The 2022 National Basketball Association (NBA) Playoffs Thread

https://www.gq.com/story/ben-simmons-nets-bench-style/amp

dink

you know what basketball pundit thing drives me crazy is the idea that "the team with the best player wins the series" its first of all just so lazy and cowardly they say it cause they dont want to be bothered to figure out who will win and its defensible because their friends all doing it, its obvs ahistoric the best player loses all the time heat lost a gdamn finals in which they had the two best players, its often tautological theyll just decide someone else was better if they win like no doubt if the celtics win then tatum will be the best player even tho kd was better before the series started which kind of undercuts the predictive power of the system, but maybe worst of all is its just baby brained like of course having the best player is an advantage in basketball only like eight guys play for each team but you still have to figure out who is going to win the series by understanding basketball generally, youtube served be a clip of the jj redick podcast talking about celtics nets and his little friend was like "you know im a best player wins guy" and i just turned if off bro your job is to know things about basketball cmon

watched a clip of jalen and jacoby and they, who both picked the lakers to win before the season btw, were both like cant pick against kd in the first round man, what are they talking about the nets are the 7th seed theyre playing a good team in the first round this shit is so low qual

has kd not lost a playoff series before is he undefeated in the playoffs

and finally im resentful that youtube has tricked me into watching bad panel shows and podcasts

on the other hand

dearest haters,

Boston Celtics guard Marcus Smart has won the 2021-22 NBA Defensive Player of the Year award.

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) April 18, 2022

best player wins the series seems like some ultimate bill simmons shit that trickled down into garbo conventional wisdom

btw your man just had “minor” lung surgery and you know what that means that’s right it’s drugged out “bball” all the way for a week baby

i think "the best player in the series always wins" when the best player in the series was michael jordan

Marcus Smart is a fine defensive player - the idea that he is the DPOY is absurd tho.

— Haralabos Voulgaris (@haralabob) April 18, 2022

I get that the voters like to be creative and think they are smarter than the average fan but this is such a comical selection.

— Haralabos Voulgaris (@haralabob) April 18, 2022

bob wrong as usual

i mean if you want to talk about how big men are more valuable fine but if you were prefer to talk about about who is good at defense marcus smart is absolutely a totally elite defender

and i hope they give it to more perimeter defenders in the future and also rescind all of goberts awards

Pretty cool a guard got the award

i think jrue is the best guard defender in the league but their defense wasn’t good enough ratings wise

i’m happy that marcus can no longer complain about having won the award. we can all move on with our lives

they should give gobert a defensive player of the year unless everyone on the court is under 6’ 9” award

jrue is also extremely good, hes not quite the defensive playmaker that smart is but hes prob more solid

yeah that’s prob true

one thing i gotta say is crazy is how many times i’m hearing the phrase “girls gone wild” watching the NBA playoffs on TNT

Yah if there’s one thing I don’t care about it’s the history of girls gone wild

cant believe theyre canceling the girls gone wild guy whos next

it's just lots of talk about porn at like 7:30 pm

gus johnson doing this sixers game TNT really pulled him out of the vault huh

The thing w the best player wins line of thinking is the gap has to be pretty big for it to matter. In general pundits focus way to much on individual play vs team play. Gets old quick.

it's especially funny too if you think about the entire lebron cavs era which was basically them losing a bunch of finals and everyone going "well lebron is definitely still the best player in the league. BUT..."

raps coming to play here salute

this would be a nice game for harden to play just awful

He needs to feel the wrath of the Philly boo birds

embiid took 12 fts in the first quarter hate him

he played 11 mins in that quarter running up and down the court. let’s see how this goes

all the numbers are way under water for the raptors again. three pt shooting, fouls, rebounding etc. all basically insurmountable for them. my question is whether the sixers can play this well in toronto

a counterpoint to the best player talk today might be this sixers/raps series

feels like the raptors have bigger issues than just that

in this series anyway

i can't believe marcus won dpoy. what a world.

bob is pretty checked out at this point but even by that standard those are bad tweets--first, don't allude to your proprietary data if that's all you have to stand on (no one can see it and no one cares) and second, fans emphasize perimeter defense more than any other population so i don't think that's who the voters are responding to?

I hate the Celts and would take three Marcus Smarts please.

Dude is smart, tough, and fun (even when you hate him).

well it’s not a question of whether marcus smart is a great defender. but it also was a wide open year. the rudy fatigue was clear, draymond and bam injuries took them both out of the running (i suspect with bam). the lane was open for a narrative winner

I always laugh at these PR campaigns for awards from teams and agents, but Marcus Smart basically won DPOY with a PR campaign over the last month. Nobody was even discussing him before then.

— Nate Duncan (@NateDuncanNBA) April 18, 2022

Maxey 23/9/8 1 TO, 50% from 3.

glad the celtics decided to run the PR campaign of "having the best defense in the league" the last month or two

Warriors shots look so crisp

the things jalen brunson is doing are not normal

that dude is gonna be very very paid this summer

salute to him

tbf the smart for dopy campaign has been going on for years, it just went mainstream recently

Successful campaigns are built on prolonged message discipline pic.twitter.com/7FbBpkDEJR

— Ryan Bernardoni (@dangercart) April 18, 2022