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yeah gonna have to disagree w/ you there on gordon. the nuggets use him very effectively against smaller players in the playoffs. they murdered the heat specifically w/ him. jalen williams gives up three inches and 40+ pounds to gordon, dort is 4 inches shorter and 15-20 pounds lighter. it's not an incidental advantage for denver.

and the other guy has to guard MPJ giving up half a foot in height. size is a major reason why denver is hard to beat and OKC is a pretty small team

gordon is effective because he plays with jokic full stop, jokic is the issue

i mean were talking about a guy who cant shoot on a normal team he would be very easy to deal with

thats why i think okc and a lot of teams will prob play joker straight up let him get his while mixing in some other coverage and then prob going to more doubles late in the game its kinda the best you can do

ok i'm not trying to have a discussion about the true value of aaron gordon as a player. what i am saying is that if you are a team trying to pass 6' 5" guys off as power forwards while playing switchy defense against this nuggets team, they are going to put gordon in the post and bludgeon you to death. this is not a theory of mine they have demonstrated the ability to do this in high level playoff games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtQWt_6F4xI

if aaron gordon, a guy who gets most of his point waiting around in the dunker spot for joker double teams, beats you with post ups so be it, it wouldnt be on the list of things im worried about if im playing the nugs

i mean he had a good series vs the heat but that not really his typical level

i would be totally happy to have gordon posting up jdub thats a win for okc

i guess we'll see. i personally would dislike having a 4 inch, 40 pound and 6 year age mismatch in that match up. i think if you're looking at a series where denver has a major size advantage and are like "eh that doesn't really matter" you are going to be in for some cold water to the face

gordon also scored 39 points on 14-21 shooting in games 1 of 2 of the phoenix series. he had 22-6 in the close out game vs the lakers and 27-7 in game 4 vs the heat which effectively ended that series. he was the role player guy who flipped a bunch of games for them in the playoffs last year as much as murray was that guy

i think teams that can't contend w/ him in the post on both sides of the floor, on the glass etc are at a major disadvantage against denver in the playoffs

also in terms of OKC playing denver well, there was one game between them this year where denver had their starting 5 and they won by 33

if you dig into some of these other games it's like

OKC wins by 1 point in a game where they are fully healthy but for denver justin holiday starts and plays 25 mins, peyton watson plays 16 mins, reggie jackson plays 22 mins

OKC wins by 26 in a game where they are fully healthy and payton watson starts and plays 32 mins

OKC wins by 5 in a game where jalen williams and jokic are both out, 21 mins from watson, 30 from reggie jackson etc

these are not playoff situations

im not saying the size advantage doesnt matter or that okc has a good chance of beat the nugs im saying particularly considering the injury to kat okc is clearly the west team thats the biggest threat to them just because theyre the best team which matters at least as much as matchup stuff, fwiw gordon having a bunch of big playoff games is the kind of thing you tend to see with champ runs, whether its likely to happen again prob not tho obvs its not impossible

also worth considering if okc has matchup advantages against the nugs, which i think they do, its weird how last years suns series has been totally memory holed, bontemps just said that the wolves played the nugs the toughest in last years playoffs which is just not true the suns did, almost entirely on the strength of devin booker wrecking the nugs d, the nugs defense is good because its sound they play great team d, its not good because they have an athletic advantage, they are vulnerable to being broken down by great perimeter scorers largely because they dont have great rim protection, booker isnt even that good at getting to the rim but he was living there in the suns series, *hubie voice* now does okc have a great perimeter scorer who can get to the rim they do, were okc to beat the nugs i think itd be because shai has a huge series, there are other things too like okc has has a ton of shooting and ballhandling so they can make the nugs work on d stretch them out try to press their athletic advantage

so the nugs arent the only team that has matchup advantages here, and if shai goes nuts we could be onto something, not the most likely outcome but its a real one IMHO

where whats the recipe for the wolves winning kat walks out of the operating room and drop 25 a night idk

if you really wanted to game it paranoid style you would want to be on the same side of the draw as the wolves to take advantage of the kat return timetable

― lag∞n, Wednesday, March 20, 2024 11:58 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is a fair point actually!

