The sixers situation isn’t quite as bad as we think, also. They actually have nailed a pretty good number of moves on the periphery that can aggregate to value.
Jared McCain at $4 mil is a good asset, Quentin Grimes at $4.2 million is really good, Justin Edwards at league minimum is awesome, Yabusele at $2 million is really good.
I’m not sure trading Durant alone would truly be blowing it up. Feels like with Booker and Beal still there and no draft pick control, they’d still be toiling in no man’s land. But maybe I’m underestimating Durant’s trade value as a 37 year old next season. What kind of haul is he expected to bring?
I think both Booker and Durant need to be dealt to actually do a proper rebuild.
Wait, didn’t he already do this once before???
Apparently I am hallucinating that Dumars was once head of the Pelicans FO
#freedevin
I think Booker owns as much as went wrong in Phoenix as anyone. Like, being considerably worse than Zach Lavine isn’t great?
A large part of it isn’t him, per se, but more about his limitations. They basically ask him to be the PG…he’s not that great at it!
the team around him is remarkably worse than the one he took to the finals
definitely is, and part of it is going from Chris Paul to Tyus Jones (and Booker) at PG. I think Booker was never quiiiiite as good as his billing? His performance didn’t really change when they went from awful to awesome, it was everything around him.
Ish be a fool.
Well yeah look at the university he went to
yeah so much depends on context - having paul run the show and playing alongside bridges and johnson helped him a lot. i still think he could be 1A or 1B on a championship-level team but that team can’t have brad beal making a billion dollars on it lol.
I’m not saying that there’s a conspiracy but Cade does take a lot of contact that either doesn’t get noticed or doesn’t get rewarded because he doesn’t exaggerate the contact. This is something that Brunson does (as do many other players of varying skill levels) and it works for him.
Refereeing is a lot tougher than it was 15-20 years ago.
Not sure what this means. Doesnt seem like much of an argument, though.
So TPTSNBN does an exercise where they calculate a team’s net rating based on currently available players, excising guys at the back end of a rotation to try to get a picture of what the teams that actually take the floor in the playoffs will look like (IE, they toss out people traded away, add people acquired, if a guy like Kawhi Leonard is healthy, assume his full participation, etc)
ANYWAY
doesn’t move the general dynamic for the Knicks/Pistons series (it says that the Knicks (+5.5 adjusted) are marginally better than the Pistons (+4.3 adjusted)
But interestingly, the Celtics get WORSE (slightly worse, both sides of the ball - they actually were WORSE with Kristaps this year than without him)
Pacers take a massive leap (+2.6 to +10.9) (mostly just minutes allocation - they starting 5 is really really strong, their bench terrible)
but
not as big as the Clippers (+4.7 to +15.8) (Kawhi’s elite play, Bogdanovic has been really good, Kevin Porter Jr was horrific for them)
obviously it is not quantifying “playoff James Harden” and counting on Kawhi to play a dozen games in a row and not break isn’t great, but there it is
this methodology last year said the two best teams in the playoffs were Celtics (didn’t need to think too hard there) and…the Mavericks!
By this system, the teams, ranked:
Clippers - +15.8
Thunder - +13.5
Cavs - +11
Pacers - +10.9
Nuggets/Warriors - +8.8
Lakers - +7.4
Celtics - +6.9
Bucks - +6.8
Heat - +6.7
Timberwolves - +6.3
Magic - +5.6
Knicks - +5.5
Rockets - +4.8
Pistons - +4.3
Hawks - +3.9
Bulls - +3.3
Kings - +2.5
Grizzlies - -3.8
Mavs - -6.6
Clippers look really really good. Easily could take down Nuggets
Clippers and Nuggets are both -110 to win the series on Draft Kings. I like the Clips despite my love for the Joker.
I don’t think I get how they’re doing that. Shouldn’t you just use DARKO/EPM/whatever and then pick a minutes distribution that’s like 40 min per starter, fill in the rest?
They had a methodology that I couldn’t be bothered with
It’s not lineup based tho right? Bc that requires a LOT of adding in mean regression based on minutes or possessions to be useful
Can someone tell me how this play in thing works? How many games does Orlando need to win to make the real playoffs?