hello friends it's the 2018 NBA Playoffs, a place where dreams GO 2 DIE

i thought durant forced shots terribly in the last 2 games in houston. steph should've been handling the ball every time down.

yup

they ran one KD steph high pnr in the 4th and it resulted in... a kd layup.

Warriors plus/minus by quarter this season (regular season and playoffs)
First quarter: -3
Second quarter: +130
Third quarter: +501
Fourth quarter: +6

— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) May 29, 2018

if he'll always just kinda be getting punked by the refs

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, May 29, 2018 12:46 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark

i feel like refs kinda hate reffing for harden because half of harden's game is like One Weird Trick That Gets You To The Freethrow Line Every Time

haralabob was throwing some numbers out about one of the refs from last night who gives harden absolutely nothing.

stunt foul drawing is def a double-edged sword and not something that should relied on in possessions that actually matter.

dang yeah

Harden has taken 262 shots with Callahan as a ref and Callahan has only called a PF_S on 2.5% of them. Avg for Harden is 5.45% on average to draw a shooting foul when he shoots.

— Haralabos Voulgaris (@haralabob) May 29, 2018

btw the new frontier of nba schedule takes is going to be that going every other night in the conference finals isn't reasonable

― call all destroyer, Monday, May 28, 2018 11:19 PM (yesterday) Bookmark

i haven't done the comparison with previous seasons but i suspect it has to do with stretching out the season to avoid back to backs etc. while still hitting an early june finals

would also account for some of the scheduling weirdness we saw earlier in the offs, playing games at 4 PM, scheduling 4 games a night etc.

if true d'antoni teams are definitely disadvantaged since he's asking a 6 man rotation to give 100% for 7 games in 14 days (m/l)

he's asking a 6 man rotation to give 100% for 7 games in 14 days (m/l)

The whole point of drawing a top seed in the offs is to have a chance to coast a bit, maybe finish your first two series early, and grab some rest if you can. By the conference finals and NBA finals, there is no rest, just maximum effort. A 6 man rotation is going to break at that level.

even with an extra days rest only playing 6.5 guys is pretty hard to pull off, they just get tired over the course of the game, especially when youre playing that insane swarming D houston was (at least in the first half lol)

the dantoni suns teams never played enough guys either

Hard when they’re suspended for standing up

otm

i think we did see how the warriors die in this series which is via the deterioration of their supporting cast, its pretty much inevitable theyre forced to overpay to bring back aging guys like iggy and livingston and then fill out the roster with late draft picks over the hill ring chasers and whatever small exemption theyre eligible for, they ran out a ton of guys in this series that basically didnt have to be guarded, the rockets had a real good shot to win before cp3 went down and wldve had an even better one if they had one more live body out there say a healthy and locked in mbah a moute, which is why i think a healthy deep celtics team with tons of young legs has such a good chance to win it all next year, they have the roster to play the kind of D houston was for a whole series while still getting buckets

just started wondering why shouldnt lebron go to the celtics then i remembered oh yeah kyries there lol

The Celtics were lucky to have so much hoops talent and maturity attached to such young legs. Now they have recent deep playoff experience to go with that. It bodes well for them.

bron going to the celtics just to annoy kyrie wld be his crowning bitch achievement

we did see how the warriors die in this series which is via the deterioration of their supporting cast

seems likely to me. that was the biggest challenge for the Big 3 Heat, too.

TNT’s 2018 NBA WCF Game 7 (Warriors/Rockets) delivered cable television’s second highest-rated NBA game telecast of all time and the highest rating for an NBA game this year across all of television (cable and broadcast), based on a 10.3 metered market rating

— TurnerSportsPR (@TurnerSportsPR) May 29, 2018

good stuff, i wonder how having two game 7 conference finals will impact revenue this year + revenue sharing, cap etc.

i suppose two game 7 conference finals will be balanced out by a 4 game finals sweep that nobody will watch lol

seems likely to me. that was the biggest challenge for the Big 3 Heat, too.

― A is for (Aimless), Tuesday, May 29, 2018 1:10 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah the league really set it up so you can get a super team but you cant keep it

even more so now with the super punitive repeater luxury tax

just started wondering why shouldnt lebron go to the celtics then i remembered oh yeah kyries there lol

― 龜, Tuesday, May 29, 2018 12:56 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark

"You put my mother on the floor, and if she were in a Boston Celtics uniform, I'd break her face." -- LeBron James, in an interview with me six years ago.

