Celtics vs. Nets, Round 1 Discussion

Who is your preferred opponent?

  • Cavs - I want an easy sweep

    Votes: 125 74.9%
  • Nets - I want to end their season / I like competitive basketball / DRAMA!!

    Votes: 42 25.1%

  • Total voters
    167
  • Poll closed .

CaptainLaddie

dj paul pfieffer
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Sep 6, 2004
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where the darn libs live
Lots of crushing Nash, but I’m not sure how he should be doing this much differently.

He gets fired only if K1 and K2 desire it. If they need a fall guy, he’s gone, but if they are of a mind to build around the Ks and BS next year I think he gets another crack: sweep or not.
This is where I am. It's not his fault Kyrie is a headcase and a nut.
 

benhogan

Granite Truther
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Nov 2, 2007
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The Nets are built the old fashioned way, they put together three superstars and then signed a bunch of aging ring chasers. But this is the flip side of the pace & space era. Those aging ring chasers struggle with speed and quickness.

Boston was in the unique position of being run by contemporary coach that was a forward defensive thinker. Boston is built to defend in this era, it’s tough to swing the ball side to side against all those long, quick defenders that are death on passing lanes. Especially when those guys are young and durable, they only have two guys on the wrong side of thirty, and Theis only just. And they’ll be adding another guy like this next year in Begarin and there’s always the chance that Nesmith gets himself untied on the offensive end.
+1
There is some past Spurs engineering under the hood
 

nighthob

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Jul 15, 2005
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+1
There is some past Spurs engineering under the hood
Can you imagine this team if they’d drafted Saddiq Bey rather than Nesmith, though? Durant might be on suicide watch if Boston had another big wing to throw at him.
 

128

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Can you imagine this team if they’d drafted Saddiq Bey rather than Nesmith, though? Durant might be on suicide watch if Boston had another big wing to throw at him.
Or if they'd kept, and developed, Max Strus?

Hindsight .....
 

Jimbodandy

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Jan 31, 2006
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around the way
Or if they'd kept, and developed, Max Strus?

Hindsight .....
…. or Desmond Bane?
By the same token, what if they gave up on Robert Williams because he couldn't stay on the court. Or what if they bailed on Grant after his terrible year last year. Or maybe if they had moved on from Marcus a couple of years ago when he was a .518 TS% on 19% usage and wasn't passing the ball well enough.

They should get credit for the guys that they kept too.
 

benhogan

Granite Truther
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By the same token, what if they gave up on Robert Williams because he couldn't stay on the court. Or what if they bailed on Grant after his terrible year last year. Or maybe if they had moved on from Marcus a couple of years ago when he was a .518 TS% on 19% usage and wasn't passing the ball well enough.

They should get credit for the guys that they kept too.
or pulled a Knicks by signing Fournier & starting Kemba :eek:

Nesmith is far from done and the core is here for the next 2 seasons at the very least

That is awesome.
good call on Ben Simmons last fall. Ben's desire to progress as an NBA player doesn't seem to really interest him
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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JVG was hammering the transition thing on the broadcast as well. I think the big thing here is that Durant is just exhausted and I don't know if he is going to be up to running the floor super hard. Between being physical with him on defense and the Nets being so bad defensively that Durant can't coast on that end is really wearing him down. It's so strange to see this happening. It's crazy to me a team needs to focus on getting in transition to score when they have KEVIN DURANT, the greatest ISO scorer in the game, or they need to do things like dust-off Blake Griffin or play Mills/Curry/Kyrie all together at once because the offense is so ineffective.
You make a good point about KD not running hard in transition. I haven't watched for that before but will try to do so for G4.

As for your point about ISO scoring, the issue is that KD isn't really going ISO. We saw in November and December that teams these days can generally stop a guy if they can load up on him. Even MJ needed help to win. BRK is simply lacking the pieces who can help on both ends of the court.
My buddy who's a diehard Nets fan and season ticket holder (really!) is convinced Nash will be fired if they are swept. I'm skeptical of this, considering the bullshit Nash has had to put up with and that he's got two years left on a pretty big contract.
I was listening to a BRK podcast because I had nothing else to do and there was speculation that Nash would simply call it quits. The podcaster said that Nash looks miserable from where he started this season. Sheer speculation.
 

jmcc5400

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By the same token, what if they gave up on Robert Williams because he couldn't stay on the court. Or what if they bailed on Grant after his terrible year last year. Or maybe if they had moved on from Marcus a couple of years ago when he was a .518 TS% on 19% usage and wasn't passing the ball well enough.

They should get credit for the guys that they kept too.
Oh, for sure.
 

HomeRunBaker

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Jan 15, 2004
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NoXInNixon

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Can you imagine a team wanting Kyrie at this point? I know it would happen if he became available, because some team would see the talent and imagine best case scenario. But he’s proven himself to be poison a few times now.
Kyrie for Westbrook. Does the money work?
 

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
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Kyrie for Westbrook. Does the money work?
According to the NBA trade machine on ESPN...

Westbrook: 44m
Kyrie: 35m + Seth Curry: 8.2m

That would be a match. Would a team of KD, Westbrook, and Simmons be any good? I'm sure LeBron would love that deal though.
 

johnmd20

mad dog
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According to the NBA trade machine on ESPN...

Westbrook: 44m
Kyrie: 35m + Seth Curry: 8.2m

That would be a match. Would a team of KD, Westbrook, and Simmons be any good? I'm sure LeBron would love that deal though.
Kyrie is so much better than Westbrook. So no, KD and Westbrook and "Ben Simmons" would be very bad.
 

Auger34

used to be tbb
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Cannot see this ending well.
Its really weird Brooklyn (and presumably Klutch) were planting these stories he would return.

