₦airaland Forum

Mahomes is Thanos. Inevitable

Wasn't too moved I'd be honest. Maybe cos I expected better.

Roland17:
@A40, are you watching the SB?

Yes I am. Mahomes is getting cooked

Thoroughly deserved loss. Utterly disgusting performance

Kroos is not even the most important player in Madrid's midfield trio before you compare him to Xavi. Someone that's enjoying Modric tax

Show me any performance that Kroos utterly dominated the game like Xavi did in 2011 CL Final and Euro 2012 Final.

Please don't compare that sideways passes merchant to 5 star general like Xavi

Ibime:
Calm down, always take Nigerian newspapers with pinch of salt. There could be several reasons including wanting to travel by road to witness the Nevada desert and Wigwe gave him allowance.

He could have gone ahead by Car to prepare things for Wigwe. Wigwe might also need a car while in Las Vegas and the assistant could have been required to drive it down from California to await Wigwe there. Or straight up, Wigwe has been in helicopters with the PA before and knows the assistant does not have stomach for helicopters like Mr T and gave him allowance to proceed by road. Helicopter rides are actually pretty scary and are not for everyone

Lol I will trek to where I'm going before I ever try that thing called helicopter. It's just too fragile and the slightest gbege it's a wrap

Former Chile president just on Tuesday. Trip of 42km

I'd never forget even before Kobe that Leicester owner. Chopper crash korokoro for front of stadium for the flimsiest of reasons

Them still give us jara make we take go house. Chai

Play RB on him debut match for LB. What a guy

raumdeuter:
Make game finish first

Cos I dey wonder why Tuchel changed to back 3 to match Alonso

Lol he's a Satanist that's why

Anyway 2-0. Grimaldo

raumdeuter:
They dont have that experience yet and since Boniface injury their attack has been somehow cos Schick has not been delivering consistently

Schick is a poacher and has not been scoring well, with Boniface when he doesn't score, he troubles the opponent

With what I heard during AFCON they said Boniface is still using stick to walk so another 3weeks at least

Lol. Well they're leading.

Alonso has built a crack team. Don't worry about who is playing and who is missing.

You see how they have been peppering us with minimal possession needed. We are lucky it's just 1 goal for now

Anything that will hasten Tuchel exit is what we should be hoping for now. Unless he can do wuruwuru to another CL then he can get a stay of execution

raumdeuter:
Even if we lose today there is still a long way to go

This is just February

I don't see Leverkusen bottling it like Dortmund. If they win I consider it a wrap

Today is the day we know if the title is changing hands or not

E be like dem don use lie swear for Lebron. How can blud say he intended that pass ffs

This nigga don't know Arenas got cameras or what? What kind of compulsive lying is this

https://twitter.com/GiannisWorld/status/1756085204542759404?s=19

Ouch. That's gotta hurt if you're a Lakers fan. Especially on Mamba statue night

Jamal Murray and Michael Porter jr are truly a joy to watch

Speaking of MPJ. Truly remarkable that with his injury history he's been able to play all 52 games this season

This trade deadline just dey somehow. Most teams just moving laterally

I dey sorry for Bucks, you no see coach hire you go carry Papa Ajasco

Now Dame is injured, Middleton injured. I would not be surprised if Giannis demands a trade in the offseason.

Can understand wanting to do right by Middleton but that extension was an egregious mistake if they wanted to remain in contention

Udoka still playing Jalen Green big minutes is coaching malpractice. Blud is tracking towards bust trajectory

Khanben:
You keep seeing more 3s, I see less long 2s.
Why has the bad 3s shooting night not happened in a finals game that led to a 20+ point blowout.
As for Dillon Brooks, in the 90s/2000s/2010s a player like him instead of taking 6 3s in a game he would have taken 6 very long midrange shots ranging from 17ft-22ft, you would have no problems with those midrange shots but every metric would say it is better to take the 3s than take those idiotic long 2s. Try watching the atrocity that was the two Nets finals runs and see the level of long midrange spamming that was just atrocious.

Duhhh. Smaller sample size. When did teams start taking 45 3s a game

Final score doesn't always determine the closeness or competitiveness of a contest either

Dillon Brooks on a bad night which is most nights is an offensive black hole regardless.

The Nets as a whole lacked equal talent to compete with the Lakers took the Spurs to 6 though and were massively outgunned. Reducing their low scoring output to long midrange shots is lazy.

