2021 nba offseason draft free agency etc

celtics have a conventional roster - bigs who do big things, wings who do wing things - so they should probably look for a conventional distributing guard like idk chris paul

do you have any of those

i hear tj mcconnell is a free agent

lol

your welcome

anyway all due respect to the point god but the days of the —conventional distributing guard— are largely behind us, brown and tatum initiate a lot of the offense, getting another star would obvs be great but past that getting guys who can make plays when they need to is good, lonzo is an excellent passer and has made progress as a shooter but is a poor finisher at the rim and a lot of his value is on defense, his profile is actually very similar to smarts, i think if you can add a guy like that its pretty good, then you just got to hope the nets get injured

Lonzo is Ricky Rubio 2.0 but with some hope left that he could improve as a shooter

i think lonzo has more ability to be productive without the ball in his hands and also has more positional flexibility, with rubio its like this guy is your point guard hes going to dribble a lot which is not great since hes a bad scorer

its kind messed up for lonzo that he was such a high draft pick and got so much press, if he were a #10 pick settling into a long career as a solid starter thatd make a lot more sense

lonzo shot ~38% from three this season, on like 9 attempts per game.

yeah he was legitimately scorching the nets for like a month before that late season injury too, im not ready to totally believe it but its pretty cool def

if you get frustrated with kemba always being injured then maybe lonzo isnt the way to go

there is that

i would just like some complementary players who can play defense, doesn't really matter who.

question was not so much how to get lonzo but what other player with an inflated contract do you trade kemba for (and how do you get rid of tristan who admittedly had one good game in the playoffs but was mostly unpleasant to watch) and Adams is who came to mind.

lonzo is not going to create any more half court offense than kemba

― micah, Wednesday, June 9, 2021 7:09 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is otm; the hope is that lonzo's strengths play better on a team where the wings can create and he can just be a ball mover

also adams is pretty bad now, probably close to a wash with tristan.

Boston Celtics president Brad Stevens has received team permissions to interview several assistant coaches for his franchise's head coaching job, including the Los Angeles Clippers' Chauncey Billups, sources told ESPN.

Stevens started making calls on Wednesday to get the OK to talk to several candidates, including Billups, Milwaukee Bucks' Darvin Ham and Charles Lee, Dallas' Jamahl Mosley and Brooklyn's Ime Udoka, sources told ESPN.

ime is as nice and sweet and thoughtful an athlete as i've ever spoken to and it would be truly joyous if he got a the big job somewhere

looks like brad is consciously attempting to hire a coach who is… not like brad stevens

they basically have to hire a nonwhite coach, even the local white middle aged radio guys have come to that conclusion

they should hire an italian

if porter doesn’t cut these no-dribble, off-rhythm threes in half next season it’ll be a huge coaching failure

The Athletic’s Shams Charania adds Becky Hammon, Dawn Staley and Brent Barry to a list of candidates for Portland's open coaching gig which already includes Chauncey Billups and Mike D’Antoni.

would be so cool

In February, Luka snapped at Mavs exec Haralabos Voulgaris: "Don’t f—ing tell me to calm down."

It's not the only example of a tense relationship.

Sources say Voulgaris is Dallas' most influential exec. Will he impact Luka's desire to stay long-term?

📚 https://t.co/q7TKUVnHdZ pic.twitter.com/jDEGbq4BCK

— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) June 14, 2021

wild story on the mavs. i will just put it in the C&P thread

bob!

In an ESPN feature from 2013, Voulgaris is quoted as saying, “The whole process (of becoming a highly successful gambler) has led me to believe that I’d be able to put together a better team than almost any general manager in the league. If not maybe all.”

beautiful

Cuban added: “Bob has a great grasp of AI and the opportunities it create for gaining an advantage. Which is important to me. But he isn’t any more influential than any other data source on the team.”

i am savoring this

otm, this is the good stuff

Why is voulgaris talking to luka ever

didnt bob admit that he made most of his money off one simple plus minus hack not off of the analytics that he hired people to produce

dont get me wrong beating the house is very impressive regardless and maybe he did well with the analytics too idk BUT thinking that qualifies you to run a team is pretty funny, and thinking that it makes you automatically in line to be the best gm in the game is some clown shit lol

also i dont think i ever heard him talk about AI on twitter need to know more about what hes gotten up to, cuban is the perfect mark for someone just saying the words artificial intelligence to him

even thought you know you shouldnt it would be just irresistible to pitch AI to him then hire some programmers like please AI basketball now

mavs mustve already had a big data guy

feel like this story is good gossip about ppl disliking haralabob that is straining to be something more. they write that he has “near total control over the roster” but also that donnie nelson “spearheaded” every major move the mavs have made, it doesn’t seem like the writers really understand how much power he has. working with an obscenely rich gambler guy who he thinks he could be better than any GM in the NBA sounds awful tho

this is amazing lol

yeah, much of what made bob entertaining when he would go on pods was his complete confidence in his opinions and complete disdain for anything he thought was dumb. not nearly as fun when you have to work with someone like that.

the mavs had bad seeding luck this year, ended up taking one of the best teams in the NBA down to the final quarter of a 7 game series, and now everyone is losing their minds

jordan otm

the only notable thing in there to me is that doncic doesn’t like voulgaris. the rest of the stuff — bob’s influence in the front office in particular and his butting heads with colleagues, seems run of the mill for an NBA franchise

― k3vin k., Monday, June 14, 2021 1:56 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i mean it's pretty funny that a famous sports gambler and twitter personality is now one of the three most powerful people in an nba front office, i guess it depends on your definition of "notable"

the stuff about his belief he can do it better than anyone else is hilarious. also his pairing w cuban.

the mavs lost two years straight in the first round the specifics dont matter imo. their roster is in a worse place it was cos now they have to pay luka a ton more, and he doesnt like very high up in the org, and didnt like the coach (maybe still doesnt?) and doesnt like his untradable sidekick.

didn’t we know bob was pretty influential in the front office already? I had assumed he had a hand in all the moves. front office personnel directing rotations and such is pretty standard to afaia, and I’m sure the article overstates the extent to which it’s true

also they cite his influence in acquiring seth curry but not in trading him for josh richardson despite the allegation that he has "near total control" of the franchise

curry and wright are long gone. did he change his mind on them?

the mavs lost two years straight in the first round the specifics dont matter imo. their roster is in a worse place it was cos now they have to pay luka a ton more, and he doesnt like very high up in the org, and didnt like the coach (maybe still doesnt?) and doesnt like his untradable sidekick.

― Spottie, Monday, June 14, 2021 2:12 PM (twenty-one minutes ago)

i do think the specifics matter. if the issue is simply them losing in the first round in back to back years it needs to be acknowledged who they played in those years, that's important context. if they had drawn the nuggets and won and then taken the suns to 6 games would the level of hysteria be the same? if the issue is that the mavs haven't won the western conference in the last 2 years then the specifics matter less bcuz then you need to beat the clippers one way or another, but that doesn't seem to be the issue here. we know that the mavs aren't better than the clippers but i'm not sure how that's some huge indictment on them given the respective contention timelines of those two franchises

mavs need to find a path to further improvement for next year but i don't think 14th -> 7th -> 5th is behind schedule thus far

right, exactly

pels will have more to answer for if they don't make a leap next year