golden state warriors thread

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

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

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, January 4, 2022 1:53 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

right generally speaking the best teams tend to do the best in the playoffs iirc

unless its the jazz or various other similar teams

eh only one team can win per year. generally you just want to be good to maximize your chances

only one team can win and its not the jazz

right as history has shown with the jordan bulls lebron heat giannis bucks etc

generally if you don’t win your first year or two as a good team tom you can’t win ever

some teams just have fatal playoff flaws that are pretty obvious

you guys believe way too much in james harden

― Spottie, Tuesday, January 4, 2022 2:49 PM (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

im not one to minimize hardens many playoff failures but it is worth noting that he came very close to some might say one cp3 hammy away from winning it all already and i do think that the nets version of harden (more passing less hoisting) is more playoff sustainable

yes until in retrospect it turns out the playoffs are as probabilistically determined as everything else in life

xp

of which your interceding post demonstrates an astute understanding

the problem with stats isnt so much a problem with stats as it is a problem with philosophy

anyway rudy gobert the player in which the jazz scheme is largely built around is easily exploited by any good team with then motivation to, maybe some day lottery balls with drop from heaven and change this fact, but probably not

the best teams tend to do better in the playoffs but the teams in the east have kevin durant and the giannis this is an important thing to remember

the playoffs are a different game is something that is said often but unlike many axioms its also true

anyway rudy gobert the player in which the jazz scheme is largely built around is easily exploited by any good team with then motivation to, maybe some day lottery balls with drop from heaven and change this fact, but probably not

― lag∞n, Tuesday, January 4, 2022 3:32 PM (three minutes ago)

also they can't defend the perimeter at all it's actually quite a bad way to build a team for the playoffs can't just have guys knifing into the paint at will 50 times per game

it wouldn't shock me if the jazz came out of the west especially depending on how injuries shake out. but i don't think they can beat the bucks or the nets they just don't have the high end talent, imo, and are too exploitable based on how they're constructed, think that would be a pretty clean finals for either of the east teams

upgrading their perimeter defensive talent would definitely help but part of the problem there does imo go back to gobert in that in the modern game you want a center who has the ability to rotate out to the perimeter and gobert does not so they built this old fashioned D where everything is funneled to him in the paint which teams can render inoperative by going small, then as weve discussed they dont even have the strategic counter of gobert taking advantage of a small team by dunking on them on the other end since he has zero ball skills

the funny thing about the money ball nba era with all the high variance hoisting where over matched teams have a prayer is dunks are still dunks baby, shots that you shoot 99% on are very low variance, start letting teams get to the rim and you could play a hundred series and never win

stats guy: a bounce here and bounce there can swing a series between what are ultimately teams with razor thin edges

me: the famous basketball rim is soul death for defense

the jazz are basically a very nice sports car you only can drive in good conditions and they have an additional problem which is that there are almost no improvement candidates on their roster. donovan mitchell has been having basically the same season for a couple years now.

mitchell could still improve or just have a great year and theyd still need to solve the gobert problem which is unsolvable

prob the best approach to the gobert problem is to surround him with great dynamic defenders but unfortunately the jazz are very far from that

mitchell doesn't need to have better years than he's having for them to get high seeds. they're made to punish bad teams and collect regular season wins. and it could still work for a playoff run too with some health, matchup luck, a mitchell hot streak, etc. but they haven't made it easy on themselves by going all-in on very specific ways of playing offense and defense.

if they were to somehow draw four rounds of opponents decimated by injuries it wouldnt even count imo, much like the lakers bubble championship

ben simmons for conley/ingles works in the machine

i think ultimately we can look at this through the lens of karma, having one of your main guys not be able to do anything good with the basketball summons cursed vibes

the celtics were spared this hex via bill russell being a great outlet passer, and from all that happening in the beforetime