NBA 2020-21 reg season 1st half thread

ok!

SOURCE: The Brooklyn Nets are in active discussions with the Cleveland Cavaliers to acquire JaVale McGee. Also have interest in Kevin Love

— Jason Dumas (@JDumasReports) January 25, 2021

lmfao if they put love on that team

javale makes sense. kevin love does not. they need defense lol

The Suns passed on Luka because they had Booker. Was that the best decision? Probably not. But Ayton looks scary good this year and I can’t really argue with the decision anymore.

ayton looks good the last few games. he was his not so good lazy self before that.

ayton pick was way more defensible than the bagley pick but only barely

only barely way more

But Ayton looks scary good this year and I can’t really argue with the decision anymore.

― Matt Armstrong, Monday, January 25, 2021 12:53 PM (one minute ago)

i can!

It’s coming into focus tho. I wish it wasn’t, I don’t want Jokic playing him 4 times a year rn

i am really hoping for kevin love to the nets now

kevin love needs to go to the nets it couldnt be more obvious

Collin Sexton is averaging 26 ppg while shooting 52/46/82 so if there’s a stat that says he’s not a top 30 offensive player rn it’s probably a bad stat

the thing about not taking luka cause you have booker is they wouldve been good together, at least on offense lol

they picked ayton bcuz he went to school in arizona and most NBA front offices still default to "well you have to pick the center, there's only so many guys like that on earth!" but it turns out there are way more players like deandre ayton in the NBA than there are players like luka. ayton will prob have some really nice seasons but at its core the logic was deeply faulty

the league has moved on from the center centric viewpoint, suns mustve really thought ayton was special, like youve really got to be a baller to be a superstar center in todays league eg jokic, davis

james wiseman just went 2 overall over a handful of wing/perimeter players who will prob be more valuable than him over their careers

i'm not seeing $30M in outgoing salary on the nets unless it involves a guy with the initials K and I

it's hard to know what the suns thought because their owner 100% meddled in that decision

james jones just took jalen smith over tyrese halliburton and devin vassell so he was prob down with it

james wiseman just went 2 overall over a handful of wing/perimeter players who will prob be more valuable than him over their careers

― J0rdan S., Monday, January 25, 2021 1:05 PM (twenty-nine seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

he did but thats much more the exception than the rule these days, also weird draft/weird situation

i'm not seeing $30M in outgoing salary on the nets unless it involves a guy with the initials K and I

― call all destroyer, Monday, January 25, 2021 1:07 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

its prob bs, some local news guy, cleve prob planted the story to see if anyone would call them about love

even though the game isn't played that way anymore it seems like teams still get a pass by playing the gotta-draft-a-can't-miss-big-man-when-you-can card. center centrism dies hard

the last 2 freaky centers have gone in the top 2, i think we'll know a page has turned when a guy like that comes out and drops out of the top 5

i don't remember the suns getting excoriated at the time. kangz otoh

i do think it's almost impossible for a player w/ ayton & wiseman level height + athleticism to completely fail if their heads are on straight. size does still matter in the league so there is some sort of safety/floor in the pick that is defensible. but the warriors prob would've been better off taking halliburton or devin vassell in all honesty. wiseman is cool tho he *could* become super valuable if he can get his game to like bam levels

just scrolled through the last 5 years drafts and were prob averaging a lil less than 2 centers taken in the lottery, and a number of those guys are listed as pf/c, i think its safe to say that center centrism is dead, tho there may be a few holdouts out there, especially amongst owners lol

i don't remember the suns getting excoriated at the time. kangz otoh

― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Monday, January 25, 2021 1:12 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it was definitely a legitimate debate at the time although iirc most of the people i trusted were coming down on the luka side. the questions about luka's game translating look extremely silly now.

which doesnt mean that a a huge athletic freak doesnt hold appeal, i mean those are still good things for basketball

wiseman has ceiling too, i get the pick. the way he ball handles and stuff, there's a world where he's one of the freakiest players in the league doing stuff up and down the court that basically no one can do. there's also a world where he's like glorified mitchell robinson.

i saw those clips of ayton putting the clamps on jokic the other night and that team has filled out around him nicely but his game looks ripped from another era, i still would call picking him over luka to be fully indefensible

the anti luka slander was hilarious here in phx. they had everyone believing dude was gonna be bargnani

