PG13 is having an absolutely amazing year. Of course Jokic and AD are too. It's a tough field.
What’s the argument for LeBron over George, exactly? If anyone should be booted from the frontcourt to make room for Jokic or AD, it’s LeBron, imo.
Fan voting has always been broken when it comes to picking the true all-stars. It should be the players and coaches doing the picking, with no one allowed to select a player on his or her own team.
But we are stuck with fan voting, just as we are stuck with 160-155 dunk fests with no defense played. NBA all-star weekend is a great opportunity to watch NCAA basketball-- you know, real basketball.
But we are stuck with fan voting, just as we are stuck with 160-155 dunk fests with no defense played. NBA all-star weekend is a great opportunity to watch NCAA basketball-- you know, real basketball.
Taking advantage of the rules is absolutely playing within them. What rule is Harden breaking if he is taking advantage of them?
You have this completely wrong DOTB. Setting up a defender to be out of position is the basic principle of offensive play whether it be in iso or pnr. Once you have an angle vs an out of position defender you can beat him to the spot OR create contact which is personal foul against the defender provided that you aren’t pushing off within your natural movement or shot attempt. The reason for this is that when a defender is out of position he is in essence the one “creating” the contact so long as the offensive player is mimicking any natural movement as contact is occurring. Your final sentence is inherently incorrect.
I’d argue that others don’t get as many of the calls is that they are not as skilled as Harden in creating and playing through contact.
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Ha, yeah, I get that part. I meant the basketball argument — specifically in response to the Moops’ request that PG13 be booted (as opposed to LeBron) to make room for AD/Jokic.
If we have a Harden thread, it must be called "Harden, The F*ck Up"
Edit: comma added in deference to DotB
Edit: comma added in deference to DotB
Looks like Cousins was never injured lol. WTF.
Hyperbole but jesus, he looks good in GS so far.
Hyperbole but jesus, he looks good in GS so far.
Yeah seriously. I have been amazed at how good he looks. But then again, most of us would look great if we were dropped into the basketball equivalent of a Bugatti Chiron alongside the best looking Instagram models.
Looks like 75-80% peak Boogie to me, but for the third game coming off an Achilles tear, that's pretty remarkable. His game has always been based more on strength, size, and skill than on athleticism, and those things tend to carry over. Plus, as you note, being surrounded by his Team USA mates doesn't hurt.
I'm savoring it now, since if he looks this healthy now, it's hard to believe someone won't offer him a big contract this summer.
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He really is the perfect big for that team. I don't think its a 100% that he doesn't re-up there either, depending on the other moving parts both for the Warriors (KD) and beyond (Davis).
I would phrase it as hes everything right with today's NBA and everything wrong with the NBA of 20 years ago. The isos, indifferent defense, and hero ball is really a throwback. The way he does everythibg himself and provides value on one end of the floor in such an extreme way is truly anomalous in today's game. Do you disagree?
During Steph’s historic season, there was an article on 538 by Silver or someone else saying that yes, Steph is basically breaking all records by taking these impossible 3s, but actually he should be taking a lot more of them because he’s so efficient at it.
Basically Morey read that and realised that he can take it to the extreme with Harden. If the league average TS% is 56% and Harden’s TS is 63%, Harden should take every shot possible until he physically collapses. If your offense has an above average chance relative to the league average of scoring every time down the floor, it makes logical sense to go with that option.
Basically Morey read that and realised that he can take it to the extreme with Harden. If the league average TS% is 56% and Harden’s TS is 63%, Harden should take every shot possible until he physically collapses. If your offense has an above average chance relative to the league average of scoring every time down the floor, it makes logical sense to go with that option.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/stephen-curry-is-the-revolution/
Bet Morey has an internal projection like this for Harden. This is the logic of our offense right now.
The only really crazy thing is that Harden has not physically collapsed. What an insane run.
Bet Morey has an internal projection like this for Harden. This is the logic of our offense right now.
The only really crazy thing is that Harden has not physically collapsed. What an insane run.
The bolded is incorrect. Harden physically collapses several times per game, not from exhaustion or even contact but because it helps his scoring.
Sorry, you know I ride with you on Harden but that was a fastball right down the middle.
if I am remembering correctly, GSW can only offer him a tad over 6 million or so next year. That is not going to get it done
The Warriors don't have birds rights for Cousins.
