2020 nba offseason draft free agency etc

paul's still got two years $85m left on his deal....

he was so good (and healthy) this year that i think his trade market expanded significantly

not saying *i* would trade for him but

some interesting phrasing by presti in that article, too. seems like billy should be able to get another head coaching job right away if he wants to.

could see him go to a place like indiana to help them overachieve

sounds like chicago is going to take a look at him which makes sense

billy dont do it

Our brilliant son Zion still needs a coach.

Yah NO would be a good fit

coach bud getting fired

My advice for @Giannis_An34 is to sit down one-on-one with Milwaukee Bucks Owner Wes Edens and figure out his strategy to make the team better and bring a championship to Milwaukee.

— Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) September 9, 2020

lol Magic the coach killer

Magic cannot but resist to inject unsolicited drama anywhere he casts his gaze.

thinkin about how the rockets gave up two first round picks and two first round swaps to trade chris paul for russell westbrook

morey is incomprehensible

i can’t be convinced of anything other than morey knowing it was a suicide mission for the franchise and not caring bcuz he doesn’t like fertita and knows he won’t be there holding the bag anyway and this at least allowed him to do something weird

recall morey on tv bragging about how many wins russ added to their team according to infallible secret metrics

cp3's best qualities brought out by leading a team, russ' worst qualities brought out by leading a team. so the trade worked out well for the reputations of each of those players. just not for the rockets.

thunder also got pretty lucky this year, good health, won a lot of close games, but still obvs terrible trade by the rockets

https://i.imgur.com/xERlAk2.png

My advice for @Giannis_An34 is to sit down one-on-one with Milwaukee Bucks Owner Wes Edens and figure out his strategy to make the team better and bring a championship to Milwaukee.

— Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) September 9, 2020

ESPN Sources: MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo's 3-hour lunch with Bucks co-owner/governor Marc Lasry on Friday covered the season, how Bucks can improve roster, Lasry confirming willingness to spend into luxury tax and agreement they’ll talk again after Giannis returns from a vacation.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) September 14, 2020

rip coach bud

i think all of these things are true

1. the rockets had to break up cp3 and harden for personality reasons
2. morey knows swapping 4 picks for harden's super max contract is a horrific longterm trade
3. morey knows there's little chance he'll be working in houston during the final two years of the westbrook contract
4. morey convinced himself in the short term the team could get better by switching out cp3 for russ and going all in on d'antoni ball

whoops i meant swapping 4 picks for westbrook's super max contract

could be, all not very wise for the health of his career tho, smart teams will certainly take note of stuff like that

i just had a vision of him in philly and i think that is correct

yesssssss

I think (4) is wishful thinking only in the context of (1) -- paul was obviously a better fit for dan tony ball

westbrook allowed them to play much faster. the trade made them worse but did allow them to go into the red stylistically

they were rolling for a minute pre virus playing westbrook out of the high post, prob wouldntve worked in the offs but they didnt even really try

he wasnt taking threes during that run but he reverted back

yeah

by the time you get to the capela trade you can't convince me that d'antoni and morey didn't realize they could seize the opportunity to run an experiment knowing they wouldn't be the ones cleaning up the mess

westbrook also had covid and by his own reporting couldn't workout for a month, and then got a quad injury. i don't think there's any way to win multiple playoff series playing the style they were playing but there are worlds in which it could have looked a lot better than it did.

The rockets have a bad owner which is probably driving a lot of this

yeah was thinking there easily cldve been pressure to get cp3 out of town whatever it took cause harden didnt like him

harden at least indirectly contributed to the capela trade as well because he wanted to iso more and pick and roll less

anyone else feel like the rockets and bucks offenses looked antiquated these playoffs? to varying degrees teams like the heat, celtics, raptors have internalized analytic principles about where shots should be coming from but are running more diverse and sophisticated offenses that are far better oriented to playoff basketball than the “spread out and stand around while a guy goes one on one BUT DOES NOT SHOOT A MIDRANGE JUMPER” offenses the other two teams were running

yeah i imagine some of it is scheme, i chalk a lot of it up to lack of versatility and secondary playmaking. the rockets have never really had much of a scheme. i don't remember a ton about the 60-win hawks but i'm guessing bud must have had some complexity in place to get that limited group to score. if we're seeing anything it's that you need multiple guys who can attack off the dribble and pass so if your initial action doesn't work you have another place to go.

