The 2022 National Basketball Association (NBA) Playoffs Thread

they should def add that mid-season tournament then so the play-offs can be back-to-backs, making for even better basketball

i was traveling today so apologies for bringing this back to the butler conversation real quick

both lebron and KD played fewer games than butler, so i don't find that to be a valid argument even if that is the explanation. even still butler was 8th in raptor, sixth in win shares per 48, and tenth in total win shares on the no 1 team in the east. he got penalized for the heat being great all year w/ ppl rotating thru the line up but a basic glance at the all in one stats says he's a top 15 player in the league at minimum. i think he also got penalized for the national media's huge overreaction to the spat w/ spo which we now know in retrospect was not a big deal (this was clear the next week when they beat chicago, toronto and boston on a road trip but i digress). simmons & rusillo did a convoluted top 25 players in the league podcast towards the end of the year and his name barely even came up. just as one example.

i see trae as a superficially better player than butler. he runs a better pick and roll and is a better three point shooter. but in terms of everything else on the court most notably defense butler is the superior player, to me. he has a tone setting ability on both ends of the court that trae's offensive skill alone cannot outweigh. even given the respective rosters i think this was evident in the playoff matchup.

I think they’re on similar tiers but butler is better atm. Defense matters too much to just brush aside.

Jimmy’s awesome and all but he’s surrounded by a really well constructed roster. We’ve seen what happens when that’s not the case

― Heez, Tuesday, May 24, 2022 9:11 PM (yesterday)

the bulls fell off majorly after they traded butler, he was an oasis in a desert of ineptitude in minnesota until this year (after winning the lottery again) and the sixers best player openly laments them letting him go. the heat post-lebron topped out as a second round team and have made the east finals twice in three years w/ jimmy there. he's raised the level of every team he's been on. he obv isn't as good as guys like prime lebron, KD etc who elevate their teams to championship contention but he's been in the NBA 11 years and made the playoffs 10 times.

the first round had a lot of competitive games and compelling stylistic matchups and then it's just gone to hell

― symsymsym, Tuesday, May 24, 2022 11:08 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

celtics-bucks was great

j0rdan otm, jimmy buckets is him

jimmys good big jimmy fan

hes also cool

Apparently this is cos of the play in games. Tightens the playoff schedule.

― Spottie, Tuesday, May 24, 2022 11:38 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

guess the playoffs havent been shortened its a combo of putting a ton of rest in the first round to satisfy tv concerns and then a second round series on each side going seven, anyway it stinks

This argument doesn't actually bear out. In 2019, the previous full season, the playoffs started on April 13 and Game 7 of the Finals was scheduled for June 16 (64 days). This year, the playoffs started on April 16 and Game 7 of the Finals is scheduled for June 19 (64 days). https://t.co/Zg42qIee35

— Kevin Pelton (@kpelton) May 25, 2022

and this sched has been done before, tho that doesnt mean its not bad, it is bad

You don't even need to say that much. Just look at the 2019 Conference Finals dates. Both played on alternating days. All of a sudden rest is to blame for poor performance.https://t.co/ZlcZ4PZHVthttps://t.co/CVRcYd9jo6

— Steven Le (@steven_le) May 25, 2022

cuban shouldve asked his stat guys to check it out before tweeting lol

Xxxxcpost back to Buckets, Jord otm... There was so much focus on the messy drama of how it ended people forget that the Jimmy year he was great and it was a good team, they went from 31 to 47 wins

he was also totally right in pointing out that his teammates did not have “that dog” in them

not only is jimmy good and cool hes also right

2019 conference finals were not played after multiple shortened/weird offseasons though

i think the celtics are a lot better than the heat when all their guys are healthy which is the main reason why that series has seemed so swingy they were missing guys that were crucial to the matchup in some games

if everyone was healthy it would have looked more like the wcf where one team is clearly better

I'm a little emotional today, had to tell my daughter about the school shooting then send her to school today

I just really appreciate Steve Kerr and what he said

At an all company meeting talking about what happened and that video came up and it was definitely shared and resonated with a lot of people who have no idea who he was until yesterday

Kerr does seem like a good guy, even when watching The Last Dance I got the impression that he was particularly thoughtful and selfless for an NBA player

i appreciate what he said, he was better than most other public figures, it was also interesting to watch him clearly struggling with his closely held beliefs in real time, as im sure a lot of comfortable liberals are, vacillating between imploring sentaors to pass legislation and realizing that they just dont care

What a legend

https://sports.yahoo.com/magic-johnson-made-one-appearance-on-espn-after-being-hired-as-a-frequent-nba-analyst-204109516.html

dude really just does whatever he wants

i was gonna go on espn but instead i made a documentary about myself

got to protect the brand first

i can't speak for magic but when hbo made a trashy and inflammatory show about my early successes i just stopped going on television as a protest

i think players only voting would turn up worse results than the media being involved

Jalen Rose admitted on NBA Countdown that it was a mistake to put Kyrie Irving on the All-NBA 3rd team. #NBATwitter #NetsLevel pic.twitter.com/x5jUl5svBX

— 𝙏𝙖𝙡𝙠𝙞𝙣’ 𝙉𝘽𝘼 (@_Talkin_NBA) May 25, 2022

they should just decouple the all nba teams from super max contracts and then the players can go back to not really caring

true

i keep forgetting which series starts the games on time and which one doesn't and rushing home just to wait for 20 minutes

jaylen still can't dribble the ball, just turned it over two possessions in a row again

we need investigative reporting

another one!

another one

Some real poor shooting going on

what a hideous basketball game. the celts might fuck around and let the heat offensive rebound themselves into a win but i feel like the nail in the coffin run is coming here at some point

my main takeaway from that half is that something is very wrong with butler, he looks awful. he has no lift on his jumper and isn’t getting to the line at all or really doing anything on offense aside from shooting like standstill shots

feels like theres something wrong with all the scoring threats on both teams. everyone must be gassed and/or playing hurt

Espn halftime show is a joke. They talk for 30 seconds and then it’s commercial time again.

everyone looks dead. the every other day schedule is insanity at this point in the season.

ive never watched a halftime show in my life, thats posting time

my brain has an auto-shutoff feature that kicks in when mike greenberg talks

this has been the least interesting conference finals round I can remember. hope the Finals don't suck.

they sacrificed the conference finals to get more weekend games in the first round

you know how a bunch of comedies have that one frumpy depressed looking guy who's in a position of authority but clearly hates his job? Jeff Van Gundy could've played all those guys

lmao like 60% of the crowd is gone. I get that last game when the Celtics were up by like 30 but this is the first close game they've gotten!

were they there in the first place?

physically, yeah

heat using strus as a pick and roll ballhandler is really scraping the bottom of the barrel

horf coast 2 coast baby!

strus heard your comment and is making his way to the locker room