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

brunson

Nuggets shoulda paid Bruce brown

Gary Payton jr is gonna be bragging to his kids, grandkids and great grandkids about this block. Wemby is 13" or 14" taller.

GP2 SWATTED WEMBY 😮 pic.twitter.com/Z2SLXt5rwC

— 95.7 The Game (@957thegame) November 25, 2023

lol no way are the Warriors gonna blow this

DEVIN BOOKER FADEAWAY 3 FOR THE LEAD ‼️

1.7 seconds remaining Knicks ball...

Suns-Knicks | Live on the NBA App
📲 https://t.co/1VIDFw6r0U pic.twitter.com/O77I2jielr

— NBA (@NBA) November 27, 2023

sick shot especially when you consider who he was on the court with

lol man booker is ice cold, amazing

grizzlies at 3-13, seems over...if ja comes back at 6-19 or something i don't know how much of a run you can really go on in the west this year

yeah they're done

ja fall from grace really is some shit

they are probably totally fucked, but even still you’d expect them to finish ahead of portland and utah, who are only 1 and 2 games ahead of them in the standings, respectively

if you clear those teams out, memphis would need to finish ahead of two of the following teams to get into the play in: clippers, pelicans, rockets, lakers, kings, mavs. (i’d prob consider the remaining teams — wolves, thunder, suns, nuggets — to be playoff locks.) it’s not impossible but it’s definitely unlikely. they will prob need a months long injury from one or two of those other teams

long term i think they’re probably ok — ja should be fine once he gets back on the court. they have 2 other really good young players. but i think a lesson they do have to take away from this season, even taking injury into account, is that their roster around those 3 guys isn’t as good as they thought

maybe ja is learning to shoot in his time off

yeah let’s hope not — oh wait you mean the other kind of shooting

ayy

he did shoot 41% from 3 (13-39) in round 1 last year

if he can do that all the time its good

he'd be the best player in the league

if he could get to the point where hes really hunting threes and hitting them yeah hed be a top guy

9 game losing streak vs. 13 game losing streak. it’s all come down to this. pic.twitter.com/4CJOTM92Li

— jeff (@DedicationHoops) November 27, 2023

appointment viewing for sure

long term i think they’re probably ok — ja should be fine once he gets back on the court. they have 2 other really good young players. but i think a lesson they do have to take away from this season, even taking injury into account, is that their roster around those 3 guys isn’t as good as they thought

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Monday, November 27, 2023 12:01 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I‘m pretty bearish on them long-term, they’re in a conference with several other ascendant teams and they don’t have a real 1A guy. starting next year they’ll probably be a perennial playoff team but as far as championship contention goes they’re never going to have the best player on the floor in a late-round playoff series, and they’re going to be paying ja as if he’s that guy

https://twittervx.com/BiasedSlightly/status/1729305452725367274

^ the other definition of "out of his mind shooting"

hahahaha what a dummy

I‘m pretty bearish on them long-term, they’re in a conference with several other ascendant teams and they don’t have a real 1A guy. starting next year they’ll probably be a perennial playoff team but as far as championship contention goes they’re never going to have the best player on the floor in a late-round playoff series, and they’re going to be paying ja as if he’s that guy

― k3vin k., Monday, November 27, 2023 5:41 PM (yesterday)

ja's playoff career averages are 27-7-9 on 45/35/76 shooting. he needs to up the efficiency/three shooting a bit but he's been a pretty great playoff performer given his age. he's been the best player in enough playoff games that i'm not ready to say he can't be the best player in a high level playoff series 3-5 years from now

i mean here are 3 games he played against the eventual champion warriors in the second round before getting hurt

game 1 - 34-9-10, 14-31 FG, 4-11 3PT, 2-3 FT, -1 in a 1 point loss
game 2 - 47-8-8, 15-31 FG, 5-12 3PT, 12-13, FT, +13 in a 5 point win
game 3 - 34-3-7, 13-21 FG, 4-7 3PT, 4-5, FT, -6 in a 30 point loss

and then he broke his wrist. he wasn't the best player in the series bcuz that was steph so i can't refute that aspect but these are incredibly good games vs the team that would win it all as the lead guy at the age of 22. he also had 3 steals in each game.

