NBA - Rochambeau Playoffs

[Tywin et al.]

30 minutes ago, Rhom said:

 

He might want to go back and check that.  He was only half of that - one reason the Lakers beat the Grizz was that the lakers left Dillon alone on offense and he could not hit anything.

Not sure he's a good defender either. He tries, which is something compared to a lot of dudes, but consistently I'm not sure he adds much anywhere. Doris Burke ripping him was comedy gold. 

Edited May 2, 2023 by Tywin et al.

[DMC]

Embiid wins MVP.  I tend to agree.  Surprised by how much he won by - got 73 first place votes to Jokic's 15 and Giannis' 12.

[Tywin et al.]

It's well deserved. I believe Wilt and Kareem are the only bigs to have better scoring seasons.

[Rhom]

Man.  Heat up at the half.

Is it possible they go 2-0 in NY with a hurt Jimmy Butler?!!?

[Tywin et al.]

6 minutes ago, Rhom said:

Man.  Heat up at the half.

Is it possible they go 2-0 in NY with a hurt Jimmy Butler?!!?

 

 

[BigFatCoward]

I'd take Giannis and Jokic over Embiid, but it's hard to disagree (or at least hard to disagree enough to care). 

 

 

[KingintheNorth4]

I understand why Draymond punched Jordan Poole in practice that one time. I get it now. 

[Tywin et al.]

10 minutes ago, KingintheNorth4 said:

I understand why Draymond punched Jordan Poole in practice that one time. I get it now. 

It wasn't his fault. He brought them back when they were down in the second. The Warriors missed a fuck ton of easy layups throughout the game. That's what really cost them.

Edited May 3, 2023 by Tywin et al.

[Rhom]

Lakers v Warriors was a good game last night… but it kinda hurts knowing how close we were to Kings v Grizz  

[Relic]

7 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

It wasn't his fault. He brought them back when they were down in the second. The Warriors missed a fuck ton of easy layups throughout the game. That's what really cost them.

Have to give AD credit here, he was a beast last night. Lakers defended th epaint well, and that's where they won. Warriors took like 50 3's lol

[Tywin et al.]

14 minutes ago, Relic said:

Have to give AD credit here, he was a beast last night. Lakers defended th epaint well, and that's where they won. Warriors took like 50 3's lol

It was weird how they were passing up what looked like pretty easy shots near the rim. 

[Maithanet]

15 minutes ago, Relic said:

Have to give AD credit here, he was a beast last night. Lakers defended th epaint well, and that's where they won. Warriors took like 50 3's lol

Yes, plus Vanderbilt doing a credible job on the perimeter against Curry.  Nobody shuts him down, but he at least made things challenging.

[Tywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Yes, plus Vanderbilt doing a credible job on the perimeter against Curry.  Nobody shuts him down, but he at least made things challenging.

I said when the trade happened that giving up Vando is what really hurt. He doesn't offer a lot on offense most nights, but he is great on defense and you always need one dude out there that will do the dirty work. 

[Tywin et al.]

Water is wet. In other news, Chris Paul is likely to miss the next three games.

[James Arryn]

23 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

It's well deserved. I believe Wilt and Kareem are the only bigs to have better scoring seasons.

As per, Hakeem massively disrespected/misunderstood. 

[Tywin et al.]

4 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

As per, Hakeem massively disrespected/misunderstood. 

?

Dream's best scoring season was no where near what Embiid just did.

[Wilbur]

1 hour ago, James Arryn said:

As per, Hakeem massively disrespected/misunderstood. 

I am not sure that anyone is disrespecting Olajuwon here.  Yes, Embiid's season scoring averages are coming in an era of inflated scoring, but even so, your remark made me look at the season scoring lists to check and see if Olajuwon had a season with scoring that was better than my memory suggested.

