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

The Bucks have had a rough week or so. They got smacked around by Indiana twice as the Pacers (20-15) showed they don’t fear Milwaukee at all. Then, the Bucks barely beat the Spurs (5-30) while providing a highlight reel for Victor Wembanyama. And, after their 112-108 loss Saturday night in Houston (18-16), Giannis Antetokounmpo decided to call out everybody on the team:

“We have to be better. We have to play better. We have to defend better. We have to trust one another better. We have to be coached better. Every single thing, everybody has to be better. Everybody. It starts from the equipment manager. He has to wash our clothes better. The bench has to be better. The leaders of the team have to be more vocal.

“We have to make more shots. We have to defend better. We have to have better strategy. We have to be better… We have four months to get better, so let’s see.”

dont let that equipment manager get away with anything stay on him

I mean, I think KAT and Rudy are just disliked so much that it colors perceptions, to me the whole key to the problem is Jaden's lack of offensive production, they are banking on him being a two way player and he's not been that so far.

that and we need another shooter

the problems with rudy imo are wolves gave up and are paying a ton for a guy whos a zero on offense thats the main thing you cant treat a defensive specialist like a superstar hes just not one, and then also theyve got a logjam in the front court

yeah he has to be your 3rd star if you consider him a star

which i guess he is there but they need one of their first 2 stars to not be kat then

if the clippers don't get it done this year which i don't think there's any reason to believe they will i still think the paul george trade should be considered worse just because SGA will be better than any player traded in or any player drafted with a pick in both the george and gobert trade.

they really should cash in on towns while he’s playing well

xp

the pg trade was def dicey but there was a viable idea there that got done in by injuries, no one thought shai was headed to all nba status all star maybe, but a lot of all nba guys werent projected to get there thats why teams dont like to trade their good young players, when the heat were trying to trade for shaq the lakers wanted just completed his rookie season wade in the trade and the general consensus was like yeah he looks good but youre getting shaq its worth it, the heat refused to #tradewade and the rest is history

so i think the pg trade was a better idea where the gobert trade was doa but moving shai was a bigger mistake so idk i think i still dislike the gobert move more just cause the upside wasnt there

they really should cash in on towns while he’s playing well

― truly humbled underdog (k3vin k.), Monday, January 8, 2024 12:44 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah the time to trade kat is exactly now before his new huge contract kicks in but they wont do it theyre playing too well

none of the players the wolves gave up, with the exception of kessler's future development, are really anything more than roster filler guys

obv George is a better overall player than Rudy but I feel like Rudy has actually played great this year, despite his ILH reputation

KAT is a tough one, it does feel like he needs to be moved, I guess I was going into the season thinking he would be (thought the signing of Naz Reid to a deal was the precursor to that) but then after last year went way worse than anyone thought this year has gone way better than anyone thought so do they have the appetite to blow it up is a big question

i also don't fully understand how any teams are going to work financially in the future with this apron stuff seems crazy

rudy has played well hes been a very good regular season floor raiser his whole career, he plays a ton of minutes and protects the heck out of the rim, the problem is the playoffs where he just has no counters when teams scheme against him, you can put a 6-8 guy on him and he cant do anything about it

i get that and it's an issue but still i think if the idea that jaden was going to be the pippin to ant's jordan then this as the kids say this ain't it chief

that's been the biggest problem to me

https://i.postimg.cc/bwFTx620/Screen-Shot-2024-01-08-at-11-57-34-AM.png

having a bunch of other bad offensive players on the team def compounds the problem

its hard to play any guys who arent offensive threats these days

i also don't fully understand how any teams are going to work financially in the future with this apron stuff seems crazy

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, January 8, 2024 12:53 PM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

seems like whats going to happen is contenders will just pay out the nose until their teams fall apart due to the various harsh second apron restrictions and then i guess get relegated, and everyone else will avoid the aprons like the plague which will be interesting from a how much guys get paid standpoint unclear how thatll play out

It starts from the equipment manager. He has to wash our clothes better.

stole this from twitter but: that seems pretty harsh on thanasis

lmao

giannis is such a doofus man when he tries to be serious it just doesnt come out right

he’s got lebron brain unfortunately

re: KAT trades, would orlando be interested in him for a couple of their young guys (prob thinking about suggs, isaac?)

