As desperate as NOLA is for a center, adding another guy with persistent injury problems to that team seems foolhardy.
General NBA season thread: 24-25 edition
- Thread starter RorschachsMask
- Start date
Yes and no.
Rob could be one of the bigs on the market with legit upside.
Obviously someone with a better injury history would be preferred by anyone, but in some cases better to have a 30% chance of a great outcome (and the other outcomes useless) than a 90% chance of a mediocre outcome. One strategy is to get a few of high upside/volatile guys to fill one role and hope 1 of them can stay healthy or they can avoid injuries at the same time.
I would certainly love a RWIII Celtics reunion, assuming the price is right, even knowing there is a real chance he is never healthy for any chunk of time. Just 1 great game last night is enough to know some of his upside is still there and he's not fully washed yet.
Yea NOLA has had terrible injury luck (although Zion going down is somewhat predictable)
But agree with what @radsoxfan said above for the buyers. TL's upside is tantalizing.
I'm 110% fine with the Celtics avoiding Rob, we're all set at the 5 with KP/Horford.
In regards to the seller (Portland) they should be moving assets that don't align with their rebuild timeline.
Especially ones that have massive volatility value and his injury history.
Any other potential buyers out there besides NOLA, Lakers, OKC (please no)???
OKC could roll the dice since they should have Hartenstein back somewhat soon, and Chet later this season.
They can handle TL's injury volatility
Who know who could use a healthy TL? Pretty much everybody.
But NYK, PHI, and DEN could all use him.
NYK would have to send out MRob, so probably not going to happen.
DEN could do something about Zeke Nnaji but probably doesn't have the draft assets to do so.
You remember TINSTAAPP? Well, There Ain't No Such Thing As An Always-Healthy Center, in my opinion. A few have good runs, but they all break eventually. Some more than others, but it's hard to say it's really predictable. You basically can't name a star center who has zero injury issues and consistently plays 70+ games... Well, other than Jokic - add that to the list of ways he's a total unicorn.
...You know what, let's make some Durability Tiers, and you can judge for yourself which plays merit a "star" or "starter" or "backup" label. Parentheses are (# of games / year over last 5 completed seasons*, MPG last 5 completed seasons).
Always Ready
Jokic (73.4 G, 33.7 MPG). Almost a lock to be available. Speaks to the sustainability of his playstyle.
Valanciunas (73.4, 26.5). Only two nontrivial injuries in a 13-year career.
Zubac (72.8, 24.0). Lower minutes load, but very consistently available after the trade to the Clippers.
Vucevic (72.6, 33.4). A few partial-season injuries earlier in his career, but lately incredibly durable
Wembanyama (71, 29.7). Still early to say for him, but no real concerns besides his sheer size / shape.
Gobert (70.2, 32.4). Seems like never an actual injury his entire career, just some periodic load management.
Sengun (70, 27.2). Not a starter his rookie year, 63G last year, but seems to hold up.
Sabonis (69.4, 35.1). That's a lot of minutes.
A Few blips, but usually reliable
Adebayo (67.6, 33.7). No big injuries, out for 6 weeks in 21-22.
Jarrett Allen (66.8, 30.5). Some brief injuries of a few weeks each.
Naz Reid (65.2, 19.2). Not a starter before last season; switch from C to PF swingman has also improved his health projection.
Jakob Poeltl (65.0, 25.3). Last year was the only time he's missed more than a few games.
Daniel Gafford (64.2, 19.5). First 2 years, lower availability might've been just not earning time yet. Last 3 seasons have been fully healthy.
Jalen Duren (64.0, 26.9). Two full seasons so far, only half of which were starts.
Capela (62.8, 28.1). 2019-20 (injury late Jan, out for year) only occasion he's missed significant time in his career.
Brook Lopez (61.6, 28.6). Has had 3 seasons in his career he missed almost all of, but every other year has played 70+.
Al Horford (58.4, 29.0). Putting him here because Operation Shutdown in OKC shouldn't unfairly ding his 63-72 GP every other year.
Concerns, but can be somewhat counted-on
Hartenstein (58.8, 18.9). 3 very healthy seasons after 3 very shaky ones to start his career.
Okongwu (58.3, 20.8). Not a starter but nearly a starter's minutes; 1 fully healthy year out of 4 in the league so far.
Myles Turner (58, 29.0). Two seasons of 62G, two in the 40s, and 77G last year.
Mo Wagner (58.0, 17.4). Never really a starter. Frequently injured, last year was his first healthy season of career.
