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

sign and trade for demar

he would relieve bron of having to shoulder so much of the offensive load. I guess you would just trust the rest of the lakers to remain a good defensive team to cover for his deficiencies there.

i love that crowder can't stand lebron. it's funny.

idk who else the lakers could reasonably get at this pt. theyre not getting beal with that offer. its 2 role players and probably a late 1st rounder at best?

I can imagine lebron being very excruciating to play with, saddles his teammates with super high expectations, complains a lot, has the front office by the balls, and is a sore loser who on multiple occasions has quit on his teams in a playoff game

on the one hand he’s the single most valuable player in the league and your chances of winning are really good just by being on his team, otoh if you don’t win it’s always your fault and the drama is maxed

yeah championship or bust is not a fun set up

whoa lots to catch up on here

I think getting to play with Bronny for a season could be the carrot that keeps him going. Just a question of what the hell he does until that can happen (if he's actually good enough to hold a roster spot, I haven't been following)

DeMar is actually a great idea for them and a lot more gettable than most options, as you all have said

Kuzma ceiling, if he is given a defined role that isn't asking too much of him, is probably like a poor man's Rashard Lewis, but he needs to get a lot more consistent in basically all aspects of his game. upthread comments otm about how his immediately exceeding expectations for his draft position (+ being a laker obv) really skewed his reputation in the league. he's been coasting off that for too long now

last I checked brony wasn’t a real NBA prospect but that would be cool for sure

Jae Crowder’s latest IG post

“Ain’t no fun when the rabbit got the gun.” pic.twitter.com/YrhFf6u7Vz

— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) June 4, 2021

i kinda wish jae didn't have a green light to shoot whatever he wants all the time but that is a funny post

I'm not rooting for LeBron to retire, but it will be nice to have an NBA with a post LeBron vs MJ discourse

interesting to think about who else could enter that GOAT conversation. I don't think Durant gets there as anything other than a challop, his legacy is too complicated playing with so many other stars. Giannis maaaybe, if the Bucks win some titles.

(not saying Giannis will ever be better than LeBron/MJ, just thinking about what's gonna suck up oxygen in the decade to come)

Luka is the first player since Lebron who seems to be in a course to be in the GOAT conversation

KD will never be mentioned seriously in those discussions. giannis, luka

giannis' game is probably too flawed, i'm not sure ppl will ever consider him better than lebron at basketball let alone MJ. but if he wins another MVP it's already putting him in the category of larry and magic, if he wins 2 more he'd be tied w/ lebron. of course he needs to win some titles

he probably needs to win a title before he can win MVP again, but if the bucks win this year all bets are off bcuz their team is set and ppl (the press) won't feel any qualms about lavishing giannis w/ awards and accolades. it's not out of the question for him to be sitting on a title and 3 MVPs heading into next year's playoffs which begins to put him in rarified air

well he won't have won next year's MVP officially by next year's playoffs but you know what i mean

unrelated to my assertion, This Is Not a Good Article
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/magazine/kevin-durant-brooklyn-nets.html

yes realistically it's just Luka. but many years to go before/if we get there. which is probably why talking heads will be litigating LBJ/MJ for our pleasure for the next decade

goat conversations and incessant player rankings is my least fav sports discourse but... luka is the only current player that has a shot imo

unrelated to my assertion, This Is Not a Good Article
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/magazine/kevin-durant-brooklyn-nets.html

― Draymond is "Mr Dumpy" (forksclovetofu), Friday, June 4, 2021 2:25 PM (two minutes ago)

haha. i saw a lot of ppl praising this on twitter, i tried to read it and thought it was one of the worst things i'd read in a while. the unedited version of it must have been so horrible bcuz the version they ran read like it wasn't edited at all. it's never a good sign when like the second quote from your subject appears 2500 words into the article

yea I agree for Giannis to be in the conversation he needs to win this year, the Bucks teams of the last few years haven't been amazing but superstars have won with less. last 2 years you could argue that playoff Bledsoe took them out of it, replacing him with Jrue is a huge upgrade and they should be able to win the title. of course they probably won't cuz of the Nets superteam

