He also attacked the paint with 15 seconds left. Effectively he tried to give the Nets an extra possession even if he didn’t turn it over.
Yup. Harris was very good tonight. Simmons was at his best. Nets know exactly what they need to do with him but couldn’t stop him.
Agreed. They are one more scorer away from being a contender. IT0, even at peak health isn't that guy because of his well documented defensive limitations. Kemba would have been great for these guys.
Yeah, I've been waiting two years to see him in the playoffs, because it was such an open question as to whether he could hold up in that environment. The early returns aren't great.
I feel like either Klay or Dray are Ringo. Boogie is George Best.
Not sure if it reflects well on Simmons that it takes a little public humiliation to turn him into peak Magic Johnson, but that was one hell of a performance. Perhaps Embiid is just the new Ewing.
Congrats, the Warriors beat the Clippers. Definitely a humongous win, a shocking win, nobody expected it. This was crazier than the Lightning getting swept by Columbus.
Pete Best, not George Best. George Best was a Manchester United legend, not the Beatles' discarded drummer.
Addition by subtraction. You see much more fluidity on teams when Embiid, Kyrie and Boogie are out. Tobias looked like he was a caged animal released from captivity. Durant was more aggressive. We’ve seen same with multiple Celtics players. It’s not a coincidence.
Over
Except the Celtics, as a team, play better when Kyrie is in there. Assist % goes up when he's off, but team shoots worse. ORtg is 5.9 with him on court, 3.1 with him off.
Long term I agree. This is the NBA where talent wins out. One game, where good players are allowed to perform without being restricted, I’ll take the better “team” over the alpha player when coupled with the opponents natural letdown.
Interesting subject. A Philly columnist suggested today that Embiid sit out Game 4, too, mostly for health reasons, but also because Game 4 is house money for the 76ers. The columnist believes it’s better to have Joel rested for Toronto. Cart before the horse, perhaps.
Haha, fair enough. I was just doing the "aggrieved fan" routine at the couple of posts above that took shots at the team for their lack of focus. Of course it's not remotely shocking that they won, but still impressive (to me) how they got after it on both ends from the opening tip. With the notable exception of the 2016 Finals, whenever they've been threatened in the Kerr era (Memphis 2015, Cleveland 2015, OKC 2016, Houston 2018, e.g.) they've come up similarly big.
All of this is true, but the fact remains that Golden State has 4 hall of fame players in the starting lineup. While they have that, they are the favorites and everyone who isn't a fan will probably hate them or at least root against them.
Yeah, this was an awful analysis of G3 on my part. Here I was acknowledging that the Warriors completely quit playing in G2 which obviously wouldn't be the case in a G3 with the wakeup call yet I didn't call a 30-point Warrior win. Terrible.
No biggie, but you didn't just acknowledge that they quit — you also claimed "this Warrior team is a mental shell of the team that won the championship." That is highly dubious analysis, imho. My general sense is that whatever mental strengths and weaknesses exist now were also there last season, at minimum.
Ooh, that works too. I went with Pete because tall, skinny, emotional, generationally talented, and — according to my NYT friend — possibly gay (not that there's anything not fabulous about it!) But Clapton actually played with them so makes more sense.
Does that leave Andre Iguodala as George? I'll just assume for the sake of argument that Kevin Durant stole his wife.
Pivoting a bit here... Is Draymond Green really a Hall of Famer? He will no doubt get a bump from being on the Warriors' dynasty, but bb-ref includes titles in their predictor and it still has Draymond at just 27% right now (the next-lowest Warrior is Klay at almost a coin flip). For me, he's not even close at this point and he seems to only be getting worse as a player before age 30.
Maybe I've misread the way the media and general public have processed Draymond's importance to the Warriors success, but I have him as a no-doubt Hall of Famer (assuming good health going forward, of course). He's been DPOY, 2x All-NBA, 3x All-Star, 4x champion and 4x All-Defense in seven seasons. That's a tremendous amount of success in a short period of time.