Ayton (57.4, 31.0). Rough sophomore season (1200'), but at least 1700' played every year since.
Draymond (56.0, 29.7). Games last 5 years: 43, 63, 46, 73, 55. Will miss time, but not whole seasons.
Embiid (55, 32.7). And not as high-variance as rep would suggest, once he started his career.
J. Jackson Jr (55, 28.8). DPOY on 63 games at 28 MPG. Two round years around the pandemic.
Porzingis (54.6, 30.9). This excludes his ACL injury year, but he's pretty consistently been around 50 games.
Wendell Carter Jr (54.2, 28.0). Seems to consistently miss about half of each year but never more than that.
A. Davis (54, 34.4). Several half-seasons, but last year played 76 games.
Eternally out-of-service
Mitchell Robinson (50.8, 25.5). Two very-injured years and two semi-injured years out of 6 full seasons in the league.
Karl-Anthony Towns (50.0, 33.3). 4 ironman seasons to start his career, 4/5 partly or mostly-injured ones since then.
Goga Bitadze (49.8, 12.8). A promising first year in Orlando last year (62G) but pretty ugly otherwise.
Nic Claxton (48.2, 25.5). A bit unfair since he hardly played his first 3 seasons; last 2 have been 76 & 71 G, all starts.
Nurkic (45.8, 27.0). Missed almost all of both pandemic seasons, last year was his first full-season load since 2018-19.
Marvin Bagley (39.2, 23.7). Another PF/C swingman. 2 teams (SAC, DET) gave up on him in this span.
Robert "TimeLord" Williams (36.6, 22.5). 61 games in 21-22 was a career high.
Zach Collins (34.2, 22.0). Moderately consistent the last 2 seasons, as a half-starter, but missed nearly all of the 3 prior.
No Idea What to Say
Chet Holmgren - played all 82 last year (!), but of course had a full-season foot injury the year prior, and right now is out.
* bear in mind, 2019-20 and 2020-21 both involved only ~72 games for each team, and I can't be bothered to only pro-rate these numbers for the players who participated in those seasons, so for the older guys, just mentally knock the number up a few games per season. It doesn't change any conclusions.
But didn't all of your hard work just prove my point? Even in a world where centers are oft-injured, Bobby Timelord is at the bottom of the "Out of Service Pervis" category. Trading for him is a big risk.
BTW, you didn't include Kevon Looney on your list. He had a Hartenstein-like career with tons of injuries early before becoming an iron man for the past 3 years. I hope RWIII's career follows a similar trajectory.
BTW, you didn't include Kevon Looney on your list. He had a Hartenstein-like career with tons of injuries early before becoming an iron man for the past 3 years. I hope RWIII's career follows a similar trajectory.
I've disliked Gobert since he decided to touch all the mics and phones in front of him after a press conference when the NBA suspended play at the start of the pandemic, followed shortly thereafter by him testing positive for covid. I know exactly who this guy is.
View: https://twitter.com/rudygobert27/status/1857194636965724220
Yeah I came in with a hypothesis, but then decided to do the work to see if it proved out.
And even if there are, in fact, some centers who are freakishly large humans and yet largely impervious to injury, the position as a whole does seem more injury-prone than others. So while Timelord's personal situation is a bit, uh, perilous even by comparison to his peers, if he holds up most of this year or the whole of it, I'd expect there will be suitors willing to bet on health going forward - because the upside is there, while it isn't for a number of other guys who are not-much-less available.
I think OKC is likelier than NOP, though, because they need help short term (immediately), but not as much long term. Betting on having some combination of him / Chet / Hartenstein around as a franken-center seems like just a high class version of what the Celtics are doing.
I know they are kidding but if washed Howard wants to come back and give new meaning to The Thunder I won't be mad.
View: https://www.instagram.com/p/DCXMQ_Vy5Ul/?igsh=MWQ1ZGUxMzBkMA==
View: https://www.instagram.com/p/DCXMQ_Vy5Ul/?igsh=MWQ1ZGUxMzBkMA==
Well, now that he's been eliminated from DWTS, he has time on his hands
Thanks for the above work.
OKC should Frankenstein the 5 with TL; they can roll the dice on that contract for the next 2 seasons. PDX would be silly to sit on Rob while he's healthy. In hindsight, they should have moved MB/TL for young players/draft assets after the Jrue trade (Miami needed that vet talent, but feelings were hurt).
