That Steph TS% is truly amazing given the all-time high defensive treatment and injured 2nd option.
The only comparison I could think of was 2019 Finals. No time to check this, but ChatGPT says:
[[
Stephen Curry recorded a true shooting percentage (TS%) of 59.8% during the 2019 NBA Finals against the Toronto Raptors . This metric accounts for field goals, three-point shots, and free throws, providing a comprehensive measure of shooting efficiency.
Notably, Curry’s TS% was influenced by five end-of-quarter heave attempts—long-distance shots taken as time expired—which are typically low-percentage and can affect shooting statistics. When excluding these heaves, his TS% for the series would have increased to 61.8% . 
Despite the Warriors’ loss in the series, Curry delivered a strong individual performance, averaging 30.5 points, 5.2 rebounds, and 6.0 assists over six games .
> When excluding these heaves, his TS% for the series would have increased to 61.8%
You’re killing me, Eric!!! 😂
As those who have to endure my rants in game threads know, I think counting heaves as FGA is evil, or at best ignorant lol. It’s a perversion of the whole idea of true shooting percentage (i.e. how efficiently do you use possessions?) to call a buzzer heave an FGA — since, far from wasting a possession, you’re actually creating one. If you’re going to punish a player statistically for heaving, you should punish players worse for swallowing the ball.
Not even caring about a potential Warriors matchup, I’m going to love Jokic trolling everyone who justified voted for SGA because “OKC is a better team”.
(To my dying day, I will hate that as a criteria for choosing ostensibly the league’s most valuable player.)
If they’re gonna use stats as criteria, I’d rather they give it to the guy with the highest total plus-minus than the guy with the best fantasy numbers.
So… SGA this season, Jokic last season, Jokic the season before. Draymond in 2016. 😊
JB had friction with KAT (now NYK), thought Wiggs (MIA) underachieved but liked him, and was angry at Thibs (NYK) and GM Scott Layden (retired). Even the ownership is changing over.
I believe that players might perform better in a revenge scenario in the regular season because it's so hard to get up for 82 games, so a little extra motivation helps. I would think in the playoffs, most of that dissipates. One would think everyone is focused at this point. They all know what they're playing for, and enough losses sends you home.
To all the old heads who are still on about how they'd have stopped Steph / the W’s by beating them up and overwhelming them with physicality: Y’all can f*ck right off.
That series was seven games of pure Thunderdome, and our guy came through with 24, 6, and 6 on 63% true shooting. Lololol.
I can tell you what they say. I was listening to the 'Locked on Rockets' podcast, and the host was saying that Steph was CARRIED by his teammates in that first half. He seems to have no understanding of how the Ws play and Steph's role in the system. Unbelievable.
In other news: sharks with arms, refugees from shark week, demonstrate deadly advanced dessert technology by putting a cherry on top of a dagger. EA, did I get that right?
I don't know how you do it, TBH. Spending several hours for each one, frequently overnight, is more than I could ever do (we had some all-nighters at Sybase/SAP, but they weren't every damn week).
I see how you might think so. And that may be the case.
But it's not like the Ws didn't give up anybody in the trade. Notably, Wiggs tended to play better against his old teams, so I wouldn't be surprised if he had a little extra sauce in those games.
On the whole, I still think you're right, partly because the team post-trade >>> the team pre-trade. But I guess we're about to find out...
Denver winning game 1 over OKC should be reassuring to those that think the Warriors can take game 1 over a well rested Twolves. I'm sure it'll take them some time to get used to playing an elite defense after the non-stop ISOs against Luka and Reaves.
I don’t think it’s the same. Steph just played 45 min. Our stars are 5-7 years older than jokic with way more mileage. And that Houston series was definitely more energy exhausting than the clippers one (from an outsiders perspective of course)
I had a look at Buddy’s monthly splits for this season, thinking ‘was his winter 3 point shooting slump really all that bad?’ Answer: yes, it was miserable. in Dec/Jan he shot 59/190 from 3 (31.0%).
But looking at the stats, I was surprised to see his consistent DRtg. Hovered between 112 and 117 every month after October. Minutes Played fairly steady all season. Of course we want to see him shoot (a higher percentage) more consistently. But the balance of his game is just another reason Kerr has so much faith in him.
So... is the Thunder's lack of interior size going to be their demise? They were +9 in TOs, +12 on stocks, got a good Caruso shooting game, at home, on hella rest, against a team just coming off a Game 7... and they still lost. Chet has some nice highlight plays defending Jokic, but you look at the box score and Jokic has 40 points on 60% TS, and the Nuggets have outrebounded them by 20. Hartenstein is fine, but he's not defending Jokic alone in space either.
