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2021 NBA Playoffs

Machinator

By Machinator
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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 19332

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GA is dead. We now have a playoffs without a single top 12 player In the league playing. Your turn in the barrel Milwaukee. 
Clips winning without Leonard would be hilarious. 
I guess Chris Paul on some level deserves a title?  But o don’t know that anyone would even count this. 

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Patrick Bateman

Patrick Bateman 3945

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8 hours ago, HookEm said:

The real person we should all be apologizing to is Ty Lue.  I always just thought he was a LeBron plant with no real coaching skill.  I was wrong.  He can coach.

Absolutely agree, just like people used to shit on Spolestra, but guy can coach. 

With regards to PG, full credit to him for the 2nd half last night, it was pretty epic, but the issue with PG isn't his ability to put up extremely good games, it's his consistency.  Going into last night, he was shooting 35.7% from the field in the series and 27.9% from 3.  Now he's doing other things especially rebounding like a stud in this series dictated by small lineups, but having one huge night doesn't really erase 2 shitty games and 2 pretty good games. 

Tonight's game sort of highlights how these secondary or really tertiary stars show up.  Kris Middleton was all the rage after game 3 and he played spectacularly that game.  But Freak goes out and Middleton needs to step up tonight and what happens?  6-17 with 0-7 from 3 with 5 assists and 4 turnovers.  He was terrible.  It's not that these type of players can't have huge games, it's they simply don't consistently.  All great players put up stinkers but guys like Middleton and PG will put up too many to be consider true superstars.  They're good players, no one should think otherwise, but they're not going to be confused with some of the great 2's in history.... at least right now.  

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Esque

Esque 135

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All in all, I can't remember a more unusual / weird NBA playoff year.  How much of this is due to the time off last year followed up by abbreviated rest this year and a full season?  Or were we just due for a weird playoff run?  I honestly have no idea who is going to win any of these series, much less win it all.

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Baboontyme

Baboontyme 2845

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2 minutes ago, Esque said:

All in all, I can't remember a more unusual / weird NBA playoff year.  How much of this is due to the time off last year followed up by abbreviated rest this year and a full season?  Or were we just due for a weird playoff run?  I honestly have no idea who is going to win any of these series, much less win it all.

That is the running popular theory, for sure. Bron subscribes. However if the past 18 months have taught us anything it's that correlation doesn't equal causation and you can't prove anything without a double blind clinical trial. If you hear anything about one, let me know, I'd enroll. 

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Catdaddyhorn

Catdaddyhorn 3448

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9 hours ago, Reynolds Woodcock said:

I'm in the same boat. I just wrongly assumed he was riding the LeBron/Kyrie coat tails, but he is a damn good coach. Frankly I did the same about face with Spoelstra several years ago.  I should know better by now than to fall for the LeBron woe-is-me PR machine that sacrifices coaches and teammates at the drop of a hat.

Spoelstra is yet to win 50 games without Lebron on his roster. 

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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 19332

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1 hour ago, Kermit said:

Kawhi is going to get another championship, isn’t he? I’ll be in seclusion.

But on some level doesn’t it make you feel good if Kawhi wins a title without playing the last 2.5 rounds?  That’s not an accomplishment it’s kind of an indignity and it’s also further tarnishing of their mental collapse last season. 

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Kermit

Kermit 3160

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3 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

But on some level doesn’t it make you feel good if Kawhi wins a title without playing the last 2.5 rounds?  That’s not an accomplishment it’s kind of an indignity and it’s also further tarnishing of their mental collapse last season. 

No. First of all, I never feel good. Secondly, he’s totally going to fucking play. He’s going to play and dominate. 

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HookEm

HookEm 2472

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I think the most important thing for this season / offseason has been quality depth.  To that end, I consolidated a bunch of top-100 player lists. Below is the HIGHEST any of the remaining players appears on any of the lists...

Suns

  • #14 Chris Paul
  • #16 Devin Booker
  • #49 Deandre Ayton
  • #58 Mikal Bridges

Clippers

  • #2 Kawhi Leonard
  • #13 Paul George
  • #72 Marcus Morris
  • #74 Serge Ibaka
  • #88 Nicolas Batum
  • #92 Pat Beverly

Bucks

  • #1 Giannis Antetokounmpo
  • #22 Khris Middleton
  • #32 Jrue Holiday
  • #68 PJ Tucker
  • #68 Brook Lopez
  • #86 Bobby Portis

Hawks

  • #13 Trae Young
  • #34 Clint Capela
  • #35 Lou Williams
  • #50 John Collins
  • #50 Danilo Gallinari
  • #55 Boddan Bogdanovic
  • #97 De'Andre Hunter
  • #99 Kevin Huerter

When you have borderline top-50 players like Gallinari and Lou coming off the bench it is a huge advantage.  Then when someone like Trae Young goes down, you barely miss a beat.

