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

draymond said last night that the knicks played super hard every game in the regular season but every team plays super every game in the playoffs. kinda sums up the thibs experience

yup, play your best players the most minutes and play hard and there you have your ceiling. there's no other gear to go to.

meanwhile everyone else is resting bringing players along testing different rotations and so forth

yup

I like dray, it’s good having people who watch/understand basketball on tnt

ESPN is really all in on Kendrick Perkins

it's rough

listening to him speak is pretty amusing but the things hes says are pretty lame

hes on every celtics halftime show if espn viewers think theyve got it bad

he just spent five minutes explaining this tweet to Mike Greenberg

Luka jump on over the fence and found out the dog that was barking wasn’t nothing but a damn Pomeranian and went got his ball! He served the Clippers a church dinner tonight that included an family order of 42 leg quarters , 12 pieces of cornbread and 8 slices of pound cakes!

— Kendrick Perkins (@KendrickPerkins) June 3, 2021

I do love his accent

lmao if perk just said stuff like that tweet he would be pretty good its the trenchant tough guy opinions that grate

all nba rookies are given lessons on how to deal with the media, the first lesson is to conceal your real thoughts and substitute a platitude. it becomes second nature.

it wasn't the tweet so much as Mike Greenberg is apparently brain damaged

lol i didnt even consider the possibility that perk was explaining the tweet because it needed explaining figured he was just talking

mike g is awful. espn is a cesspool of talent atm

somehow they have pretty great writers, podcasters, play by play, and game analysts but their talking heads/studio shows are like descended from the ninth circle of hell

https://theathletic.com/2629290/2021/06/03/how-will-the-bucks-defend-the-nets-examining-potential-matchups-and-how-giannis-antetokounmpo-will-guard-screens/
this matchup is gonna be fascinating.

Lillard on the Sixers does make a lot of sense honestly

― Matt Armstrong, Thursday, June 3, 2021 9:11 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

ben simmons + what gets portland to listen?

embiid

lol

the blazers F.O. is not trading lillard unless he puts a gun to their head

they just need four or five guys

he is literally the most beloved player in the history of the franchise xp

yah something around CJ and Simmons makes more sense

yeah both team has dupes

there's no way daryl morey is trading ben simmons for cj mccollum and anfernee simons unless someone put a gun to *his* head

even with picks involved

j0rdan gets it

re: dame there's also the not insignificant matter of his being owed *200 million dollars* from next year through '24-'25, when he will be in his mid-30s

it's just really hard to trade a guard for a wing i think

like could you get harrison barnes and some picks for CJ? would you even want that? sign and trade for duncan robinson? kyle kuzma and KCP? it's hard to find a wing who is equal to the value of a borderline all star SG bcuz the wings are either gonna be too flawed to move the needle or too good to be traded

cj had real trade value 3-4 years ago, feel like that's fallen off a cliff in the meantime despite his production being steady

He was tearing it up to start this season before the injury.

not only do you have to find a team who will take on 30m, 33m, 35m in salary but you also have to find a team who can match the salary to even complete the trade. it's tough

if the sixers flamed out of the playoffs i could see morey maybe looking to move tobias harris. he didn't sign him and he isn't a star and the salary does line up w/ CJ. if they were agonizing trading simmons for harden they're not gonna trade him for CJ

the thing w/ the sixers and CJ is that seth curry gives you, what, 50% of the production for 25% of the price?

my impression is that cj's less committed to the drive as part of his offensive game and it makes him less versatile. meanwhile, opposing guards keep getting bigger, but he's not.

the other day a friend who is new to "thinking about basketball" asked me in desperation how portland could move cj and i was like "you have to trade him to one of the dumb teams, probably for a guy who is worse"

like yeah, harrison barnes and filler and a pick or whatever, but portland isn't gonna do that

the other day a friend who is new to "thinking about basketball" asked me in desperation how portland could move cj and i was like "you have to trade him to one of the dumb teams, probably for a guy who is worse"

― Clay, Thursday, June 3, 2021 7:19 PM (one minute ago)

right exactly. it's too bad the sixers hired a smart GM it screwed up a lot of things

and the kings have halliburton so i'm not even sure they would do it. it's hard to find a good fit for him. i do like the duncan robinson idea but the filler players would also have to match up

the thing w/ the sixers and CJ is that seth curry gives you, what, 50% of the production for 25% of the price?

― J0rdan S., Thursday, June 3, 2021 7:18 PM (twenty-three seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

listen cj might not be an mvp candidate but seth curry just hangs around the 3pt line and thats about it theyre not comparable players, cj would be an almost unspeakably large upgrade

now that we've all buried him, cj will score 30+ against the nuggs

i'm not the biggest cj fan in the universe or indeed in my household but i think jordan's undervaluing him some. the guy did average 23-4-5 with excellent shooting splits, while playing in a backcourt with damian lillard! he's very good! he's better than duncan robinson and some stuff. he's just also completely untradeable at his value level

cj has some issues for sure but his skills are also very valued around the league, worse players with more egregious contracts are traded all the time, i think you could find a decent trade for him

lol yes he did go completely bonkers in an elimination game against the nuggs a couple years ago iirc xps

if weve learned anything in the nba its that no player is untradable, if anything the difficulty with trading cj is more about portland needing to compete now than anything to do with him, so all the young player/picks type trades are off the table

as I recall, in the early season before he was injured, cj was carrying the team for a while

cj is a really good offensive player, and a poor defender, there are a lot of teams that need lead guards, if portland decided they wanted to move him there would be offers