All of the talk when they got him was how they wanted him to be comfortable, not rush him, and start him off in games that weren’t pressure filled.
It never made any sense for him to return from over a year off in the middle of a playoff series against the best defense in the NBA
 

The Mort Report

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Kyrie may self sabotage and throw up a 7-30 to avoid a game 5 elimination in Boston
This. We'll know for sure pretty quick if he starts picking up Tatum on D like his last game in a C's uni picking up Giannis. Can play it off as trying to give Tatum a different look on D
 

Cellar-Door

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According to the NBA trade machine on ESPN...

Westbrook: 44m
Kyrie: 35m + Seth Curry: 8.2m

That would be a match. Would a team of KD, Westbrook, and Simmons be any good? I'm sure LeBron would love that deal though.
yeah, considering the Lakers get the 2 best players.

Kyrie is an asshole and a headcase... he's also still a borderline All-NBA player, he's really good. Curry is a good player.
Westbrook is garbage.
 

HowBoutDemSox

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View: https://twitter.com/wojespn/status/1518350643056058372

ESPN story on Ben Simmons reporting back soreness on Sunday, leaving the Nets surprised and disappointed that he won't make his season debut in Game 4:
Hadn’t even scrimmaged with the starters yet, but was set to play game 4 barring further setback? Sure, sure.
While Simmons hadn't been able to scrimmage with the Nets starters, there was still some hope his presence on the court could provide some help to a flailing team -- and allow Simmons to get back into an NBA game for the first time.
 

Cellar-Door

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Hadn’t even scrimmaged with the starters yet, but was set to play game 4 barring further setback? Sure, sure.
Nets haven't practiced the starters all post-season apparently. So no matter what there was no way he was going to scrimmage with them.
 

Euclis20

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Hadn’t even scrimmaged with the starters yet, but was set to play game 4 barring further setback? Sure, sure.
This whole situation is a giant embarrassment for all involved. That photo of TL dunking on Drummond with Simmons watching awkwardly from the sidelines is the takeaway from their playoff run so far.
 

Eddie Jurak

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LOL at “surprised and disappointed.”

2016 draft:
1. Ben Simmons
2. Brandon Ingram
3. Jaylen Brown

2017 draft:
1. Markelle Fultz
2. Lonzo Ball
3. Jayson Tatum

Ingram and Ball are legit players, but we did a fine job of dodging some bullets in this drafts.

(As to 2017, I 100% believe that Tatum was Danny’s guy all along and Danny would have taken him first if he wasn’t certain he would get him third.)
 

HomeRunBaker

bet squelcher
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Jan 15, 2004
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This whole situation is a giant embarrassment for all involved. That photo of TL dunking on Drummond with Simmons watching awkwardly from the sidelines is the takeaway from their playoff run so far.
Yeah but think of all the practice time, with two days off between all games thus far, that was dedicated to Simmons first pre-season game of his year? Those Nets really got one over on us this time. GJGE.
 

Spelunker

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Jul 17, 2005
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Thanks for posting.

It's amazing to me that Jaylen Brown - who is off the charts athletically and in this series is tasked with guarding KI straight up at time, chasing around Curry and Mills, going mano-a-mano against KD, and guarding bigs like Drummond and Claxton and keeping them off the boards (JB had a couple of key rebounds down the stretch in G2) is considered the "worst" defender of the Cs starting five. Particularly on a lot of teams he might be considered the best defender.

I know at the beginning of the year people were pointing out that JB sometimes fell asleep on defense or missed rotations. That's not happening very much these days if at all.

Amazing what happens when you put five of the best 25-50 defenders in the NBA together, they might really be able to shut down opponents.
Hadn’t even scrimmaged with the starters yet, but was set to play game 4 barring further setback? Sure, sure.
Concepcion continuing his savage streak.

View: https://twitter.com/netw3rk/status/1518333489958899712?t=pzI2HD-z4sQFC2D9v3CPAQ&s=19
 

tims4wins

PN23's replacement
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LOL at “surprised and disappointed.”

2016 draft:
1. Ben Simmons
2. Brandon Ingram
3. Jaylen Brown

2017 draft:
1. Markelle Fultz
2. Lonzo Ball
3. Jayson Tatum

Ingram and Ball are legit players, but we did a fine job of dodging some bullets in this drafts.

(As to 2017, I 100% believe that Tatum was Danny’s guy all along and Danny would have taken him first if he wasn’t certain he would get him third.)
How did the Sixers manage to draft two complete head cases in back to back drafts? That is a really black mark for that leadership team.

Edit and while Embiid isn’t nearly to that level, he’s kind of out there too (drafted in 2014)
 

ManicCompression

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Its really weird Brooklyn (and presumably Klutch) were planting these stories he would return.
Seeing that Woj is a Nets stooge, I don't think this is a Klutch thing (remember: Woj was the guy saying that the Simmons for Harden deal "wasn't happening" solely as a way to create leverage for Sean Marks). Seems like the simplest reason is that the Nets wanted to build up a better fall guy than the front office - who have done a fucking shit job of surrounding two All-NBA players with a surrounding cast that can compete for a title - and Simmons is perfect because he's a narcissistic doof with no self-awareness.

So they can pretend like "oh, we thought Simmons was going to play, but *wink wink* we never thought this back issue was serious enough to force him out all of the first round, kinda weird that it's persisted this long" and of course people are going to eat it up because they don't like Ben Simmons. Then no one is talking about how the FO picked Patty Mills over Jeff Green or kept Blake Griffin and LMA over James Johnson (or Kessler Edwards over James Johnson) and how much of a bad idea it was to go into the playoffs without a capable wing defender taller than 6'3" who's also not your best scorer.