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

he was tall as hell tbf

but he couldn't go to his left

re both terry & KD, this year more than any i feel myself crying out for an NBA version of WAR that is as good as what we have for baseball bcuz i need a way to situate everyone who is having a career year w/in the context of the rest of the league. all these guards including rozier are having the best seasons of their careers but how much better are they in relation to the rest of the league than they were in previous seasons? if rising tides are lifting all boats then the numbers need more context to tell us which of these boats are actually doing something beyond just riding the wave

would be nice

terry is good imo quality rotation guy can start on a good team does a lot of stuff, his defense has slipped with age and being on the hornets but the heat can prob get him back in shape

in the old nba hes prob more of a 16-4-5 as a third option guy

his numbers this year are prob inflated not just by the general nba sitch but also by playing on the hornets where other teams dont really have to try their hardest and hes prob also just having a good year

they definitely need his skill set & he has at least been on non joke teams previously in his career

re both terry & KD, this year more than any i feel myself crying out for an NBA version of WAR that is as good as what we have for baseball bcuz i need a way to situate everyone who is having a career year w/in the context of the rest of the league. all these guards including rozier are having the best seasons of their careers but how much better are they in relation to the rest of the league than they were in previous seasons? if rising tides are lifting all boats then the numbers need more context to tell us which of these boats are actually doing something beyond just riding the wave

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, January 23, 2024 11:53 AM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is basically what the adjusted plus-minus numbers like EPM attempt to nail down. his true shooting is tied for his career high, but to your point, that 58% was 63rd percentile 3 years ago and now it’s just dead average, overall league shooting just keeps getting better and better. estimated wins is the the WAR equivalent (basically a simple conversation of EPM based on minutes played). the basketball value stats aren’t as well validated as the baseball ones for various reasons but EPM and EW are probably the best all in one stats out there

https://imgur.com/a/haZKRcH

getting terry rozier makes sense although i’m a little confused about how he and herro will/will not work together.

it kinda doesn't in the same way that putting any two small guards together seems like a bad idea these days but i'd imagine in playoff crunch time and such it will be an either/or situation b/w those two guys as the guard around jimmy, bam, & two of their wings

yeah maybe start them both run herro with bench units to provide scoring then generally finish with terry for defensive purposes unless you need herros firepower, herro basically functions as a sixth man

i understand why both herro & the heat have wanted to make him a starter but i just think you'd be hard pressed to find a player whose skillset more loudly screams "sixth man!" and so if he eventually gets nudged back into that role i think it will be good for everyone

Given that it's Spo and Riley, they have a plan they're working on with this Rozier trade.

their plan is to win the nba playoffs

and they think they know how to make that happen using Rozier

presumably hes just a simple upgrade from cooked lowry

maybe they got him to leverage the scary terry persona

it only activates in the playoffs so charlotte couldn't use it

intersting detail

the Dallas game operations crew responded to Dončić’s misfortune by replaying the clip of Brown dropping him on the Jumbotron. Granted, it wasn’t their fault. Mavericks minority governor Mark Cuban signaled for it to be replayed, something he does frequently, presumably believing the video would prove it was some sort of push-off or foul. But an irate Tim Hardaway Jr. still walked over to the scorer’s table. “Are we home or away?” he screamed, with a few more expletives added in for emphasis.

lol yes Brown said “whoever did that should be fired”

sorry mark

WHAT

The Milwaukee Bucks are firing head coach Adrian Griffin, sources tell @TheAthletic @Stadium. pic.twitter.com/uQESJrkOP3

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) January 23, 2024

BEING BACK BUD

er bring even

they are 30-13 wow

what the fuck??

Milwaukee Bucks will strongly consider Doc Rivers, league sources tell @NBAonTNT, @BleacherReport.

— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) January 23, 2024

That’s legit wild. Giannis must’ve said this is not the guy behind the scenes

🐦[Milwaukee Bucks will strongly consider Doc Rivers, league sources tell @NBAonTNT🕸, @BleacherReport🕸.
— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) January 23, 2024🕸]🐦

lol

^^^

I did look it up and the Bucks are only 25th the league in Ubuntu rating this year, was time to make a change

wild to fire a guy this soon cant recall anything like it, even crazier when the team is winning, prob the right move tho he seemed like a bad coach, kudos to the bucks for cutting bait i guess, im assuming theres gotta be some bad interpersonal behind the scenes stuff going on too there was already the stotts situation