I have a respect for the thunder insofar as they’re really good and they have a puncher’s chance for sure…but I just think the wolves (at full strength) match up better vs denver. regular season head to head doesn’t mean much imo, saw some tweet the other day that in the past 4 years the nuggets playoff series results were almost all opposite the reg season head to head results.

as things stand now with the thunder having home court obv that swings things in their favor a bit of course

i could get on board with full strength wolves being the biggest threat tho im still tempted to take okc, but it doesnt matter since the wolves arent full strength, kat just isnt going to come back from surgery in the middle of the offs and be his 100% self, hes never actually been good in the playoff anyway

okc is +7.6 this year thats in the championship range theyre a very good team, people are discounting them because theyre so young which is totally fair, but also weve never seen a team this young be this good before, young teams dont only struggle in the playoffs they also struggle in the regular season, okc is very much not struggling, theyre also one of the best coached teams which isnt nothing

i mean, the suns won two games, at home, by margins of 7 points and 5 points. they lost the 4 other games by 25, 16, 10, and 18. so i think the competitiveness of that series is very much in the eye of the beholder. in my eye, it was not very

if you look at denver's point differential in each series it was

vs MIN: +44
vs PHX: +57
vs LA: +24
vs MIA: +41

by game average it would be

vs MIN: +8.8
vs PHX: +11.4
vs LA: +6.0
vs MIA: +8.2

and that minnesota series was a 29 point blowout in game 1 followed by 4 competitive games

this idea that denver can be exploited by perimeter ball handlers and stuff, i mean... any theory on how to beat them is prob as good or bad as any other. but i really don't think the phoenix series supports this idea that there is some achilles heel for shai to exploit

i mean... game 4 a 7 point win by phoenix, booker and durant combine for 86 points on 25-37 shooting. i don't doubt shai could have a nuclear game and pick off a win or even two... denver will almost certainly lose more playoff games this year. but this is not a blueprint for beating them

it is a blueprint for beating them actually

worth considering too that the suns were not a good team

i've heard bill simmons say all year that phoenix is the biggest threat to denver in the west because nobody can stop denver anyway so you might as well just try and outscore them

i don't think the data from last year's playoffs support that conclusion. i think you actually have a better chance if you can get denver in the muck a bit and play them close in every game, rather than the phoenix model of getting blown to smithereens in every loss bcuz you're giving up 120 ppg every single time out

it is a blueprint for beating them actually

― lag∞n, Wednesday, March 20, 2024 1:24 PM (three minutes ago)

who would you say is the kevin durant of this OKC team

its weird how last years suns series has been totally memory holed, bontemps just said that the wolves played the nugs the toughest in last years playoffs which is just not true the suns did, almost entirely on the strength of devin booker wrecking the nugs d, the nugs defense is good because its sound they play great team d, its not good because they have an athletic advantage, they are vulnerable to being broken down by great perimeter scorers largely because they dont have great rim protection, booker isnt even that good at getting to the rim but he was living there in the suns series,

I feel like I made this point last time we had this discussion but this is just not what happened. the suns won those games because KD and especially book both went on insane, completely unsustainable runs on jump shots. here is a screenshot of booker’s game log. they won those two games, on their home court, by a combined 12 points, and lost the other 4 by an average of 17.3. it was their most competitive series by games lost, but what I’m point out above is the reason most nuggets fans don’t consider it to have been their toughest series

https://imgur.com/a/hBBnGen

i posted bookers shot chart for that series he was living at the rim

he did great at the rim when he got there but he was just visiting not really living there

every version of the suns playoff chances discussion is the same, yeah of course they can beat anyone if their guys get and stay hot, but they have no plan b and their plan a is exceptionally hard to pull off in 4 out of 7 games

even just beyond the typical normal unsustainability of some of the shooting in that series, i don't think from a stamina POV you can ask two guys to carry that kinda load against a team like denver that is a true 5 man unit

the good news for OKC is that they are much more a real line up than last year's phoenix team, but they also don't have a second scorer anywhere near as good as that phoenix team

he did great at the rim when he got there but he was just visiting not really living there

― brony james (k3vin k.), Wednesday, March 20, 2024 1:37 PM (five seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

his rim attempts were way up he doesnt get there much but he was vs denvers d, also this wasnt a booker and kd situation kd had a bad series he shot 45/22/88 his two good games were more or less standard regular season games for him he did not have any games where he went nuts, this was the devin booker show, and denver couldnt do anything with him even tho the suns werent a good team, now what if you had a player like booker except for better particularly in the ways that booker gave the nugs problems and he was on a very good team might that be a little bit of a worry something to consider matchup wise

the other thing w/ giving the thunder a match up "advantage" in that series w/ shai is that murray in the playoffs becomes a guy at that level too

