NBA 2021

[baxus]

10 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Could be a bit of both, but it's just odd that he's always red and bleeding. 

Also, he's really strong despite having like no muscle definition at all.

One would imagine that people whose arms are red and bleeding on their own would have more important things to think about than playing top-level sports.  

Muscle definition shows low body fat and not much more than that. Take a look at powerlifters or strongmen - they lift 100+kg stones, pull 18-wheeler trucks, carry some quite elaborate and insanely heavy contraptions for distance etc. and yet finding a six-pack or chiseled arms/leg among them is highly unlikely.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

39 minutes ago, baxus said:

Muscle definition shows low body fat and not much more than that. Take a look at powerlifters or strongmen - they lift 100+kg stones, pull 18-wheeler trucks, carry some quite elaborate and insanely heavy contraptions for distance etc. and yet finding a six-pack or chiseled arms/leg among them is highly unlikely.  

I'm sending Magnus ver Magnusson to fight you.

[BigFatCoward]

40 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I'm sending Magnus ver Magnusson to fight you.

Marius Pudzianowski was the most extreme outlier. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

13 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Marius Pudzianowski was the most extreme outlier. 

The thing that blows my mind about Magnus, and you tell him that he's a liar, is that he claims he could run the 100 meter in under 11 seconds when he was at his peak bodybuilding. That's nuts.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Watching Zion tonight has been so much fun, but I don't get why they take him out of so many plays on the offensive end. 

[Proudfeet]

I don't know if its just the games I've watched, but the Pelicans offense on the whole is just very stagnant. It's basically just spacing out and letting the players work one on one and see if they can find something. There's the occasional screen but there's very little cutting and a lot of the passing is because they've picked up their dribble and need to reset. 

[Wilbur]

8 hours ago, Proudfeet said:

I don't know if its just the games I've watched, but the Pelicans offense on the whole is just very stagnant. It's basically just spacing out and letting the players work one on one and see if they can find something. There's the occasional screen but there's very little cutting and a lot of the passing is because they've picked up their dribble and need to reset. 

The Pelicans are one of the few teams that I take the time to watch regularly, and you are so correct.  It is baffling how a team with Brandon Ingram on it can be so stiff, halting, etc. to say nothing of the other players who have the potential to play a smooth, pacey game.

They seem really bereft of ideas in the half-court, particularly.  It is like you took a team out of the NBA dark ages of the 90-00s and told them about contemporary spacing but nothing else about how to make use of the spacing.  Players like Ball and Zion have played with pace in the past, yet on the break they often look like they are thinking instead of acting, and in the half-court there is a lot of standing around.

It is also frankly confusing as to how they ended up with such shallow depth, given that they traded AD for a good group of players with potential, yet seem to have squandered or lost that potential.  I keep watching them in the hope that they will figure it out and burst into life, but it has been a damp squib to date.

[Proudfeet]

9 hours ago, Wilbur said:

The Pelicans are one of the few teams that I take the time to watch regularly, and you are so correct.  It is baffling how a team with Brandon Ingram on it can be so stiff, halting, etc. to say nothing of the other players who have the potential to play a smooth, pacey game.

They seem really bereft of ideas in the half-court, particularly.  It is like you took a team out of the NBA dark ages of the 90-00s and told them about contemporary spacing but nothing else about how to make use of the spacing.  Players like Ball and Zion have played with pace in the past, yet on the break they often look like they are thinking instead of acting, and in the half-court there is a lot of standing around.

It is also frankly confusing as to how they ended up with such shallow depth, given that they traded AD for a good group of players with potential, yet seem to have squandered or lost that potential.  I keep watching them in the hope that they will figure it out and burst into life, but it has been a damp squib to date.

And yet, they are apparently good in the half court. Not sure how its derived though.

https://www.espn.com.sg/nba/insider/story/_/id/30965138/ten-nba-things-like-including-sluggish-boston-celtics

Quote

The Pelicans quietly rank third in points per possession within the half-court over the past month, and they're up to 13th for the season, per Cleaning The Glass. They are fifth in average points after opponent baskets, according to Inpredictable.

Also, this bit about why Lonzo is a handoff machine.

Quote

 he (Van Gundy) discussed what he saw as Ball's NBA destiny: point guard in transition, spot-up wing in the half-court.

Pelicans are bullet point four in case you don't want to read the whole thing.

I haven't watched any recent games, but its apparently Point Zion now. No idea how that squares with Tywin's observation of Zion not being involved offensively.

[Wilbur]

16 hours ago, Proudfeet said:

...Also, this bit about why Lonzo is a handoff machine...

I haven't watched any recent games, but its apparently Point Zion now. No idea how that squares with Tywin's observation of Zion not being involved offensively.

Maybe that is why the half-court offense looks so stilted - the hand-offs?  Viewing it as a disinterested observer, it is like a long goods train starting off, with the cars in front moving, the ones in the middle clanking and bouncing, and the ones in back still standing still.  Clunky and without much rhythm, but I guess this is by Van Gundy's intent?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

17 hours ago, Proudfeet said:

I haven't watched any recent games, but its apparently Point Zion now. No idea how that squares with Tywin's observation of Zion not being involved offensively.

