2023/24 NBA REGULAR SEASON THREAD "THANKING FOR WEMBANYAMA"

its true that live basketball is better when the home team is good

feel like tons of guys are sitting on really high cushions on the bench this year whats up with that, i mean i can understand why tall guys would want to do that but why now

maybe it was uncool before like underhand free throws

its cool now its the "it" seating option

they should have cushions for the fans too. i guess some arenas do but not the boston one

I guess that lebron minutes restriction thing isn’t happening any more

Dejounte Murray's been on one. 41 against the wolves while guarding Edwards after shutting down Dame the day before.

24pts on 10-15 shooting plus 8 assist against the wiz last night

https://x.com/ATLHawks/status/1719885572813062161?s=20

hes gone over it in 4 of 5 games lol xp

ham going with playoff rotations 5 games into the season?

nba cup rotations

this is the lakers problem right here

https://i.imgur.com/8oDPOlN.png

playing ad 48mins (ot) seems pretty bad

seems way too early to panic about the Bucks but yea it does concern me that a team with two great defensive players is giving up these quick 20-4 type runs in every game so far. at the game I went to it looked like they were giving up way too many fast breaks due to turnovers which seemed to be a result of players not being where they were supposed to be. also they're not switching when they're supposed to, seemed easy to get a guy open for 3 with a little razzle dazzle, plus Capela kept getting behind the entire defense somehow. so right now I think it does kinda come down to coaching, though I have faith he's gonna figure it out sooner or later

yeah obvs you have to give it time, there are things to be worried about but you cant really tell to what extent theyre really a problem yet

if i was a fan of the bucks i'd have a hard time worrying too much about how the team was playing 4 games into a season w/ a new coach & new roster

that said defense feels pretty scheme oriented in the NBA these days & the bucks in particular have a pretty complicated relationship w/ that concept. it's not a stretch to say that bud was fired for being too rigid defensively & after the jrue/dame trade the ability for the new coach to be much better than bud at defensive scheming is even more paramount now than it was the day after they got eliminated. does he have it in his bag?

i do think the bucks perimeter d is gonna be an issue no matter what, the extent to which they can scheme and play good team d will determine how big of an issue it is, they could also just make a trade tho, middletons ability to find some form will be big for that too and obvs other things

they should be able to get a defensive minded guard who can kind of hit a three for not that much

crowder & beasley are two guys who were acquired by contenders for title runs last season & then were terrible/couldn't get off the bench in the playoffs and are now playing 25 and 30 mpg respectively for this bucks team. so i immediately look at those two spots and i'm like, this isn't going to fly in playoff games that matter. i kinda agree that they have some work to do to find a few more guys they can trust in the playoffs. bcuz right now their list is: giannis, brook, middleton, portis, connaughton and cam payne. that feels, um, incomplete

Early returns but Did not expect this

The Wood/LeBron/AD lineup has now played 44 minutes, with an ORTG of 127, a DRTG of 63 and a Net rating of +64.

— Jason Timpf (@_JasonLT) November 2, 2023

kawhi played big minutes on night two of a back to back? this 65 game minimum rule might be working

yeah they were saying during the game that he has no restrictions on minutes back 2 backs anything

suspect western conf teams looked at the final standings last year and said damn if we had just tried to win a lil more we wouldve been in a better spot

yeah its making for some fun and competitive regular season games.

i think ballmer would be willing to eat every fine if that’s what kawhi wanted & i don’t think kawhi cares whether he is allowed to make all NBA. i think it’s more that they fucked around and found out one too many times in terms of where they get when they pretend the regular season doesn’t matter

doenst he need to make an all nba team to be eligible for another supermax?

that’s a good question. i feel like he has enough service time in the league that probably not. but i honestly am not sure

Draymond Green: “Last year, we had an awful team as far as chemistry goes.”

“Last year was horse shit. Hard to come to work. Not fun. This year, you see the joy on guys’ face when they come in the building…this is a group that likes being together.”

