2021-22 NBA "REGULAR" SEASON THREAD

yeah hes doing crazy maybe unprecedented defensive things for a 20 y/o rookie

he has not yet gotten 5 fouls in a game as a rookie big man playing super impactful defense with starter minutes. that is insane.

It's interesting that he plays so much with Allen. Twin towers

there is nothing materially different w/ their team from last year except ricky rubio and lauri markkannen. and they don't have sexton (tho maybe that's a better or worse thing). and it looks like they're going to improve by 20 wins. allen and garland are playing better, it's not like it's all mobley. but he feels like he might be a walking .500 record as a 20 year old

the way cad puts it it's sort of hard to internalize and reckon with, absolutely crazy

The no foul trouble thing might be more impressive than anything else. Unheard of.

Garland has been really good since sexton went down it probably doesn’t make sense to have two 6’1” guards starting next to each other.

the no fouling thing ties into one of the things i was hearing about mobley pre-draft which was this impression that he was sort of casual with his movement and rarely looked like he was going at max effort...he may just be one of those athletes who is really well-calibrated to have an innate sense of how to get to where he wants to be, and it just looks too easy to the rest of us

He’s very smooth out there for sure

ayton kinda seems like that too

chill bigs who are great at nba basketball

damn great win for the sixers. hawks were poor down the stretch

embiid jumping all over the place celebrating at the end

this will be a really fun WCF

Think this play encapsulates a lot of what makes Evan Mobley one of the most valuable long-term players in the NBA moving forward.

Contains in PnR coverage then gets the help block, corrals the rebound, sprints down floor, posts his man, then finds the backdoor cut for an assist pic.twitter.com/Fddugzyp8K

— Sam Vecenie (@Sam_Vecenie) December 4, 2021

Phoenix have taken 20 more free throws than GS and are down 13

vs the heat the other night there was at least a half dozen plays in the first half alone where guys didn’t even bother taking shots on him or just straight up lost the ball trying to do something on him. non-box score stuff and i feel like there’s a lot of that when he plays that explains why they’re doing so well with him playing (i don’t know his on/off numbers but they’re 13-6 when he plays and 0-4 when he doesn’t — now granted the 4 games they lost when he sat were to the nets twice, warriors, and suns. but my point stands)

Those yellow ATL jerseys are yikes

same i like them. the worst part is the jersey ad is ugly and really clashes

ok guys, to each their own

Boos raining down on the Knicks here at Madison Square Garden as Denver jumps out to a 44-28 lead and forces Tom Thibodeau to call a timeout midway through the second. This game is looking reminiscent to what happened Thursday night vs. Chicago so far.

— Tim Bontemps (@TimBontemps) December 4, 2021

Knicks fans got to watch the mvp cook, that’s a fine afternoon

4 of charlotte’s 9 main rotation players are in health and safety protocols for awhile, seems bad

love to feel healthy and safe

what is a protocol anyway

if this, then this, until this

Oof

Chauncey Billups: "I've never seen a team that needs its bench to inspire our starters. That shit is crazy to me. It's supposed to be the other way around."

— Sean Highkin (@highkin) December 5, 2021

that whole team getting traded, chauncey getting fired, oregon antifa needs to occupy ths team imo

otm

srsly, what is the best case scenario for this team? dame regresses to his mean and they claw their way to the 6 seed and then they get spanked in the first round? and they do this until dame cant walk anymore?

they tried like 8 times with this core and couldn't get over the hump of being a mid-seed team, at some point you have to assume thats the ceiling and stop spending resources prolonging it

obviously i am worried the celtics are entering the same spot now

blazers bottom five defense three years running

celtics wont have that at least

i kinda understood holding out and not trading dame for simmons assuming he'd still be That Guy but he might not be That Guy anymore and hes gonna get paid like $50M in 24-25 fuckin woof

if you’re trading dame idk why you’d choose simmons over the more recently popular package of “every draft pick you have.” might as well trade CJ too and just tear it down. you could keep CJ, get maxey and simmons and prob still make the play in game and maybe even win a game given how mediocre the west is this year but it certainly isn’t changing your ceiling and is prob only prolonging the inevitable full rebuild. i guess it comes down to whether ownership is ready to swallow 4 years of being really bad.

i guess it all comes down to what dame wants and what he thinks of the team. they’re only 2.5 games out of the 4 seed. it’s a really down year for the conference. but the advancing beyond round 2 seems impossible in even the best case scenarios

in my mind its dame for simmons+all the picks, but point taken

philly cannot be allowed to get him

and yeah theres prob a better trade out there anyway

the major question is whether portland lets dame choose his next team or whether they just take the best offer

It’s pretty difficult to come up with a Dame trade

No, here it is:

in my mind its dame for simmons+all the picks, but point taken

― class project pat (m bison), Sunday, December 5, 2021 11:55 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://i.imgur.com/XES0S6I.png

We're all good with Tony Snells, thanks.

Still think the Blazers would move CJ before dame unless dame has made trade demands behind the scene

As long as Dame wants to stay a blazer, no GM could get away with trading him for anything less than a proven MVP.

did you see tony snells numbers last year? i think they're getting a proven mvp

As long as Dame wants to stay a blazer, no GM could get away with trading him for anything less than a proven MVP.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Sunday, December 5, 2021 2:21 PM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is understandable and also wrong. they cant build a strong team around him, CJ is not a strong enough trade chip to meaningfully pivot with dame. they should trade both.

As long as Dame wants to stay a blazer, no GM could get away with trading him for anything less than a proven MVP.

lmao

they should burn it all down obv, a complication to all this is ownership probably wants to sell in the coming years and it’s harder to max profit when you’re selling a routine basement dweller in an untrafficked corner of the country that lacks stars or pizzazz, but could be the richies are more savvy to how rebuilds these days

a GM needs to please the fan base. presumably the imperative to drive deep into the payoffs is fan-driven, but if keeping dame for the next few years means more to the fans than diving straight into a rebuild that might possibly achieve more playoff success three or four years out from now, then the fans should get to see dame in pdx and postpone the rebuild.