₦airaland Forum

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

Tuchel and his satan ball again. 1-0 down to Gladbach at home

Lowkey want us to lose this title so that fraud is chased out of our club. Dortmund had one job last season

As far as I'm concerned only if he wins the CL should he be allowed to remain

What does LeDiva passive aggressive behind got to say now?

No emojis??

I thought they were surrounded by bum players and a bum coach. This is a big STFU and play result by Darvin Ham and the rest of the squad.

This was a team going into the season that Bronsexuals on TV and social media all unanimously agreed were big winners. Even when we told them the calabash LeMickey IST was deceptive they didn't listen.

If you cannot make the top 10 with this squad and no injury excuses this time then maybe you're not as great as alleged

raumdeuter:
Bayern fast tracked the arrival of Bryan Zaragoza given Comans injury and Sane is the only fit winger

Make e show osiso. Champions League is here already and no room for funny business

DissTroy:
One year ago, this poster prophesied this. And it's happening faster than we all thought it would.

Hahahaha I didn't want to sound more gloomy trust me. I actually projected 2k based on how it was explained to me.

Nigerians that voted Tinubu on the back of tribe and religion will really smell their yansh. Especially the ones with dependents. If your money no long o ma sunkun peregede

I feel somewhat bad for the ones that genuinely thought he had something to offer though they should have known much better

I will advice anyone still running Dom account. if you can to move your $ to USDT before APC and their agents of poverty begin chook eye inside. They've already sent their evil horsemen to test the ground and see public response to such suggestions

budaatum:
Seems like a retirement move to me. He should make a huge impact though on Ferrari sales.

I'm just sorry for Carlos Sainz. But yeah seems like a bucket list move to me.

Of course Ham fanboys think a 40 year old Ham would beat Max and win an 8th title

I know AD and LeNomad are not quitting on this team already

We were told they were title favorites with their offseason moves and winning that calabash In season tournament.

Don't tap out now. You're only 10 games away from the #1 seed

Roland17:
Na fam, I won’t let you guys slide with that. The last time I checked Adrian was the problem.

You can’t give what you don’t have.

Wetin consign me whether you let it slide or not?

You hire Papa Ajasco Doc Rivers as him replacement wetin you expect?

Hamilton to Ferrari??

He would be 40 though. How much impact would he possibly make

Roland17:
@A40, the Bucks just conceded 67 before halftime....

Them go hire Doc Rivers. Might as well have stuck with the former guy

Greatihex:
That is why it is good that we lost Poch should know what not to do on that day

Klopp ginger is fueling this team so. Una no fit escape akpako for Final

Who be those werey players wey no wan come Liverpool that time?

When your village people are working

Khanben:
I personally disagree because this is the very mindset that led to extreme load management. Jimmy butler for all his playoffs heroics has never produced any body of work in the regular season that is any where close to what Shai has produced last season and so far this season, or what Luka has produced since his second season in the league. Jimmy has repeatedly been a coast during the season, and then turn it up in the playoffs in the last 5 seasons he has only played more than 60 games once, but he has in that same time produced 2 finals appearances and one conference finals.
I respect great playoffs performances but the regular season should either matter or it does not.
If fans and media continue to judge guys based on only playoffs performances, then don't blame them if they start implementing programs, that will allow them to coast during the regular season and then ramp up the intensity during the playoffs .

Jimmy Butler is 34 years in his 13th season. Surely you cannot be comparing that to rookies and guys with less than 5 years in the league practicing load management

Jimmy Butler has been second team once and third team All NBA 4 times so he has produced at regular season level as well.

Luka is a lottery pick, Jimmy was not projected as a franchise player anyway so the premise of your argument is flawed. You are claiming Jimmy does nothing in regular season and only balls in the playoffs but this is patently false considering they once finished as the #1 seed

Plus everyone is load managing. Luka missed 16 or more games the past 4 seasons

SGA missed combined 73 games last 3 seasons