The breakdown here:
https://sports.yahoo.com/demarcus-cousins-unusual-position-enters-005654628.html
The breakdown here:
https://sports.yahoo.com/demarcus-cousins-unusual-position-enters-005654628.html
Yep — they're still well over the cap even if Durant moves on. They'd basically have to renounce the cap holds of everyone except Steph and Draymond (including Durant, Klay, Andre, Shaun et al.) to clear enough space under the cap to sign Cousins to a $20M+ deal. Since at minimum Klay re-signing is pretty close to a given, I think it's fair to say that isn't happening,
I mean, nothing's ever 100%, but given Cousins' age (28.5), body type, and medical history, it's really hard to imagine he'd turn down the security of a long-term max (or near-max) contract for the one-year $6.2M "non-Bird" contract the Warriors can offer, as fun as it must be to play in basketball nirvana.
I was at the Dubs-Wiz game last night and Cousins looked really good. He had some beautiful plays in the post to get layups, one with an especially nice spin move, and he also knocked down an open 3. He also had some nice passes out of the high post.
He looked much better playing with the starters. When you put shooters around him he can't be doubled in the post, and nobody on the Wiz could handle his size and quickness 1-on-1. Kerr tried him at the beginning of the 4th quarter in lineups without shooting and he didn't look nearly as good; for the first time, the Wiz could send doubles at him and they forced at least one turnover that way. He clearly is still working himself back into condition and doesn't have a full wind yet.
Where Cousins will be invaluable is in the playoffs when teams adopt Houston's switch-everything defense to counter the Warriors' 3-point shooting. The Warriors can just get Cousins switched on a smaller man and throw it in the post for an easy layup. None of these stretchy perimeter defenders have anything like the size to handle Cousins in the post.
He looked much better playing with the starters. When you put shooters around him he can't be doubled in the post, and nobody on the Wiz could handle his size and quickness 1-on-1. Kerr tried him at the beginning of the 4th quarter in lineups without shooting and he didn't look nearly as good; for the first time, the Wiz could send doubles at him and they forced at least one turnover that way. He clearly is still working himself back into condition and doesn't have a full wind yet.
Where Cousins will be invaluable is in the playoffs when teams adopt Houston's switch-everything defense to counter the Warriors' 3-point shooting. The Warriors can just get Cousins switched on a smaller man and throw it in the post for an easy layup. None of these stretchy perimeter defenders have anything like the size to handle Cousins in the post.
The counter to that is that he will get absolutely smoked when he has to switch onto Harden on the defensive end. But then again most bigs have the same problem
It's funny — when I imagined Cousins traditional post-ups it didn't excite me all that much, since even with a size mismatch I never think of posting up as particularly efficient basketball, at least not relative to the Warriors' idealized body-and-ball movement offense. The main good that I saw coming out of it was split-cut action, like they used to run with David West, where the ultimate goal was to pass to a cutter or shooter rather than actually get up a shot out of the post.
But then last night I saw him get a couple of those "deep seals" where he literally puts a skinny guy like Sam Dekker under the rim and drops the ball gently through the hoop, and I was like, "okay, this can work." (Edit: offensively, anyway. As Moops alludes to, we have to see what happens on the other end when elite P&R guys like Harden try to force him to switch all day long).
Cousins per 36 minutes (tiny 61-minute sample alert): 23.0 pts on .556 true shooting / 12.4 rebounds / 6.5 assists / 1.2 blocks / 2.4 turnovers / 7.1 fouls.
But then last night I saw him get a couple of those "deep seals" where he literally puts a skinny guy like Sam Dekker under the rim and drops the ball gently through the hoop, and I was like, "okay, this can work." (Edit: offensively, anyway. As Moops alludes to, we have to see what happens on the other end when elite P&R guys like Harden try to force him to switch all day long).
Cousins per 36 minutes (tiny 61-minute sample alert): 23.0 pts on .556 true shooting / 12.4 rebounds / 6.5 assists / 1.2 blocks / 2.4 turnovers / 7.1 fouls.
Just yesterday I posited on a Warriors board that Harden might be one of the few players in NBA history other than Curry for whom the standard Usage-Efficiency curve does not apply. Both players perversely seem to get more efficient the farther into the stratosphere their usage goes.
I honestly think the biggest reason Kerr doesn't just spam simple Curry P&R all day long is just a pure philosophical and aesthetic aversion to it as ugly basketball. It's also easier to run the more varied, egalitarian sets he does when you have great playmakers and passers up and down the roster (Dray, KD, Andre, Shaun, Bogut, West, and now Boogie, e.g.) But I can totally see why Mike D is doing what he's doing now, especially since the Beard seems to have the endurance and sturdy body type to hold up to it. And it's always interesting as a pure science experiment to see what when someone goes where no one has gone before. 249 points in five games on 0 assists is really like a whole new sport that we have not seen.
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It is philosophy with Kerr, but it's not just aesthetics, I think. Kerr thinks that eventually you're going to need contributions from guys up and down the roster and the only way to keep everyone engaged and ready to contribute when you need them is a system where everyone moves and gets to touch the ball -- all that "Strength in Numbers" stuff. Of course that's a lot easier to do when you don't have to sacrifice much short-term offensive efficiency because your team is so good.