I keep telling you the physicality allowed from the mid late 90s to 00s the players today will not be able to cope.

How games are whistled and what and what isn't allowed factor hugely and can transform what you're watching to a completely different sport. A Flagrant 2 today is a clean hard foul from Ben Wallace in 2004

Khanben:
PS: You say Denver took the least 3s without acknowledging that they have the best big man in the league and that the team that took the least 3s lost in the 2nd round.
Finally, in the nba the more volume of shots taken the worse the efficiency, so players who are statistical bad at taking 3s in small volumes don't become more efficient at huge volume. That is why guys like Steph are considered freaks of nature, because he can take them at such volume and still remain very efficient

Exactly. They didn't fall for the 3 ball spam ball okey doke. They understood the need for a balance scoring style

The team that took the least 3s lost to who though? The team that took the 2nd least 3s. And who took them the furthest? Who dragged their series to at least 6 games

Last part of your post is patently false. Higher volume means more wiggle room and margin for error. A notorious 3pt spammer like James Harden can miss his first 6 3pt attempts make his next 4 and they say he shot 40% from 3. If he stopped at 7 they will say he only shot 15% from the field

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/l/lopezbr01.html

If Brook Lopez had retired in 15/16 the verdict would have been he couldn't shoot. Meanwhile there's really nothing to it besides attempting them

Khanben:
What of the previous eras spamming of long 2s were those good.
Nba.com stats show that on average drives to the basket now is like 6-8 % points higher than 2013-14 which is the farthest they have the data for.
So we know for a fact that players get to the basket more these days, we also know that they take more 3pts shots, so it is the midrange that got short changed.
My opinion is that if you take all those inefficient longs 2s that used to be the norm and compress them into 3pts shots, that you will find that there is negligible difference in shots taken. The main difference is that players have been advised to jettison the very inefficient long 2, for the more efficient 3.
If players are going to make long 2s at 37%, they are better off taking the 3s at even 30%.

Bro there's nothing entertaining about watching a 3pt spam off every night

Mike Malone said it along with many others. We all agreed the last all star game was the worst we had ever seen.

This so called long 2pt talk you keep going on about. There was defenders and shot alterers in the paint. You couldn't just drive to the rim willy nilly

Physicality was allowed. You could actually hand check and make people work for buckets instead of a lot of the sham we see today

My point is today's era what we have is guys who just bomb 3s, no flair, no footwork, no finesse. No go to moves.

A guy like Ginobili, Tony Parker, T-Mac, AI, Baron Davis would all be shoehorned to 3pt spammers today. Tim Duncan, Hakeem, David Robinson. Would be spamming the 3 ball

It's why nobody particularly stands out. They all play the same

Skilled midrange guys are not shooting 37% from 2 anyway. Not quite sure what you're on about. Even Kobe that was taking tonnes of contested 2s. Cos you actually had to play defense wasn't putting such a bad percentage

A made 2 still better than a missed 3 nonetheless. Just ask the Rockets in 2019

Ibunkun1:
Nkunku, Sterling, Chilwell?

Which team will they start on?

I will still say it anywhere sha. Spamming 3s is the only thing that stands this era out from previous eras. Guys are merely jacking up more 3pters

BlueMann:
A fit Reece James won't start for any of the top six??

This una overhyped medicine student again.

Khanben:
Every metric and even the so called salty old heads all agree that if it just comes to shooting, the average nba player today is far better than it has ever been.
People like you always talk about 3pts spamming, I tend to watch either scoring cuts or highlights of 90s 2000s or 2010 basketball and as far as I can see all the emphasis on 3pts has done is remove those stupid 19ft-22ft long twos and replace them with 3s. You watch and see more 3s I watch and see less long 2s. Shooting a 19ft-22th midrange at 38% when you can take shoot 3s at 35% has always been the most stupid shoot selection choice I have ever seen.

Because they take more 3s. It's purely down to sheer volume of attempts.

Again I used the Marc Gasol and Brook Lopez example. We will never know if this era has better shooters cos the previous era did not take 3s. Dillon Brooks spamming 6 3s a game today does not mean he's a better shooter than the generation before him. It just means he spams more 3s

There's a downside to taking huge volume of 3s. What you have is guys good at shooting a bunch of 3s and not much else. Just go and ask Roland what his eye has been seeing with his team. Any night their 3 is not falling the game is lost already. They have no counter move

Bigs cannot post, wings have no midrange game. No counter when the 3pt spam machine is not working.

