this account does a really good job showing how much a team is exceeding (or missing in the Celtics case) their expected point total based on the shots they're taking. Only found a tweet for the first half but I'd imagine it's pretty representative of how the game went. 41 actual points on expected of 52.
Miami is probably Denver's best matchup of any playoff level team in the league. But as you said the Heat defy reason so I'm still nervy af
it wasn't just him, Tatum and especially Jaylen weren't getting back on D a lot because of the bitching
Jokic demolishes zones and has since the first day he stepped onto an NBA court. Best way to cover Jokic is big guy on Jokic with a rim protector behind him to roam ala Dwight Howard and AD in the bubble. Miami doesn't have great personnel to do this. All the things about Bam that make him an elite defender are basically useless against Jokic. Jokic has pretty much always cooked him. Miami doesn't have much hope on paper of keeping Denver off the offensive glass. Denver has several guys to throw at Butler that should hold up reasonably well. Miami doesn't really have the kind of P&R creator that has given Denver's defense trouble in the past. On paper Denver should cruise but I imagine every other playoff opponent of Miami felt similarly.
"This job is about to get hard and people still think I'm good at this" said the man who drafted Wiseman, Kuminga, and Moody
Bob made an unwise pick in Wiseman but the Bob wised up enough to know it was time to quit. Be like Bob
Lamelo could have been Shaun Livingston on steroids for them on a rookie deal but they had to take a raw big with no playing experience and put him in the hardest scheme in the league
Them whiffing on the picks was bad but IMO they should've packaged those assets together early for another star the entire time. Trying to plan a future in the NBA these days is foolish, win as much in the moment as possible
Or, you know, take Haliburton and Franz with those picks and win more titles It really wasn't that hard to say that before those drafts. Those were easy calls if they wanted to win and maximize those picks. But I think they tried to prove to everyone that they were light years ahead again and that they were going to be on a 25 year run, which was stupid.
GS taking Wiseman and Kuminga is the Pistons taking Darko of this era. It might not be viewed quite to that extent historically because Darko was picked in front of 3 HOFers, but they made the exact same mistake for the exact same reason, and the result is going to end up being pretty similar in all likelihood.
I don’t think Kuminga is a bad pick, at least not yet. Wiseman was a miss. I don’t understand giving Lamb all those minutes in the regular season instead of Kuminga only to bench Lamb in the playoffs anyway
I have a hard time being too critical of the Wiseman pick. If it hit their title window was likely open another five years
It's obviously difficult to put either GS pick fully into perspective among the careers of other possible picks but this feels a little like you wanting another team to identify with probably the worst contextual pick since Sam Bowie.
Golden State drafted arguably the rawest players in the lottery in each of those two years to play on a team that built much of its run around skill and basketball IQ, and they drafted them to play for a coach who had zero willingness to dumb down what he was doing to allow them to catch up or gain confidence. Either you take those guys and you do everything in your power to help them develop, or you take guys who are going to fit into what you do, even if the ceiling/"value" isn't there based on internet mock drafts and rankings. They did the opposite.
You can debate whether the picks themselves were as bad as Darko to Detroit was. I don't think they are because, like I said, the next three picks after Darko are all going to the HOF. The three picks after Wiseman were Ball, Patrick Williams and Isaac Okoro. But the Warriors were in a similar situation to the Pistons when they got those picks, and the reasons they picked those players were the same reasons the Pistons picked Darko. Both teams even won a title in spite of the picks. There are parallels between the two that feel pretty similar to me.
I don't follow the draft or college basketball closely enough to have a strong opinion on this but I do remember people loudly saying at the time of the pick that Wiseman over Lamello was bad bad bad
He's an Aggie, was always gonna start dry heaving in the trash can once he had a chance to win something of consequence
so is he leaving the industry? is he going back to being an agent? i'm not watching the press conference but that's a strange quote for someone who is supposedly going to take the same job in brooklyn
Can we trade Tatum’s one game of a bad ankle for Herro’s full series of a broken hand? or how about two games of Brogdon for a full series of Oladipo?
It's failson time by the bay Vice president of basketball operations Mike Dunleavy Jr. and executive vice president of basketball operations Kirk Lacob, older son of owner Joe Lacob, are expected to receive “more prominent roles” in the front office, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
Miami shot exceptionally from 3 vs the Celtics, and sometimes that happens. However, it’s pretty funny seeing some Boston people pushing this bad luck narrative when they have 4 of the best guard/wing defenders in the league.