What teams are beating a dead horse?

[Nites]

I'd go with the Warriors. It's over, and it's been over for awhile. They had that same core longer than Boston has had theirs.

[Patsfan1081]

Well you could say any team that sucks every year....lol

But to me Boston is the predictable. They are good....but just can't get over the hump with the top talent they have. Tatum is awesome....but IMO he's a second tier guy.

Exactly. Very predictable! Been hearing/seeing it in the national media for almost a decade, since Stevens got there.
If that aint a treadmill team then we don't know what is.

It’s ridiculous to call a team led by two guys in their early twenties a treadmill team, they aren’t stuck in their position. People are only brining them up because they haven’t bottomed out recently. They tried to go the vet route with Kyrie, Horford, Hayward, Kemba…..and it obviously didn’t work. Now they’re trying to develope young players, and because they didn’t have sunk back into the lottery between you have people calling them a treadmill. What’s different between them and other young teams around the league?

[jkvonny]

Well you could say any team that sucks every year....lol

But to me Boston is the predictable. They are good....but just can't get over the hump with the top talent they have. Tatum is awesome....but IMO he's a second tier guy.

Exactly. Very predictable! Been hearing/seeing it in the national media for almost a decade, since Stevens got there.
If that aint a treadmill team then we don't know what is.

It’s ridiculous to call a team led by two guys in their early twenties a treadmill team, they aren’t stuck in their position. People are only brining them up because they haven’t bottomed out recently. They tried to go the vet route with Kyrie, Horford, Hayward, Kemba…..and it obviously didn’t work. Now they’re trying to develope young players, and because they didn’t have sunk back into the lottery between you have people calling them a treadmill. What’s different between them and other young teams around the league?

It's ridiculous that the national media keeps pushing the Celtics down our necks the past decade since Stevens got there.
Treadmilling for awhile now. TBH.
I guess we shall see in the next few yrs.

[jpengland]

Dallas has been surrounding a Euro superstar with garbage for about 25 years now.

I’d really like for that to change one day

Yeah I mean the second most winningest franchise of the century, finals trips and a championship. Now with the best young player in the world is flogging a dead horse....


Christ.

Cool. Now look up post 2011 Mavs stats

So 10, and not 25 years, you mean?

And in those 10 years (mostly Dirks victory laps and rebuilding) we have been to the playoffs 6 times and now have the best young player on the planet who has been to the playoffs two of his first three years (not many young first options can say that..).

But hey, if that's flogging a dead horse and 'garbage' for 25 years then perhaps you should go and support another team?

[Tacoma]

Washington seemed pretty optimistic about keeping Beal, if he wanted out all he had to do was say so but all we've heard is he will take a max contract and stay. This is the trend for players now in the COVID era, they're very conservative, not taking less money when they can just sign a big contract and demand out in a year or two of losing.

And IMO, this is exactly what Bradley Beal should do because he's a bit overrated as a player. Poor defender and he's shot around 35% from 3 the past 3 seasons. Yeah, he scores a lot of points, but that's partially because he's one of the highest usage rate guys in the entire league (4th in the NBA last season). I actually think he's potentially a bad fit with other stars because he's not a great passer (4.4 assists to 3.1 turnovers). Specifically on the Celtics he's going to take the ball out of the hands of Tatum and Brown and won't really make them better players.

Concur about Beal being overrated. He's not just a poor defender, he's one of the worst. According to NBA.com, his defensive rating ranks 479 out of 525 active players. The benefit you get on offense is offset by his liability on defense.

This has translated to his teams missing the playoffs in 4 of his 9 seasons. His team's best season was 2017 with a very good team with Wall, Otto Porter, M. Morris, Bogdanovic and Gortat, but they lost in the 2nd round. That's about it in 9 seasons. If BOS is looking for Beal to be their missing link, I think he's more fool's gold than savior.

[dirkforpres]

Yeah I mean the second most winningest franchise of the century, finals trips and a championship. Now with the best young player in the world is flogging a dead horse....


Christ.

Cool. Now look up post 2011 Mavs stats

So 10, and not 25 years, you mean?

And in those 10 years (mostly Dirks victory laps and rebuilding) we have been to the playoffs 6 times and now have the best young player on the planet who has been to the playoffs two of his first three years (not many young first options can say that..).

But hey, if that's flogging a dead horse and 'garbage' for 25 years then perhaps you should go and support another team?

10 years, 25 years… honestly does it even matter? It’s a problem when any team can’t acquire a better sidekick for their generational stars than Monta Ellis over any period of time. It’s embarrassing that anyone can defend these passive idiots when it comes to talent acquisition

[Scalabrine]

Dallas has been surrounding a Euro superstar with garbage for about 25 years now.

I’d really like for that to change one day

Even with Donnie gone, it's still the same nonsense. This off season was putrid from a Mavs fan perspective.

Yeah I'd be pissed if I was you. They are essentially running it back with the same squad but swapped out Josh Richardson for Reggie Bullock and Moses Brown.

Porzingis/Brown/WCS/Boban
DFS/Kleber/Powell
Bullock/DFS
Hardaway/Brunson/Terry
Doncic/Brunson/Burke

That teams filled with a bunch of JAG's. They have no cap space, they will be picking in the low 20's next year, dont have a FRP in 23, and thus can't trade a first till the 2025!