I'd guess Chet will struggle to average the same # of games/minutes per season as KP over his career. Take away KP's lost season & he's averaged 65 GP/2000 minutes per season. Chet has already spent an entire season OUT, and the rest of this season is in peril.
Their body types/play style/floor positioning are similar BUT the present style of the game (perimeter-oriented) makes it even more difficult for BIGs to stay healthy.
Chet & JDub will get rookie MAX extensions this summer. Expect the JDub contract to provide much more value to OKC simply due to GP/minutes.
Please no TL on the Lakers. Seeing Rondo win a title there was heartbreaking enough.
Hopefully no team would want to pay eight figures next year to such an unreliable center. Rob needs to play very few games this season and next, so he can sign a vetmin deal with Boston to try to help the Jays with the historic four-peat.
Hopefully no team would want to pay eight figures next year to such an unreliable center. Rob needs to play very few games this season and next, so he can sign a vetmin deal with Boston to try to help the Jays with the historic four-peat.
The team to worry about would be the Knicks, who can legitimately say that they are an elite rim protector away from title contention. He'd fit great next to KAT.
The only trade NYK can make is TL for MRob. It would be interesting to see a betting market as to which one is going to play more games this year.
I'm sure there are complications, but that sounds kind of fun.
The most obvious bad side would be I could see players getting competitive in this format -- wouldn't the Rising Stars really want to win? -- which of course might lead to injuries and...lots of criticism.
Still, I'd watch Rising Stars vs LBJ, Curry, Durant, Embiid et al -- kids vs the geriatrics.
The most obvious bad side would be I could see players getting competitive in this format -- wouldn't the Rising Stars really want to win? -- which of course might lead to injuries and...lots of criticism.
Still, I'd watch Rising Stars vs LBJ, Curry, Durant, Embiid et al -- kids vs the geriatrics.
I like how you combine the 30 year old Embiid with a 40 year old and two 36 year olds as “the geriatrics”. There is a certain element of truth to that.
They should team up the All-Stars by age so that 8 oldest are one team; the 8 next oldest are a second team, and the 8 youngest the third team. And then the try is in the Rising Stars. That would be fun.
If it happens, I hope I get some credit.
A couple of almost inconceivable misses from Ben Simmons tonight, this was my favorite:
View: https://twitter.com/BrasilBrooklyng/status/1857630427495776635
View: https://twitter.com/BrasilBrooklyng/status/1857630427495776635
That's a brilliant idea and add some organic competitiveness.They should team up the All-Stars by age so that 8 oldest are one team; the 8 next oldest are a second team, and the 8 youngest the third team. And then the try is in the Rising Stars. That would be fun.
If it happens, I hope I get some credit.
The Bucks got absolutely jobbed on a foul call to lose to Charlotte. LaMelo was driving down 1, tripped on his own feet, and the refs called Giannis for a foul. And Doc had already used their challenge.
To add insult to injury, with 7 seconds left down 1, the Bucks got the ball to Giannis and Charlotte stacked the box and dared him to shoot an 18-footer to win. He missed.
To add insult to injury, with 7 seconds left down 1, the Bucks got the ball to Giannis and Charlotte stacked the box and dared him to shoot an 18-footer to win. He missed.
In Q4, Doc won a challenge with 2:46 left
then Doc won another challenge with 1:07 left
Agree that the last foul was very soft. Giannis redirected Ball with his hand and the refs probably don't overturn it.
BUT that was a rough end-of-the-game whistle for a reeling Bucks team.
Then again, it could be worse...they could be the Philadelphia 76ers
I didn't see the game and didn't realize they were out of challenges because they had already won two, and the fact that they were both in crunch time is insult to injury. That's 3 calls bad enough to overturn (potentially, since redirecting Ball with his hand isn't the reason that he tripped over his own feet) in the final 3 minutes, just brutal luck. Especially after the bad call in the closing seconds against Detroit should've cost them the game a few days ago.In Q4, Doc won a challenge with 2:46 left
then Doc won another challenge with 1:07 left
Agree that the last foul was very soft. Giannis redirected Ball with his hand and the refs probably don't overturn it.
BUT that was a rough end-of-the-game whistle for a reeling Bucks team.
Then again, it could be worse...they could be the Philadelphia 76ers
Looks like Doc lost the challenge at 1:07? I am assuming it was the blocking call on Prince?
Yeah, you're right, my bad. Doc only won 1 of the 2 challenges. Thought Prince was a 50/50 call
The Bucks definitely got a crumby whistle all day.
Grant had his hands all over Giannis, who ended up with 1 FTA
At least there's one matchup he can still be counted on for.
