ITS THE OFFS BABY THE 2023 NBA PLAYOFFS

its considered good

I wonder if nikola jokic will ever show up for the playoffs, or if teams will just play him off the floor by relentlessly putting him in pick and rolls?

its one of those questions that you can never know the answer to

do you guys think the best player in the playoffs is devin booker…or jimmy butler?

sorry taking a breather now just emptying the drafts for a minute

lol

Suns going out sad man woof

I mean the suns only had 4 playable players and are down 2 of them but this KD postseason and last postseason is not promising. And you have to think they’d def be ina better position right now w their old roster. They have their work cut out in the off-season

Phoenix Suns-et

new activist owner too, gotta think some big changes a comin

theres not much they can do theyre kinda fucked

they should trade kd

maybe hell demand one

they're gonna have to sell low on ayton but they may be able to talk some young whippersnapper team into him, maybe recoup some depth? new coach probably. but yeah theyre pretty fucked.

wonder if kd has one more trade demand in him, what a weird career

love to move around sinking franchises while being one of the all time greats

Disgusting KD game here

Step 1 fire Monty you can’t get embarrassed like this twice with two different rosters

They might be better off just keeping their top 4 and seeing if a coach can help draw more out of Ayton

They wasted an insane cam Payne game lol

truly enjoy when k3vin starts running amok

some great stuff from tatum at the end again but the sixers didn’t look prepared in that game to me. it’s almost like boston lulled them to sleep by playing such horrible pick and roll defense in game 5 that philly didn’t seem to think they’d have to do anything differently in this game. but that harden-embiid PNR was getting gummed up the whole second half, especially at the end. the sixers didn’t seem to have any other ideas for how to get good shots. not great stuff from doc

also thought the sixers rotation felt noticeably a player short. for all the stuff ppl say tucker brings to the table his minutes often get cut in game 6/7s because ultimately you need a guy who can make a shot. but then melton was even worse. combined with tobias harris they had too much bad shooting out there. i felt like this was their issue last year & we’ll see how they shoot in game 7 but i’m not sure it’s been remedied. i didn’t even think harden played all that bad (except for the very end) but he was throwing a lot of passes to guys who couldn’t do shit with the ball. tho one thing i will say about harden is that he’s really a PG now at this age and that REALLY felt like an offense being run with no PG on the floor

Felt a little like they were one pass short on offense, but they still had plenty of open looks. I didn't feel like they got run off the 3pt line or anything, they just missed shots.

They were the best 3pt shooting team in the league this season and they had a bad game. It's going to be something on Sunday. I'm driving back from my parents in the early afternoon so I hope the game is later in the day.

Wild stat: Per @nbastats, the Suns shot 9-of-49 (18%) on corner 3s during the Denver series.

— Kevin Pelton (@kpelton) May 12, 2023

i still cant believe people believed in that team

once KD got injured it was all about building for next season.

here's a fun stat I bet the over at 226 points and went to bed at half when it was 81-51 only to wake up and find it somehow landed at exactly 225

ouch

i still cant believe people believed in that team

― Spottie, Friday, May 12, 2023 4:34 PM (two minutes ago)

it's really crazy ppl just thought the suns could throw out all rules of playoff basketball including one of the main ones "you have to have more than 2 good players on your roster"

i still cant believe people believed in that team

― Spottie, Friday, May 12, 2023 3:34 PM (fifty-five seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

did anyone here think they were going far, once the afterglow of the trade wore off? seems like something Vegas and ESPN pundits would overreact to but not the true hoops dorks here. I do recall a lot of "hmmm maybe if KD stays healthy" but that depends on CP3 also being healthy and Ayton being a different person with the same body

ilh was fine about it but the media shows way too much reverence for kd.

there was smart basketball ppl in the media who thought this made them the west favorites by default, it wasn't just the first take types. i think to some degree it's front office brain trickling down thru media members who have lots of like assistant GM sources or w/e. the idea that you have to ruthlessly find stars at any cost and just see where the chips fall feels a tad more justifiable to me if you're actually involved in team building, whereas as an analyst it would be fair (and correct) to say "but actually that team only has 2 good players on it"

the Heatles ruined everyone's brain. that roster was really smartly constructed and did a great job of finding cheap guys beyond the Big 3 who could hurt you. you also had peak LeBron. kinda hard to replicate that.