They swung for the fences with KP and it's looking more and more like they were guessing fastball and it was a changeup.

[ciueli]

Concur about Beal being overrated. He's not just a poor defender, he's one of the worst. According to NBA.com, his defensive rating ranks 479 out of 525 active players. The benefit you get on offense is offset by his liability on defense.

This has translated to his teams missing the playoffs in 4 of his 9 seasons. His team's best season was 2017 with a very good team with Wall, Otto Porter, M. Morris, Bogdanovic and Gortat, but they lost in the 2nd round. That's about it in 9 seasons. If BOS is looking for Beal to be their missing link, I think he's more fool's gold than savior.

It's interesting to look at it this way and ask who you would rather have as the main player on your team, to put things in perspective these two players were the main guys on teams that won an almost identical number of games last season.

Player A
31.3 PPG, 4.7 RPG, 4.4 APG, 1.2 SPG, 0.4 BPG, 3.1 TOV, 7.7 FTA, 35.8 MPG
-1 Net Rating, +3.2 Box +/-, 5.9 Win Shares, 0.132 Win Shares/48, 59.3% True Shooting, 22.7 PER, 34.1% USG

Player B
21.6 PPG, 4.2 RPG, 6.9 APG, 0.9 SPG, 0.2 BPG, 2.0 TOV, 7.2 FTA, 33.7 MPG
+7 Net Rating, +3.2 Box +/-, 7.4 Win Shares, 0.174 Win Shares/48, 59.1% True Shooting, 22.0 PER, 26.1% USG

Based on those numbers, I'd probably take Player B, 6.9 assists on only 2.0 turnovers per game is really good, Net Rating and Win Share numbers also indicate that Player B was more responsible for his team's wins. Player A is really just giving you more volume scoring with crazy high usage.

Spoiler:

Player A is Brad Beal (obviously), and Player B is DeMar DeRozan. And Brad "I'm about to sign a deal starting at $41M/year in 2022" Beal wasn't clearly better than DeMar who just signed with Chicago for $28M/year. At this point he's basically worse passing, worse defensive DeMar DeRozan who can shoot the 3.

[JN61]

I mean considering state of league you can argue good 20 or so teams... There are probably 5 teams that properly tank and 5 teams that have any chance to win it all. Injuries or not, if not counting injuries it's like 3 teams.

[Catchall]

Mavs are tapping on the horse a bit. The jazz are full on beating it. The blazers have pummeled the horse into a fine powder at this point.

I'm not sure the Jazz horse is all that dead though. I think there is some life left in that nag.

Jazz should be a top-2 seed and make the WCF this year if they're healthy. I don't think they're a dead horse. They made some improvements this offseason.

Portland on the other hand...

[Catchall]

Dallas has been surrounding a Euro superstar with garbage for about 25 years now.

I’d really like for that to change one day

Even with Donnie gone, it's still the same nonsense. This off season was putrid from a Mavs fan perspective.

Yeah I'd be pissed if I was you. They are essentially running it back with the same squad but swapped out Josh Richardson for Reggie Bullock and Moses Brown.

Porzingis/Brown/WCS/Boban
DFS/Kleber/Powell
Bullock/DFS
Hardaway/Brunson/Terry
Doncic/Brunson/Burke

That teams filled with a bunch of JAG's.

For whatever reason, Dallas has had a hard time pulling free agents. I'm not sure why.

[ciueli]

10 years, 25 years… honestly does it even matter? It’s a problem when any team can’t acquire a better sidekick for their generational stars than Monta Ellis over any period of time. It’s embarrassing that anyone can defend these passive idiots when it comes to talent acquisition

Well, the Mavs bet everything on Porzingis being a future perennial All-Star and that hasn't exactly worked out. They were criticized for it at the time, he was coming off injury and they gambled he would get back to All-Star form, and that gamble hasn't paid off yet.

The other option at the time was to go the rebuilding route for a few years, build through the draft, leave cap space open to get a better player in free agency but with a player as good as Luka it's hard to see how the Mavs would have lost enough games to get anything beyond a late lottery pick and Dallas already has a questionable history attracting star free agents who always seem to want to sign with other teams. That continued this year as Kyle Lowry (their prime target) decided to sign with the Miami Heat.

I get the sense that at some level there is some kind of US born bias in certain players in terms of stars wanting to play with each other. Kyle chose Miami because he's close friends with Jimmy Butler, LeBron famously always wants guys he's had experience playing with or is good friends with, there's a surprising amount of player movement that occurs in the NBA due to players being buddies (Minnesota trading for D'Angleo Russell just to appease Karl-Anthony Towns for example) and that leaves the European players out in the cold to some degree.

[dautjazz]

Mavs are tapping on the horse a bit. The jazz are full on beating it. The blazers have pummeled the horse into a fine powder at this point.

The Jazz had injuries the last two years in the playoffs, otherwise who knows what happens, especially this year. Also it's really hard for a Utah to attract superstars, its quite impressive that they are this good considering the circumstances.