It's not coincidence that the team that took the 2nd fewest 3pters in the playoffs went all the way.

Khanben:
Also you act like Embiid is the first player who plays great in regular season games and then drop off in post season games, why didn't you name Luka, Jokic, J murray, Kawhi, Steph, Giannis,etc all players consistently raise their performance levels come playoff time.
Peyton manning was and still is the greatest regular season QB of all time, but come postseason his play took a dip, same with Thierry Henry, greatest striker in EPL history, but he more often than not came up small in the biggest of games.
So it is very possible Embiid has a big game block, hopefully he gets back healthy and puts that possibility to bed this season with a great playoffs run.

What do all these names have in common? Besides Steph and Luka there are no 3pt spammers there, the rest are more of a throwback to the players of yore. You didn't add Jimmy Butler

Further proof that come playoff time the players who go back to the previous era are the ones getting the most success

Embiid not playing like a big is why he's not been able to dominate come postseason

Khanben:
PS: As for cherry picking games, a 90s finals game had a final scoreline of 96-54, not a first round or regular season game but a FINALS game.
If any of today's star played on either side of a match-up of this they would be buried with abuse

And? That era was never marketed as the golden age of offense. Lool I can bring up more similar low scoreline from the 90s to the late 00s.

Spurs and Pistons played 84-69
81-74
Lakers vs Celtics in 2010 89-67
Lakers vs Pistons 88-68 in 04

That is what this era would also look like on bad shooting nights or nights teams actually played some defense and tried to stop their opponents. Bottomline just because you take 45 3s a night as against the guys that only took 10 doesn't make you better.

Van Dijk with another point and kill masterclass. He's going to help Pep to a 4th straight PL title with his shambolic defending

BlueMann:
When they're all fit? U dey whine?

Delulu is free sha. Cos the table don't lie

This team too mid. Looking at your squad y'all will be terrible for a long time

There isn't a single player at Chelsea that gets into the starting XI of any team inside the top 6

Give us Caicedo, All we want is Caicedo

This Embiid injury don't know how I feel about it. If the reason was to meet up with the 65 game minimum thing then the Sixers only have themselves to blame.

The pro load management crowd seem to think the anti load management crowd are pushing for players that are genuinely hurt to play regardless.

No. The only thing that is penalized is your lack of availability. If a player misses 30-40% of the season how in the hell should he be eligible for awards at the end of the season? What job have you seen where employees who only show up 60% of the time are rewarded for it?

Khanben:
Did your analysis take into account the increase in 3pts shooting, a bigger emphasis is today's NBA on efficient shot selection, and IMHO the biggest factor which is the greater spread of scoring talent across teams in today's NBA.
A look at the 2012-2013 scoring leaders list shows that 6 teams were represented 2x in the top 20 scoring leaders list, which leads to only 2 players averaging more that 20 FGA per game. while for last year only 2 teams had two representatives. With 9 players averaging over 20 FGA per game with a substantial amount of them being 3pt shots.
So to me it's not surprising that more players are averaging over 20pts, because in today's NBA there is more emphasis on efficient shot selection, players take more 3pts shots and are on average better shooters overall, then finally because of the talent spread the scoring options on teams nowadays average more FGA than in 2012-2013, so all factors point to more players averaging over 20pts per game.

How come all this efficiency and what not always vanish come playoff time?

I don't see most of these scorers in the postseason.

I'm telling you most of it is an effort issue. Physicality and defense has being legislated out of the game. The 3pt spamming is another factor. I don't know that there are better shooters what I know is that they are spamming more shots so it's incredibly hard to tell. I always use the Marc Gasol and Brook Lopez example. We would never know if they could shoot 3s if they didn't go from 0.5 one year to 5 the next

The point is you're overstating the efficiency angle, I'm saying it's more of an effort and general lack of defense issue than anything else

Last year's close out game finished 94-89

The leading scorer in the regular season went from 34 pts to 23 come playoff time.

So much for better and efficient scoring

Ok. Credit to Tucheliban. Seems he has solved the Gladbach puzzle

Started the game too slowly but Sane has to be scoring those chances

Sane with his yearly pre CL Knockout stage dip. He's been shocking

Pavlovic 1-1