2019 NBA off-season

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Socnorb11
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Re: 2019 NBA off-season

Post by Socnorb11 »

33anda3rd wrote:I'm just really happy that the journalists and opinionists are all finally all on the same page that Westbook is not that great and is grossly overpaid.

Haha......... based on your opinions of Harden and Westbrook, this new Rockets team must want to make you puke.

I'm right there with ya', by the way.

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33anda3rd
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Re: 2019 NBA off-season

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Rockets add Anthony Bennett. Man, what a week. They got a recent MVP and a recent overall #1 pick on back-to-back days! Daryl is a genius!

For sure this Rockets team will be the NBA team I have hated more than any NBA team in my life. I'd rather watch the Jail Blazers or the Bad Boys or a team of Metta World Peaces and Ron Artests or the slow/brutal/mechanical Knicks teams of the 90s.

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33anda3rd
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Re: 2019 NBA off-season

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Love or hate the owner for moving the team you gotta respect what Presti built. When they made that finals run with Harden 22 and Russ and KD 23 it looked like that team was set up for a decade-long run of West Conference domination. Presti drafted:
--Durant, an MVP, multiple-time scoring champ, legit MVP, and best player in NBA 2017-2019
--Harden, an MVP, multiple-time scoring champ
--Westbrook, an MVP, multiple-time scoring champ
--Ibaka
--Adams
and when it all fell apart he collected the greatest haul of draft picks in league history.

Presti is a pretty great GM.

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thrill
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Re: 2019 NBA off-season

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Traded for Paul George about two seasons after we all thought George was done being elite and then he became a top 5-10 player again.

Presti and Morey are both good examples of how hard it is to break through with a championship. They do things mostly right and find value consistently.

People like to do revisionist history about the Harden trade, but Presti's boss doesn't pay the luxury tax and Presti has to deal with that reality. Harden, at the time, was the obvious piece to trade and I don't remember a single person at the time suggesting they should've traded Russ instead.

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33anda3rd
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Re: 2019 NBA off-season

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Bill Simmons famously hated the Harden trade to the point KD told him to get past it and move on with life while KD was still in OKC, but yeah, Simmons was in a very small minority.

I think Morey and Presti are different. Morey dumps draft picks for stars, and Presti uses scouting and the draft very well. Morey hunts for star players who will exploit some kind of value wrinkle he finds. The single best return on a play you can get is a foul on a 3P shot. Returns something like 2.4 points per occurrence. Second best return you can get is a layup IIRC, then in third is a foul on a 2P shot, something like 1.5 points per play. So Morey gets Harden to manipulate the refs to get foul calls because that's analytically the best return. But basketball has too many interlocking parts that baseball doesn't have, so Harden attempting to draw a foul and failing is probably one of the lowest-return plays in the game: what's the value of taking a shot you don't even try to make because you're just trying to draw a foul? This is either/or, which baseball doesn't have: when Trout comes up, Trout isn't bunting, he's trying to smack the ball, whereas Harden's not, sometimes he's trying to sucker the refs into a foul while tossing the ball hopelessly toward the basket. What's the value of a guy like Oladipo on the Thunder? He was their best shooter, but useless his last year there. Is it better for Russ to shoot a three, Russ to fly toward the basket, or Oladipo to get a good open look? While Russ at the rim is high-return, isn't a balance of Russ at the rim + Dipo shooting threes best?

So do those high-return plays in volume mean Houston wins? Baseball analytics are easy to convert to wins, but for HOU and OKC we have two teams who decided analytically to have one player use the ball an amount that, unless you're Jordan or Wilt, is probably counterproductive as a means to a win, especially in the post-season when rotations tighten up to 7-8 players and everyone's role is incredibly important.

I feel for Eric Gordon and PJ Tucker, man. Their job is basically to stand around half the game now, and then go do all the heavy lifting on the defensive end.

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thrill
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Re: 2019 NBA off-season

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I feel for Mike D'Antoni. Morey clearly views his job as talent acquisition and D'Antoni's job to deal with chemistry/fit issues. I'm not saying he doesn't care about fit at all, but he's definitely not going to let it get in the way of getting as many top 20 players as possible on his team.

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33anda3rd
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Re: 2019 NBA off-season

Post by 33anda3rd »

They're both gonna be unemployed soon enough.

Their standings position will be just good enough to ensure they get bad first-round picks, and Daryl's not a good drafter. Here are all his first-round picks as HOU GM:
[SHOW]
Aaron Brooks
Brad Newley
Nic Batum (traded right away for bad players)
Maarty Leunen
Pat Patterson
Marcus Morris (traded in his 2nd season for a 2nd round pick)
Mirotic (traded draft day for Donatas Motiejūnas
Chandler Parsons (traded in that Mirotic draft day trade)
Jeremy Lamb (traded away for Harden)
Royce White
Terrance Jones
Isaiah Canaan
Capela
Nick Johnson
Sam Dekker (traded in the CP3 trade so they could have two PG)
Montrezl Harrell (traded in the CP3 trade so they could have two PG)
Onuaku
Zhou Qui
Isaiah Hartenstein
Dillon Brooks (traded on draft day for the pick that would become....)
De'Anthony Melton (traded on draft day for Marquese Chriss and Brandon Knight)
That's just awful. The good players he drafted he shipped right out. Productive guys. Mirotic, Morris, Harrell, Parsons, Batum. I run a pool with a bunch of guys where we pick various things each year, one of them is First Exec Fired, and I'm going Morey this year.

D'Antoni, he does the best with what he's given and the direction Morey and the quants give him. But I think he'll be out soon too. They'll do a Toronto, where it's like we are here, on the doorstep every year, we have great regular seasons and we just don't get over the hump. Time for a reset at the coaching level.

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33anda3rd
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Re: 2019 NBA off-season

Post by 33anda3rd »

The Reggie Bullock deal w/ the Knicks fell apart over medical reports, giving the Lakers another shot at signing Bullock. They again failed, and he struck a new deal with the Knicks. This is my favorite nerdy sub- sub- sub- sub-drama in the offseason.

The Lakers have no cap room. The Lakers have a cap hold on Reggie for like $7 mil. Reggie is a player who can be good in a LeBron system--he can stand at the 3P line and shoot 37-39% from there. If the Lakers keep him, again in dire need of cap space, they can use that cap hold to give them some bonus cap space. Instead of signing Reggie for like $11MM--$7MM of which doesn't count toward the cap b/c of the hold--they don't act. So the Knicks end up giving him only $8 million for two years (!!!) and the Lakers cap hold, and ability to exceed the cap by like 6%, goes away.

The Lakers, man. A $4 billion business without one nerd who makes a half mil to just tell Pelinka "you get $7 million bonus money over the cap by keeping Bullock."

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33anda3rd
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Re: 2019 NBA off-season

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BottenFieldofDreams
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Re: 2019 NBA off-season

Post by BottenFieldofDreams »

He's just so great. Always finding ways to get better, like in interviews. On the shot:
Damian Lillard wrote:What can I say? That was for Seattle.
Eat a penis, Clay Bennett.

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