Jokic is a cheat code abeg

steady986:
LeBron is really going to play the entire 48 minutes on a bad foot in year 38? Unbelievable.

4 minutes to go and baba don tire. You can see it from that sequence where he guarded Murray and caused the shot clock violation . Father time is still undefeated

donlittle25:
I don't know how nuggets took the lead. Jokic isn't going off. Murray isn't going off. KCP isn't going off. Yet, they took the lead.

That's what offensive rebounds does, they got like 2 put backs in that sequence

steady986:


I thought it's something like 0-149

Wow, it's more than 110, Yepa. Make it more improbable

Baba won play 48mins ohh

Honlucas:
What if Lakers do a comeback 💜💛

The existing record is 0-110, so for both the Lakers and Celtics it's near impossible.

Skrrrrrrr:
By the way, the future ain't looking sharp for American Basketball. The top tier players in the near future are all gonna be foreigners....
Jokic, Giannis, Luka, Embiid.
And with the coming of Wembayama....
Wahala dey...

The future is fine, you are talking about a talent pool of 7 billion people against 350 million people. What we are seeing is the actualization of the vision that David Stern had, which started with him sending the 92 dream team to the Olympics. Other usa sports followed also copied it, the best player in baseball is currently Japanese.
David Stern just decided to open up his league to 8 billion people rather than restrict it to 350 million people.

Eric spoelstra is an incredible coach, the dude's team is always fine tuned and don't make mental error. Everything I know about basketball and even from listening to commentators and ex-players say zone defense should not work that well against nba caliber players, but time and time again he finds ways to make it not just work but work very well.

A40:
Interestingly he's never been an Allstar. This is quite a crazy stat. Zero all star, zero all NBA.

His ACL injury can be blamed for that, he got injured right around the time he put it all together

A40:
Well that would be because the bigs are not as good and we are in a guard dominant league today. That's why I tell people there's nothing players do today that guys in the past couldn't. It's just that their roles were more defined.

What do you think a Larry Bird taking 8 3s a game would look like today?

Well the Warriors series also showed that the 3 ball is a hit and miss. The Heat this postseason have been shooting at an unbelievable clip besides the Knicks series where somehow the Knicks found a way to shoot even worse than the Heat did.

We've also seen were the 3 ball can spectacularly fail you so balancing both at just the right mix is always the best way to go cos on a cold shooting night you will simply have no shot

Agreed, but the issue is simple, imagine playing a great game shooting mid-range and getting to the rim, and your opponent in doing fairly well from 3 and every time you check the scoreboard you are still down by double digits. That is an abbreviation of what happened to make Dame start taking more 3s.

A40:
But even the past floor generals could shoot. They just took 12 shots instead of 22. Mark Price, John Stockton, Nash, CP3,

All these guys could shoot. And were not turnover machines

Lack of skilled and dominant bigs obviously make it acute for your floor general to be able to shoot and when you look at the supposed floor generals today. You see that their bigs are usually lemmings and can't get their own buckets. Look at the Cavs, Hawks, Warriors, Memphis the list is endless

Dame explained this perfectly in his appearance on JJ Reddick podcast. The fact is if guys like Mark Price, Stockton, Nash played now they would have taken 22 shots. Nash has said it repeatedly that if he had to do it all over again he would have shot more. The threshold for efficiency when shooting the 3 ball is just too low. If you are taking 2s at 55% as a team, just shooting 35% from 3 covers that.
Yesterday's game showed it, the Heat just outscored the Celtics basically because their 3 bal was falling

donlittle25:
Nash, Cp3, even kidd in their later careers were floor general.

You don’t have to be a curry and shoot your team out of the game.

Nash and CP3 can shoot. We should not forget that Kidd could not shoot for most of his career. The older Kidd would fit now perfectly, but the young Kidd would be played out of the rotation because he could not shoot. Lonzo's stint in LA apart from the injury issues was bad because of his inability to shoot, he played point as well as any one and done player could have played it, but as soon as the other team starts sagging and forcing him to take the shot, his own game crashes.

A40:
There's no real point guards or floor generals today just combo guards who just happened to be listed as PG.

Exactly, in today's NBA a floor general is only valuable if you can shoot. The fact is simple, a player with the ability to shoot and do some playmaking fits today more than a true floor general who cannot shoot remember Lonzo in LA

steady986:
Baba don old

Assinn, he has tried sha

donlittle25:
houston fit pay am. prodigal son

Rumors say Ime doesn't want him

birdman:
Just watching, I feel like Tatum has regressed. This is not last year's Tatum

Nothing of the sort IMHO, he even improved a bit. He has gotten rid of that bad habit of taking it to the rim and playing for the foul instead of trying to finish through contact. His remaining issue is that he can disappear for long stretches, in the first game against the Heatles, for as well as he was playing during the first half, he then came out and shot the ball only 5 times all 2nd half.
Whenever I watch the Celtics, I just wish you can swap the mentality of Smart always wanting the ball with Tatum mentality of being okay with not getting the ball. The Celtics would be more better if the ball always finds Tatum in crunch time instead of somehow always going to Smart

James Harden reportedly wants a 4yr max contract.

benji93:
They have started again. 40-year-old Lebron by himself beat GSW. Is there anything impossible for Le-Old fans? Such shameless people. . The last time i checked GSW wasn't in that caption. Let me remind you again, the caption suggests that, whether Lebron is 45 years old doesn't matter, if he loses to Jokic and the Nuggets. it goes on the record forever.