— Danny Emerman (@DannyEmerman) November 2, 2023

his whole quote is pretty good. klay hit a game winner last night, the last 4-5 minutes was really entertaining

Forgot About Klay pic.twitter.com/e2b1L9LCLM

— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) November 2, 2023

draymond is currently searching for the killer
― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Thursday, November 2, 2023 2:07 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol

there were at least 50 i think you should leave hot dog memes posted on my timeline last night after that dray quote dropped.

i really think that as a culture we need to switch back to OJ references for this emotion. thank you for your service tim robinson but it’s time to bring the GOAT back

started a thread to track vibes updates
NBA ~Vibes~ Check

Klay's post shot interview was excellent

read this quasi viral thread from a psychotic bucks fan about griffin — i’m making no comment on the beginning of it where he’s talking about internal drama tho the stotts thing. but the part where he gets into the stats is interesting. i didn’t realize griffin was making bucks fans relive the jason kidd experience

It's only four games in, but I feel pretty confident in saying that the Bucks (and Giannis if slop is to be believed) made a very large error in hiring Adrian Griffin to the HC role.

— rcon14 (@rcon14) November 2, 2023

the upside is that perhaps a lot of this seems fixable thru a combo of scheme adjustment & trying harder

All along, Griffin has talked about how he wants ball pressure and to play an aggressive style of defense... with a team that is perhaps the oldest in the NBA and has a 7' rim protecting mountain of a center.

That's clown scheme/personnel matching.

— rcon14 (@rcon14) November 2, 2023

sure the Bucks are generating turnovers at a better rate than last year, but they are absolutely bleeding points everywhere else. They've dropped to 14th in DRB%, they're 30th in eFG%, 15th in opponent FTr.

When you play aggressive D, you're going to foul more and rebound poorly

— rcon14 (@rcon14) November 2, 2023

The Bucks actually allow a very low frequency of rim attempts, but they are all effectively dunks or easy layups. And this is largely happening due to cutters and rollers getting free because guys are having to cover too much ground and make too many communications.

— rcon14 (@rcon14) November 2, 2023

The transition defense is abhorrent. The Bucks give up the highest number of transition opportunities in the league and are horrific at defending it.

Per CtG, teams are adding 11.3 points per game in transition. That is 4.4 more than the next worst transition defense...

— rcon14 (@rcon14) November 2, 2023

thread is interesting but idk if most of those stats mean anything other than the bucks have been bad so far, this however is a very reasonable point

All along, Griffin has talked about how he wants ball pressure and to play an aggressive style of defense... with a team that is perhaps the oldest in the NBA and has a 7' rim protecting mountain of a center.

That's clown scheme/personnel matching.

— rcon14 (@rcon14) November 2, 2023

gotta give em a chance tho, making the dame jrue swap days before the season started is gonna make things kinda chaotic, having said that if i were a bucks fan i would not be 100% zen about the situation, but things certainly can improve any time, look at the celtics the year they went to the finals, rookie head coach and the were pretty bad for the first 2+ months of the season before turning it around

Dame gotta be the worst (high profile) screen navigator ever. He’s always done this

Bucks defense has been bad all around but Dame is just DYING on these screens. pic.twitter.com/6zvarQFs1m

— Esfandiar Baraheni (@JustEsBaraheni) November 2, 2023

lol hes like whats this theres something in my way

lol i posted for years about dame's inability to even conceive of defending the p&r, he never sees the screens coming it's really bizarre??

he has expectations now all his flaws are gonna be magnified much more

James Harden ranked second in the NBA in time possessing the ball per game. Behind only Luka last season. I guess if you’re not first you’re last. https://t.co/Cdsbu1xhvR

— Kevin O'Connor (@KevinOConnorNBA) November 2, 2023

I agree this defensive scheme looks a lot like Kidds in how it puts players in difficult positions that don’t really match their strengths but also Kidds thing was he never changed shit even as opponents shot like 70% from 3. So we’ll see if this guy can adapt.

I just came here to post those Harden comments. Lol, talk about getting high off your own supply.

lol why would he say that

Psyched to watch the Sixers for the first time this season. It's a lot more fun when you have no expectations.

i think they can pretty easily be the 3rd best team in the east, maybe even the 2nd if milwaukee cant figure it out. plus they have some flexibility to go get one of the toronto wings or whatever

"i am a system" on a team where he'll be the third option is hilarious

Yes, but that might be an indictment of the East as much as anything. I guess I don't believe in Embiid anymore, so I'm just going to have fun watching Maxey hoop.