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ztejas

ztejas 43777

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1 hour ago, HookEm said:

When you have borderline top-50 players like Gallinari and Lou coming off the bench it is a huge advantage.  Then when someone like Trae Young goes down, you barely miss a beat.

It was a 10 point game with 7 minutes in the 3rd quarter when Giannis went out, and you could see MIL starting to pick up some momentum. The thing about Trae is that he has bad shooting nights where they may be better off without him but if the rest of the team is struggling then he is great at creating offense or hitting tough shots or getting to the line. He's also proven to be a phenomenal closer in the clutch. They just didn't need anyone to close last night - especially since the Bucks without Giannis are not exactly a great defensive team. 

So sure they were fine without him last night - but for starters Milwaukee has been picking random games to pull disappearing acts all playoffs (they won a game against Brooklyn scoring like 86 points) and on top of that Giannis barely played the 2nd half. I'm not sure the Hawks win last night if Giannis doesn't hurt his knee. They were also at home - where you'd expect your role guys to be a little better. 

 

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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 19332

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1 hour ago, HookEm said:

I think the most important thing for this season / offseason has been quality depth.  To that end, I consolidated a bunch of top-100 player lists. Below is the HIGHEST any of the remaining players appears on any of the lists...

Suns

  • #14 Chris Paul
  • #16 Devin Booker
  • #49 Deandre Ayton
  • #58 Mikal Bridges

Clippers

  • #2 Kawhi Leonard
  • #13 Paul George
  • #72 Marcus Morris
  • #74 Serge Ibaka
  • #88 Nicolas Batum
  • #92 Pat Beverly

Bucks

  • #1 Giannis Antetokounmpo
  • #22 Khris Middleton
  • #32 Jrue Holiday
  • #68 PJ Tucker
  • #68 Brook Lopez
  • #86 Bobby Portis

Hawks

  • #13 Trae Young
  • #34 Clint Capela
  • #35 Lou Williams
  • #50 John Collins
  • #50 Danilo Gallinari
  • #55 Boddan Bogdanovic
  • #97 De'Andre Hunter
  • #99 Kevin Huerter

When you have borderline top-50 players like Gallinari and Lou coming off the bench it is a huge advantage.  Then when someone like Trae Young goes down, you barely miss a beat.

The only reason that matters though is because if the injuries to the high end players. Everyone is healthy and that quality depth doesn’t mean shit as Brooklyn and The Lakers are rampaging through the playoffs. 
the way to win a title is still to have a top 5 guy, a sidekick for him that’s top 10 ish and then another all star fringe all star type. Same as it ever was. Unless the teams that have the blueprint get hurt then quality depth matters. But it’s not the way to build a team if the goal is to win a title under non loony tunes circumstances. 

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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 19332

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Put another way- I would give you the entirety of players 21-30 for your rotation and I’d you give me a choice from the top 5, a choice from the top 10 but not the top 5, and a choice from 30 and up I’m pretty sure I’d beat you. 
 

Example- KD, Joker and Jamal Murray (just thinking of a guard that I think missed the all star team) or someone like that, paired with a couple low end starters beyond the top 100 that can play a role and I’m going to beat your team off 21-30. 
or, Lebron and Embiid and Mike Conley it some such. 
Or Leonard and Dame and Ben Simmons. 
Or Giannis, AD and CJ McCollum. 
We’ve seen combos like this all the time.  And they always win NBA titles when healthy or when they don’t run into a similarly talented team. 

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ztejas

ztejas 43777

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11 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

The only reason that matters though is because if the injuries to the high end players. Everyone is healthy and that quality depth doesn’t mean shit as Brooklyn and The Lakers are rampaging through the playoffs. 
the way to win a title is still to have a top 5 guy, a sidekick for him that’s top 10 ish and then another all star fringe all star type. Same as it ever was. Unless the teams that have the blueprint get hurt then quality depth matters. But it’s not the way to build a team if the goal is to win a title under non loony tunes circumstances. 

Yep. It's why being down on the Harden trade is a fallacy. If it's only a bad trade when the guy that you traded for - who has a basically non-existent injury history - gets hurt - along with your 3rd best player - then maybe the trade wasn't the issue. 

You get as many top 15-20 guys as you can and worry about the rest later. Boston won a title doing it. Miami won 2 titles doing it. Golden State won 2 titles doing it. Cleveland won a title doing it. You could argue Toronto did it by getting Kawhi - and GS was cruising towards a 3rd that year anyway. The Lakers did it last year. 

There's no need to reevaluate how to win championships because a bunch of freak shit happened. If ONE of KD's running-mates stays healthy then the Hawks get swept out of the ECF and the Finals probably isn't much better. 

And even after all of this - the title favorite right now is the team that is closest to having 2 top 15 guys in the league. And probably another top 40 dude. Funny. 

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