he had a 45-9-13 on 13-26 shooting game and a 31-10-7 on 13-26 shooting game vs the lakers in round 1 last year

if the argument is that ja is a hothead and you can't win a title w/ a guy like that as your best player & leader that's one thing but he has a pretty strong track record of legit playoff performances at a very young age. he can also get to the basket at the end of games & all that. the idea that you can just go under the pick & roll on him can get you burned in real playoff games, he's already shown.

i guess we'll see how it all plays out. i doubt we'll get a lot of info this year on ja as a playoff performer. so then you're looking to the following playoffs at which point those games against the warriors will be 3 years in the rearview. maybe he never gets that magic back etc. it's entirely possible. but the only guy in his age group w/ anywhere near this level of playoff performance so far is luka

the idea that ja can't be the best player in a playoff series gets back to the thing i was talking about recently about how every team needs 2 guys basically so this whole prism of "do you have the best guy on the floor" feels limiting unless you have like *literally* 1 or 2 guys in the league. so i'm not sure how compelling i find that argument. i'd argue the issue is just as much how good desmond bane and JJJ are then it is how good ja is. because ja was in all likelihood going to be a back to back all NBA player before the gun stuff. those other two guys are not at that level.

like let's project out the best players on some teams in the west 3-5 years from now

denver - jokic
dallas - luka
suns - booker
okc - shai
wolves - ant
kings - fox
spurs - wemby

the only guy on this list who i'm like "yeah he can just put the entire team on his back and win the title" is jokic. every other guy on this list luka included needs the "second star." i don't think anyone would say that ja is better than booker right now -- booker didn't win shit until chris paul showed up and now has a super team assembled around him in the hopes he can get back out of round 2. shai, edwards, ja, fox, luka are all in the same boat to me -- we could argue all day and night about who is better but it's very hard for me to look at ja's playoff track record vs these other guys and just say that there's no way he can be better than them in high level playoff series down the road. maybe you're just really down on ja's game, i dunno.

i think it's pretty interesting to look at ja-bane-JJJ vs shai-williams-chet. which trio do you like better? is it because you think shai is a lot better than ja, or bcuz chet is a lot better than JJJ? if OKC wins two or three titles and memphis wins none will it be because of the quality of their best player or the fact that memphis has swung and missed on a bunch of role player first round picks and OKC controls the most draft picks in NBA history?

i'd bet against ja winning a title bcuz most teams just don't. but to me memphis' issue is not the quality of its best player it's the rest of that roster & the assets the GM has already burned through acquiring players who aren't currently very good & don't project to be very good

well, i should clarify that obviously ja is a huge issue for memphis for off the court reasons and of course that may derail his career and the entire enterprise. but i don't sense that's the point being made here.

horrible loss at home by a fully healthy clippers team to denver w/o jokic or murray. good lord

clippers missing the playoffs and coughing up their pick to playoff team okc is kind of incredible?

jordan very otm all around. ja def good enough to go toe to toe with the best. but that org is already showing they wont pay to fill out the roster so i have a hard time taking them seriously. letting solid rotation players/winners like slomo, dillon, tyus and melton walk for nothing is just bad business.

banes contract kicks in next year going from 3M to 34M. worth it obv but its gonna be even harder to retain rotation level dudes in a small market that doesnt want to spend.

in other news the fully healthy lakers got 44 pieced by the 76ers

In other other news the fully healthy clippers got smacked by the nuggets sans Jokic Murray and Gordon. Deandre Jordan 21/13/5/2/1 reggie Jackson 35/5/13/2 amazing stuff

Embiid had 30/11/11 in 30 mins.

