technical basketball details etc

steals are one of the best plays, as long as youre not gambling

seems like pursuing the play once youre beat has become standard defense where it was once not, leads to more blocks from behind poking balls away and so forth

Jose Alvarado please stand up. Also get healthy so you can poke away balls again.

the 309 point game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvyiAiF6L9c

man i really cant stand how that guy talks.

i was mad they did not overturn this

I can’t believe that I have to explain this…#basketballiscooked pic.twitter.com/f5KF8N4WIw

— #1 ranked snitch ref (@DevInTheLab) November 29, 2023

steph mightve put a lil extra on that one hard to tell tho he was moving in many directions

funny thing was his kick didnt hit anyone

he got monk on the thigh, pretty dubious call tho i can see how the refs would be suspicious of the path his leg took sort of an usual hooking motion

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

shoudla just been a nocall

yeah in real time it looks like theres a ton of contact but there wasnt much really

i dont think devin should be using a clip of reggie of all people to demonstrate a natural shooting motion

or mj or kobe or cp3 for that matter

haha thats fair

i think a lot of these guys practice kicking out to the extent it does become part of their usual motion, even if its not necessary to get the shot up... no real downside to it unless the league cracks down

the right leg kick out is def naturally when turning on that shoulder to shoot

sure in that particular shot maybe

Whyyyy

Kyle Anderson warms up with corner 3’s before Wolves-Clippers.

(via @TomerAzarly) pic.twitter.com/kEx9DjGYxn

— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) February 13, 2024

investigating the luka mysteries

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

crazy the mavs have two guys who are elite with the ball and do nothing otherwise

i think thinking basketball lets him off the hook there only trying when you have the ball is actually really bad, is pretty easy to look at individual plays and see things luka couldve done better but theres also the hidden loss of strategic flexibility, mavs arent drawing up plays for luka to get easy catch and shoot threes, and their opponents know that and theyre like thank you for leaving that very good play on the table, it also as mentioned in the video squanders the talents teammates who are good with the ball

luka reads the game in a self centered manner, hes an amazing passer but not in a way that cares about his teammates talents, its anti point guard stuff, its a hardenesque approach where hes just like spread out and be ready to shoot or roll, his teammates are cogs in the luka machine, and then he powers down when he doesnt have the ball lol, cant be the most fulfilling system to play in

funny aside about plus minus in there lol yeah a stat thats noisy over a single season might not be the best over a longer timeframe because players output might change over the course of five years, but they want it to be good so bad it makes so much sense

great video, even if ben thanos’d jokic for some reason lol.

raw plus-minus is clearly telling you something important, you can just look at the guys at the top, but you are always going to have outliers that need to be explained (usually due to weird lineup things, for example KCP is like top 10 in raw plus minus this year). the adjusted plus-minuses are getting better and better, they still have some kinks but it’s not like the old days where some rando big was 7th in the league in PER or something.

delivering accuracy on the level of asking a casual basketball fan is a great accomplishment for a decade of work by the statistics community

i think these playoffs will tell us a lot about the current state of luka. he is a perpetual top 5 player so he should be held to a high standard; on the other hand there isn't any lead player drafted in his class or after him that has anywhere near as many playoff wins. the thunder could make the finals this year and SGA still wouldn't have as many playoff wins as luka & that's including games where he was chris paul's sidekick. if the mavs win another playoff series this year, given what is on their roster, i think i'd have a hard time worrying about whether luka's "impact" is overstated

he just needs to win one playoff series and the questions about his game are moot

i mean, no. i said i get why he is held to a high standard. but i also think if he continues to demonstrate the ability to win playoff series when other stars his age cannot/do not, that some of the criticisms start to seem a bit silly

Luka Doncic is leading the league in scoring and is 2nd in assists, but for there's a long term trend related to the scoreboard that doesn't match that production

yeah i wonder why that could be one sec lemme check their roster

mavs roster always seems to be bad its weird lemme check what some of their past players are up to

yeah when he had a really good young player on his team luka put up 32/10/7 and led his team to the conference finals hopefully one day archeologists are able to uncover his impact there, it's a huge mystery

i was watching mavs celtics last game with my dad who is a big box score reader but not that big of a game watcher outside the celtics and he was getting all fired up about luka to kind of an annoying degree tho tbf luka was cooking the celtics were just guarding him straight up letting him get his i was like just watch him get tired as the game goes on and sure enough by mid third quarter he was chucking stepback 3s then in the fourth he had one basket and the celtics wrecked the mavs easily, his style of play its just obviously not good its not the good way to play basketball

mavs barely squeaked into the conf finals and got destroyed, they were a second round quality team that year, i mean it was nice for them dont get me wrong and they were on a roll for sure but stuff like that happens no one is consulting the history books over it

like the lakers last year sometimes there just a bunch of pretty good teams and one of them wins a couple rounds