Collin Sexton is averaging 26 ppg while shooting 52/46/82 so if there’s a stat that says he’s not a top 30 offensive player rn it’s probably a bad stat

― Matt Armstrong, Monday, January 25, 2021 12:57 PM (twenty minutes ago)

offensive rankings

BPM - 28
538 - 34
win shares - 47

ayton has shown some promise as a shooter if he could hit 3s that would change things a lot

ayton just looks so stiff and upright when he plays... if he could shoot threes that would obv be great but idk if he's ever gonna be a guy who can do much w/ the ball aside from score

the suns have def salvaged that pick to some degree by getting bridges and cam johnson and adding paul... i really like that 5 man line up and think they can make some noise in the playoffs. passing on halliburton and vassell made no sense at the time tho and it seems like that pain will only increase

smith seems like a very nice young man

ayton def a case of tight hips (too much video games)

I think one of the ingredients in 3 teams passing on Luka was front office and owners inability to shake the residual belief that you never know what you're getting with a Euro/intl player. Anyone paying attn knew Luka was a special case but teams had some reason to feel snakebitten. These are the players who didn't play US college ball and were taken in the top 10 in the 4 drafts preceding the one we're discussing:

2017: Frank Ntilikina
2016: Dragan Bender, Thon Maker, Giorgios Papagiannis
2015: Kristaps Porzingis, Maria Hezonja, Emmanuel Mudiay
2014: Dante Exum, Dario Saric
2013: none

Kind of remarkable, actually -- ALL busts except Zinger and I suppose Saric, who was picked 12th as a draft and stash by the Process Sixers so doesn't really apply.

Call it the Skita Stink.

Collin Sexton is averaging 26 ppg while shooting 52/46/82 so if there’s a stat that says he’s not a top 30 offensive player rn it’s probably a bad stat

― Matt Armstrong, Monday, January 25, 2021 12:57 PM (twenty minutes ago)

offensive rankings

BPM - 28
538 - 34
win shares - 47

Thon Maker was an American prospect essentially, Exum is Australian which doesn’t count

Mudiay signed with SMU and wasn’t really a foreign prospect at all

all fair - i just took the names that didn't have college stats. i don't think it has any effect on my point tho

I was an Ayton skeptic and Luka lover, but my pull with the Suns front office wasn't enough to overcome their 'local kid makes good' bias for Ayton.

Thanks for these numbers which don’t affect my point of view at all, are exactly what I was talking about etc
― Matt Armstrong, Monday, January 25, 2021 2:10 PM (one hour ago)bookmarkflaglink

no stats are gospel so if you want to believe that sexton is a top 30 offensive player those stats shouldn't dissuade you from that but they would indicate he's closer to 30 than 1

i feel like there were lots of concerns about luka's athleticism and you can see why, it's not like there is much athleticism to his game, he's just so good at basketball that it doesn't matter. there's no real test to quantify how fast a guy's first step is and luka just consistently blows past pretty anyone who guards him and i can see why you would watch him do that in europe and wonder if he would still be able to do it vs great wing defenders in the NBA. also i bet there were ppl who thought he would have trouble finishing at the rim bcuz of the lack of athleticism but that discounts again the "being good at basketball" part where you can win out w/ creativity and skill, also he's pretty strong

there was just always a huge amount of overthinking happening when looking at a 19 year old who won euroleague regular season and finals MVP. in a way it should've been one of the easiest no 1 picks ever

you know crazy abt lukas drive game is he almost never gets all the way to the basket but hes so go at getting almost all the way there putting his shoulder into his defender and somehow everytime rotating his body so that he gets off a quality floater/almost layup, and then of course hes got great touch too so they go in a lot, being super strong helps too

i dont think ive ever seen anyone use that part of the game as much or as well as he does, the like in between the in between game and at the rim game, tho he takes a fair amount of just regular in between shots too

for sure if i close my eyes and picture luka scoring it's him getting into the lane bumping the rim protector w/ his shoulder, pivoting and shooting a standing shot from like 2 feet away from the basket. i would say that's his signature shot aside from step back 3 pointer that clangs off the side of the rim

his stepback is so ugly, a disgrace

He has that nash balance and patience around the hoop, but in a bigger frame

Luka has one of the nastiest crossovers in basketball history, that’s the frame from a lot of what he does