NBA 2020-21 reg season 1st half thread

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or are you just talking about Hunter

trae was amazing last year, were ppl really hating on him that much, obvs the defense is awful but he was nuts last year

so

dame hasnt gotten an mvp is trae gonna be better than him

theres getting an mvp and theres being an mvp candidate

probably not xp

If we’re going off 3 game samples Terry Rozier is in the mvp race

That was kind of the point of my post.

Anyway Hawks are gonna trade Collins sooner or later

he was on a team that was 27 games under .500 lol
― J0rdan S., Tuesday, December 29, 2020 1:08 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

he was 20. what’s the track record for 20 year olds who put up his numbers? what’s his floor, kyrie irving?

Anyway Hawks are gonna trade Collins sooner or later

if we're gonna do a three game mvp, i think 29/15/14 kinda wins it

well 29/12/14, but still

he was 20. what’s the track record for 20 year olds who put up his numbers? what’s his floor, kyrie irving?

― k3vin k., Tuesday, December 29, 2020 1:39 PM (six minutes ago)bookmarkflaglink

yeah it's just simply impossible to imagine trae young having a career worse than kyrie irving

kyrie really shouldve been one of the prime beneficiaries of the game getting called ridiculously tight the last few years but hes been injured the whole time

I would argue that trae has superior court vision than kyrie or dame

need a larger sample size unless you mean "right now" in which case i think kyrie has the edge there

comparing trae's stats across eras is useless given his insane usage rate, his style of play, and the style of play of the league in general. his floor is a good stats high usage point guard who makes some all star games and whose teams don't win anything. take your pick of these sorts of players from years past -- stephon marbury, gilbert arenas w/o the knee problems, baron davis...

his ceiling is a good stats high usage point guard who makes a lot of all star games and whose teams don't win anything so... chris paul hehe

Comparing him to someone like Marbury or Gil insane to me. Those guys were straight up ball hogs that hurt their teams

i mean, trae young's *floor* is definitely that of a ball hog player whose teams don't accomplish much. whether his assist numbers would superficially paper over the ways in which his play "hurts" his team would be a matter of interpretation. in his age 23, 24 and 25 seasons gilbert arenas made 3 all star teams averaging something like 27/6/5 on .500ish teams that made the second round once and got bounced out of the playoffs in the first round twice. that general level of individual value and team success is well w/in the range of outcomes for trae young -- he could also transcend that up to the level of dame lillard or whoever.

That kind of points to the impossibility of comparing across eras. Marbury was definitely ball dominant, but he averaged around 8 assists/game almost every season of his career, right up until the final Knicks phase. He couldn't shoot though, and I kind of doubt he would've learned to be a significantly better shooter in the modern game. Trae as that player, but with the shooting capacity he already has, is pretty damn good. Remains to be seen whether it can translate to team success. I think he's a good enough passer that he can rebalance his arsenal enough for that elusive winning formula, in the right context. Will be fun to watch either way, though, and doubly so if he can hover close enough to Luka to generate barstool arguments and think pieces about the draft day trade for years to come.

xp similar to what J0rdan said. J0rdan, love your bball insights and much respect for your take on the game

atm trae is more or less singlehandedly making watching hawks games fun for the first time since like 2014

xp ha thanks :) i love chatting ball w/ my guys

just looked up trae's player projection page on 538

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2021-nba-player-projections/trae-young/

performance of the 10 most comparable players

1. chris paul
2. stephon marbury
3. russell westbrook
4. devin booker
5. kyrie irving
6. gilbert arenas

this seems entirely reasonable to me as a range of outcomes. devin booker showing up is interesting for better or worse

having watched most of the guy's games, the chris paul comparison is the only one that fits. he has superb court vision which i would not attribute to the rest of that group. i'm not arguing that his teams will outperform any of those other players (or even that he'll have a better career than a few of those guys), just that stylistically, he's much different

J0rdan, love your bball insights and much respect for your take on the game

― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Tuesday, December 29, 2020 2:37 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

please do not encourage the chris paul slander -_-

CP3 is controversial. Not his all-star status, but just where to place him in an era of fabulous guards.

noticed cp3s status amongst contrarian minded people even those who arent really huge basketball fan has reached god level, a natural byproduct of him being generally underrated

cp3 is at least the 3rd greatest PG of all time maybe 2nd so yeah

as the original cp3 fan i feel pretty comfortable saying chris paul is a lot like john stockton, both of them are wildly overachieving little guys who play extremely sound basketball and make their teammates better, but both are limited in comparison to the greatest players of all time by their inability to score points at an elite level, for instance if i had to win a playoff game i would take steph over cp3 every time, and i would take isiah thomas too, but also being the best at any particular position isnt meaningful

simmons and russillo did a book of basketball episode on him recently...simmons’ take was truly deranged, basically a standard twitter egg perspective, russillo is a stan and also generally is a much better thinker about basketball so his was much more informed

2nd or third is probably right, depends how the rest of curry’s career shapes out. (maybe third or fourth, I admit my sense of isiah’s place is very incomplete.) comparing those two is fascinating because it’s a comparison between a guy who always plays well and never wins and a guy who usually underperforms yet wins anyway

tangentially i do wonder what guys like marbury or arenas would’ve looked like if they got to play in the spacing era as opposed to the last gasp of the packed inside the arch, no movement era

arenas was really ahead of his time. he would have cooked in today's game.

the guy who wouldve been just unstoppable is iverson

I think Marbury had personal issues that would have always derailed him

CP3 has such a brain-boggling highlight reel though, so many plays that just seem impossible

Iverson would have averaged 10 assists per game as a shooting guard in today’s game

I’ve always been so confused by the zoomer/millennial stat nerds who think iverson sucked but love Westbrook

there are stats nerds who love westbrook?

stands to reason as he makes a lot of stats

stands to reason as he makes a lot of stats

steph vs cp3 is an interesting comparison... kind of a peak vs longevity argument even putting aside the respective playoff histories. don’t think cp ever reached the heights of even steph’s pre KD MVP/championship season. cp is more of a “pure” PG & his game is prob more consistent/adaptable... if you put him on the KD warriors i’m sure he wins a title. i just think steph’s long distance shooting & how that opens up his entire game puts him above cp as a player for me

the one time paul was paired with an truly elite bucket getter, james harden, he came very close to getting a ring even tho the team on the whole was pretty flawed

hot take alert but imo steph will never regain his prior form and will come to be seen as unable to perform without a super supporting cast

thats prob where he paul been best as a second option star, but i mean thats the thing, the first option guys you just put next to whoever

blake was a really good scorer but couldnt just do it on his own whenever he wanted

if I were a Rockets fan I don't know if I'd ever get over that game 7

hot take alert but imo steph will never regain his prior form and will come to be seen as unable to perform without a super supporting cast

― micah, Tuesday, December 29, 2020 5:49 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this may end up being a popular idea but its obvs not true, just check out the dubs first champ team, not any sort of superteam