golden state warriors thread

i'm actually stunned that oubre's career high in assists per game is 1.6, which happened four years ago. lol. like, i never thought of him as a distributor but damn.

i just think it's hard to overstate how obvious it was lsat year that steph was a one man offense and how different that is from this year

the thing is all those bench guys as mentioned before are just not that good, the fit might be better but i mean adding some guy who struggled to get minutes in sacramento, a guy whos had a fork in him so long the fork fell out, and a guy who hasnt been healthy in five years generally doesnt take you from bottom third to top five offensive team, which is why i think its unsustainable, tho there was def an aspect of them running cold/having bad luck last year so they prob werent actually that bad, but still just on talent theyre pretty clearly playing over their heads so far

also worth noting this is the no 1 defense in the NBA by a full point in defensive rating. no 4 offense, no 1 defense, championship pedigree on the roster and w/in the organization, top 3 offensive player in the league, top 3 defensive player in the league, good role players, i wouldn't overthink this in terms of considering them a genuine title contender

the role players are not actually good, the defense is legit tho

well you're focusing on porter iggy and bejilica but biggest thing is really the emergence of poole and there's nothing much that you can say about that other than he's a first round pick who has developed into a really useful scorer for a team that desperately needed someone else who could do anything w/ the ball to scare the defense. i don't think there's smoke and mirrors there it's just a major player development win for the organization. the rest is mostly just replacing bad players/bad fits w/ good fits who don't hurt you

the trade that i would be trying to make if i was the warriors would be wiseman, moody, whatever other assets to indiana for sabonis and then re-routing sabonis to charlotte for hayward or toronto for siakam, or somewhere else to a team who needs/wants a good center under contract for another borderline all star level wing/big guard (jaylen brown?)

oh you want to make a trade now

the celtics are not trading brown for sabonis fwiw

also the warriors cant really trade for more than ~$20m of salary without including wiggins

borderline all star level wing/big guard (jaylen brown?)

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, January 4, 2022 1:10 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

jaylen brown 50-11-4 (ot)

― lag∞n, Sunday, January 2, 2022 8:53 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

they should definitely go all in with a trade but it would also be very classic warriors hubris to sit pat

jaylen is also a ball stopper and might not fit that well anyway

yeah i mean they have iggy anyway

i said when we were talking about sabonis trades recently that if i was the warriors i'd def be trying to find an all star level wing or guard to ward against iggy and porter injuries, wiggins slumping, and/or poole having first time in the playoffs struggles. if they can trade players who don't play for them for a player at the hayward/siakam level i def think that they should do that.

i don't think they're title favorites as i just said, i think the bucks and nets are heavy favorites against any team from the west. but i don't think the warriors *need* to make a trade to get out of the west and if they get into the finals they obv have a chance of winning it.

i'm looking at basketball reference here and it says jaylen brown has made one all star game in 5 seasons. will check back again later.

yeah yeah

all things being equal i think the suns prob smoke the dubs in the playoffs as things stand now, and theres still time for other west teams to get their acts together

in full knowledge of being trolled i will say that at age 25 jaylen brown is currently putting together his third straight allstar worthy season

i think the suns could beat them. if warriors have home court tho i would favor them.

suns are just so much more solid, it would be a ridiculous defensive battle but ultimately i think the suns could completely shut down the dubs where the dubs could only mostly shut down the suns, however if klay is back to his old self i prob like the dubs

i don't think the celtics will trade jaylen but if you were going to shake up the team sabonis would be a pretty good option, he's young, productive, signed for 2 more seasons, would prob be willing to extend there, re-orients the structure of the team. celtics would want some more stuff but i don't think it's crazy. trade rob williams for a PG or wing

all things being equal i think the suns prob smoke the dubs in the playoffs as things stand now, and theres still time for other west teams to get their acts together

― lag∞n, Tuesday, January 4, 2022 11:21 AM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol

if the celtics did want to shake things up and trade jaylen which they should absolutely not (unless there are unsolvable personality conflicts behind the scenes which there could be) they could do much better than sabonis, i mean sabonis is a nice player but he also has huge holes in his game and is a weird fit almost anywhere, where jaylen is exactly the player that every team wants

what the celtics should do is keep jaylen and jayson two players that any team would want and build a better and more fitting roster around them which admittedly isnt that easy but is also not impossible

maybe those guys just arent that good toegther tho

i dont thats exactly it but it can appear to be it, tho theyre not a perfect fit, i think the issue is that theyre both poor playmakers, and then the rest of the roster is also over all poor in that area, and this year their backcourt is also bad at shooting, i think the solution is to upgrade the rosters passing and shooting

suns are just so much more solid, it would be a ridiculous defensive battle but ultimately i think the suns could completely shut down the dubs where the dubs could only mostly shut down the suns, however if klay is back to his old self i prob like the dubs