If Durant keeps winning titles they're going to add up to a lot of titles, despite the various caveats

yeah I think it’s too soon to rule durant out, I mean if he wins 2-3 more titles he’s going to be in the coversation for top 5 ever

giannis just way too soon, people are too tough on him imo, almost like they forget neither lebron or jordan won until their 9th years in the league too, with the same silly conversations dominating their perceptions. that said he really does need to learn to shoot, because he’s one back or leg injury away from being a very different and less effective player

luka also way too early but it’s looking positive

Durant healthy and operating at peak form is (was?) pretty special

thinking about it... luka is really bad at defense and imo you have to be an all defensive team level defender to be considered

durant could win 4 titles and still not be close to the GOAT discussion. part of it would be that his 4 titles would have been won on super teams but also his individual accolades pale in comparison to lebron

lebron: 4 MVPs, 13 time first team all NBA, 5 time first team all defense
KD: 1 MVP, 6 time first team all NBA, zero first or second team all defense

KD has four scoring titles, ppl would put him in the discussion for greatest scorer of all time. but as an overall player, no. pretty much his entire career will overlap w/ lebron and there's only like 1 or 2 years where KD could reasonably be considered better than lebron. the team success will only matter so much esp given the teams KD has chosen to play for

i kinda think none of the post-bron players are gonna be dominant enough to be in the top 5 discussion, at least none of the names mentioned

I guess it's hard to consider Giannis given his bad shooting, his career FT% is 71 and he has a penchant for missing big FTs late in playoff games

like hibidtae is theres the top 3 singular era-defining talents (mj, kareem, bron), there's a handful of spotlight sharing centers of gravity (russell/wilt, magic/bird, tim/shaq) and theres a bunch of really excellent players.

for anyone unwilling to read that NYT durant/nets article, it starts with multiple paragraphs about the comet that killed the dinosaurs

lmao

i think giannis, luka, KD, steph, maybe jokic if denver wins stuff could all later challenge the top 10-15 discussion along with hakeem, kobe, moses and karl malone, oscar, etc.

where does cp3 fit in the convo if the suns win this year? is he considered the second-best pure point behind magic?

as always, impossible to write history as it's lived; if luka breaks his leg hayward-style or steph wins four more rings as a starter, this is a totally different conversation. but yeah, that all sounds right.

xp currys already there :)

breaking: magic is apparently writing headlines for NBA.com

http://i.imgur.com/DORrSq1.png

What is the deal with Luka shooting .730 on free throws. He doesn't seem like he should miss those

thinking about it... luka is really bad at defense and imo you have to be an all defensive team level defender to be considered

xp currys already there :)

― Spottie, Friday, June 4, 2021 2:09 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

haha fair. cp3 does feel like a different kind of player, more in the isiah/glove mold than the bombs-away pg archetype that curry invented

it's never a good sign when like the second quote from your subject appears 2500 words into the article

― J0rdan S., Friday, June 4, 2021 2:29 PM (forty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

wow, so this really starts with 4 paragraphs about the prehistory of earth doesn't it

Admittedly Bird was an amazing rebounder and hustle player and Doncic doesn’t have that xp

It’s like the opening screen of a video game in which you have to choose your character, each of whom comes with a different set of pros and cons. Do you want the tiny quicksilver thief (Kyrie Irving) or the burly crafty woodsman (James Harden) or the tall ethereal phantom (Kevin Durant)? Choose carefully — your survival depends on it. Somehow, Brooklyn figured out the cheat code that allows you to pick all three.

Every time Durant shoots, the neurons firing inside him are the same neurons that have been firing since he was a boy — and when they fire he can feel the past and present pulsing as one, the action on this court merging with every other court he’s ever played on, with every court out there in the world, on every continent and in every timeline, and the backspins on all the balls are rotating in perfect synchronicity, and when the shot finally drops through the hoop all the shots drop through together, the whole vast catalog of shots that he or any other player has ever taken and made, all the way back to the very first ball that ever thunked into the bottom of a peach basket. And still, Kevin Durant’s galaxy brain rises, out of the arena, to heights where whole cities overlap, whole cities and their teams, high enough that everything starts to make sense, all ideas start to cohere, and running on an N.B.A. court is just running up the old hill, and he is sprinting in an official game but also sprinting through drills, and he has been working for so many thousands of hours that soon Aunt Pearl will have to come over to the rec center and bring him a sandwich — and he is already very high but is determined to go higher, all the way to the origin of everything, the place where all points converge, and then if possible higher than that, up to wherever an asteroid comes from.

yes if only we could crack the code of how they pulled this off (trading all their dudes for harden and clearing a lot of cap space for kd and kyrie oh shit i solved it)

xp

certainly SOMEONE is already very high

makes me miss free darko

Luka is somehow a great shooter who sucks at free throws. I can understand why Lebron and Giannis aren't great at them but Luka really should shoot 80% there.

on the plus side i got a new dn there

the weird thing about Durant is he has the body type of a promising but skinny one and done rookie who will need to "grow into his body" but he just stayed the same and became dominant anyway