i think one reasonable theory about lukas game is that its a high floor and not necessarily capped ceiling but its more difficult to raise the ceiling of his teams to contender status because he doesnt play good team ball, of course thats just speculation at this point since hes never had a contending quality roster

the suns that year were defending conference champs, brought back the same nucleus, won 64 games, and were the 1 seed by 8 games so gonna have to disagree w/ you on that one. don't retcon that game 7 into them being some mediocre opponent

i agree w/ you & have consistently agreed that he has conditioning, stamina, modulation issues that he has to figure out as his career progresses so if "style of play" just means a decrease in usage so that he can last longer across games/the playoffs then yeah. but the heliocentric possessions where ppl stand around and watch luka thing that you guys really pick at i just don't think is as big of a problem bcuz he's simply too good. i'm not chalking james harden's playoff failures up to "style of play" and then pinning that on luka

he just stands around when he doesnt have the ball and that includes defense its really bad its harmful not sure what else to say about that hes giving back a bunch there

xp didnt say the suns were mediocre tho they did have some issues what i said was the mavs barley squeaked through (seven game series) then got wrecked (five games series)

sorry but beating the 1 seed on the road in game 7 by 40 points does not count to me as squeaking through but whatever

i watched that celtics game too and maybe your analysis of it is correct, it's subjective. luka was out of his mind incredible in the first half and did not match that in the second half. but my take away from that game was that the mavs are built on the concept of having two high level star players and if kyrie is going to go 9-23 and 1-7 from three vs a team as good as boston then the mavs are not going to be competitive

you're presenting a theoretical scenario where luka tries less hard and passes more in the first half of that game, gets his teammates involved more and is able to have more stamina to dominate in the fourth quarter. i would submit that if luka wasn't playing like the best basketball player of all time in the first half the mavs would've been down by 20+ and nothing that happened in the second half would've even mattered. so i guess it's a matter of perspective

but again people have been talking about luka figuring out a better balance between domination and stamina since he was putting up first half triple doubles vs the clippers in the 21 playoffs and i don't think he has taken a serious critical approach to that aspect of his game so all of that stuff i agree w/

that celtics game they were targeting him on defense was part of the reason he was so tired the other part is he plays a very tiring style, good teams are going to do the same until theres a solution for it, he could get in better shape we dont have any idea how much hes capable of increasing his stamina, its seems like probably some but also he likely doesnt have naturally high stamina, his style of expending a ton of energy with the ball then resting the rest of the time just makes him vulnerable to scheming

you really want your perennial mvp candidates to elicit the reaction from opponents wtf are we supposed to do with that, like whatre you gonna do vs joker whats the plan here you got nothing, giannis youre like wall him off hope the bucks dont hit threes its not great but its what you have, embiid the obvious plan is to have al horford haha jk he has stamina issues too, but luka the plan is pretty clear youre gonna go after him on d which tbf is just good for scoring points and it will tire him out and then you hope he fades in the second half it has a decent chance of working

maybe in the regular season where he's not playing as hard sure, that is real. in that suns series they were putting luka in every single pick and roll every single time they could and some games it was fruitful and in other games it was a disaster. he is big so you can only take so much advantage of him on defense, i don't think ppl feel like we're dealing w/ a trae or early steph curry level point of attack defender where just purely from a size perspective there is very little that person can do, tho steph is also a great example of how guys can continue to get stronger and better at defense over the years to the point where the defense is no longer dragging down the offense. you can also more easily scheme away from having the same guy getting picked on every time in the playoffs than you can or do in the regular season. so yeah idk

luka is legitimately an extremely bad defender hes not close to where he should be

i agree that he is not close to where he should be but the individual numbers on his defense do not suggest that he is extremely bad specifically and the mavs have played great defense for long stretches w/ him on the floor

if you took shai off OKC and put luka in his place and told j dub and chet that they had to stand around for 5 extra possessions a game as they watched luka cook i think OKC would prob be a worse regular season team but i don't think their playoff ceiling would be lower and it quite possibly could be higher. and if shai was on dallas i don't think anyone would be saying that they have a significantly better shot of winning a playoff series. so how much of it is the warts of the player vs the warts of the roster

the mavs have played great defense for long stretches w/ him on the floor

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Thursday, April 4, 2024 2:11 PM (twenty-eight seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

mavs playing good team defense in the regular season in stretches against just ok teams is one thing, throwing luka and kyrie out there against a quality prepared playoff opponent is a completely different proposition, the mavs could just try to effort and swarm their was through it switch a bunch fly around and so forth it could even work thats what they did in that suns series, but what they cant do is just play solid and make minor adjustments, a fwiw they are for the season a not good defensive team

luka on okc is an interesting thought experiment would we even know that jdub is a good player, prob not, maybe close watchers of the team would figure it out, tho would okc let luka play the way he likes to idk hard to say

but yeah putting luka on a better team would be good for him he should look into that, not the nugs tho that would just be unfair

it would be interesting to see if joker could get him to play better ball tho

they’re bffs it is fated I’m afraid