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

paging m bise: can we get an autocorrect for x.com -> twitter.com ?

the last time luka was in the playoffs he went to the conference finals, so i’d at least let this year play out before i started branding him as a loser. his team tanked against his will (rightfully so, of course) last year, it’s not the same thing

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Monday, February 5, 2024 9:36 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

why'd they tank

the problem with drawing comparisons between harden and luka in terms of heliocentricity and playoff performances is that we may find out the issue wasn’t the heliocentricity it was that james harden has a mental block that causes him to forget how to play basketball in the most important games. not an issue that luka has

tbf harden was one cp3 hammy from a title tho obvs his overall playoff history is very bad

re the mavs run they were a second round quality team who eeked out a win to advance to the conf finals then got wrecked by the eventual champs, its a pretty common pattern, lakers last year for instance, heck the hawks even did it, dont think it says too much about luka either way, other than he is very good at basketball which we already knew, tho i guess it does say that his reg season performance does carry into the playoffs which isnt nothing, but stars who choke in the offs tend to be the exception

we prob wont get too much luka playoff data past the first round for a while tho lol

i do think heliocentric is a bad dumb way to play luka might be able to make it work just through force of talent but doesnt mean its the best approach, iirc saw some stat where he gets worse as games go on which makes a lot of sense having the ball all the time is very taxing, and he plays a very physical style, getting some nice catch and shoot threes no and then how could that not be better than what hes doing, its effect on his teammates is prob greater tho, like how does zinger go from the worst post up player to the best in one season, didnt really watch him dc but i know the celtics work on getting him good looks on switches in his preferred spot, with luka none of the that is happening, youre playing luka ball all the time

that mavs conf finals team did have bruson and zinger three allstars lol

the thing to do would be to play normal basketball for three quarters then unleash fresh helio luka vs a tired defense, but that would require luka to do more offball than stand five feet behind the three point line waiting to get the ball back

also just vibes wise luka making a pass then when his teammate doesnt make a play immediately clapping demanding the ball back and getting upset if it doesnt happen is real bad

its interesting how luka and jokic both get a ton of touches and are elite passers but jokic cares about people and is nice and luka does not

that mavs conference finals run was definitely match up dependent to some degree but luka did average 32-10-7 across 7 games vs phoenix incl 27 in the first half of game 7 on the road so while i agree it doesn’t say much about that mavs team i have to break from you when you argue that it doesn’t say much about luka

i mean he had a great series hes not a choker its not nothing but its also totally in the wheelhouse of a player as good as him in the regular season

like if you told me before that series that he was gonna put up those numbers id be like yeah its doable

luka imho is a perennial mvp candidate who also has a number of big annoying flaws that he doesnt seem to care to improve on, which kinda puts him in the harden russ category, except that hes better than both those guys, with the right team he could win a title im sure, not talking about some perfect unrealistic team either, just a good team that fit well, unfortunately he plays for the mavs whawhaaa

he is harder to build around than other not as flawed top guys tho, but at the end of the day being unstoppable on offense is the best basketball skill

ultimately among luka’s contemporaries among guards there’s nobody with a superior combo of team success and individual playoff performance. tatum has had more team success, his play has been uneven over that time. trae has made a conference finals too but he is not on luka’s level. booker has played in a finals but has a very checkered past if we’re talking about team and playoff success. mitchell has been a consistent playoff disappointment. guys like shai and halliburton have barely if ever even played in the postseason. so i find all this handwringing to be fairly ridiculous

i think people are looking at it from more of a logical rather than results based pov, having the ball all the time not playing defense and being a big baby just arent the top conditions for success

i also think just on a general level that any of the 4 teams that end up on the other side of the bracket from denver in the west playoffs this year could win two rounds and that includes dallas. a very realistic path for them is beating minnesota in a 2-7 series and then having to beat one of phoenix or the clippers in the second round. i would not call it at all likely that they would win those series but those are all flawed/fragile teams and luka is good enough to put dallas on his back and take them thru that imo. of course denver would send them to the stone age

yeah the west is pretty wide open if you avoid denver same as last year, tho this year the clippers and okc are possible actual good teams too who could be very hard to beat, mavs currently are in danger of not making the playoffs at all tho

btw top four in the west are within 1 game as of this writing

i think people are looking at it from more of a logical rather than results based pov, having the ball all the time not playing defense and being a big baby just arent the top conditions for success

i hope he does but it doesnt seem like he wants to, maybe he needs to relocate, start fresh

