₦airaland Forum

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

A40:
Hehehe. I've seen too much playoff ball to overreact after one half. This is what the Warriors should have done game 1 that they were faffing about.

I've not seen the Nuggets in a tight game and their level of composure vs these Lakers to say it's over for certain. They did a bit of wobbling in the Suns and T.Wolves series.

But you're right offensively the Nuggets have way more points of attack than the Nuggets and the personnel to execute it. It's more of mental and how composed they can stay when the Lakers inevitably fight back in games in this series

That is the only question they've not answered so far this playoffs. Half Court execution during the last 2 minutes of a must win game with all the marbles to play for

Roland17:
How Brown transitioned from the 3/4 with the Nets to playing guard position with the Nuggets is impressive.

Last playoffs Nets vs Celtics, he was IMHO the Nets 2nd best player. That said what he has been doing this season has been short of extraordinary. Dude will get paid this offseason, because I don't see him playing for 6mil next season

donlittle25:
Baba i know say you they throw caution to wind or wind to caution but my guy i no know o.

I just no know how you wan counter this denver team. Denver no they rely on three like warriors hence all that ball wey lakers go get when basket no enter no enter don cancel out.

Unless denver starts shooting threes like say them no get sense, i no see wetin go happen but make we dey watch sha

As the Lakers were a bad match-up for GSW, so too is Denver a worse match-up for the Lakers. They have the size, the better starting 5 and enough bench scoring to cancel out the Lakers own bench scoring.
AD is legitimately playing great D and this dude has 19pts and 16 rbs through 2 quarters

Jokic is the basketball equivalent of a Trequartista. He just sees and makes reads from the center position that few guys will ever be able to do.

I still don't get why people believe the nba rigs the draft. In what world is Wemby to Spurs rig worthy

Skrrrrrrr:
The funny thing is that people are saying that steph needed KD to beat Lebron. And ignoring the fact that Lebron needed Kyrie and AD to beat steph....
Like why aren't we seeing the irony?

Kyrie? What has he achieved without Lebron. KD has been a 4 time scoring champion, MVP with Steph. Kyrie has never been top 5 in MVP voting ever.

I just remembered something, in the bubble season the Lakers where the number 1 seed right. That means they were robbed of the home court advantage to win that title

donlittle25:
Monty Williams has been fired

It's the nba adapting to the world. 1-2 bad games/series and you are either a choker, or a quitter or a bum.
In this day and age coaches like Jerry Sloan, Van Gundy, George Karl to name a few would never have lasted how long they did in the 90s and 2000s

steady986:
Oh. Rumours had it that he found out his children were not actually his. Twitter is a terrible place

That is why it always important to delay judgment on things like that. Some people just want to bring others down and they use every opportunity to sling mud even when they know it is a lie. I don't know Wiggins girlfriend or best friend, but imagine how their interactions will be now that lies where put on the public space that the dude is the father of Wiggins children.