Giannis is definitely Lebron-level player-GM at this point huh?

feel like dame might be in the mix here too he hasnt looked happy on the bucks and stotts was his guy

guess there have been a couple faster firings tark the shark only lasted 20 games https://www.sportskeeda.com/basketball/the-5-nba-head-coaches-with-the-shortest-tenures-sstl

yeah I remember hearing last month that Brook also was getting frustrated with him. imo the big issue is this team can't figure it out on defense, they're giving up 120 a game which I think is 6th worst in the league, and even if going from Jrue -> Dame is a downgrade on that end there's no reason why a team with Giannis & Brook should be that bad. I've heard a lot of smart basketball people claim Griffin's defensive rotations were really bad and I guess we're at the point of the season where that really oughta be cleaned up

on one of his recent podcasts i think the one w/ simmons that was about championship pressure or w/e zach lowe mentioned during a discussion about the bucks that adrian griffin was not by any stretch a consensus choice w/in that organization. so while i of course do not doubt that giannis & dame exert a lot of influence over the organization i wouldn't be surprised if we find out this is related to a front office power struggle that transcends the players. or everyone from the players to the front office just agreed he needed to go

🐦[Milwaukee Bucks will strongly consider Doc Rivers, league sources tell @NBAonTNT🕸, @BleacherReport🕸.
— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) January 23, 2024🕸]🐦

im sensing a failure to close out a first round series vs the knicks up 3-2

guess there have been a couple faster firings tark the shark only lasted 20 games https://www.sportskeeda.com/basketball/the-5-nba-head-coaches-with-the-shortest-tenures-sstl

― lag∞n, Tuesday, January 23, 2024 2:06 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

right but they all had losing records outside of Rudy who was sick, Bucks otoh are winning 70% of their games and are firmly in the #2 seed, idk a move like this might be unprecedented

in retrospect hiring this guy in the first place was really the bizarre move, like even before Dame you'd think Milwaukee would be a pretty sought-after gig, and instead they go with a rookie HC who no other team was really interested in. did they even pursue Nick Nurse? idk what's going on there but this has the potential to turn into a really odd bad vibes situation that blows up at a bad time, which you'd think was the Clippers' destiny

yeah I remember hearing last month that Brook also was getting frustrated with him. imo the big issue is this team can't figure it out on defense, they're giving up 120 a game which I think is 6th worst in the league, and even if going from Jrue -> Dame is a downgrade on that end there's no reason why a team with Giannis & Brook should be that bad. I've heard a lot of smart basketball people claim Griffin's defensive rotations were really bad and I guess we're at the point of the season where that really oughta be cleaned up

― frogbs, Tuesday, January 23, 2024 3:09 PM (two minutes ago)

there has been misalignment from the beginning insofar as the entire point of firing bud was to bring in a coach who would be more of a defensive tactician & then like 3 games into griffin implementing his defensive tactics all the bucks players were publicly like "ok maybe not those ones haha..." i think ultimately the bucks front office just made a calamitous evaluation of griffin but how much did the bucks players *actually* want to move on from bud? there were stepdad vibes to this whole thing & i'm wondering if that was actually a griffin problem

and then after all that ending up w/ doc rivers is a major red flag

word was that giannis wanted him right

lol doc is unkillable hell be bouncing between coaching and broadcasting until the sun envelops the earth

I always thought they moved on from Bud too quickly, I mean yeah I get it if you're the 1 seed and you lose to the 8 then something's gotta change, but that 8 seed wound up destroying the team everyone thought Milwaukee was gonna lose to in the ECF, plus they were missing Giannis for 3 games in that series while Jimmy was playing historically great basketball. not only that but we found out Bud's brother died right as the playoffs were starting which might explain why he seemed so checked out. I mean maybe getting rid of him was the right move but they took no time to think about it, which was odd because he had just won a title with them 2 years prior

was odd because he had just won a title with them 2 years prior

― frogbs, Tuesday, January 23, 2024 3:24 PM (twenty seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

meant to add yeah seems fast

bucks are in a tight spot suspect theyre about to learn that the bad defense is not a coaching issue

maybe they can get a lil better idk

a funny thing that hadn't crystalized for me until now is that when they fired bud it was kinda like "well, we need to do *something*" and changing the coach was the obvious something. but that assumption rests on the notion that you don't want to or can't alter the roster but... then they went and made a huge trade that changed the roster over in a huge way too. so like, did you really want to change the coach? or...?