nba playoffs aka the 'offs (which includes the 'ins) 2021

xp the mavs have shown no evidence that they will capitalize on that promise

other than retaining a good coach

i feel like we are all going insane saying the same things over and over but lukas in his third year and i dont think theres anyone on the team that you can say is a foundational piece to run with him, or even a possibility to be that really, zinger was supposed to be...

be 30 games under .500 for three years, get a bunch of picks, trade trae young for luka doncic, make the playoffs one time getting the fifth seed in the east: this good

acquire luka doncic, make the playoffs twice, be one of the 5 best teams in the western conference: actually, this is bad

yessss let's merge the arguments

lmao lets do this

i will say there is def a chance that trae ascends to mvp level, but i mean luka is already there

yeah i wouldnt bet on it but also its not totally impossible is how i break it down

for instance nash and steph two not dissimilar players to trae were no where near the mvp convo at his age

but they also were like 50-40-90 guys from the start. trae doesnt shoot well for a supposed 'shooter'. needs to get way better there. (luka does too)

if he's chis paul level his whole career i will be content

Trae needs to get better at shooting, the league won’t let him do this free throw ballet forever

agreed

with spottie as well

he seems like a hard worker so i have hopes

but they also were like 50-40-90 guys from the start. trae doesnt shoot well for a supposed 'shooter'. needs to get way better there. (luka does too)

― i was too much listening to your accent (Spottie), Wednesday, May 26, 2021 3:53 PM (twenty seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

feel like trae is actually a good shooter he just takes insane shots like if he took nashs shot profile he be putting up the correct slashline, but yeah he does prob need to become an insane high level shooter to realize his potential, i think he could do it tho

luka i feel like weve seen progress in the right direction with his shooting, his stepback is getting tighter/more methodical, tho he is always going to have the two motion shot which isnt ideal

luka doesnt need to become a great shooter as much as trae does, he would be totally unstoppable if he did tho, prob ascend into the goat convo at that point, obvs that requires insane longevity which you cant do much to control

It’s fun to see the new generation making strides

i have like 8 tabs open with half written responses then i have to go to a meeting or whatever so i dont remember which points ive made or not made lol.

you need to take some time off so we can resolve this

the mavs seem a lot closer to contention than the hawks to me if thats what these past 300 posts are about

smh people dont want to do research these days

_be 30 games under .500 for three years, get a bunch of picks, trade trae young for luka doncic, make the playoffs one time getting the fifth seed in the east: this good

acquire luka doncic, make the playoffs twice, be one of the 5 best teams in the western conference: actually, this is bad_


The nuggets made the western conference finals last year, the year before their best player won MVP, and you confidently argued they weren’t close to contending.

more of a sign of luka putting up trip dubs from the second he came into the league lol

jokic was on the bench, the bench!

xp the mavs have shown no evidence that they will capitalize on that promise

and things of that nature

things change people dont stay on top the league is hard and so forth

it’s true and if the mavs hadn’t drafted luka doncic they’d be in the wilderness right now and i’d be right there alongside you saying that their future doesn’t look very bright. alas they did

sorry i don’t want to put words in your mouth. i’d be right there next to you saying the hawks and grizz have brighter futures but they did draft luka and so i’m taking the other side of the argument

i'm not necessarily saying the hawks have a brighter future! i'm saying wtf are the mavs doing

The mavs are a great organization because they made 2 great draft picks in 23 years

it actually kinda sucks for the mavs that luka was so good so fast if he had a more normal rookie progression theyd have been able to make another lottery pick or two

umm Dirk was actually selected by the Milwaukee Bucks

being out of the lottery without getting another foundational guy to run with luka def makes their job harder

seems like theyre pretty much on a path to needing to get a guy or two through free agency, tho trades arent out of the question but they dont exactly have blockbuster assets

maybe get a very good player through free agency and trade picks and spare parts for a #3 guy

so their path to improvement is already limited partially due to circumstance and some to their own actions, the zinger trade/signing is obvs a big swing and miss that ties up their salary cap for the next couple years, being bad for a few years pre luka and not coming away with any guys is not great either, but as mentioned they do have luka and a dece team that just lacks secondary high end talent, improvement to champ level is def doable... but will they execute lol

we knew when the Luka/Trae trade happened it would be Analyzed And Discussed For Years To Come. very comforting to see things playing out just as predicted

lol yeah

Still haven’t figured out why the Hawks felt like it was toss up between the two but I’m glad they’ve recovered

luka skepticism prob mostly hinged on anti euro bias and his lack of athleticism, or sometimes ancient balkan blood feuds

My theory is they wanted to do a fancy tier drafting system and well tiers suck when you have too many of them so maybe stick those two guys together

one thing that i think is pretty clear is anyone who dominates in a top european league as a teen should be taken extremely seriously as an nba prospect

i thought it was kinda silly at the time that people were rolling out the usual euro-player criticisms. he was putting up better euro-league numbers as a 17-year-old than successful nba players like nikola mirotic were putting up at 22

yeah obvs a huge mistake, the history of nba euro buzz and bust is kinda funny after dirk there was a big run on euros who mostly didnt pan out then a long fallow period and now weve got luka jokic and giannis dominating

Rubio had insane hype, hard to compare but maybe Luka levels? That mightve been a cautionary tale the Hawks bought into

yeah guys like him def scared teams off, jokic went in the second round ffs, giannis 15th, hard to imagine any of them slipping as far as they did if they had played in the ncaa

schlenk came from the dubs and he wanted to build the dubs east

this fear of euro draft busts is odd considering for every euro bust there have probably been 10 locally sourced busts