theres been a lot of success over the last ~25 year with acquiring big names shaq with the lakers and heat celtics big 3 heat big three lakers with gasol warriors with kd raps with kawhi lakers with bron, that prob represents the majority of the championships, there have been some big superteam whiffs recently tho, dynamic mightve changed or maybe teams just talking them into not that good configurations idk

its really hard to fill in around the edges now i think. which is what makes the lakers miracle trade deadline even more impressive

well the thing w/ the heatles is that they didn't have to trade any players to get those guys. and in response the owners remade the CBA so that high level free agency was basically killed. now in order to get an all star player you have to in turn neuter your ability to add around those players. you can draw a direct line from point A to point B on this one. minnesota, atlanta, cleveland are learning the hard way now. the clippers to a certain extent tho ballmer's money has helped them a lot, and now that's being taken out of play.

those teams feel a lot deeper than what the Nets, Suns, and Mavs have now

nets mightve had a decent shot at a ring if it werent for their beautiful minds and fragile bodies

the knicks not trading for mitchell & instead just signing brunson for only the cost of his contract turned out to be a genius move. really one of the smartest fork in the road decisions a team has made in the last few seasons. even if mitchell is slightly better than brunson which may not even be true, there's no way he's three first round picks, two swaps, markannen, sexton and agbaji better. it's not even close.

if you look at the teams that are left, the lakers are the only one that made one of these "all our assets for one player trade." but even that was contingent on getting lebron thru a more traditional version of free agency. philly got harden but it ended up being a different level of deal in terms of assets sent out and under very specific circumstances bcuz of the simmons & kyrie situations on either end of that trade.

the heat's entire run w/ butler is predicated on them acquiring him in a complete heist sign and trade that would never happen right now. warriors, boston, nuggets are all homegrown & i'd throw philly in that group too w/ their roster aside from harden

ya that seems to be the thing, teams are only really looking at the best case scenario right now, instead of the unfortunate reality that players with a pattern of missing time generally do not break that pattern as they get older. I guess as an exec you'd rather say "well we got KD and it just didn't work out" rather than being known as someone who passed on the chance to get KD

and even in the lakers case they did a second "all of our assets for a star" trade and it prob ranks as one of the single worst front office decisions of the last decade

the biggest free agent signings of the last few seasons are like... brunson, derozan. kyle lowry lol. lonzo ball, bogdan bogdanovic. at best you can get like a third team NBA/borderline all star type guy or a really good role player in FA now

free agent market has been killed by the trade demand

if you're gonna trade everything for someone it basically has to be Lebron. idk maybe that sort of trade for Giannis might make sense in a couple years if Milwaukee really flames out.

when you’re throwing some of the worst playoff role players imaginable out there
― J0rdan S., Friday, May 12, 2023 4:32 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i still cant believe people believed in that team

― Spottie, Friday, May 12, 2023 4:34 PM (one hour ago)

this goes down in history as offically a 6 game series, but it was really a 4 game series with a 2-game interlude where booker had two of the best playoff games ever and thanks to some role player shooting the suns managed to eke out close wins. nuggets +57 in the series and jokic was a + in both losses. a waxing

i think it was really a five game series with one game stretched over two games

xp as you pretty much alluded to, pinning your hopes on a thin team is a dicey bet, the threat of injuries etc has to be baked in there. that said the suns were still really good and I'm not sure the trade was the wrong move. they should be able to retool next year

they will be better next year for sure

booker could be a legit mvp level guy next year

i’m willing to say it was the wrong move. i don’t see how you come up with like 8 new players including 3 new starters in one offseason. if they don’t win it next season do we really think it’s changing in durant’s age 36 season? he’s not the same guy & this isn’t revisionist i said before this series that nobody in the national media was talking about the possibility that KD was the guy we saw vs boston not vs milwaukee.

i’ll take the under on whatever phoenix thinks ayton’s trade value is and ishbia’s money isn’t even gonna matter all that much w the new CBA

free agent market has been killed by the trade demand