It is the years 2018-19 in the National Basketball Association (NBA) - The Regular Season

he shdve been more respectful of ppls drinks imho

it’s 2018 and Rudy is still disrespecting drinks smdh

His abs are amazing

rudy can't flail

heh

i’m concerned for the rockets

i feel like maybe clint capela was not the best use of $90 million?

Why? He’s even better than last year. I would say that 160 mill for old CP was a much more egregious use of funds.

yeah capela is good, cp3 is only going to get worse

Windy on the kd quote

Straight from the horses mouth. pic.twitter.com/hTzSkd4kdM

— Jeremiah (@basketballSZN) December 7, 2018

capela was super valuable on his rookie deal... for $17-$18 million per year tho is he really impacting the game that much

the rockets are similar to the suns in that they are both bad at basketball

Mikal Bridges didn't want to hear it from Suns head coach Igor Kokoskov. 😳 pic.twitter.com/yKu50EMmWj

— House of Highlights (@HoHighlights) December 7, 2018

there's a guy who will have a job for a long time

Joel Embiid is not playing tonight (rest). Brett Brown says it's their responsibility to preserve players health and it was clear he was fatigued.

— Serena Winters (@SerenaWinters) December 7, 2018

hah oh man

aw

"I never dreamt of having a World Championship coming back to my high school -- or a jersey retirement. I'll always remember it for the rest of my life."

Forever in the rafters at Hamilton High School. Congrats @Loon_Rebel5! pic.twitter.com/zxImZtExRD

— Golden State Warriors (@warriors) December 7, 2018

interesting data from pelton: http://www.espn.com/nba/insider/story/_/id/25470842/nba-mvp-race-answering-big-questions-giannis-lebron-kd-curry

Can a center be most valuable?
The leaderboards in most advanced stats at this early stage have a decidedly tall slant. Basketball-Reference.com's value over replacement player (VORP), for example, rates six centers and four other players listed as power forwards (one of them is Kevin Durant, who has actually played more minutes at small forward) among the league's top 14 players. Meanwhile, the PER leaderboard -- once we've filtered out low-minutes players -- is even more heavily tilted toward the frontcourt, with 19 centers in the top 30, including reserves Montrezl Harrell, Nerlens Noel, Jakob Poeltl, Dwight Powell, Domantas Sabonis and Jonas Valanciunas.

These results reflect a topic I addressed ahead of the NBA draft: Because the floor is so well spaced, it's never been easier to get productive play from centers. Indeed, consider the average PER by position (as defined by Basketball-Reference) weighted by minutes played:

Avg. PER (Weighted For Minutes)
POS PER
PG 14.7
SG 13.1
SF 13.0
PF 14.9
C 19.6

Across all positions, the average PER is always set to 15.0. However, that varies widely across positions now, with centers naturally dominant and wings much weaker. It's not just the very best centers who are most productive, but also the ones who are cheaply available to teams -- including Noel and JaVale McGee, both of whom are in the top 30 in PER after signing one-year deals for the veteran's minimum as free agents this summer.

When we're determining value, then, position has to be taken into account. To be as relatively valuable on a per-minute basis as a small forward with a 25.6 PER (like Kawhi Leonard), a center would need a PER of 32.2 -- something that's never been achieved in NBA history.

In other words, it's probably not possible for the best center in 2018-19 to be more valuable than the best wing player, which has important implications for the MVP chances of not only Joel Embiid (who's not actually among those high-rated centers, ranking 17th in PER and 26th in VORP) but also Anthony Davis (mostly -- though perhaps not exclusively -- a center).

houston is terrible damn

the computer rankings still like them

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2019-nba-predictions/=

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/page/Basketball-Power-Index/espn-nba-basketball-power-index

https://theathletic.com/700266/
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dt0tbUzUcAELmon.jpg:large

Fuck the Rockets. They were fine playing shitty ugly ball when they were winning.

imo they should just bring Jaleel up from Santa Cruz and run sets with both Cousins brothers.

― reggae mike love (polyphonic), Monday, December 3, 2018 12:40 PM (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

looks like it's gonna go down the other way around

Warriors plan to have DeMarcus Cousins practice with team in Santa Cruz "next couple of weeks" so he can get more intense practices. Also a "possibility" that Cousins plays in some G-League games too

— Mark Medina (@MarkG_Medina) December 7, 2018

Great read Kevin, thanks for sharing

the 2 years ago rockets were cool when they were passing a bunch and taking 30 ft 3s on the regular

Chris Paul ruins everything.

looks like it's gonna go down the other way around

I think I might "go down" to santa cruz for this. been meaning to take in a seadubs game at some point.

hardens visionary cross court passes were nice

xp the ticket prices are pretty ridic. $25-90 for a g-league game!

Probably not in tune with the NBA like most of you but this has been a weird start to the season from what I've been seeing.

extremely weird

dubs-bucks 2nite baby!

there has been broad agreement that a warlock has cursed this season, carne

Trade!

Delly and Henson to cle for George hill, Decker, a first and Second

Milwaukee will save 8M in salary in the 2019-20 season with the trade, which allows them flexibility to continue to upgrade roster. Cavaliers continue show a willingness to take on money to gather draft picks.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) December 7, 2018

send delly the f out of the offs

hill brogdon bledsoe is an interesting collection

Hill is washed but can still be useful as a third rotation guy

none of those guys can get to the basket

Bledsoe can. He just doesn’t know what to do when he gets there

fair, also he is a coward

Idly wondering what the Pacers would look like with Aaron Gordon on 4/$84 and no Tyreke/McD. Gordon making a jump on D this year makes him sick much more valuable.

wasnt gordan an rfa? i dont think the magic would have let him walk

my preferred alternate history is not picking tj leaf

Pacers were going to be the team that the Magic were bidding against, but don’t think Pacers made a serious offer. IIRC, Pacers could’ve offered an amount that would’ve capped out the Magic, maybe?

Would’ve gummed up Pacers’ future signings, m/l would’ve been the extra star for Oladipo to grow with. That Gordon contract looks so good right now. Not really sure how Gordon would work on a team with Sabonis and Turner, but feel like that’s a good problem to have / Gordon’s contract looks like an asset in the very least.

Sooner they cut ties with Leaf the better – dying to get more floor time for Holiday, Sumner and Ike. Also feel bad that there’s such a pileup for bigs already and OQuinn never gets playing time, and he’s a nice roster dude!

Really like this team; great sign that they went something like 0-7 w/o Oladipo last year and are maybe 6-4 (with a road trip) so far this year.

spurs were down 15 to the lakers, 10 going into the 4q. and then they scored 44 in the 4th.

bucks really pushing the ball here

bledsoe is a disgrace

is going 1 on3 in transition the latest thing that used to be bad but is good now