all the top dogs in the west aside from denver have blatant flaws be it lack of playoff experience or old/fragile teams. it’s entirely possible we get chalk and OKC and minn are for real and kawhi stays healthy. we could also get the opposite of all of that too, i think

yeah if i had to bet id say okc and the clips fade a lil in the offs but also they could not

clippers its worth remembering that even if kawhi and pg stay healthy they are still relying on james harden

regarding the wolves i dont think theyll be able to score enough in the playoffs

tbh with the embiid injury you could pretty much make the same argument about the east at this point. esp if we end up with knicks/cavs as the 2-3. but even if the bucks do make it to the other side of the bracket from boston they seem vulnerable for obvious reasons

yeah east is looking softer than we thought

interesting the cavs put together a big run without two of their top three guys

that’s fair but i also just read this as “the 24 year old prodigy needs to mature some before he is the best player he can be” and i’m like, well ok yes
― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, February 6, 2024 10:08 AM (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

he's been in the league 5 years and if anything complains more than ever so idk maybe this is just who he's always gonna be. maybe it's unfair to compare him to Jokic who may wind up being a Top 5 all time player but also Jokic has literally never had an all-star teammate while Luka has had several

joker does have an allstar quality teammate tbf

might still get in this year too

rather have murray than any of the guys luka has played with

luka has never played w/ someone who has made an all star game while on the mavs so that particular line of argument is not holding any water for me

i don't think it's unfair to compare luka to jokic except for the fact that they play distinctly different positions. luka will eventually be compared to every all time great. i just think you guys are making a lot of pronouncements about a 24 year old when league history pretty definitively tells us that even the best players ever are not reaching the apex of their success until the other side of 25, at minimum, and likely more like 27-28

and if you feel comfortable saying there's no path for the mavs to get into title contention in the next 4 seasons that's cool, the road obviously does not look clear at this juncture. but a lot can happen, including luka getting even better, the guy is already a certified killer in big games we know this from international play even if you wanna grasp at straws to demean his NBA playoff resumé

team situation is looking pretty rough, theyre not good now, kyrie is on the team, and the mavs have shown no ability to be anything but very bad at this stuff

imo its way more likely we get a luka trade demand than a mavs contender

projecting the next 4 years in the west my main question is how long this nuggets core can go because i think the rest of it is all pretty fluid including w/ the thunder

four years is obvs an eternity in the nba, but the mavs are not starting from a position of strength, besides the fact that they have a superstar which tbf is the hardest part

the thunder’s next few years being, at minimum, the west’s version of the last 4 years of the celtics is something I couldn’t possibly feel more confident about. barring some catastrophic injury or scandal

I get it, a lot of all-time NBA greats didn't win a title until years 6-8, thing is those teams were steadily getting better year after year while the Mavs missed the playoffs last year and look like a play-in team this year. probably fair to put more blame on the Mavs organization than Luka, especially as someone who watched Kidd make the same mistakes every single game with Milwaukee.

imo its way more likely we get a luka trade demand than a mavs contender

agree with this, especially if contender is multiple trips to WCF and/or NBA Finals and not another WCF followed by another trip to the lottery

I get it, a lot of all-time NBA greats didn't win a title until years 6-8

a lot of NBA greats didn't win a title ever!

apropos
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2024/2/6/24062464/dallas-mavericks-luka-doncic-role-players

this is about derrick jones jr, lol

Doncic might not have made the same call in the clutch a year ago, largely because none of his teammates were equipped to beat Rudy Gobert to the rim, much less finish with that kind of authority. Dallas took one of the biggest swings in franchise history by trading for Kyrie Irving last February, but that was only the start of what would become a massive, ongoing project to reimagine how to best support a playmaking genius.

this whole idea is funny to me because they made the conference finals w/ a pretty basic plan: two ball handlers along w/ luka, 3 and d wings, and yeoman small ball centers who can move their feet and do a little w/ the ball if they need to. i think they needed to get better players but i don't think the concept of what team you should put around luka is some grand unknowable mystery

reasonable point

classic example of a team that threw away a successful roster as overreaction to one bad playoffs loss

people focus on the jalen brunson of it all which is understandable but i will still argue that the mavs could have lost jalen and still tried to maintain the structure of that team. instead they were like, "we're not going to replace our PG and instead we're going to sign javale mcgee and christian wood." they really do not get enough criticism for this specific shift in team building worldview as evidenced by the ringer writing a whole article about this very subject and not mentioning javale's name once

yeah those big signings were rough