the ball handling and shooting and stuff that OKC has is nice the problem w/ denver is that they have the best ballhandler in the league dictating every possession and better shooting too

im a murray fan, i dont think its just some random thing that hes been great in the playoffs his combo of shooting off the dribble and attacking ability is really the mix you want from a guard, however i dont think hes guaranteed to outperform his regular season production by as much as weve seen in the past, its not really a normal thing, even if it maybe makes more sense with him because of his particular game and fit with jokic

denver doesnt have better shooting than okc fwiw okc is clearly better

neither of them take many threes which is kind of interesting, with denver it makes sense because they have joker flipping in five footers all day and they have some non shooters in the mix, but okc has the best 3pt% in the league while only taking the 18th most, thats leaving money on the table

celtics are 2 in 3pt% while taking the most btw 😎

you gotta boil a lot this stuff down at the end of the day and i'll take murray, KCP and MPJ over OKC's three best off ball shooters, whoever they are

you gotta trim so much of the fat off denver's rotation and statistical ledger when projecting them for the playoffs, it's all guys who are not very good, drag their stats down etc

meanwhile in OKC's case guys bench guys like isiah joe and cason wallace who help prop their statistical profile up from a shooting perspective are gonna have their mins decreased in the playoffs. i'd imagine you'd see little of those guys in a denver series especially as it went on

bet you see wallace and joe more actually just cause giddy wont be playable lol tho those minutes could go to hayward if hes up to speed, he can shoot too

you gotta boil a lot this stuff down at the end of the day and i'll take murray, KCP and MPJ over OKC's three best off ball shooters, whoever they are

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, March 20, 2024 2:08 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

mjp and murray are legit shooters kcp isnt anything special in that regard, but doesnt really matter since the game isnt played three on three, you could make an argument that having more shooters is better than having a couple high end ones, tho i think that changes when you talk about guys who can hit threes off the dribble like murray which is just insanely valuable, and movement shooters like mpj are also very good way better than yr stand still catch and shoot guys, btw know who has the highest off the dribble 3pt% in the league this year, its jdub

jdub is checking all the boxes for a superstar projection but no one wants to think about it because its too sick

KCP is pretty certified to me at this point

if you line up both of these teams i feel like you have:

best players and no 1 ball handlers on both sides who are not frequent or great 3 pt shooters, tho have capability from there

one non shooter on both end, tho gordon did shoot 39% from 3 in last year's playoffs and we'll see how long giddey is in the starting line up

that leaves you w/ j dub, chet and dort vs murray, MPJ, and KCP as the guys most likely to be leveraging their shooting in off ball scenarios. obv j dub and murray have the ball a lot too but they're largely still orbiting the no 1 guy on the team. so those are the core 3 on each end for me and i'm taking denver's three guys

now you can switch out giddey for one of those other guys and then say that gordon sticks out like a sore thumb as a non shooter, but as i explained earlier i think making yourself smaller vs gordon presents an entirely new set of problems

kcp is a guy who takes the easiest threes and hits them at a good rate, its not nothing and when combined with his elite d and general ability to play basketball hes a very good player a star role player even but hes just not a special shooter is all, hes a prob a lil above average for the type of player he is

widening the lens if giddy doesnt play then all the okc minutes go to shooters, which is pretty nice, i think is a pretty clear advantage for them

and fwiw okc have been playing small all year, they know the downside of it, and have decided its still best for them, and theyre a very smart org, they didnt go out and get a big at the deadline even though they couldve had their pick, cant say i agree with it but the fact that a great org thinks this is the best way for them to play does give me pause, its not like they dont know joker is out there, tho on the other hand they might just be taking the long view here and will add some size later, but idk just get some dece backup to eat up some minutes the celtics got tillman for two seconds why not add a guy like that, they didnt seem to want to at all

instead they got hayward who is more a guy that fits in with how they play

feel like they might be galaxy braining this but who knows

okcs top 11 by minutes played, wild stuff

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

*minutes per game

okc like to play with a blur of motion and shooters, this is not something jokic/mpj/gordon like to guard they are too big for that. and you know that okc will lean into that style even more if they face denver

last season gordon shot 34% on threes and 39% in the playoffs vs his career average of 32%. he is back down to 28% this season. i wouldnt count on him catching fire again

fuuuuuuck this

https://nypost.com/2024/03/20/sports/nba-league-pass-launching-in-app-live-betting-in-latest-sports-gambling-lean/

yeah it’s an impending disaster imo

no good