I'm also not sure Steph could be as efficient as Harden at that usage. Steph is smaller and shorter and not as good at drawing fouls and finishing at the rim as Harden, plus I'm not sure Steph could handle the physical pounding of that many drives/fouls per game. Steph rarely looks to initiate contact on his drives the way Harden does. FWIW it's still not clear Harden can handle the pounding over the long term, we've seen him wear down in the playoffs.
Looking forward to the five or six possessions where Marcus Smart defends Cousins tomorrow night.
In this interview, while he expects VO to make a full recovery, one Dr. thinks the ruptured quad is worse than an ACL tear. One quote:
CBS SPORTS: Bottom line, do you expect Oladipo to make a full recovery?
DR. BENNER: The hard part is even if you get full range of motion back, even if you get all the strength back, there is that unknown part of the equation. Professional athletes have to put incredible stress on that muscle and tendon, whereas a normal person who sustains this injury, they're just looking to restore continuity of the muscle and get as much of the motion and function back as they can. They want to walk normal. Things like that. Victor Oladipo is an incredibly explosive and dynamic athlete. That's one of the things that makes him so special. So he has loftier expectations, or a higher bar if you will, for his recovery.
From a medical standpoint, the tendon is going to heal. If he is able to get his full motion and all the strength in his muscle back, he will be able to return to the explosive athlete he's been. But the thing is: it's hard to recover all that. There is no question that there are some aspects of an injury that might be insurmountable. Results differ from person to person, surgeon to surgeon, athletic trainer to athletic trainer. You just don't know until you get into the rehab and see how the athlete responds, and really, once he's back out there competing and being explosive and athletic.
Also, for the athlete, getting back the same level of strength and range of motion and all those things isn't the only hurdle with an injury like this. It's the mental part, the confidence to jump and land and explode the way an athlete like Oladipo is used to doing. Now, Victor Oladipo seems to be hard working and a really mentally strong guy, so I would say all indications would point to him being able to make a full recovery. But there is an unknown factor with an injury like this.
DR. BENNER: The hard part is even if you get full range of motion back, even if you get all the strength back, there is that unknown part of the equation. Professional athletes have to put incredible stress on that muscle and tendon, whereas a normal person who sustains this injury, they're just looking to restore continuity of the muscle and get as much of the motion and function back as they can. They want to walk normal. Things like that. Victor Oladipo is an incredibly explosive and dynamic athlete. That's one of the things that makes him so special. So he has loftier expectations, or a higher bar if you will, for his recovery.
From a medical standpoint, the tendon is going to heal. If he is able to get his full motion and all the strength in his muscle back, he will be able to return to the explosive athlete he's been. But the thing is: it's hard to recover all that. There is no question that there are some aspects of an injury that might be insurmountable. Results differ from person to person, surgeon to surgeon, athletic trainer to athletic trainer. You just don't know until you get into the rehab and see how the athlete responds, and really, once he's back out there competing and being explosive and athletic.
Also, for the athlete, getting back the same level of strength and range of motion and all those things isn't the only hurdle with an injury like this. It's the mental part, the confidence to jump and land and explode the way an athlete like Oladipo is used to doing. Now, Victor Oladipo seems to be hard working and a really mentally strong guy, so I would say all indications would point to him being able to make a full recovery. But there is an unknown factor with an injury like this.
Something that really can't be discounted is the game-to-game consistency that Harden is delivering. His consecutive game streak of scoring 30+ is up to 21 now. In the era where stars sit out for rest all the time and poor performances are regularly excused by players having to play on a back-to-back; what Harden is doing right now is even more remarkable. Not at one point during this run has Harden just taken a game off to rest, or be passive on offense, or just not bring it 100 percent on a random night in the regular-season. His team couldn't win if he does that, and he's brought it every night, regardless of his opponent.
The Rockets might have something here. Gordon and Rivers are capable of generating offense when Harden sits, and Faried works well in the poor man's Capela role.
I'm also not totally sold on the concept of the Raptors--I don't see their path to really ratcheting up to another level on the offensive end.
I'm also not totally sold on the concept of the Raptors--I don't see their path to really ratcheting up to another level on the offensive end.
Have to hand it to the Raptors, getting Kawhi + Green was highway robbery. Green played some excellent defense against Harden in the 1st half
Faried extremely active, nice to see a guy come back from the abyss. He'll be a nice high energy bench piece once Capela returns.
Gordon with the off balance 3 with 20 on the clock, wtf? Good defense from Harden on Kawhi on the last possession, they pull it out.