Is Dub Nation being too dramatically critical of the young JP or is his recent stretch of poor play a sign of a doomed relationship between team and player?
Late post to this thread, but I enjoyed this post season review. Kept it steady without too many suggestion of changes, just health and some versatility, which we could almost completely get from our current roster.
The discussion around JP has been interesting since this vid, with the exit interviews from Kerr & Drays pod all pointing to “the punch” as opposed to his lack of defence and getting scouted out, as Patrick points to. So an interesting narrative from the club, vice what was pointed out here.
Any historians here who can shed light on how the Spurs kept their dynasty for so long? My understanding is that they rarely went over the cap. Is it that they rarely went over the cap (six times in 14 years, only 3 times did they pay over 1 million, only one time they paid over 5 million). Is it that their core was very good, but not max-level good? Owners just not competitively overbidding players to the max?
Wonder if the Spurs could’ve kept it together for so long in today’s NBA market environment. Implications being: say Wemby is Duncan level good, what would be their route to sustaining excellence for decade+?
Didn't see the second half but it sounds like the Lakers put Hachimura on Jokic and let AD roam off of Gordon. Felt like a fairly obvious adjustment to try to put AD on someone else to keep him in the paint. Invite Jokic to expend energy beating Hachimura, if he takes Hachimura all the way down to the paint like he presumably can, AD will be waiting. That presumably allows Hachimura to play Jokic pretty aggressive (kinda like Wiggins/Bjelica on Doncic or Tatum with Draymond behind them last playoffs). Nuggets gotta find ways to get AD into the action, putting Gordon in the dunker spot seems pretty moronic from Malone, he's gotta fix that.
A nuclear adjustment the Nuggets do have is to remove Gordon and put MPJ at the 4. Lakers probably put AD on Bruce Brown in that scenario and dare him to shoot though, and now you just removed your best chance at guarding LeBron. It's possibly still worth it, but the sneaky Achilles heel of the Nuggets is they aren't very deep when ancient Jeff Green and rookie Christian Braun are their 7th and 8th guys. If you can make a couple of their guys unplayable, it could get really tough for them especially if you have an overall strategy to tire Jokic out which the Warriors would have had.
The Warriors series made the Lakers realize that it's going to be tough to play Vanderbilt I think. He would be way too easy of a place to put Jokic on defense to keep Jokic near the paint. So the Lakers might only really have a 7 man rotation too, can they keep up for an entire series with multiple altitude games and old ass LeBron?
Also, the Warriors perfected the tagging and the pre-switching and all that shit to keep Curry off of LeBron. Let's see if the Nuggets can figure something out to keep a worse defender in Murray off of LeBron. Then again, it also depends on if LeBron has the stamina to target Murray consistently like the old days.
Interesting series imo, if the Lakers can successfully get AD off of Jokic then I think they have a chance. Glad the Nuggets got Game 1, sounds like Game 2 will be a good one.
Lakers got 40 from AD, 5 3s from Reaves, and 17 from Hachimura and couldn’t pull it off… Jokic is too skilled, they’ll need a bigger Hachimura. Nuggets just have to figure out a little of the LeBron situation and how to best attack the Hachimura on Jokic, and they’re fine…
It feels like the Nuggets strategy is to outshoot the opposing team. That almost didn't work tonight, but they managed to get a win despite the Lakers outscoring them 72-60 in the 2nd half.
Late post to this thread, but I enjoyed this post season review. Kept it steady without too many suggestion of changes, just health and some versatility, which we could almost completely get from our current roster.
The discussion around JP has been interesting since this vid, with the exit interviews from Kerr & Drays pod all pointing to “the punch” as opposed to his lack of defence and getting scouted out, as Patrick points to. So an interesting narrative from the club, vice what was pointed out here.
Any historians here who can shed light on how the Spurs kept their dynasty for so long? My understanding is that they rarely went over the cap. Is it that they rarely went over the cap (six times in 14 years, only 3 times did they pay over 1 million, only one time they paid over 5 million). Is it that their core was very good, but not max-level good? Owners just not competitively overbidding players to the max?
