Breaking -- The human race has waived Josh Smith: 2014-15 regular season thread part 2

holding that spot is a more dubious proposition tho

and like, don't we all believe the thunder will eventually get good again?

they need to get good again very soon

I mean they won tonight but it was 1. vs the magic and 2. pretty close. they have to win 24 more to be near playoff contention, 26 more (50 total) for a better chance, 30 more for a guarantee.

I can see them winning 20 more but I think all the preexisting damage means they fall just short of the cutoff point in this season's west

jeff green asserted

RIP hawks, tough schedule ahead too

― Spottie, Monday, February 2, 2015 10:01 PM (1 hour ago)

do not fret. they'll beat the wiz

jeff green v assertive. 5 really tough (basically) buzzer beater losses now.

hope nola grab a playoff spot behind a rampaging brow and he wins the mvp

not really feeling our front runners curry and harden needs to be brow

they have an OKC back to back next and then the bulls, but after those the schedule isn't terribly hard for them, like it's more or less balanced between hard and easy games until the very end, which is all games against contenders

I would be fine with curry as MVP, much less so with harden, but if they even just get to the 1st round and no further on brow's back, it makes his case indisputable (I'd hope) even to the old heads who keep repeating "MVPs get teams to the playoffs"

(to clarify, harden is v good but are we really gonna make that face the surrogate and embodiment of the NBA?)

curry is a fine MVP choice imo. i bet lebron ends up winning it again tho lol

prefer mvp to be dominant on both ends, curry wldnt be as weak a choice as rose, approx as weak a choice as nash tho

with both curry and especially harden i feel like theres a certain lack of discipline, they both still have room to grow

i mean brow has prob more room to grow but brow is so good

curry's been really good on d this year

think if things continue to go like they are now then lebron wins it with brow 2nd, curry 3rd and harden 4th

dont want to hear yr homer curry defense defense

the hawks made a spotify playlist, apparently https://play.spotify.com/user/atlhawks_spotify/playlist/1GG335FFAFT5OpehyVZQQq

:( xp

aww that's adorable

regarding bron, in that hypothetical instance MVP voters who picked him are choosing to ignore his first 1/3 of the season, rather than the consistent excellence of AD, curry and even harden...which i guess i can see bc no one is really expecting voters to be completely rational

well his horrible was still pretty damn good

Harden has been having a fantastic season, but he needs several more to erase the shame of all those viral video clips of him being clueless on defense.

Don't worry Spottie I will listen to your Steph def def.

ty

if you go by PER, brow is as expected on top (32.07), w/harden (27.30) and curry (27.20) at 5 and 6 respectively. brow has played the least games of the three, but 43 isn't that much less than 45 (steph) or 48 (beard), so still safe to say his ultimate value is higher. LBJ is 26.19 in 40 games.

sidebar: whiteside is already #2 at 27.98 with 21 games played, damn

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/modern-goon-jusuf-nurkic-denver-nuggets/

nurfic lol who

moves like a danseuse

Should be danseur, in both a grammatical and a semantic sense.

wait can we talk about the bucks

the bucks are way fun to watch and if their improvements aren't flukes (certainly don't seem that way) and they keep growing, could be a serious threat in the east in a few years

this year their ceiling is probaaaably the first playoff round

They are fun! No idea who Middleton is but he's playing well. Crazy they're doing as well as they are w out Larry sanders and Jabari.

remember when everyone was all oh no jabari is out rip bucks and i was all hes a rookie he is bad theyll prob be better now

i was otm itt

You have been generally otm about rookies sucking that is true an I usually forget it

Year 3 is historically the giant leap for most good players and it's only a handful a generation who are really almost fully ready to make an impact as a rook

Bucks and Hawks are good arguments this year against "distractions" meaning anything maybe (sanders, racist execs)

i was otm itt

― lag∞n, Tuesday, February 3, 2015 11:42 AM

pvmic

pfft

statmuse sez they're better without him in a number of statistical categories (FG%, 3P% DRTG, APG, RPG), albeit not by any hugely significant margin except DRTG (102.4 with to 98.2 without)

how much of that difference is actually contingent on problems he created or a lack of ability might be debatable, but goon is indeed otm itt

they would be better off developing him tho.

for sure tho itll prob all even out at some point next season

Even with new ownership the Bucks are great at finding veterans who will strive for that ninth seed.

haha had no idea k mart got picked up by them

nice to see dudley playing well again. the clips really coulda used him but he wasn't right all year with them.

rundown of the duds trade fallout in todays lowe column about how the clippers are good

Spencer Hawes might represent the Clippers’ only hope for such an injection of crazy, in part because of the way the Clips signed him. They lavished the full midlevel exception upon him, triggering a rule that caps the Clippers’ payroll at $4 million above the luxury tax. The Clips were only about $1 million below that after beating out Portland for Hawes, and they had just 12 players under contract.

They needed flexibility in case they encountered injuries or a chance at a good trade. How Doc Rivers achieved that flexibility was nothing short of a disaster. Rivers flipped Jared Dudley and a first-round pick to the Bucks for two players he could waive immediately with little penalty. That freed up money to sign Hedo Turkoglu, Chris Douglas-Roberts, and Ekpe Udoh to minimum contracts.

Udoh doesn’t play, Turkoglu probably shouldn’t, and Rivers traded Douglas-Roberts in the three-team deal that netted his son. The Clippers lost Reggie Bullock, a potential end-of-the-rotation wing, in the same deal, and they flat waived Jordan Farmar after using the precious biannual exception to sign him.

The Clippers in essence paid a first-round pick to dump Dudley, and then cycled through a half-dozen players who have contributed next to nothing — all while Dudley thrives as a hybrid forward in Milwaukee. They could have simply kept Dudley and signed a 13th player to the minimum salary. That might not have been realistic, since the Clips would have had zero flexibility in case of an injury wave, but it’s a better alternate universe than their reality. The Clippers do have enough room now to chase someone on the buyout market, and if things break right, they could find some valuable depth there over the next six weeks.