yoyoboy wrote:Yeah the idea that Giannis hasn't been neutered in the playoffs by well coached defensive schemes is so strange to me. Have we been watching the same games? Sure, he was doing awesome in that 11 minutes of game time he played in Game 5 before he got injured. But excuse me if I'd rather pay attention to the 9 other games against Toronto and Miami these past 2 years which represent the larger sample size and have shown that he can be contained when the opposing team builds that wall, dares him to shoot, and has the personnel to execute the scheme properly. Giannis is too predictable as an on ball creator right now, he's not a shooting threat teams are close too worried about, and he's still limited as a playmaker who's not making the pass out of the collapsed defense quick enough to take advantage of how they're playing him. Defensively he hasn't had the same impact either against the more elite teams but I'm more inclined to blame that one on Bud to be honest.
Over a whole season as a total body of work Giannis might be providing as much value as anybody, but if he's significantly less effective at maintaining that impact against say 2-3 teams in the league (which he's likely to face in the playoffs) then it's a non starter for me to consider him over guys like LeBron or even Davis who imo are much more resilient to any kind of defense they might face. People say "oh well Davis has LeBron" but I don't see how that matters. We're not even talking about team success here and working backwards. I'm talking about how each have looked from an individual standpoint, and I don't buy into the idea that Davis is only doing this because he's with LeBron. It hasn't looked to me like LeBron is giving him way more easy baskets than he'd be getting otherwise. Most of the time the play is literally just dump it off to AD and watch him either hit the midrange shot or use his quickness and power to get to the rim. His % of assisted FG is actually lower this year compared to his past playoff runs, at 59.4% assisted this year opposed to 72% and 79% in the past. It's partly because the Lakers really trust Davis to just go to work on his own, but also because while LeBron does open things up for AD at times, the rest of the roster is severely lacking in creation ability and that offsets that assistance a bit.
Who said he wasn't "neutered"? Of course he is, he's the only volume scorer on his team. It doesn't mean he's not actually an increidbly hard guy to defend.
Lebron James? He has been held back by similar defensive tactics several times. You know Steph Curry? Even he gets held back...James Harden...all of them do - and those guys have had more star power than Giannis have. Anthony Davis literally did just as "bad" against GSW's defense in 2018 - now all of a sudden he's having no problems putting the ball in the hoop.
If a player is the only star on their team then obviously an entire 5 man defense can stop them.
There is actually no real strong evidence that Anthony Davis is more resilient. He has a MUCH smaller playoff sample size - and the last time he was in a similar situation as Giannis he put up worse numbers. So how is he more resilient? Teams can't guard Davis with all their guys because LBJ is on the court....
Like, ok Ardee. Pretend Luka Doncic is Giannis' teammate. Can you seriously imagine Giannis being "neutered" when Luka is his teammate? If they were to do that Luka would destroy them. Could you imagine them "neutering" Luka? If they did that Giannis would destroy them. You can't say "oh, well that's because Luka is an incredible offensive player" - because that's exactly what Lebron James is.
Every thing you said literally goes out the window if you give Giannis another star.
Lillard
Curry
Durant
Harden
Luka
Tatum
Jokic
If they all team with Giannis everything you just said is irrelevant. You replace Bledsoe with Damian Lillard who is not even a superstar, and the Bucks will have a MUCH better offense than the Lakers (who aren't even a great offensive team, they win on defense). How do you guard it? I mean, Giannis' game is so simple - all they have to do is crowd the paint, right?
So yeah, ARE we watching the same game? Because when I'm watching it seems like Giannis is having problems scoring against 3 guys hedging the paint with a rim protecter behind the.I believe we came up with a slang and we would call that "gravity" - that seems pretty damn resilient in the playoffs.
Re-read most of your criticisms of Giannis, now apply that to Davis...Davis doesn't have to worry about most of the things you just said. You're not holding them to the same standard.
Giannis + superstar =
BETTER offense than Davis + superstar, but somehow Giannis is playoff fodder on offense and Anthony Davis is super resilient. That's almost nonsense to me. How on earth is Giannis+Curry worse than Davis+James? Or Davis+Curry if you want to use the same partners. It doesn't seem possible based on "what we see".
. I saw one post on the GB that said that he changed the way they answer interview and post-game questions 
