( ( ( ( ( nba bubble ball 2020 ) ) ) ) )

My guess is plumlee and Millsap are gone, Grant stays. One PF/C vet signed in free agency

rip nugs great run, jokic/murray/porter core should be good for a while

denver is poised to inherit the post-lebron west.

congrats to the nuggs on their inspiring run to contention proximity — next year’s goal: a positive scoring margin in the playoffs. see you in the finals!

Don’t count out the mavs. They have some things to figure out but they’ll have the best player

I actually think the goal should be to make the nba finals

Western conference semifinals—> western conference finals—> positive scoring margin isn’t the progression I’m hoping for

chicken or egg thing w/ that one i guess huh

j0rd is a nuggets truther

In a way they didn’t beat the clippers

Federer won more points that djokovic at wimbledon 2019, still waiting for that result to be changed

what does winning in the second round get you if you lose 4-1 in the next round?

Lmao jord, idk man. It gets you to the state of being a good basketball team

If you believe that there is one winning basketball team each year and everyone else should commit seppuku well I guess that’s an ethos

https://i.imgur.com/1eJstwy.jpg

the nuggets had a nice run in the bubble, their fans should be very happy. i'm not saying you have to be sad because they lost. my point is simply that going down 3-1, 3-1, and then losing 4-1 w/ a negative scoring margin across the playoffs doesn't normally portend future success, but that will not be the narrative on the nuggs coming out of the bubble.

i don't disagree that they are well positioned for the post-lebron west. i think that is pretty obvious. but the post-lebron west is 2-3 years away at least. i think the nuggets will be good next year and there will be a bunch of other good teams in the west. what i'm taking away from their 9-10 showing in the playoffs w/ negative scoring differential is that the margins were extremely thin for them and unless that changes in a drastic way next year they're likely to go out in the first two rounds to one of the other teams in the west who are of roughly equal or better quality.

the nuggets don't have the bucks problem of their offense shutting down in the fourth quarter of every playoff game so that's a step up. but they also play in a very tough conference and are an obviously flawed team. i just see them as among the pack of the large group of teams in the west who are not the lakers.

“Obviously flawed team”

Jord you’re just doing your typical long term cope thing, you underestimated them vs the clippers, murray has made a leap and they’re a really good team now

if murray is still an elite scorer outside the bubble then the nugs have a pretty clear path forward, they have to get the right supporting cast but thats doable, if he turns back into a pumpkin then theyve got a lot more work to do

Has any player had a 19 game playoff run like Murray had and not been a star? I doubt it

theres never been a bubble before!

We all thought the bubble was magically making people awesome and then it turned out to just be murray

a lot of wacky numbers and outcomes have happened in the bubble, its not normal nba, not taking anything away from bubble stars but its just different

i personally would put money on murray having made some sort of leap but is it really a leap into the dame/steph zone... idk gotta see more

Trevor Ariza had a playoff run where he shot the shit out of the ball, I guess that’s sort of what Crowder is doing, but Murray is different. I would say the possibility that it was just bubble psychological effects is unlikely. Maybe he and Jokic just worked harder than most in their daily training sessions. But that’s reason to believe he’s a star on its own.

I was always a murray doubter and thought he was mostly just streaky but at this point he has to have so much confidence. Refs will give him more respect too

If he was on another team I’d be upset about not having him and doing jord cope things

he def has at the very least shown that he has the talent to be a leet nba guard, some of the stuff he did this run 98% of nba players couldnt dream of

i think he's more in the bradley beal zone than the dame/steph zone

I’ll take it

i mean dame isnt in the steph zone if we're being real

we can't fully discount what we've seen in the bubble, players and teams showing new skills should be recognized. but we also have to acknowledge that it's a context for basketball that we will never see again. and it's not just murray or the nuggets! i'm very happy to talk about my miami heat. do we really think the heat would be 12-3 in the playoffs w/ tyler herro eurostepping over everyone's faces if they had to play a normal amount of playoff road games? bcuz i don't. i'm going to be using caution in extrapolating no travel/no crowd/games every other day playoff basketball to the playoffs of the future.

murray may have taken a "leap"... the nuggets could also lose to utah, dallas, or houston in the first round next year, or the clippers, lakers, or warriors in the second round and it wouldn't necessarily mean they're any worse than what we're seeing from them in the bubble.

Has any player had a 19 game playoff run like Murray had and not been a star? I doubt it

― Matt Armstrong, Sunday, September 27, 2020 12:35 PM (fifty-one minutes ago)

it was a great 19 game run no doubt but this point is entirely devoid any context whatsoever

i mean dame isnt in the steph zone if we're being real

― Spottie, Sunday, September 27, 2020 1:00 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

uhh thats why i called it the dame-steph zone please do your research on how zones work before posting

The context is every other playoff run in nba history

ok but it's not, because no other playoffs in history has been played in one city in an open gym in front of no fans. it's ok to talk about this.

tyler herro is putting up "playoff" stats that have him in company w/ magic johnson and james worthy. he looks great, has clearly improved, is gonna be a very important longterm piece, possibly a multi time all star. and yet it's still ok to look at what he's done in the bubble playoffs w/ a skeptical eye.

tbf there are also additional problems with historical stat comparisons at the moment

donovan mitchell averaged 36-5-5 on 52/52/95 shooting... i don't really know what to take away from these stats. my conclusion is basically what it was before, which is that donovan mitchell is really good at scoring.

That’s one series, murray did 19 games.

Broad presumption before the playoffs was that Donovan mitchell>Jamal murray

The nuggets fell behind against the Jazz 2-1 without Barton or harris and then Gary came back and they were the third or fourth best team in the playoffs. They deserve credit for that, and there’s lots of reason to believe they can improve a bunch when they replace the corpse of Millsap and MPJ doesn’t try to go coast to coast off every rebound

fans of teams always assume they will improve "a bunch" from one year to the next. i think it's just as reasonable to point to the vast swaths of NBA history where teams had non-linear and quite tumultuous journeys to success and argue that the team that lost more games than it won in the playoffs and had a negative point differential may still encounter a series of tribulations over the next few seasons before ascending to the top of the mountain.

the book on jamal murray was that he was a really talented scorer whose play could ping wildly between peaks and valleys depending on the night. perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, he managed to play a consistent string of basketball in the year where there was no travel, no road games, and no fans.

Jord they were a top 3 seed in the west for two straight years and made the conference finals

They also have a massive home court advantage which they couldn’t utilize at all

This is gonna be like the 2011 nba draft isn’t it

jokic had great playoffs last two years too proving their best guy can "step up when it matters the most (in the playoffs)"