Sixers had an extremely fluky shooting game - Pat Bev and Marcus Morris shot a combined 8/13 from 3 - they will beat anyone when that happens.

i think the thing with ja in the playoffs is if he continues to be a not that good of a shooter it just makes him much easier to scheme against, play off him and have another guy lurking behind his defender, which doesnt mean he cant still succeed hes a great player but if he could shoot the whole thing would be a lot easier, and the non shooting is hard on his body since he has to do crazy drives all the time to be his best self

but that org is already showing they wont pay to fill out the roster so i have a hard time taking them seriously. letting solid rotation players/winners like slomo, dillon, tyus and melton walk for nothing is just bad business.

― infinite wiggles (Spottie), Tuesday, November 28, 2023 1:25 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

and yeah this is bad

yeah like lots of other teams the grizzlies would need a rock solid 1-7 or 1-8 rotation to make it deep in the playoffs and they’ve definitely been going backwards in that regard. if the player development was working they would look really smart and financially prudent, but currently all their recent draft picks kind of suck.

i think we’re also seeing jjj plateau a bit and where he lands is looking a little disappointing.

i'm not as convinced that there's some huge issue w/ ja's shot. his 3PT FG% in the playoffs the last 3 years has gone 32% -> 34% -> 42%. obv it's all small samples (he's taken 112 total threes in the playoffs) and the regular season 3PT% is all over the place so i'm not gonna say that trajectory should be taken as gospel. but we're not talking about a broken shot here or something. if he actually establishes himself as a 36-38% shooter from three in the playoffs, given the nature of most of his attempts, he will be hard to stop

i think the thing w/ him is just that the blatantly obvious defensive strategy is to go under a pick bcuz going over a pick on him makes no sense at all. but it's not like that's some foolproof plan to victory, again just referencing some of those big games from the last few years he can make you pay from back there. what level of consistency he can find feels like the crux of the whole situation. but i think you can say the same things about fox (career 32% 3PT) and shai (career 35% 3PT) at the very least... ant looks like he might be a more reliable three point shooter but also it's the same sorta deal of what else are you gonna do except go under and hope he misses

jas a pretty bad shooter basically teams dont even guard him on the line, whatever % hes shooting is all on looks a teams wouldnt dream of giving a good shooter or prob even a decent one

i dunno, maybe. if you couldn't give him open looks at 3 he would prob be the best offensive guard in the NBA.

starting from the 22 playoffs (the MIN, GS & LAL series) he's 30 of his last 81 from 3 (37%). maybe that's just a total fluke, i don't know. there's games where he's made 4, 5, 4 and 6 threes... could be blind luck. there's also ones where he's made 0 and 1 threes. a few makes or misses in either direction would skew the overall number. but the way he's performed in the playoffs isn't lining up w/ what you guys are describing it, so the argument is basically "i just don't believe in it." which is cool. totally could be right. i'm more open minded on this one

ja also has the stuff you can't teach, he can get by anyone, has made a number of big plays at the rim in the playoffs, getting shots at the end of games all that shit ppl fetishize about the nba. shooting can be learned or at least is so variance dependent that he can go on hot streaks that effectively make him a different player for a series

in other news the fully healthy lakers got 44 pieced by the 76ers

? They didn't have Vanderbilt or Reddish or Hachimura.

Not sayin' those guys are world-beaters of course

anyone still left on austin reeves island?

he averaged 15-5-6 on 50/36/86 shooting in november... you guys have a really weird thing w/ him that i don't quite understand. well, he is a white guy on the lakers so i guess i get it. but you guys are just off on this one, sorry to say

there's some stuff he needs to figure out role-wise, how he can play w/ lebron along w/ being the 6th man type role, he needs to get the scoring up closer to 20 ppg, not a perfect player etc but he isn't one of their problems

in other news the fully healthy lakers got 44 pieced by the 76ers
? They didn't have Vanderbilt or Reddish or Hachimura.

― reggae mike love (polyphonic), Tuesday, November 28, 2023 10:49 AM (forty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

meant the main guys (really just lebron and AD and our boy reeves) but i guess cam and rui are a couple of the main rotation guys my bad

Reaves also got trapped last night on the baseline by the ghosts of Pat Bev and Robert Covington. Sources say they took some of his lunch money, too.

Actually I think it was the sideline, but I like saying baseline.

we were promised more than 15-5-6