That's my complaint. They run the team through him as a PG or let him roam to cut to the rim which seems unstoppable if the pass is on point. However, on many plays he just sits in the corner without moving. Maybe he needs a rest, maybe he's a decoy, a bit of both or they're setting things up, but when you do watch them, he scores at will on several plays in a row and then for a few plays doesn't move at all on the offensive side. I don't get it.

[Proudfeet]

9 hours ago, Wilbur said:

Maybe that is why the half-court offense looks so stilted - the hand-offs?  Viewing it as a disinterested observer, it is like a long goods train starting off, with the cars in front moving, the ones in the middle clanking and bouncing, and the ones in back still standing still.  Clunky and without much rhythm, but I guess this is by Van Gundy's intent?

Don't quite get your analogy but I suppose so. I mean, despite our misgivings on how it looks, its apparently effective. Their problems are more on the defensive side anyway.

9 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

That's my complaint. They run the team through him as a PG or let him roam to cut to the rim which seems unstoppable if the pass is on point. However, on many plays he just sits in the corner without moving. Maybe he needs a rest, maybe he's a decoy, a bit of both or they're setting things up, but when you do watch them, he scores at will on several plays in a row and then for a few plays doesn't move at all on the offensive side. I don't get it.

Nobody here gets it. Its not just Zion when I watched too. Its the whole team. I don't watch that many teams or games but its striking how stagnant they are. I can't generally tell good offense from bad defense or both, but it feels like they are relying on individual brilliance and it isn't sustainable. 

[Wilbur]

So Ben says that LeBron's greatest peak was in Miami, but frankly it isn't obvious to me that he has ever really fallen off from those years very much at all.

 

[Maithanet]

15 minutes ago, Wilbur said:

So Ben says that LeBron's greatest peak was in Miami, but frankly it isn't obvious to me that he has ever really fallen off from those years very much at all.

Lebron's last bad playoff performance was 2011, and so really I'd say that Lebron's peak was 2012-2018.  2020 he was still great (enough to win another Finals MVP), but not quite at the level of his past selves. 

[Relic]

16 minutes ago, Wilbur said:

So Ben says that LeBron's greatest peak was in Miami, but frankly it isn't obvious to me that he has ever really fallen off from those years very much at all.

 

I dunno, that 50 point game he had in game one in the 2018 (the game JR lost) finals was fucking epic. 

[Maithanet]

1 minute ago, Relic said:

I dunno, that 50 point game he had in game one in the 2018 (the game JR lost) finals was fucking epic. 

The 2014, 2015, 2017 and game 1 of the 2018 Finals were truly awesome, even though he lost every one of those series.  The 2015 Finals loss vs GSW is the most impressive basketball series I've ever seen from any player.   

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

55 minutes ago, Relic said:

I dunno, that 50 point game he had in game one in the 2018 (the game JR lost) finals was fucking epic. 

There was a game in the previous Finals in which LeBron played nearly 46 minutes and he was individually +7. The Cavs lost by 5. That's mind-bending shit to me.

Anyways, I'm about to start the video, be LeBron exists in a unique space in which his prime may literally be longer than a decade, which would be hard for this serious to evaluate as he's looking at 2-3 year windows,

[briantw]

1 hour ago, Wilbur said:

So Ben says that LeBron's greatest peak was in Miami, but frankly it isn't obvious to me that he has ever really fallen off from those years very much at all.

 

You could argue he's better now than he was ten years ago, to be honest.  He's obviously not as physically dominant as he was in Miami, or during his first stint in Cleveland, but he's every bit as skilled and his game has just continued to add polish. 

[Maithanet]

3 minutes ago, briantw said:

You could argue he's better now than he was ten years ago, to be honest.  He's obviously not as physically dominant as he was in Miami, or during his first stint in Cleveland, but he's every bit as skilled and his game has just continued to add polish. 

You can make the argument, but you'd be wrong.  Defensively he definitely isn't where he was 5-10 years ago.  Offensively his game is different, and arguably just as effective, but he's not physically able to take on the enormous offensive load for as long as he could in 2012-2015.  His useage rate by necessity was lower in the 2020 postseason.  He can still be Lebron Destroyer of Worlds, but only for brief periods until the final 6 minutes or so. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

38 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

You can make the argument, but you'd be wrong.  Defensively he definitely isn't where he was 5-10 years ago.  Offensively his game is different, and arguably just as effective, but he's not physically able to take on the enormous offensive load for as long as he could in 2012-2015.  His useage rate by necessity was lower in the 2020 postseason.  He can still be Lebron Destroyer of Worlds, but only for brief periods until the final 6 minutes or so. 

Just look at his dunk in the series' intro. He still gets above the rim, but he takes off near to the rim these days. Still, his all around offensive game is better, though like you said, different. He's still a good defender when he wants to be, but he's not elite anymore and slacks off a lot. Can't really blame him these days.

[Rhom]

Yeah... I’m a sucker.