NBA 2024-25 Season Thread

Steph Curry has made Draymond, Klay, and Kerr so much ****ing money.

Luka is so clearly the best hoops player alive it's ridiculous. Jokic is second, but he's like 8 feet tall, and it's comparing Kareem to MJ anyway. Pure hoops, it's Luka. All this nonsense needs to stop. Imagine if he could shoot free throws.

Problem is USA#1s can't stand that some euros are housing them every which way in hoops.

KD a whiner otherwise he'd be in the discussion. Lebron still a beast. Embiid always breaks. Tatum? Get the hell out of here.

Also it is a huge corporate event where the NBA takes care of the fat cat execs from all their sponsors

I just don't see a compelling case for Luka as a better player as Jokic. Put another way, I think it is quite a bit easier to win a championship with Joker as your best player than it is Luka as your best player.

Luka often feels like peak-Harden without the off court dumbassery. That's a great, great player, but probably not the easiest player in the league with whom to win a championship.

Yep. I give Draymond credit for perfectly adapting himself to play alongside Curry. If you put him on a random NBA team, he still would be a great defensive player, but he would be greatly diminished as an offensive player. At the end of the day, Klay is Joe Dumars.

Steph is the system. It's that simple.

I really want to see Draymond get cheap shotted before he retires.

Maybe we can start a GoFundMe to cover the fine.

Yeah, someone did a deep five a few years ago regarding Steph and hi statisticial stability regardless of his situation.

Their conclusion was the same: Steph is the system. You just put him on the floor and production improves by X%.

https://defector.com/kevin-durant-phoeni...

podcaster? ofc. ok i changed my mind, get this idiot outta here

how can you hate this guy

I don't necessary disagree with the conclusion but Curry hasn't played outside of the Warriors system since the 2013-14 season. And his track record without Kerr isn't stellar for a borderline top-10 player all-time. It's probably the weakest start to a career through the age-25 season among the 15 or so players that have a strong argument for inclusion in the top-10. The league rapidly catching up means Kerr and his motion offense aren't as impactful in 2024 as they were in 2015, but it's odd to act as though there's some kind of definitive proof when it's not possible to disentangle the impact of coaching.

and whats kerr's record without steph?

e.g. 2023 FIBA World Cup

I'm a fan of the condescending tone.

I'm not arguing for Kerr at all - the point here is that we don't in fact have data demonstrating that Curry is exceptionally impactful in all sorts of situations regardless of the system, at least since the conclusion of the 2013-14 season.

Also I'm using Kerr as a shorthand for the Warriors system but it's also possible that guys like Ron Adams and Bruce Fraser were just as critical, kind of like how we associate the Bulls/Lakers dynasties with Phil Jackson, but they literally brought in Tex Winters to help players understand the system. Also coaching national teams is a very different type of job altogether and is specifically incompatible with implementing complex systems.

yeah fair enough, but "fair" really gets in the way of my kerr slander, so ... go to hell

We may not have the data but the thought that Steph would be dominant in the standard, modern PNR should largely go without saying.

We all know he's better than Dame.

I think Curry in 13-14 was already better than Dame at his best - I don't think Dame was ever a top-10 player in the game and you could make a reasonable argument for him being outside the top 20 for most of his prime. Curry's floor in this scenario might be a slightly worse Harden. Somewhere around Harden in all-time ranking might be a reasonable bet.

No qualms with that

The thought that those Rockets teams would be better with Steph is a bit ambiguous imo.

If Harden wasn't such a tank it might be different.

I don't even know what this post means. Every decent coach runs an offense that amplifies the talents of the team's best players. And every team suffers when their best player is unavailable, although few teams fall apart as badly as the Warriors fall apart without Curry. Curry is no more of a system player than Jokic, Giannis, Luka, SGA, or any other superstar.

Curry's career started slowly because of (i) injuries; and (ii) reluctance by coaches (and to a much lesser extent, reluctance by Curry himself) to accept that it was a good idea for Curry to take an absurd number of threes, including difficult, long-range threes and threes off the bounce.

I think this is way too generous to Harden. Even at his peak, Harden was not an easy player to pair with another great player.

Curry would not have been as productive as Harden if he had been forced to play in the offense that best suited Harden, just as Harden would not have been nearly as productive as Curry if he had been forced to play in an offense that best suited Curry.

I suspect that Curry would have been more effective playing in the style of Harden than vice versa, but that misses the point. If Curry had been traded to the Rockets in exchange for Harden, both the Warriors and the Rockets would have played differently.

i don't think this is fair, sample size of genuine attempts at pairing him with another star is small and the overwhelming majority of the attempts occurred once his prime was over

iirc in his prime he was the most efficient scorer in the history of the game with all the contact he drew for extra shots on made baskets, especially his ability to get fouled at the 3pt line, which is legendary as he has been fouled while making a 3pt attempt more than twice the amount of the person who has the second most all time, he's that good at drawing contact while shooting it that they had to rewrite the rules of the game to make it more difficult for him to do it

Dame is incredibly overrated. He made a game clinching shot last night to beat the Twolves and the announcers verbally slurped him up non-stop.. saying how he's the greatest closer in the game today / dame time / etc.

The reason the Bucks beat the Twolves last night was because of a fluke of a 3Q by the Twolves. They only scored 13 points (lowest score for them in ANY Q this season). That had NOTHING to do with Dame.

Dame? How did he do? He shot freaking 8/23. He's an arrogant POS frontrunner (trade me to Miami or ELSE, gfy dame) and the Bucks ain't winning anything.

/rant

Also I feel a main reason they won the title in 2022 was due to Mike Brown's defensive schemes. He unlocked Wiggins to be like 80% of a Prime Pippen.

Kerr slander doesn't just feel right. It is right.

ooopsie wrong thread, How about those Raps? :P

Disaster season.

Not good enough to make the play in.

Not bad enough to be bottom 6 which means they'll lose the 1st round pick this year.