( ( ( ( ( nba bubble ball 2020 ) ) ) ) )

Has any player had a 19 game playoff run like Murray had and not been a star? I doubt it

theres never been a bubble before!

We all thought the bubble was magically making people awesome and then it turned out to just be murray

a lot of wacky numbers and outcomes have happened in the bubble, its not normal nba, not taking anything away from bubble stars but its just different

i personally would put money on murray having made some sort of leap but is it really a leap into the dame/steph zone... idk gotta see more

Trevor Ariza had a playoff run where he shot the shit out of the ball, I guess that’s sort of what Crowder is doing, but Murray is different. I would say the possibility that it was just bubble psychological effects is unlikely. Maybe he and Jokic just worked harder than most in their daily training sessions. But that’s reason to believe he’s a star on its own.

I was always a murray doubter and thought he was mostly just streaky but at this point he has to have so much confidence. Refs will give him more respect too

If he was on another team I’d be upset about not having him and doing jord cope things

he def has at the very least shown that he has the talent to be a leet nba guard, some of the stuff he did this run 98% of nba players couldnt dream of

i think he's more in the bradley beal zone than the dame/steph zone

I’ll take it

i mean dame isnt in the steph zone if we're being real

we can't fully discount what we've seen in the bubble, players and teams showing new skills should be recognized. but we also have to acknowledge that it's a context for basketball that we will never see again. and it's not just murray or the nuggets! i'm very happy to talk about my miami heat. do we really think the heat would be 12-3 in the playoffs w/ tyler herro eurostepping over everyone's faces if they had to play a normal amount of playoff road games? bcuz i don't. i'm going to be using caution in extrapolating no travel/no crowd/games every other day playoff basketball to the playoffs of the future.

murray may have taken a "leap"... the nuggets could also lose to utah, dallas, or houston in the first round next year, or the clippers, lakers, or warriors in the second round and it wouldn't necessarily mean they're any worse than what we're seeing from them in the bubble.

Has any player had a 19 game playoff run like Murray had and not been a star? I doubt it

― Matt Armstrong, Sunday, September 27, 2020 12:35 PM (fifty-one minutes ago)

it was a great 19 game run no doubt but this point is entirely devoid any context whatsoever

i mean dame isnt in the steph zone if we're being real

― Spottie, Sunday, September 27, 2020 1:00 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

uhh thats why i called it the dame-steph zone please do your research on how zones work before posting

The context is every other playoff run in nba history

ok but it's not, because no other playoffs in history has been played in one city in an open gym in front of no fans. it's ok to talk about this.

tyler herro is putting up "playoff" stats that have him in company w/ magic johnson and james worthy. he looks great, has clearly improved, is gonna be a very important longterm piece, possibly a multi time all star. and yet it's still ok to look at what he's done in the bubble playoffs w/ a skeptical eye.

tbf there are also additional problems with historical stat comparisons at the moment

donovan mitchell averaged 36-5-5 on 52/52/95 shooting... i don't really know what to take away from these stats. my conclusion is basically what it was before, which is that donovan mitchell is really good at scoring.

That’s one series, murray did 19 games.

Broad presumption before the playoffs was that Donovan mitchell>Jamal murray

The nuggets fell behind against the Jazz 2-1 without Barton or harris and then Gary came back and they were the third or fourth best team in the playoffs. They deserve credit for that, and there’s lots of reason to believe they can improve a bunch when they replace the corpse of Millsap and MPJ doesn’t try to go coast to coast off every rebound

fans of teams always assume they will improve "a bunch" from one year to the next. i think it's just as reasonable to point to the vast swaths of NBA history where teams had non-linear and quite tumultuous journeys to success and argue that the team that lost more games than it won in the playoffs and had a negative point differential may still encounter a series of tribulations over the next few seasons before ascending to the top of the mountain.

the book on jamal murray was that he was a really talented scorer whose play could ping wildly between peaks and valleys depending on the night. perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, he managed to play a consistent string of basketball in the year where there was no travel, no road games, and no fans.

Jord they were a top 3 seed in the west for two straight years and made the conference finals

They also have a massive home court advantage which they couldn’t utilize at all

This is gonna be like the 2011 nba draft isn’t it

jokic had great playoffs last two years too proving their best guy can "step up when it matters the most (in the playoffs)"

having said that yeah the climb to the top of the mountain (mount nba) is fraught and can be derailed by all sorts of things, but id def put the nugs amongst the teams that are best positioned 4 success

oh i think the nuggets will continue to be a very good regular season team. they're very young and have one of the best regular season home court advantages in the league. i don't think their seed is going to fall. but when it comes to playoff basketball (the real kind) i still put them behind the LA teams and the warriors, in a group w/ dallas and utah. i would prob but houston a tier below that and then everyone else behind them.

if the nuggets can get the 2 seed next year they'll be well positioned, bcuz just outlining it like that it feels like there's a real drop off after the top 6. i would favor denver w/ home court over houston and any of those other teams. but the second round is going to be fraught for them next year no matter where they're seeded.

either of the LA teams cld easily implode imo theyre good but not dominant, i dont think the warriors will implode but they cld just not be as good anymore

clippers shd try to trade playoff p for playoff embiid

warriors shd try and trade the #2 pick + wiggins for... someone

one thing occurs to me the lakers havent played a super active athletic team yet in the playoffs but both teams in the east are that, that one regular season game the celtics just overwhelmed them with that

Happy with the trade now


Minnesota Timberwolves guard Malik Beasley was arrested Saturday and is being held without bail on felony weapons and drug charges in Minneapolis, according to police records.

Beasley, who averaged 20.7 points in 14 games with the Timberwolves after being traded by the Denver Nuggets, is charged with felony controlled substance/narcotics and felony receiving/concealing stolen property, according to Hennepin County Jail records.

Beasley, 23, was arrested after brandishing a gun at someone who then called police, according to sources. After obtaining a search warrant, officers found marijuana and guns in his home in Plymouth, Minnesota, the sources told ESPN.

davis particularly prefers to play a more deliberate style and can get flustered when teams speed up and swarm, its also the style of play that could make bron show his age or at least just work more than he would like

yeah vs the heat lebron could play a free safety style defense. butler isn’t dominant enough offensively to demand bron’s full attention and the rest of the heat’s offense comes thru the guards or bam. but against boston they will need him on tatum and brown.

Sounds like grant wants to stay with Nuggets and hey why not

matt, just remember that we're talking about a Minnesota police department who swear they 'found' this stuff.

Considering that last off-season Beasley got in a fistfight in an apartment complex lobby I’m gonna say the nuggets made the right call here

guys do we think the crowd-noise person has “beat LA” cued up tonight if the heat are running away with it in the 4th?

lol yeah def should, too bad we will never know tho...

the murray-harris-mpj-grant-jokic 5 is fucking good at everything imo

except defense

if you swapped out mpj u cld have a good defensive unit there

I don’t think he’s saying that all those players are good R everything

I get what he means, it’s a nice balance of skills.