Hakeem Olajuwan's best seasons come in at #181 and #216, respectively, in the ABA/NBA list of top PPG seasons.  And let's be clear, his scoring included machine-like consistency in the late 80s through the mid-90s that was impressive in an era of hand-checking and increasingly brutal defenses.  No one should scoff at a player scoring in the high 20s season after season when they have to face the Riley Knicks, the Pistons, the Bucks, Portland, etc. of that era.  And his offense was attractive, much like Jordan, even in the face of the violent defense of his contemporaries.

But on the other hand, some of the players who are centers (or mainly played as centers) above Olajuwon on that list include the following.

Bob Pettit (multiple seasons)

Walt Bellamy (multiple seasons)

Anthony Davis (multiple seasons)

Giannis (multiple seasons)

George Mikan (multiple seasons)

Shaq (multiple seasons)

Elvin Hayes (multiple seasons)

Embiid (multiple seasons)

Patrick Ewing (1989-90)

Kareem (multiple seasons)

Spencer Heywood (multiple seasons)

David Robinson (1993-94)

Dan Issel (multiple seasons)

Connie Hawkins (1968-69)

Moses (multiple seasons)

Bob McAdoo (multiple seasons)

Wilt (seven of the top 20 scoring seasons of all time)

At this point in time, only Wilt, McAdoo, and Kareem have had higher-scoring seasons than Embiid from the pivot.

Now I don't find Embiid's game to my own taste, as he lacks the aesthetic grace and form I like to watch.  Furthermore, I dislike his on-court persona even more.  I hope that the Celtics punt the Sixers out of the playoffs just so I don't have to watch any more of his game, while Olajuwon was a delight to watch operate, a sort of combination of Moses and McHale with incredible durability and athleticism who seemed to reach a high standard of play early in his career and stay there forever.  If I was picking a best-of-all-time team, Olajuwon would be much higher up the list of centers for my consideration.

But the point was that Embiid's scoring this season was in the top 25 of all seasons, and there is a significant distance and many NBA centers in between Embiid's scoring this season and the best scoring season of Olajuwon's career.  There isn't any slight to Olajuwon in this.

[James Arryn]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

?

Dream's best scoring season was no where near what Embiid just did.

Oh, thought you were talking about Jokic. Am pretty stoned, my apologies. But the underlying truth…that Hakeem‘s almost inhuman dominance of every inch of the floor, at either end has been largely forgotten because between his 2nd season finals (beat prime time Showtime Lakers, lost to what many consider the greatest team ever in 6 and were up pretty big early in game 6 when one of their Twin Towers got ejected and, well, you can guess…and early in the next year Sampson would injure his knee, try to play through it and ended up destroying it/his career/a dynasty in the making.

*****Somewhere around here I passed out. Woke up many hours later much more compos mentos and with an apparent need to take a tangential plunge off an already tangential (and mistaken at that) point and bang the drum for a guy I mostly know in retrospect but have watched/read about a lot since. I make no apologies, I was sleeping, The Dream was inevitable.*******

The Olajuwon Sampson duo was sooooo dominant in a multiplicity of ways that SI ran a cover story asking if the league should find some pretext to separate them, invalidate their lottery win or at least make back-to-back generational bigs (when basketball was a big man’s game) going first overall to the same team close to impossible to repeat, and new lottery rules were introduced. Same-ish thing happened later with Shaq and Chris Webber, I think, but it’s been a while since I read about this era. Bird and Magic both openly stated they were the next dynasty. Then Sampson’s knee, their 3rd through 5th best players including entire starting backcourt are kicked out of the league for cocaine usage, and horrible management and Olajuwon spent the prime of his athletic career…the 8 year stretch 24-31yrs old…with second stars like Joe Barry Carroll (I read he was widely called Joe Barely Cares, one of the most savage nicks ever), Vernon Maxwell and Otis Thorpe. His team’s second highest scorers during that stretch had averages of 15.6, 14.2, 15.4, 16.7, 17.1, 17.7K 13.8 (! On 40% shooting!) and, at age 31 and the year he wins his 1st ring, 14.0…in what must be the greatest single team-carrying season ever. And it’s not like no one else got the ball…the period includes multiple inexplicable seasons, including 2 back to back, where he didn’t even take the most shots on the team. SMH, imagine being in Houston back then.