dont think paulo and kat would be a good fit, also gotta get more back for kat imho

knicks are the ones who are always rumored to want kat, problem is they dont have any guys would have to be randle and picks which isnt what the wolves need, maybe could work with a third team idk seems tough

tho i guess the knicks prob want to keep randle expirings and a bunch of picks prob would be easier with a third team anyway

problem with this situation is the thing the wovles need a good two way wing is the same thing every team needs, maybe they can get siakam

will you look at that

https://i.imgur.com/6ZVxYXc.png

wolves should target lauri imo

NBA teams do lots of stupid stuff so never say never but KAT strikes me as the single most untradeable player in the league so i'm not really sure how they would even go about cashing him in

who is looking at KAT w/ 4 years and $220 million on his deal, w/ his own team saying that at best he needs to be the third most important player on the team in order for them to succeed, and saying "not only do we want to take this contract on but we want to give up assets in order to do so" ... i seriously can't picture one team except maybe the true desperate backwaters like detroit & charlotte but idk how you're doing it w/out taking back bad money and/or attaching assets to KAT, which the wolves can't even do bcuz they have nothing to trade

im personally not a kat fan but my sense is he still has admirers in the league, i mean hes a seven footer who can shoot threes and dribble people like that

the big guy they could actually trade for stuff to balance out their roster is naz reid but there's no way they would do that

KAT for randle is one i would do in a heartbeat if i was minny bcuz you save a lot of money and can easily bench randle in the playoffs w/o feeling bad. the knicks need bigs really bad

KAT for gordon hayward works salary wise... how desperate/dumb is the new ownership in charlotte?

KAT for trae as the new generation version of the wall/westbrook trade? i actually don't hate that one except making ant edwards play w/ prob trae alters the entire course of NBA history

don't think the knicks would do kat for randle at this point, tbh. two months ago i would've leapt for that

Lamelo/KAT could be an interesting pairing

if the wovles were just gonna dump kat for whatever then itd prob be better to trade reid instead and get a good return

lamelo/KAT would def set the concept of "winning basketball" back like 175 years and for that reason i find it intriguing

also this situation where three of their top four guys are bigs really needs to be sorted, you have to be able to play all your best players at the same time on a basketball team

― lag∞n, Monday, January 8, 2024 11:32 AM (three hours ago)

i wanna go back to this bcuz it's really one of the most perplexing questions in the NBA to me -- are the wolves playing chess in having a roster where "flexibility" means having to bench one of your two most highly paid players ... or is it a really bad idea and if you're paying guys that much money they need to be able to be on the floor together all the time in the playoffs? i suspect it's the second thing but maybe it's the first???

i think its just they didnt know naz biggy jelly reid was gonna be this good

"highly paid" is something that only really matters for next season, not the current season. so it can be both, on different timeframes

kat is good and offers a really unique skillset. they do not need to dump him, he for sure has value around the league. he seems to be ok moving into the 2nd banana behind ant role, which sometimes young stars tend to fight hard against. most of the negative talk about kat/gobert revolves around playoff success, where neither of them have been good, and both for vastly different reason. kats playoff problems (dumb fouls, pressing too hard, over emotional) seem a lot more fixable than goberts (easily gets played off the court vs the best small ball lineups). but with how spread out the talent is across the league, i dont think they should do anything drastic right now, they have as good a shot as any of the 2nd tier teams (top tier being celtics and nuggets)

i think their goal at this point should simply be to make the conference finals and then once theyve proven they're real enough for that then they can figure out what else they need

yeah

lamelo/KAT would def set the concept of "winning basketball" back like 175 years and for that reason i find it intriguing

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Monday, January 8, 2024 2:36 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is the type of thing the denver nuggets or new jersey nets would have unironically tried in like 1992

kat is good and offers a really unique skillset. they do not need to dump him, he for sure has value around the league.

the reality of the situation is that these statements might feel true in a vacuum, but less so when you consider his salary. the notion that "you trade contracts not players" has rarely felt as apt to me as when discussing KAT. cuz if you're really trying to tell me that KAT has value on his contract then we disagree deeply about this subject

most of the negative talk about kat/gobert revolves around playoff success

i also think that with KAT it's two fold -- one is that he was the no 1 overall pick and his team was never good w/ him on it until they drafted another guy no 1 overall. so it was a regular season issue that has become a playoff issue now that other guys came around to put KAT in the position to have his playoff performance scrutinized

but there is also something more bedrock about KAT's place in the league. like fundamentally speaking -- what position does he play? can he play 5? or do you have to pair him w/ a center? what are the deficiencies of his that need to be covered up vs what are the ones that you can live with? how much is his shooting worth vs what he gives back on defense? if he is one of the two best players on your team, how far are you getting?

he's in his 9th season in the league and i find these very basic questions about him to be unanswerable

i just think there are plenty of teams that could talk themselves into kat, even w his contract. hes the best shooting big man of all time, after all. i agree with you tho.

hes the best shooting big man of all time

Wilt could get the ball through the hoop, too, you know. He had a real knack for the famous "dunk" shot. I hear one time he scored 100 points in a single game using his shooting ability.

You overlook the "shooting" qualifier?