donlittle25:
When did jokic score 27?

That's why his game is hard to understand. His game just sneaks up on you and because he his so efficient, you wonder when he got the shots up to score 27pts. Today he went 8 of 12 with 27pts and a triple double to boot.

donlittle25:
That last series woke Gordon up o

The worst part for Miami is the pocket of spaces where Lakers wanted to send Gordon to, in order to minimize his impact on offense will be a disaster for them as this first half has shown. Sending Gordon under the basket with a smaller guy on him, with Jokic passing him the ball is just barbecue chicken for Gordon.

Jokic is a mismatch in this series

steady986:


It's easy to say top 5 center all time until you have to remove one or two names from that top 5 centre list. You have Kareem, Wilt, Russell, Shaq, Hakeem, Moses Malone, David Robinson. And it gets harder if you consider Duncan and KG centers.

If he wins, then automatically he is already better than David Robinson. KG and Duncan are not centers they are both PF.
As for the rest as i said an argument/discussion can be made that he his top 5.
Jokic is an elite rebounder, as good a scorer as any of them in totality (his range of shooting helps him in this category). his only knock is that he is the worst defender amongst them. But, I will argue that the gap between his playmaking and everyone else's is wider than the gap between their defense and his.

PS: If he wins it, he will definitely be ahead of KG on my all time list

steady986:
Who y'all got?

https://twitter.com/FanDuelTV/status/1663224117821161488?t=OmFfEJhNDgXquY7r_4w-vA&s=19

Jokic is already a better player than Howard has ever been. Jokic is a phenomenal playmaker (top 5 all time in my book), a great scorer and rebounder and an adequate defender. Dwight was an all time great defender and great rebounder. But you couldn't run an offense through him and as a scorer we never got to see him at his very best because he adamantly refused in his prime to play an offense which maximized his ability. In his stint with the Lakers, he was told that his PnR scoring efficiency with Nash was number 1 all-time, and they hoped to increase the number of those sets run, but he refused and wanted the ball in the post because of his stupid feud with Shaq.
So Jokic clears for me and if he wins this title, he is going into top 5 center of all time discussion.

Caleb Martin is a dawg

I Just hope game 7 is not a dud. Game 6 was not the best basketball, but it was close and tension filled till the end.

Whoever wins this series might just have emptied the tank both physically and mentally just to get to the Finals.

Both teams are playing subpar basketball, too much TOs by the Cs and too many misses on good looks by the Heat

greypencils:
Plus Like O, plus respect O, ManUtd fans don't give neither to Messi. We hate him. You are NOT a ManUtd fan, so you cant relate.

I have friends who are man utd fans, I am a real madrid fan. Nobody that I know was insulting Messi when man city knocked city out of the champion league

A40:
The fantastic irony too that the Nuggets make their first ever finals on the day Melo announces retirement.

Now to arguably the most underrated controversial debate. Which #15 will the Nuggets retire? Melo's or Jokic's

They will retire both I think. It will just be a unique situation, just like the Lakers retiring both of Kobe numbers

A40:
You people are just emotional. United fans respect Stevie G? In what planet does that occur. Someone that still gets roasted for failing to win a league title till this day

Plus most NBA followers today are fans of players not teams, can argue it's always been that way but it's more pronounced today. Even the people masquerading as Lakers fans now are actually Lebron fans. Seen an awful lot of people who were definitely not Lakers fans in the recent past suddenly pick interest when he joined

Where I draw the line is wishing evil on the player in their personal lives, injuries and that type of thing. But as far as wanting him to lose on the court and glad when he does. Abeggi. That one is never never going to change and if that makes us haters. So be it. It's not a crime

Maybe me and you grew up in different environments, so I disagree, when Gerrard was playing any man utd fan will jump at him playing for them.
I as a Madrid fan watched live when Madrid fans gave Ronaldinho a standing ovation after watching him demolish their side 3-0. I watch sports to enjoy the game not to see a players downfall.
If I have my team playing I want both teams to play to their very best and my team winning in the end. But where I don't support any team, I want to watch a spectacle, I want to see great players play great.

greypencils:
No Man Utd fan likes Messi. You don't like someone who prevents you from winning 2 UCL finals.

They don't have to like him to respect him as a footballer. For instance,I don't know any man utd fan that watches PSG lose and makes it all about Messi

A40:
Why is he crying? Nobody hates hates Lebron. We just want to see him lose. Especially with insufferable fans like these

Like asking a Liverpool fan why they hate Man United

For me there is a difference, man utd fans hate Liverpool with a passion but they still by and large respect Steven G. This hate for a player and not the team, I just will never understand it

PS: Its also observable in cR7 and Messi, but at least that can be said to be about their rivalry. But the Lebron thing I just will never get it

larride:


They didn’t even go for a three.

Go for 3 when you've been atrocious all game. Na the coach made the right call

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.