He had a legit second star for his first two seasons (and 5th since first picking up a basketball) and interrupted the Bird Celtics vs. Magic/Kareem Lakers regularly scheduled programming and took what many considered the best team ever to 6 games, and again, being ahead in the game until losing one of the bipods legs. He gets a legit~ish second star at age 32 with 35 games left in the season (before which his second scorer was lighting it up at 13.3!) and repeats. Then first Drexler and thereafter a series of legit-but-older stars come on board but are, not completely surprisingly (except for the literal constancy) ravaged by injuries and are never anything like together com playoffs, and still come within any of many terrible calls from slaying their  own personal dragon slayer Sonics, who lose to the Bulls. 
 

Next year, more of the same, injury plagued, lose in 6 in WCF to Jazz with 2 of the now three star engine playing through broken bones, including fractured spine, come playoff time, and with Hakeem being almost 10 ppg higher than his next highest teammate, a fading Drexler at 17.8, besides again leading the team in assists, blocks, steals, but for a change not rebounds, with the Rounder Mound now in H-Town.

From there the same cycle, lots of big names revolving in and out but age/health always keeping them from playing much together if at all, but also by 97/98 Hakeem is also starting to miss a lot of time and his play when on court rarely unaffected or just in decline. My point being, give Hakeem Pippen, Phil et al…or just keep Sampson healthy…and different dynasty. Even as it was Houston was the one team and Hakeem the one player Jordan feared most during his prime run. During their first three peat the Bulls were 2-10 against Hakeem’s Rockets, and both Jordan and Pippen said they had no answer for Hakeem at all, while at the same time the insane but talented Vernon Maxwell was one of the very few who could slow Jordan down some.
 

In typical MJ back-handed and divisive manner, he told the NBA sideline tv crew after one of the losses ‘it’s a good thing they’ll never get to the finals because we can’t beat them, whatever we do. We got no answer for the Big African.’ Several of his teammates and coaches over the years have expressed similar concerns back then. Just one aspect; defence. Hakeem is the all time leading shot blocker, but also top 10 all time in steals. And lead his team in rebounding, scoring, sometimes assists. But the shot blocking/stealing combo is pretty insane, but it speaks to his insane quickness, range, timing, and recovery speed. In a series against the Bulls where he can shut down their bigs as an afterthought, he can concentrate that much more on helping/shot blocking/jumping passing lanes, which is how he frustrated Jordan as much as he did. Mach-ups make fights…the Sonics had Houston’s*, but Houston was the one team many agree had Chicago/Jordan’s. 

 

Honestly, if like me you came too late to see him in his prime, go on YT and watch some highlights or games or interviews with MJ, etc. about how unbelievably good he was and what a complete waste of talent the bulk of his prime was. He’s unreal in so many ways. 

 

*though not Hakeem’s, the Sonics plan was basically NBA Trachenberg plan, and he would play some of his best career games in playoff losses to the Sonics, like the 49 point, 25 rebound, 6 block, 2 steal masterpiece in the deciding game 6 in 87. 

Edited May 4, 2023 by James Arryn

[Tywin et al.]

16 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Hakeem is the all time leading shot blocker, but also top 10 all time in steals. And lead his team in rebounding, scoring, sometimes assists. But the shot blocking/stealing combo is pretty insane, but it speaks to his insane quickness, range, timing, and recovery speed.

I think this is where younger fans like me overlook Dream. It's pretty nuts that he's the all-time leader in blocks and top 10 in steals, plus he was a great scorer and elite rebounder. He'd absolutely be a star today. I just find it hard to believe that he'd be that much more improved as a shooter that you'd want him taking threes. 


Tonight is a thorough ass kicking. I expected the Celtics to win, but this is ugly.

[DMC]

Olajuwon was vastly under-appreciated during his prime, let alone now.  I don't think we'll ever see another guy with his skillset, he was truly unique.