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

yeah i dont if its a new rule or just an emphasis but theres some language around you have to do it blatantly or some such

ah hm thx

probably a fair change except when the nuggets would have benefited imo

extremely entertaining nuggets/hawks game

nuggets have had a few not so great clutch performances recently

man that challenge by snyder might be one of the worst ever from a leverage perspective

spurs lose their 17th straight. at this point im convinced that only wemby is a real nba player.

93-82 is a 1998 ass score

the difference was in 1998 they were the team scoring 93

genuinely a bit of tension brewing here as no one playing the Spurs or Pistons wants to be the one to break the streak. and the longer it goes the more tense it will get. remember the Suns losing 28 straight to tie the record and it kinda being must-see hoops? I mean come on this is at least as meaningful as the in-season tournament

spurs and pistons play each other on january 10

genuinely hope neither win a game until then. if so I would probably treat this like a Finals game

hell yeah lol

spurs about to get ye olde lakers on the 2nd night of a back to back, thats probably their best chance isnt it. meanwhile pistons are playing the sixers twice and then the bucks

shams says that toronto is really serious about trading og and pascal now, guess we will see, both of them are unrestricted this summer and og wont sign an extension with a new team due to it being much less than he could make on a new contract, pacers and sixers will prob have max room this summer which makes it a lil different than most years where only bad teams have room, kind of a weird sitch seems like toronto wont get a great return if they do make a move, especially compared to what they couldve gotten if they made a trade say this time last year, pacers picking up og in free agency would be very great for them

more infos in this hollinger quasi article https://theathletic.com/5129813/2023/12/12/pascal-siakam-trade-rumors-raptors-situation/

non paywalled vers https://archive.ph/1oQYo

lots of speculation about a hawks deal in there

time for the fabled siakam-randle trade

it feels like something is hitting a breaking point there, some of the big raptors writers were despair tweeting last night

The Raptors have lost 6 of 7 to teams they thought they'd be in the mix with in the East.

They don't have a key strength to lean on when games get tough, at least not one the roster construction lets shine.

The Knicks felt comfortable.

Repeat.https://t.co/07diEVlvBr

— Blake Murphy (@BlakeMurphyODC) December 12, 2023

I didn't like the deal then, but I couldn't have guessed how much the Poeltl trade has complicated the path forward.

— (((Eric Koreen))) (@ekoreen) December 12, 2023

as alluring as it is on paper, there's just no evidence that this siakam/OG/barnes core can be the engine of anything more than an extremely mediocre basketball team

having two of your big three be dubious shooters is not the recipe for 2023 nba success

3 guys who are not quite all star level isnt a very intimidating Big Three

yeah i mean siakim has been a solid allstar barnes could certainly get there og is maybe borderline but siakim and barnes primes are just not going to overlap much if at all

they couldve gotten such a haul for siakim if they traded him a couple years ago

can certainly understand not wanting to trade an all nba guy they are hard to find but still

feel like masai bought fully into the idea that it’s a wings league, you can never have too many wings etc but maybe it turns out that your three best players all playing the same position is not actually a great idea

yeah you look at the wings teams celtics clips rap the returns have been a lil underwhelming, tho not totally conclusive

what you really want is a big two way wing with elite guard skills, doesnt really exist outside lebron

yeah i had the same thought about brown & tatum as i was typing that, there is clearly more there but there’s been a similar sorta longterm tension over whether it’s the best idea

yeah i dont think its optimal on offense at least, in general the celtics are just trying to win by putting overwhelming talent on the court at this point rather than optimizing posistionally, and to their credit they have managed to get a lot of talent

guards who can break down the defense play fast shoot make passes etc are still really good, big wings who can do things are good too but they dont make the offense pop in the same way

obvs if you can get a jokic-embiid-giannis type guy youre laughing too but thats not that easy

its not that brown and tatum get in each others way particularly just that having some of their possessions in an as good as them guards hands might make the offense more gooder, tho obvs the celtics have had a lot of success could easily win the this year are 12-1 with their starting five etc, but still a really good guard is nice more of an offensive engine than wings are generally capable of

downside with guards is they tend to be more vulnerable on defense

yeah i think the ideal is a PG skill set in a non PG’s body … i’ve become pretty convinced over the last year or so that you really need someone who can run your offense in tight spots. maybe that sounds obvious but that point guard steadiness is so paramount for contending teams imo … it was prob what separated the heat and celtics last year. obv jokic is the cheat code for providing everything a PG brings from that perspective w/ the size, rebounding etc of an elite 5

nuggs have murray too tho

yeah but he’s a shooting guard imo

murrays more of a scoring guard than a natural pg tho

the issue with jaylen and tatum is that neither of them has quite enough PG skills. career high of 4.6 APG for tatum is not quite where you want it to be & we know jaylen’s A/TO issues etc

idk if steadiness or point guardness is exactly it, like i dont think mike conley even in his peak memphis state is doing that much for your crunch time offense even tho hes a classically steady point, i think the thing a really good guard can bring via a combination of handle shooting scoring speed and playmaking is just the abilty to always bend a defense, wings cause theyre slower and never have quite the handle just cant attack as well particularly under heavy crunch time duress, murray even tho hes not nearly an mvp level guy basically has the ideal mix with the exception of not being an elite passer

and yeah playmaking is the big problem with the tatum brown duo, which isnt exactly a positional thing, but it kind of is

jrue should be running hte offense more than he has been

you dont get too many of those classic pg high assist rate low-to-medium scoring guys anymore. maybe cade is supposed to be closer to one of these if he had actual nba players to pass it to

yeah i would love to see jrue and white initiating the offense much more than they are and get the jays particularly jaylen the ball in the flow where they have an advantage, somehow in this day and age its become the standard to have star perimeter players on the ball all the time which imo isnt necessarily the best

the classic point guard is dead just cause these days you need to be able to really score in order to put enough pressure on the defense to make plays, like marcus smart is a really good passer but it doesnt matter since his scoring is so bad he cant bend the defense enough get in spots to make good passes

those last two posts might be related lol

surely off ball movement can bend the defense too if the guys moving are huge scoring threats

it can but its just not as reliable one sick ass little man with the rock in his hands

even bron spent most of his career sharing the court with a pg

imagine a dwyane wade who could shoot in todays game my lord

btw its too bad the wiz had to play the pistons otherwise theyd be right in the mix of this losing streak battle, feel like we need a new stat thats losing streak not including playing the wiz spurs or pistons