He and Giannis beat the everloving crap out of each other in the 2022 ECSF. But in the end, that hurt the Bucks more than it did us.
Kind of nice for the Bucks to know how it feels to be every team that plays them for one game.
Refs admit they blew the LaMelo call: https://sports.yahoo.com/refs-admit-they-blew-call-that-gave-hornets-game-winning-free-throws-vs-bucks-044900346.html
Lakers are a team that might want to gamble on.a miracle scenario, and Rob fits that. It would almost certainly blow up in their face, but in the slight chance it works they become a legit threat
Interesting article on Rob Dillingham's journey, which has a little bit of discussion about how the US prepares its top basketball high school players - since Dillingham went from private school to Donda to Overtime Elite: Inside Timberwolves' Rob Dillingham's bizarre NBA journey - ESPN.
A little bit on Overtime Elite:
edit: thanks @InstaFace for fixing link; I also fixed it above.
A little bit on Overtime Elite:
IN MAY 2019, months before Dillingham started high school, former NBA commissioner David Stern arrived at a happy hour in Brooklyn. He was there for a showcase of the top high school boys' and girls' hoop players in the country hosted by Overtime, which offered basketball content through high-production video and social media. Before he passed away in January 2020, Stern was one of Overtime's early investors. He held court about the prospect-to-pro pipeline.
"And the parents [of the prospects] were there complaining about the existing ecosystem," said Farzeen Ghorashy, then-Overtime's chief strategy and financial officer and now its president.
It was clear there was a problem.
By September, Overtime hired the manager of player programs and team services from the Philadelphia 76ers, Le'Sheala Dawson, and asked her to talk to parents of basketball prospects and synthesize their concerns. She spoke to 75 sets of parents during the pandemic.
"And she came back with this master spreadsheet," Ghorashy said. "And it was a very consistent theme of things, right?"
Parents vented about spending time and money -- "they could have bought a house with the money they had invested," Dawson remembered being told -- but not getting results. Prospects worked with individual trainers and were on high school teams that, in some cases, played national schedules. And they competed in AAU, one of the United States' main vessels for young players. Dawson kept hearing the same refrain: The players were supposed to be getting better at skills that would set them up for specific roles in the pro game, but it wasn't happening.
"And so we said to ourselves, 'Why don't we just reverse engineer something for them that works?'" Ghorashy said.
Overtime Elite was born in 2021 and had the tenets of a basketball academy (the players lived near and trained at NBA-level facilities), where they could enter at 16 and stay until they left for college or the pros. But it was also an actual basketball league, and groups of scouts would visit on a regular basis. There's also an Overtime YouTube page that now has more than 3.5 million subscribers, giving the kids a worldwide audience.
"The notion of paying an athlete, putting professional resources around them at a very young age is not something that you really see in high school basketball or football," Ghorashy said. "But you cross a body of water into Europe, and Luka Doncic and all these players are getting that sort of environment since a really young age.
"You look at all the sports, especially soccer. That's basically the model that is being replicated."
More at the link.edit: thanks @InstaFace for fixing link; I also fixed it above.
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LaMelo Ball fined the max of $100K for casually dropping a "no homo" in his postgame interview the other day
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/42447996/hornets-lamelo-ball-fined-100k-using-anti-gay-term
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=128GR0yPyxs&ab_channel=JeffSkversky
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/42447996/hornets-lamelo-ball-fined-100k-using-anti-gay-term
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=128GR0yPyxs&ab_channel=JeffSkversky
What did it even mean in the context of the answer?
It's like someone dared him to squeeze the phrase in.
Or, a verbal tic like saying "you know."
I know you are the resident expert/maven for the value of BIGZ in today's game, but your bolded statement seems to me to run counter to my own experience and intuition. It seems like a big who now spends much of his time on the perimeter will see less wear-and-tear on his body than banging around in the low post, both on offense and defense.
Verbal tic seems closest. Remember when KG used that phrase, over a decade ago? People here at the time said stuff to the effect of, "well, you know, he hasn't exactly been in environments where tolerance and empathy for gay people are emphasized, and so that phrase is just part of the locker room culture, it's not seen as a slur". But then it blew over and was hardly ever mentioned again. The same is probably still true here today with Ball. It's just something that basketball players say in conversation, and while they know not to say F----t, and may avoid "retarded" or even avoid calling something "gay" to mean "lame", this one hasn't been added to their personal self-censorship word list yet. Perhaps that will now change.