― lag∞n, Tuesday, January 4, 2022 1:28 PM (two minutes ago)

the suns defense across the board def bothers the dubs to some degree, they can switch and have length, guys who can mess w/ steph. i see the argument. i also think the suns aren't an elite offensive team, against very good defenses there becomes tons of pressure on 37 year old chris paul to do a lot of work. we saw the cracks against the bucks. booker had to hit a bunch of really really hard shots to even keep them afloat. i think we do have to keep in mind that last year the suns went through a broken down lakers team, a nuggets team w/o murray and then a clippers team w/o kawhi. i think this playoffs will be a different kind of test for them.

the trade the celtics im sure are thinking about is getting ben simmons without giving up either jay, a three team deal something like a bunch of picks and al horf going to a third team, good player from third team and smart to philly

personally i still have the bucks and nets at the front of the line and i'm not sure any of the west teams can beat either of them in a 7 game series.

this seems insane to me given how the best 3 teams in the league this year are from the west

yeah that's all fine and wonderful but the playoffs are a different game

cant count the champs out they havent been playing their best but that is an extremely stout team, particularly if theyve learned their lesson from last year and are ready to go full center giannis at the drop of a hat, and the nets are obvs high variance but if they get their big three rolling and kyrie somehow is allowed to play at home they could absolutely crush, or likewise implode, dont think id put them second too many bad vibes but they are for sure a big threat

id prob bet on the bucks rn if i had to then the suns but this year is pretty open imo

it's nice that the net ratings have the best three teams in the west but this bucks regular season basically hasn't counted, from a statistical POV, so i'm not even sure what to say to that

the nets are the more vulnerable of the two, especially healthwise. i still give them the nod over all the west teams... the suns or warriors would be a good series, 6 or 7 games i'm sure, either team def *could* win. a top end version of the nets if that's what we get is better than those teams tho. i don't consider the jazz a legitimate title contender personally

no one should

theyve proved it repeatedly

based on what we saw last year you might have to put the clippers even without kawhi as the no 3 team in the west and maybe they do end up getting him back (i doubt it)

one of mj's greatest accomplishments was denying that bumass franchise and state a title twice, he rly needs to be honored for that

xp

denver and clippers are dark horses with getting guys back from injury, unlikely theyll pull it together but not impossible, philly is in the mix with the right simmons trade

its wide open

not sure how anyone could trust the nets at this point. weve got ~2 seasons of evidence now that their big 3 likely wont be playing at the same time when it matters.

denver is tough for me i don't think they have the horses if porter is out and murray is still not fully at his peak. the clippers had proof of concept last year w/ no kawhi tho i think the reggie jackson/terrance mann show was prob a fluke ultimately to that degree

not sure how anyone could trust the nets at this point. weve got ~2 seasons of evidence now that their big 3 likely wont be playing at the same time when it matters.

― Spottie, Tuesday, January 4, 2022 2:14 PM (three minutes ago)

this is fair and might be a fatal flaw of theirs that said KD is arguably the no 1 playoff player right now and that has to carry a lot of weight. they may have won the title w/ harden on 0.5 hamstrings last year if they got past the bucks

the nets big 3 being healthy for the offs isnt out of the question at all, only one of the three thats fully injury prone is kyrie and hes had a lot of rest lol, tho the cause of that rest may actually put the title out of reach

kd has missed like 3 full seasons

and a chunk of last season

its true but besides those big injuries he played a lot

kyrie is the one where you just never know if youre about to lose him for two weeks

i hear any argument against the nets that boils down to "this whole situation is too volatile and for 100 diff reasons i just don't see this resulting in a title." for me, i think last postseason went about as bad as could be expected for them in terms of injuries, outright losing kyrie and losing harden for a significant chunk and having him be severely hobbled and largely ineffective when he came back. but they handled it way better than i expected, i would have said they were dead in the water under those circumstances but they ended up taking the champs as close to the brink as you possibly could take a team. if their injury luck is in any way better than it was last year, that makes them dangerous to me, based on what we saw KD + crippled james harden + random guys do.

of course if they lose KD it's a wrap for them but that's true for any team that loses their best player in the playoffs for any significant amount of time

yeah i mean theres a def non zero chance they have their 3 guys healthy for the offs and if that happens theres a very good chance they just crush everyone

you guys believe way too much in james harden