NBA 2024-25 Season Thread
Lettuce NBA!
and lettuce lol @ James Harden
Brunson versus Curry, fighting for Second Team all-NBA
You can double hard / trap Brunson and can mostly just get away with it.
Kuminga is becoming very difficult to guard. He's a total bully with near nuclear athleticism.
Two spots for Brunson, Haliburton, Mitchell and Edwards
Aren't they position-less now?
Yeah.
Top 7 are locked
Curry 8
Lakers hold off the Wizards. in Overtime!
How would you guys build around Wemby this offseason?
Trae himself said he'd love to play with Wemby... personally I think they'd be a phenomenal fit. Wemby behind Trae shores him up defensively like woah. Trae would get Wemby in all the right spots, for tons of lobs, the PnR action with them would be fantastic as well. Picks are picks... no guarantee they're anything great or even good.
I say you know what Atlanta? You want all your picks back from the DeJounte Murray trade? You got 'em, ship us Trae. Let's accelerate the process in San Antonio.
my guess is san antonio instead just signs free agents who want to be with wemby
Pairing wemby with a shutter bug point guard makes a lot of sense to me. I’d target Darius Garland over Trae, but that’s my personal preference.
They really have to trade/sign/draft a point guard who can both shoot and put Wemby in the easiest positions to score.
I got on the subject of Portland Trailblazer drafts over the years a while back, and not sure how much if any I posted. Realizing the obvious that they had passed on Jordan, Durant and Bird ... I wondered who else. Below is a glimpse of some of it.
They passed over:
Tiny Archibald, Calvin Murphy (for Geoff Petrie)
Bob MaCadoo, Paul Westphaul, Julius Erving (for Larue Martin)
Swen Nater, George McGinnis, Jim Chones, Caldwell Jones, Larry Kenon (for Barry Parkhill)
Junior Bridgeman, Gus Williams, World B. Free (Lionel Hollins)
Dantley, Parish, Kupchak, Alex English, Dennis Johnson (for Wally Walker)
Norm Nixon, Eddie Johnson, Cornbread Maxwell, James Edwards (for Rich Laurel)
Reggie Theus, Mo Cheeks, Michael Cooper (for Mychael Thompson #1)
Laimbeer, Donaldson (for Paxson),
Vandeweigh, Drew, Woodson, Mahorn (for Ronnie Lester)
Larry Nance, Eddie Johnson, Alton Lister, Danny Ainge (for Jeff Lamp)
Sleepy Floyd, Ricky Pierce, Derek Smith, Craig Hodges (for Fat Lever)
The Worlds Fair of Jordan, Barkley, Perkins et al (for Bowie)
Del Curry, Mark Price, Dennis Rodman, Hornacek (for Walter Berry)
Mark Jackson (for Ronnie Murphy)
Vernon Maxwell, Steve Kerr, Anthony Mason (for Mark Bryant)
Vlade Divac, Sherman Douglas, Cliff Robinson, Doug West (for Byron Irvin)
Eldon Campbell, Toni Kukoc, Cedric Ceballos (for Alaa Abdelnaby)
PJ Brown (for Dave Johsnon)
Shawn Respert over a dozen guys who played 10+ years in the league
Roberto Bergerson over Manu Ginobli
Erick Barkely over a bunch of guys that played 10 years in the league
Zach Randolph over Tony Parker,
Seems a beyond sick history. In passing on Jorday, Durant, Larry Bird, Dr. J, Dennis Rodman, Mo Cheeks, Tony Parker, McAdoo, Westphaul, Tiny Archibald, McGinnis, Alex English ... they seemed remarkably inept. They did manage to draft Walton, Wicks and Drexler first.
Trae with Wemby, oooohhhh boy. That would be popcorn for sure.
Warriors very smart for not trading him.
Kerr unbelievably dumb for not giving him more minutes earlier.
Hard to argue with either proposition.
I don't think Kuminga is going to be a superstar. But Jaylen Brown at age 21 is a good comp--incredibly athletic, near impossible to stop when heading downhill, sloppy handle that leads to turnovers, too right-handed as a finisher. Jaylen was a better shooter at age 21, and Kuminga is a better bully inside, but otherwise they are quite similar.