— Lee Jenkins (@SI_LeeJenkins) May 28, 2018

heh

the god move by the warriors wld be to trade dray and klay for like 5 rotation players

yeah the league really set it up so you can get a super team but you cant keep it

― sprout god (lag∞n), Tuesday, May 29, 2018 1:14 PM (thirty-four seconds ago) Bookmark

i think more accurate would be to say you can set up a super team and then you *have* to keep it, since you can go over the cap to re-sign your own players. the warriors couldn't have really replaced guys like igou & livingston with better players for whatever they could've spent

funny how the 15-16 warriors seem good for the game in retrospect now

that team was pure and lovable then dray had to freak out and call kd from the losing locker room cause he cldnt help but kick guys in the nuts smh

anyway i still think the warriors almost secured their own demise by allocating their meager leftover resources towards bigs instead of wings. the rockets having gerald green almost singlehandedly swung the series

i'm glad to be no longer watching harrison barnes honestly

i think more accurate would be to say you can set up a super team and then you *have* to keep it

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, May 29, 2018 1:16 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you can get a super team and then you have to keep it except its not as super anymore (unless lebron just leaves)

warriors have no resources to patch up leaks in the ship which is how it should be when you have that roster imo

harrison barnes played his role admirably, he was a troop

i have decided that the only team level stats i respect are pace, defensive rating, and 3PT attempt rate

Kevin Durant - 死神 "God of Death"

From a famous pic of Durant as the Grim Reaper

Now refers to his killer instinct late in games, especially since he joined the Warriors

Like in English, the Chinese call game-winning shots "daggers" and refer to this as "killing" the game pic.twitter.com/5r46XRSvfE

— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) May 29, 2018

anyway i still think the warriors almost secured their own demise by allocating their meager leftover resources towards bigs instead of wings. the rockets having gerald green almost singlehandedly swung the series

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, May 29, 2018 10:19 AM (forty-three seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm. dont think they make this mistake again next year. having 8 diff big guys who might or might not make a minor difference in different possible (but not probable) playoff matchups was just dumb. i think they roll w jordan bell and damian jones next year and then a couple vets / ring chasers. david west was their 5th best player for a fair chunk of the reg season but
unplayable in the final four. swaggy and casspi really didnt work out at all and the iggy / mccaw injuries killed their small ball rotations.

to clarify, pace should be as high as possible but you can 'shoot the moon' by having the lowest pace in the league

i thought KDs post game presser was really heartfelt, he was an open book. basically admitted to being shooketh by, once again, letting the outside noise eat up his brain space.

i will be creating a new stat to reflect this

dubs got absolutely killed on the boards by capela and tucker lol

i mean, why stack bigs when you're not gonna use em

tucker played his ass off. total baller.

xps they did but in the end only lost the rebounding battle by 2. draymond was perfect in the 3rd q. boxed out like a mad man.

tucker is that dude that every team wants on their team. he was their draymond as far as being the heart of the team. tuck's effort never wained. always loved him since the suns.

i thought KDs post game presser was really heartfelt, he was an open book. basically admitted to being shooketh by, once again, letting the outside noise eat up his brain space.

― they call me melo gelo (Spottie), Tuesday, May 29, 2018 1:30 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark

probably what happened was KD used one of his alts to let off a bunch of steam on insta right before the game, which got his head in the right place

hopefully! but it woulda had to have been at halftime cos he was extreme trash in the first half

btw i looked up the scheduling stuff looks like this years playoffs started at roughly the same time as last year's playoffs so there goes my scheduling theory. d'antoni should still play more than 6.5 guys tho

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DeXd996V0AAE8XU.jpg

wonder if this was when durant was making crybaby face at someone?

curry attacking the basket this series was very beautiful to watch.

This is interesting. Per @nbastats ...

Curry's 81 drives was 3rd among all players in Conference Finals, behind Harden (144), LeBron (108). Despite getting just 2 FTAs off those drives, he scored the 3rd-most points off drives because he shot 61.7 percent on them.

— Marcus Thompson (@ThompsonScribe) May 29, 2018

The Houston Rockets have died. pic.twitter.com/5k7IzeXoYL

— perfect angel dan (@dannyteardrop) May 29, 2018