Judgement no be one way. Once you require us to recognize your feats late in your career, we are allowed to push enter express if you fail.

Poor wrinkly Le-Old fans.

Who is saying Lebron beat GSW, anybody who bothered to watch the series can tell that if there's a MVP for the series the first name would be AD, yes Lebron was the best player in the close out game but overall AD has been, all playoffs the best player on the Lakers.
Unless they are putting them in lockstep like Shaq & Kobe, just like then if it boils down to one, the big man takes the cake

A40:
Killer turnover by Tatum. It's a wrap

Playoff Jimmy mehnn. All skill all will. When you remember guys like Harden would be ranked higher than him in basketball pantheon it just doesn't seem right

As much as he does in the playoffs, the regular season still counts. If we start making it all about the playoffs, then we should expect players to coast during the regular and just gear up for the playoffs

The conference finals so far as lived up to expectation

steady986:
At what age is this thing supposed to end? Let's put a number now.

There is a reason Lebron himself says he doesn't read all of the BS. Every other player that has played the game at a certain age nobody pulls all this stunt on them. MJ, practically played 2 seasons that we don't talk about, Kobe had like 3, KG days after the Celtics, Shaq after the Suns etc.
Only Lebron is somehow expected to win it all in his hooray years.
It's just the internet making noise as usual

The Blazers insistence on this Dame experiment is puzzling, which co-star can they get for the 3rd pick that would make them a contender next year?

This idea that a team only loses because they played badly is just a bastardization of sports. In a sport that they must be a winner, two teams can play at their very best and one of them will still lose. The Lakers shot 54.8% from the field and 45.8% from 3.
AD played as well as he could, he just faced not only a great player but one who on the night shot 70% from the field and 100% from 3.
The game was a great advertisement for nba basketball and what one, wants to see during the playoffs, great players performing and both teams playing well

iLoveYouToo:



Most great players got overlooked in the draft. I watched Giannis get drafted and watched his first season too, he was basic. He just went to sleep one day and came out a different player

You also have to take into context how long those guys have been playing basketball, Giannis had just been playing for like 5 years before he got drafted and even then he was playing against low level competition. Jokic started earlier, but a combination of playing low level competition, lack of elite athleticism, his incredible love of soda, and not knowing if he was willing to fix his workout habit caused him to drop that low.
Nowadays, his elite playmaking and size even though he is from Europe will make him a lottery pick.

PS: If he was athletic, he would have been a lottery pick even with all the negatives, because if you have watched Finding Giannis, the GMs who wanted him, justified spending the 1st round pick because of his athleticism, saying if he never takes the MVP level step he would have at worst been an incredible rim runner.

donlittle25:
Nikola Jokic really went 41st overall during the nba draft

It was the final years of under estimating guys from Europe. Those days are gone now, there is no way something like that will happen again

This series will be fire if game 1 is anything to go by. Very good basketball and both the main guys and the role players came to the party.

A40:
I've noticed there are some really good players that routinely get underpaid everywhere they go. I don't know if it's their representation or whatever but they just never get their worth relative to their contemporaries, just look at that same team Aaron Gordon is there and probably makes 3x more despite his very limited skillset

2nd Contracts in the nba are based on regular season performances and where you were drafted sadly, Except if you win MVP or become all-nba.
Showing out in the playoffs only gets you like between 120% -150% of the last rookie contract unless you are a max or super max player

A40:
Kai so Austin Reaves is a RFA. Which means Lakers can match. This is someone the Mavs should have gotten oh

If they make the same mistake like the did with Caruso, then something is wrong in that front office

Roland17:


I can’t disagree with any of your thoughts. He plays hard and easy to slot into any lineup the chooses. On defense he can switch 1-4 and 5 in some instances which is a coaches delight. Is he really playing at 6M/yr?

Yes 2yrs/ 13mil and change, and next year is a player's option.

donlittle25:
Jokic man

He has had the midas touch for 3 quarters so far

A40:
Exactly. Mentally how much poise they can show. They didn't pass the test in Game 4 against the Suns but fine margins they did well to come back in that game.

Physically they have the tools, Jokic, Murray and MAGA Mike (This guy should be Allstar level by now don't know why he's messing around)

Like Van Gundy is saying during the game, starters vs starters Denver will kill anybody, if their role players just do the minimum they will be hard to beat

AD is seriously having a very good game, but Jokic is just on another level offensively today, and his role players are shooting lights out