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

feel like im seeing this sentiment around, people unwilling to come to grips with just how bad the bucks perimeter defensive talent is, having said that do they have room for improvement, absolutely, can they improve as much as they need to, no, will doc rivers max out their improvement, also no

the other thing too when comparing them to i.e. denver, sacramento, and cleveland is that those teams are very young whereas the bucks are very old. we *think* that for xyz reasons the bucks can get close enough to where they were on defense under bud, but the rim is being protected by a 35 year old, the point of attack defender is 33, the wing defender is 32

yuup

i mean?

https://i.imgur.com/kl4dA2P.png

then youre playing four on five on offense but something like that might be the best way forward

I mean the Bucks do pretty well with Giannis & Dame just taking 70% of the shots so yeah maybe

imo they need to take 2-3 fliers over trying to just get one guy. if you look at their top 8 in MPG this year it's

dame
giannis
brook
beasley
middleton
crowder
portis
connaughton

last year beasley was banished from the playoff rotation, crowder was a total zero, and connaughton and portis were both non entities in the miami series. imo they have 4 guys and potentially nobody good enough in spots 5-8, which is a big problem

maybe they get a 5th guy and two of portis, connaughton, crowder, beasley can give them 10 decent mpg and that's the 7 man rotation they ride with but ummm... yeah....

yeah its a tough sitch they just dont have a lot of flexibility to make moves, maybe they can pickup a bought out guy but lux tax teams can only get buyout players who made midlevel or less now

on either zach lowe pod or hop collective pod they were talking about what the bucks have to trade and the answer is basically nothing

They could trade Lillard :)

#tradedame

no teams that can afford lillard want lillard. it's a known problem.

bucks are just a classic dead-ended team at the end of their window, they can still compete but they'll get worse every year until they reset

i think they can still win it this year, either way i think we'll get a good indication this playoffs whether that's remotely possible in the subsequent years

I think they got one more good year left, after which they would probably be smart to try to move Giannis, I mean I love the dude but I do not see how they're gonna be able to compete beyond 2025

they might be smart to but is there actually any chance of that route if he doesn't ask for it, would the fanbase revolt? he might be second only to curry in the player-team intertwined identity dept

i don't think the bucks will ever trade giannis unless he tells them to & honestly if i were them i would ride out his contract and if he walks so be it. that's probably going to be your best chance at winning a title in the next 10 years even if you traded him for a boatload of picks *and* those picks turned out to be good *and* you made good choices w/ those picks

probably not but who knows this new ownership group has done a lot of odd things

if they crash and burn in the playoffs like lose in round 1 or 4-1 or 4-2 in round 2 i could definitely see them putting dame back on the market given what his contract starts to look like, bcuz if you can't win w/ him in any of the next two years you need to get off that deal asap

just looked it up again and dame has a 2/121 extension that doesn't kick in until after next season good gracious

couple bad things for the bucks are the east has a bunch of good teams this year and jrue went to the celtics

one would imagine bucks fo were kicking themselves hard when jrue ended up back on a conference rival

yeah they prob couldve worked out a three teamer where jrue went west but they really didnt want the trade to leak so they left it up to portland

just looked it up again and dame has a 2/121 extension that doesn't kick in until after next season good gracious

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, January 24, 2024 3:03 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

thats the one portland gave him for no reason lol

zach lowe asked on his pod if the bucks would just hit do over on the trade if they could, go back to jrue and grayson and their assets and just add to that team. i still think there is more upside w/ the dame team the answer to that question may actually be an unequivocal yes

hard to say what they couldve put together, they were in desperate need of a #2 scorer which isnt the easiest guy to get, but they did end up going all in on a #1 scorer

pdx extended dame that time just to prove they loved him unconditionally

also as documented recently itt grayson is having quite a year of his own, though i am not sure he'd be shooting 49% from 3 without durant and booker sucking in the defense

maybe they couldve got say dejounte hes not a high level #2 but youd have him jrue and middleton and its prob pretty good, maybe not a realistic move idk but something like that, not sure who was available over the summer

Grayson was pretty good with Milwaukee but kind of unplayable in the playoffs which turned out to be a major problem for them

yeah grayson is a whatever player but where their roster is at he would be getting like 25 mpg for them

yeah he would be nice for them right now

cracking up how much of the messaging around the rozier trade is people repeatedly being like "ok we know what you guys are thinking but we PROMISE he is only going to shoot when he's supposed to" ... there was this weird thing on zach lowe's podcast last week before the trade that must have obviously come from rozier's agent where zach was like "i hear from rozier's camp that he's under no illusions that he's anything more than the 3rd or 4th best player on the heat"

Coach Spo with a similar sentiment to Terry Rozier a bit ago:

“I don’t think he’s going to step in here and overpower. He just wants to complement.”

Said when talking to him: Terry just wants to win

— Brady Hawk (@BradyHawk305) January 24, 2024

scary terry already scaring his new team

scaring the roez(ier)

free terry let terry hoist

not sure why you’d want to stop terry from bombing threes? it’s like the main thing he does well.

At the Bucks game now, man seeing Giannis in person is something

😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/mF2Xx0SWRC

— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) January 25, 2024

mourning griffin

prediction: adrian griffin will never be the head coach of an nba team again

lol xp

has there been any trustworthy intel on why he was fired? clearly it can’t have JUST been an x’s and o’s thing

it kind of seems like it was though? windhorst had the espn bucks/bulls guy on his pod and that guy was saying he was a nice guy and people liked working with him. following the quotes they're all about issues w/strategy and process.

yeah been looking and so far its all just about how the coaching was bad

grizz have been winning games despite the whole team being injured, not sure what their deal is

the blazers are good now

apologies to k3v but the best center in the league is deandre ayton

dominayton

he understands the game mentally because he has put in the hours playing simulations

it kind of seems like it was though? windhorst had the espn bucks/bulls guy on his pod and that guy was saying he was a nice guy and people liked working with him. following the quotes they're all about issues w/strategy and process.

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, January 24, 2024 10:16 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

literally just got to this part of that podcast — something just doesn’t seem like it adds up, the terry stotts thing still looms for me as a red flag and that video of the team dancing is…interesting given the context. but maybe they all just didn’t like him because they knew he was in way over his head and felt the urgency