Wonder if the Spurs could’ve kept it together for so long in today’s NBA market environment. Implications being: say Wemby is Duncan level good, what would be their route to sustaining excellence for decade+?
So, how long before Tony Parker joins the Spurs as an assistant coach, mostly to be Wemby's counselor/NBA/USA guide?
Apparently, he is not in basketball at all anymore.
Now that the Spurs will have Wemby, and now that Zach Collins appears healthy, would he be a good trade target?
The Ringer's updated mock has us taking Derek Lively, with Rayan Rupert still on the board.
https://nbadraft.theringer.com/mock-draft
According to their description, Lively sounds like a Wiseman clone with better hands, better feel for the game, but worse outside shot.
I’m watching Denver vs Lakers. So… Poole for Jokic straight up? 😂😂😂
Didn't see the second half but it sounds like the Lakers put Hachimura on Jokic and let AD roam off of Gordon. Felt like a fairly obvious adjustment to try to put AD on someone else to keep him in the paint. Invite Jokic to expend energy beating Hachimura, if he takes Hachimura all the way down to the paint like he presumably can, AD will be waiting. That presumably allows Hachimura to play Jokic pretty aggressive (kinda like Wiggins/Bjelica on Doncic or Tatum with Draymond behind them last playoffs). Nuggets gotta find ways to get AD into the action, putting Gordon in the dunker spot seems pretty moronic from Malone, he's gotta fix that.
A nuclear adjustment the Nuggets do have is to remove Gordon and put MPJ at the 4. Lakers probably put AD on Bruce Brown in that scenario and dare him to shoot though, and now you just removed your best chance at guarding LeBron. It's possibly still worth it, but the sneaky Achilles heel of the Nuggets is they aren't very deep when ancient Jeff Green and rookie Christian Braun are their 7th and 8th guys. If you can make a couple of their guys unplayable, it could get really tough for them especially if you have an overall strategy to tire Jokic out which the Warriors would have had.
The Warriors series made the Lakers realize that it's going to be tough to play Vanderbilt I think. He would be way too easy of a place to put Jokic on defense to keep Jokic near the paint. So the Lakers might only really have a 7 man rotation too, can they keep up for an entire series with multiple altitude games and old ass LeBron?
Also, the Warriors perfected the tagging and the pre-switching and all that shit to keep Curry off of LeBron. Let's see if the Nuggets can figure something out to keep a worse defender in Murray off of LeBron. Then again, it also depends on if LeBron has the stamina to target Murray consistently like the old days.
Interesting series imo, if the Lakers can successfully get AD off of Jokic then I think they have a chance. Glad the Nuggets got Game 1, sounds like Game 2 will be a good one.
Corgi says:
Nuggets in 6 (Nuggets, Lakers, Nuggets, Lakers, Nuggets, Nuggets)
Celtics in 7 (Celtics, Heat, Heat, Celtics, Heat, Celtics, Celtics)
Lakers got 40 from AD, 5 3s from Reaves, and 17 from Hachimura and couldn’t pull it off… Jokic is too skilled, they’ll need a bigger Hachimura. Nuggets just have to figure out a little of the LeBron situation and how to best attack the Hachimura on Jokic, and they’re fine…
So the adjustment that the Lakers made in the 2nd half was to put Rui on Jokic and AD on Gordon. I wonder how the Nuggets will counter this in game 2?
Malone is gonna need to figure out how to get AD out of the paint. Denver is fortunate Hamm didn’t have that adjustment earlier in the game
It feels like the Nuggets strategy is to outshoot the opposing team. That almost didn't work tonight, but they managed to get a win despite the Lakers outscoring them 72-60 in the 2nd half.
So, Lakers still managed to get more FTs.
So glad the Nuggets held on for that game 1 victory. Whatever happens, the Lakers won't use the template of the last two series.
I want these guys to get beaten soundly. I don't generally root for other teams, but in this case: Go Denver!
Nuggets take game 1 of the series by defeating the Lakers 132-126.
Lots of interesting strategy in the LAL DEN game (around guarding Jokic). If I weren’t exhausted, I’d be tempted to make a video…