Agree with all this.....it hasn't been placed on the "banned" list yet. This is at least the 3rd time an NBA player has been fined by "no homo" phrase that I've heard young people say many times in a lighthearted way so this likely is something Ball heard or said before, laughed about with his buddies before, and without any harmful intent. The other two were fines of $25k (Jokic in 2018), $40k (Cam Thomas last year), and now Ball $100k.
View: https://twitter.com/TheDunkCentral/status/1858519309561049185
Bamba is definitely an imperfect messenger, but I wonder how much his availability is a joke among active players (I know former players all hate it).
On a related note:
View: https://twitter.com/ShamsCharania/status/1858544780004769997
Bamba is definitely an imperfect messenger, but I wonder how much his availability is a joke among active players (I know former players all hate it).
On a related note:
View: https://twitter.com/ShamsCharania/status/1858544780004769997
Out of all the Drew Hanlen clients, Bamba is the most disappointing (and Meyers Leonard was a client)
In old YouTube clips. JT, Embiid, and Bamba would go at it one on one on one, and Bamba didn’t look totally outclassed. I thought he would have had a better career, as an athletic seven footer who can shoot the three.
In old YouTube clips. JT, Embiid, and Bamba would go at it one on one on one, and Bamba didn’t look totally outclassed. I thought he would have had a better career, as an athletic seven footer who can shoot the three.
Bamba plays for the Clippers. Had to look it up because I had no idea, and "plays" is generous, he's appeared in fewer games than Embiid this year.
I haven't watched enough of the Pacers this year to say, what exactly is going on with Haliburton? His massive pre and post all-star splits last were were basically written off because he was never 100% healthy late in the year, but he's off to a brutal start: Just 16.2 ppg on .518 TS (and just 8.8 assists, bad for him), compared with 20.1 ppg on .605 TS last year (and he was at 23.6 ppg on .634 TS before his injury). The vast mediocrity in the East seems prime for someone to step up outside of Boston/Cleveland and Indy should be as well positioned as anyone, but after finishing 2nd in offense last year, they are just 13th through 13 games. Their next three best players have all been good to great from a scoring efficiency standpoint:
Siakam: 20.2 ppg on .659 TS (last year was 21.3 on .602)
Turner: 17.6 ppg on .590 TS (last year was 17.1 on .626)
Mathurin: 18.9 ppg on .660 TS (last year was 14.5 on .562)
Nembhard is off to a brutal start (and he's been hurt), but from a distance, Indy's decline seems mostly tied to Haliburton's decline. Were his first few months last year just a mirage?
I haven't watched enough of the Pacers this year to say, what exactly is going on with Haliburton? His massive pre and post all-star splits last were were basically written off because he was never 100% healthy late in the year, but he's off to a brutal start: Just 16.2 ppg on .518 TS (and just 8.8 assists, bad for him), compared with 20.1 ppg on .605 TS last year (and he was at 23.6 ppg on .634 TS before his injury). The vast mediocrity in the East seems prime for someone to step up outside of Boston/Cleveland and Indy should be as well positioned as anyone, but after finishing 2nd in offense last year, they are just 13th through 13 games. Their next three best players have all been good to great from a scoring efficiency standpoint:
Siakam: 20.2 ppg on .659 TS (last year was 21.3 on .602)
Turner: 17.6 ppg on .590 TS (last year was 17.1 on .626)
Mathurin: 18.9 ppg on .660 TS (last year was 14.5 on .562)
Nembhard is off to a brutal start (and he's been hurt), but from a distance, Indy's decline seems mostly tied to Haliburton's decline. Were his first few months last year just a mirage?
"the present style of the game (perimeter-oriented) makes it even more difficult for BIGs to stay healthy."
It's brutal for BIGs to be running around the perimeter & then be expected to run back and protect the rim.
Chet's injury kind of exemplifies that.
In the good ole days, they could run back & forth to the two rims and jostle in the lane with other BIGs (very bruising). The Centers now are being asked to be quick-twitch athletes, while putting their joints in awkward positions.
PACE has also increased, which favors the health of smaller, more athletic PGs/Wings.
The lumbering BIG that just lives in the lane is practically extinct. Drummond has been roaming around the NBA for 4 seasons on minimum deals. His style of play served him well healthwise early in his career where he averaged 80GP over a 6-year stretch. Born 20 years late.
I know Bamba was mentioned as a deep depth guy for the Celtics last year but his lack of effort/caring is so blatant that he is the prototypical “guy looks the part maybe he’ll find the love for the game” flier that teams take. No thank you