i do wonder what it means for luka and trae young and the next generation of super heliocentric guys because i'm more and more convinced it's impossible to make a serious playoff run while playing that style.

yep being able to use the entire floor is a pretty big advantage against playoffs d. we've been saying that in here a bunch

there's extremely few guys in the league for whom an off the dribble 3 is a good shot and you end up having to take a lot of those if you're not willing to use the midrange

luka is not one i'm worried about but trae maybe

taking a lot of borderline 3s is a good way to push matchups closer to 50-50 via variance which is great if you're the 8 seed and not so great if you're the 1 seed

James Harden was one of the NBA's best scorers off screens, handoffs, and cuts in OKC and early in Houston. Now it's a nonexistent part of his game.

Rockets need to make it a priority to bring back this aspect of his game so he's a more unpredictable, dynamic half-court threat. pic.twitter.com/nggTPTEXK7

— Kevin O'Connor (@KevinOConnorNBA) September 13, 2020

this was pretty eye opening to watch... completely different player. made me wonder what a coach like spo, stevens or nurse would do w/ him

is he willing to do that tho? he just stands around now or doesnt even cross halfcourt if its russ turn

that's the thing to me. harden has made it clear what he wants to do on offense and the rockets have for years basically been saying "sure, whatever you want to do."

its crazy that hes still a good shooter while taking so many of the most difficult shot and does not want the easier shots

i do wonder what it means for luka and trae young and the next generation of super heliocentric guys because i'm more and more convinced it's impossible to make a serious playoff run while playing that style.

― call all destroyer, Monday, September 14, 2020 2:18 PM (fifty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

not only is hard to execute vs playoff D also puts a ton of wear and tear on yr main guy during the regular season

there's a chicken and egg aspect to it though - partially he doesn't do that stuff because he's recouping from and/or conserving all his energy to bend the game in accordance with his will when he has the ball. Now whether he'd be open to shifting that balance depends on how he wants to play, sure, but at least from the outside it's hard to know if there's ever been a real coaching effort to get him to do so.

xxposts to spottie and cad

let the drama drip

https://sports.yahoo.com/disappointment-frustration-lack-of-chemistry-portrait-of-the-clippers-collapse-172338674.html

The rapport simply wasn’t there for the Clippers, and it certainly wasn’t there in Game 2 when Montrezl Harrell and George got into a heated verbal exchange during a timeout, league sources told Yahoo Sports.

Early in the second quarter, a struggling George had committed two careless turnovers in less than a minute. The second mishap was a half-court pass to Harrell, who was near the paint but surrounded by Murray and Michael Porter Jr.

Murray picked off the pass. Seconds later, the Clippers called a timeout.

Harrell approached his teammate about the risky pass, with George not taking responsibility and arguing the pass could have been caught had Harrell made the right play, sources said.

This set off the NBA Sixth Man of the Year.

Harrell responded with something along the lines of, “You’re always right. Nobody can tell you nothing,” and expletives were uttered from both players, sources said. George eventually toned down his rhetoric, but a heated Harrell wasn’t having it. Teammates began clapping on the sideline, in part to disguise what was going on and in an attempt to defuse the situation. The incident deescalated shortly after as coach Doc Rivers took his seat to go over the game plan.

The Clippers were not on the same page off the court either. After the Game 7 loss, George said, “I think internally, we always felt this was not a championship or bust year for us.”

George was the only player to convey that thought. Rivers and the players acknowledged the goal was to win a championship this year.

not sure who deserves the most blame here but im leaning towards doc.

lol trez genuinely hates the new guys

yeah and hes a FA so i imagine hes not coming back

he's going to get squeezed pretty good since he turned out to be unplayable by the second round of the playoffs