And Jaylen Brown is about where I expect Kuminga to settle at his peak. But that's a very useful player.
Hard to argue with either proposition.
I don't think Kuminga is going to be a superstar. But Jaylen Brown at age 21 is a good comp--incredibly athletic, near impossible to stop when heading downhill, sloppy handle that leads to turnovers, too right-handed as a finisher. Jaylen was a better shooter at age 21, and Kuminga is a better bully inside, but otherwise they are quite similar.
And Jaylen Brown is about where I expect Kuminga to settle at his peak. But that's a very useful player.
Will he be worth $60M/year adjusted for inflation though?
That is the question.
I got on the subject of Portland Trailblazer drafts over the years a while back, and not sure how much if any I posted. Realizing the obvious that they had passed on Jordan, Durant and Bird ... I wondered who else. Below is a glimpse of some of it.
They passed over:
Tiny Archibald, Calvin Murphy (for Geoff Petrie)
Bob MaCadoo, Paul Westphaul, Julius Erving (for Larue Martin)
Swen Nater, George McGinnis, Jim Chones, Caldwell Jones, Larry Kenon (for Barry Parkhill)
Some of the old drafts, you had to worry about whether or not you could sign them. Easy example is Bird was never playing for Portland if they picked him. Celtics gambled losing that pick if they weren’t able to sign him prior to the following draft when he went back to school. Similar idea that Dr. J was probably never going to Portland either.
Rodman, no one thought was going to be anything close to what he became. He was a late 2nd round pick.
I’d start with the Bowie pick as the earliest example and go forward from there.
Bucks had a pretty awful track record of this nature in the 90s and 00s. The worst example being drafting Dirk and trading him for Robert Traylor. You’re basically the biggest German heritage major city in the US, but let’s not try to build around the German unicorn! Thankfully they eventually figured out that building around the foreign guy was their path to a title.
Some of the old drafts, you had to worry about whether or not you could sign them. Easy example is Bird was never playing for Portland if they picked him. Celtics gambled losing that pick if they weren’t able to sign him prior to the following draft when he went back to school. Similar idea that Dr. J was probably never going to Portland either.
Rodman, no one thought was going to be anything close to what he became. He was a late 2nd round pick.
I’d start with the Bowie pick as the earliest exam
I also think you have to consider where the better players were drafted. For example, we could all say "LOL Cavaliers, they took Andrew Wiggins over Joker." But the reality is that Joker was the 41st pick in the draft, and every single NBA team would have drafted Wiggins much earlier than Jokic, not just the Cavaliers.
Kuminga did start the season like ****. Out of control. Something clicked mid-December.
Kuminga did start the season like ****. Out of control. Something clicked mid-December.
One thing that has changed is that he has quit shooting three pointers except for the rare instances in which he is forced into an attempt because of the shot clock. He seems to have accepted that the best thing he can do in the half court is attack the paint relentlessly. He's too physical for the small guys, too athletic for the big guys, and it's too dangerous to double or blitz him when Curry is on the floor.
The skills are never going to be much better than average for an NBA wing, but in terms of raw athleticism, he is top 5%.
I got on the subject of Portland Trailblazer drafts over the years a while back, and not sure how much if any I posted. Realizing the obvious that they had passed on Jordan, Durant and Bird ... I wondered who else. Below is a glimpse of some of it.
They passed over:
Tiny Archibald, Calvin Murphy (for Geoff Petrie)
Bob MaCadoo, Paul Westphaul, Julius Erving (for Larue Martin)
Swen Nater, George McGinnis, Jim Chones, Caldwell Jones, Larry Kenon (for Barry Parkhill)
All this looks like an artifact of a posteriori selection.
A lot of people thought Walter berry would be good.
I assume he was kidding.
WNBA bigs obviously could not hold up against good boys high school bigs, but I think Clark herself could handle pretty good boy's high school competition. She would be small and would get cooked on defense, but she almost certainly has as much range and shoots as well as any boys HS guard.
