NBA 2024-25 Season Thread
Lettuce NBA!
and lettuce lol @ James Harden
Pels should look for a 3 with someone cutting to hoop. Options baby. McMuffin style.
CJ McCollum iso ball can’t be your best play there, can it?
a cj iso, in the year of our lord 2024? k
OKC is so ****ing lucky Pelicans have a ****ing ritard for a coach.
And sun running that Zion hurt himself.
SGA made a few plays at the end there to break their drought. Pels had to have that, should be normal service rest of the series now.
Pelicans are scrappy af. But they also kinda suck. With Zion they wouldve won this game by 10.
not the most impressive win by OKC, if Pels had Zion would've def been a series
problem is BI is their go to guy and he's basically trapped in the Dorture Chamber
atleast there was a competitive game today though
I don’t think the Pacers are dead in the water. Dame aint gonna have 35 in the first half again. They should shoot better from 3. Maybe someone gets thru to that bitch Haliburton.
I actually don't really agree with this. DLo is the Lakers 3rd best player and he is going to just have to play well for them to have a chance in this series, this isn't last yr where you can sit him for Schroder. Gabe has barely played this yr and hasn't looked very good when he has. Dinwiddie/Gabe both been underwhelming, I mean DLo is just way better than these guys in general. You really wanna sit him for backups over a bad few quarters?
It is game 1, you gotta ride DLo a bit until he falls
Yeah I noted this could be exactly what they are thinking for this series - keep D'Lo on the floor no matter what happens; if that is what they are thinking then they may have been happy for KCP to take 10 threes, and Denver to take 42 attempts from beyond the arc as a team. Make or miss, maybe you can get a game on variance alone.
I don't fully agree on Vincent - he had been working in over the last two weeks of the regular season. In theory he should be able to provide good on ball disruption. But I do appreciate that the challenge for the Lakers is not finding a guy to disrupt Murray when he has the ball. It's more trying to make Murray work on D, and they need to have enough on the floor at all times that he can't just stand off to the side on Vandy or an equivalent with his hands on his knees.
Like I think on balance, yeah, just keep Russell out there.
Prince over Rui is just a hard no for me, Prince plays with such little physicality defensively. In theory he should be more of a force there, but it hasn't manifested all season. Rui can make cuts to the baseline effectively and suck up minutes on Jokic earlier in a game - I just think it's a priority to have him out there and get him going and it feeds into the same idea re D'Lo: you need to keep up offensively and force Denver to defend 1 - 5. Rui just brings more diversity to his game on the offensive end and far more effort defensively.
As much as its interesting to think through these things, I really don't think Saturday was close at all. Ham should do better and make Denver earn this more, but if they were actually ~10 points ahead midway through the 4th in any of these games it feels like Denver have levers and gears to pull that would get it anyway. The BIG issue here, in the end, is that neither Davis nor LeBron have any ability to impact Jokic. If one or both of them could guard him effectively, even for stretches, it would make this interesting. But they clearly can't, Jokic languidly gets his 30+ point double double in the way that suits Denver and that's that.
It's just really hard for you to win a series when your opponent's best player gets what he wants how he wants when he wants. Makes the rest entirely academic.
I don’t think the Pacers are dead in the water. Dame aint gonna have 35 in the first half again. They should shoot better from 3. Maybe someone gets thru to that bitch Haliburton.
It was an odd game. Dame had 35 in the 1st half and 0 in the 2nd half once Indy stopped stupidly running over screens. Bucks were actually -3 in Dame's minutes over the full game.
That said, the Pacers Bench was terrible. Running Doug McDermott in the year of our lord 2024 for playoff minutes is coaching malpractice. Doug was -17.
Again, probably comes down to hame two and whether or not they can find their shot.
The Hield trade looks especially bad after yesterday IMO, as you had called out here at the time RT.
24 coaches received votes for “who you would most like to play for” from across the 133 players who participated in the players poll.
Darvin Ham: 0 votes
Yeah I noted this could be exactly what they are thinking for this series - keep D'Lo on the floor no matter what happens; if that is what they are thinking then they may have been happy for KCP to take 10 threes, and Denver to take 42 attempts from beyond the arc as a team. Make or miss, maybe you can get a game on variance alone.
I don't fully agree on Vincent - he had been working in over the last two weeks of the regular season. In theory he should be able to provide good on ball disruption.
The Lakers actually looked unreal good the few mins Vincent was in. He needs to play more. They aren't going to win if DLO plays like this of course and they definitely can't seem to stop Jokic at all. Scary part about Game 1 was Murray was off and Lakers still lost by 11. They're just cooked.
This is the post trade deadline Pacers. It's what I've been saying. This is the Pacers offensive scheme now. Tyrese runs the ball up then gives it to Nembhard/Pascal and let's them dribble for 15 seconds. It's horrible to watch.
oh yeah, the rapz did that kind of thing a lot with pascal as well. when he was on it worked well and was fun and cool and all that, but when it didn't ... oof
just letting him cook should prob be more of a 3rd/4th option for a good team, like when they rang'd
oh yeah, the rapz did that kind of thing a lot with pascal as well. when he was on it worked well and was fun and cool and all that, but when it didn't ... oof
just letting him cook should prob be more of a 3rd/4th option for a good team, like when they rang'd
Basically exactly this.
Pascal has been outstanding for the Pacers, arguably their best player since he got there. He was 36/13/2/1/2 last night.
The bigger issue is they're going away from the thing that made them so good. Take a guess at who the best player in the NBA is as the Roll Man in the PnR (>2 poss/gm)? It's Myles Turner. You can't run that play if Haliburton doesn't have the ball.
Guess who the best player is off the PnR as the ball handler (>6 poss/gm)? Ok, it's SGA, but Haliburton is 6th. Why are they going away from those plays to run isos all game?
Myles Turner PnR/PnP: 1.40 ppp
Haliburton PnR: 1.05 ppp
Pascal Iso: 0.91 ppp
Doesn't take a genius to see what you should lean into...
Mosley getting these boys to 5th in the east
Giddey playing like someone who isn’t at the age of consent and is somehow getting ****ed by nba players
superfluous hyperbole
high floor no ceiling
24 coaches received votes for “who you would most like to play for” from across the 133 players who participated in the players poll.
Darvin Ham: 0 votes
deviled ham finishes ahead of monty piston and po' tom thibodont in your sandwich coaching poll
a style prone to delivering bad news between positive slices
doc immediately disqualified for plucking watercress and bean sprouts on the mill walk
this game will come down to who sucks less between OG and Lowry
Literally came in here to say what the **** is Lowry doing getting big minutes?
YOU'RE TOO OLD LOWRY GET OFF THE ****ING COURT
He's been too old for like 2 years now.
If he gets another contact next season then I'd be shocked.
Although a Demar/Kyle reunion would be a nice story.
That ending was insane. Bodies flying everywhere
