Only watched about five minutes but Mudiay is good. Flashed several nice passes while flying through the paint on a drive.
Kobe air balled two threes in that same period of time.
Kobe air balled two threes in that same period of time.
ifmanis5 said:Evan Fournier, destroyer of worlds.
The guy playing center for the other team tonight for one.Kliq said:Ezeli's improvement since coming into the league has been remarkable. How many seven foot projects come into the league as late draft picks and actually turn into quality centers? Testament to the player development of Golden States organization.
How many times can they announcers talk about how it's a good thing that these two teams dislike each other?
It has to be eerie for Pierce to be on the second unit with Austin Rivers who used to come to his Celtic practices as a 12-year old when Doc first came to Boston.DeJesus Built My Hotrod said:PP with a patented drawing of the foul.
This is a great observation. It has to be surreal. Especially since Rivers is probably one of his weakest teammates, including some of the guys on those poor Cs teams.HomeRunBaker said:It has to be eerie for Pierce to be on the second unit with Austin Rivers who used to come to his Celtic practices as a 12-year old when Doc first came to Boston.
DannyDarwinism said:So through five games, Curry's at 76.3 TS% (57.4/51.9/94.6) with 29 assists and 8 turnovers with his usage at 33%.
As a masshole looking at a big-ass fish once said, we're seeing some shit we ain't never seen before.
Why? He averaged 36.1 minutes per game last year. He has never averaged fewer. He's at 34.3 so far this year.Playing LeBron 36 minutes against the 76ers in November isn't exactly a great idea at this point in his career.
Because he needs to play less and games against the 76ers in November are meaningless. Bron and the Cavs keep saying they understand this concept yet their actions are the opposite.Why?
Harrison Barnes was the only player on the Warriors to average 28-30 minutes per game last year. Their key guys, assuming you mean Curry, Thompson, and Green, averaged 31-33. Now, that's still fewer minutes per game than LeBron averages, so your point stands.LeBron himself has said his body isn't what it used to be, and went so far as to say he'd rather get eliminated in the first round than in the Finals given the wear and tear on his body. He's now at 43,500+ career minutes played, more than Bird or Magic logged in their whole careers. Just cutting from 36 to, say, 30 minutes per game saves him 500 minutes of wear-and-tear over the course of a season. I think an underplayed aspect of the .487 ts he put up in last year's playoffs is that there were stretches (especially late in games) where he seemed totally gassed. Meanwhile, one of the underplayed aspects of the Warriors' great "luck" with health was that throughout the season most of their key guys were deliberately kept closer to 28-30 minutes a game than to 38-40, to keep them fresh for the playoff run.
I agree with Ifmanis: the Sixers seem like the type of opponent where you want to keep the minutes low. (Though the game was relatively close, so that does have to be balanced with the desire to win).
I wrote "closer to 28-30 than to 38-40" so the fact stands as well.Harrison Barnes was the only player on the Warriors to average 28-30 minutes per game last year. Their key guys, assuming you mean Curry, Thompson, and Green, averaged 31-33. Now, that's still fewer minutes per game than LeBron averages, so your point stands.
The 38-40 number seemed worth ignoring since Cleveland has never looked interested in playing him at that level of minutes.I wrote "closer to 28-30 than to 38-40" so the fact stands as well.
You also left out NBA Finals MVP Andre Iguodala, who played 26.9 minutes per game, and in the finals — probably not coincidentally — looked frequently like the freshest and most energized player on either team. Iguodala was born the same year as LeBron, and as a young player was similarly explosive with a similarly heavy workload. And like LeBron, he had been showing slight signs of physical decline in recent seasons. Kerr and the Warriors staff made a conscious effort to reduce his minutes throughout the season to keep him fresh for the stretch run, and we saw how that turned out. Having experienced that first hand, you'd think the Cavs might try to emulate it somewhat.
Easier said than done without Kyrie and Shumpert around, but a stitch in time...
Well, as I said, it was more about being the same age than anything else. They're 11 months apart, so LeBron this year is the same age as last year's Iguodala, or possibly older than that if you weigh hoops mileage as heavily as age.I'm legitimately shocked you think Iguodala is a reasonable reference point for comparison to LeBron James.
To be clear: he was a sixth man in name only. He was a starter for this team his first season — for all the reasons mentioned above — and arguably its second best player. (Green was really the only other guy with a case). He was a miles better player to start the season than Barnes, who was coming off an atrocious sophomore year and had Ws fans worried he might be a semi-bust. And Kerr adored him. He asked Iguodala to become the a sixth man for a few key reasons: (1) to develop and better integrate Barnes; (2) to improve and lead the bench mob, which had been awful (a la Manu in San Antonio, who was also pretty consistently his team's second-best player); and (3) to keep him, at age 30, as fresh as possible for the stretch run and playoffs.Ignoring the obvious player quality differences, Iguodala was not a starter for his team. He was a 6th man who played 6th man minutes.
Where did you hear this? From everything I've read and heard on the matter (which is like, a ton), this is simply not true. Indeed, the opposite of the truth: Barnes got bigger minutes than he had earned to keep Andre's minutes low.Golden State was not keeping his regular season minutes down, they used him, among other players, to keep the regular season minutes of guys like Thompson, Curry, Barnes, and Green down.
Well, they do kind have a player kinda like Iguodala. He even looks like him a little. He's just bigger and better.If the Cavs had a player like Iguodala, they would do the exact same thing, and a low 30's number might become an option for LeBron.
That was all pretty persuasive. I just wonder if more recent studies about player workload aren't changing that calculus somewhat. The last two NBA champions (Spurs and Warriors) won convincingly despite not having the best player on the floor, in large part by virtue of having fresher, better rested players than their opponents.As I tried to demonstrate in my previous post, elite talents in their age 31 seasons do not play 28-30 minutes per game. They play 34-40 MPG.
You could be right on all this. If he is kept around the 34-minute mark, I don't really have an issue, and all my blah-blah-blah is for naught. But if come playoff time, after a season of 34-ish mpg, and without the luxury of the two-week sabbatical like last season, he starts looking old and gassed, I will wonder if it wouldn't have been worth it for the Cavs to trade a couple-few regular season wins for a fresher LeBron by cutting his minutes closer to 28. Interesting to see how it all develops. In a lot of ways I think LeBron's aging curve may be the biggest X-factor in the NBA over the next 2-3 years. (Well, that and who KD decides to sign with).That the Cavs look to be targeting the low end of that range for LeBron is evidence that they are being responsible with his minutes. That he played 36 minutes in a single game and it is being discussed as a high usage game is further support for that.
Blake is terrific but he is a scorer and not a center and not a guy who is going to average 20+ rebounds.Blake Griffin would like a word with you.
This discussion runs a bit into that Jalen Rose comment about positions in basketball only existing so fans can follow the game. I also thought of "bigs" as just a synonym for PF/C, but I don't think it really matters.
Andrew Wiggins is even better. The Timberwolves may get us a #13 pick after all.Towns is really good.
Karl was doing all he could to help Rondo get his 10th Turnover for the triple double.Are the Kings trying to kill Rondo or our they completely rudderless? He played the full 48 minutes in a loss to the Spurs.
Well, Karl may not be around that long.Karl was doing all he could to help Rondo get his 10th Turnover for the triple double.
Actually, Collison and Curry were out injured leaving the Kings with Rondo as the only PG with McLemore and Anderson at the 2. Be patient though it will only be a matter of time before Karl intentionally tries to kill him.