Side note, Chet sounded like an 82 game player when he was blithely asking "where was the foul" after getting dunked on by Gordon. The Thunder are going to have to play way harder than this if they want to win anything meaningful.
First real experience with the playoffs, I think. OKC is a great team. Maybe they don't have the mental toughness quite yet, but they'll probably get there this series.
Denver's been through the fire several times, and they have monster competitors (Jokic, Gordon, Murray, even Westbrook). It may take OKC a couple of games to raise their play to Denver's level.
I hear people talk about OKC and Houston and other teams with promising young pieces, and they seem confident that they'll get there eventually. I'm not so sure. It might happen. But I remember how good the Kings looked a couple of years ago. I remember the dynasty they were building in Memphis. Stuff happens. Guys get unhappy with their pay or playing time. Personalities clash. The salary cap starts squeezing the team as the young guys come up for bigger contracts, and there isn't enough money to pay them all. Front offices get impatient and blow everything up, hoping to land one guy that will turn it all around.
All that's to say, we'll see soon enough who is right -- and who is dead.
Thunder allowed 5 possessions to occur over 4 seconds (13 sec remaining to 9). Too many chances for something to go wrong, and that's what happened on Holmgren FTs.
I mean it's Jokic. They had both Hartie and Chet in there. Not sure how much bigger you can get. Side note: hard to believe no one's called him jock itch.
It is Jokic, and he is hard to stop (though somebody down thread seems to not even know who this guy is!). But Chet is a stick. He has no chance of keeping Jokic from getting to his spots. Hartenstein has size, and he's a good defender, but not a great one. Maybe there are adjustments they can make, but Jokic may end up with such dominant stat lines in this series that SGAs MVP award becomes laughable in retrospect, even if the Thunder end up winning the series.
Did SGA officially win it? I guess I missed that, but I was expecting it. It's not just in retrospect that that's laughable. Jokic is the best player in the world. Hand him the trophy.
Super-micromanagy post-game analysis: I'm not sure Aaron Gordon would have done that again if he had to think it over.
There were six seconds on the clock in the final fast break, Nuggets down only one, when Westbrook passed it to Gordon. He had run directly behind the three point line. Chet closed fast on Gordon, who shot a three. Sure it went in, but if it had not, he might have regretted the decision.
Because with one side step on Chet, Gordon could have gone right to the hole. No way Chet keeps up with him and there were no other defenders who could have stopped the former dunk champion.
Obviously this is a sort of silly post because they won and it's very hard to think all the options in a moment like that; but I think his higher percentage move was to waste a couple of seconds dribbling to the hole, and go up by one instead of two. Because either way, OKC is going to have to heave a three, so it doesn't matter whether you're up one or two. So you're better off with the highest percentage shot.
You're welcome, Aaron. Hit me up any time for this kind of hot tip that took me ten minutes longer to type than it took you to just hit a badass three.
I think that shot is exactly what you want, actually... if you make it, it's a 2 point lead with seconds left. If you miss, you're crashing the glass and have chances for a putback.
By the time the ball hits the rim, Braun has good rebounding position, Jokic is in the paint, Westbrook is ridiculously standing at the 3pt line (I guess he did already use his turbo). They had chances.
I'm listening to a podcast from a couple of days ago right now, and it's hilarious to hear the hosts writing off the Knicks and Nuggets. They're probably still right over the course of the series, but for the moment ...
Playoff TS of the stars of the eight conference semi-finalists:
.630 Steph
.587 Jokic
.577 Spida
.573 Tatum
.556 Haliburton
.548 Brunson
.533 Ant
.528 SGA
But Steph got to play against an easy defense, or something. Washed.
What the @#$^.
This is just another one of those stats that seems normal at a glance and then seems increasingly impossible the more you think about it.
It’s shooting like that that secures you a 9th place in a playoffs MVP list: https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/45002874/nba-playoffs-2025-jokic-ant-brunson-ranking-10-postseason-mvps
Yeah but he's got nothing on the GOAT Pat Spencer - .803 TS% ;P
All we are saying is give Pat a chance...
It’s only because he shoots so many free throws /s
That's astonishing.
That Steph TS% is truly amazing given the all-time high defensive treatment and injured 2nd option.
The only comparison I could think of was 2019 Finals. No time to check this, but ChatGPT says:
[[
Stephen Curry recorded a true shooting percentage (TS%) of 59.8% during the 2019 NBA Finals against the Toronto Raptors . This metric accounts for field goals, three-point shots, and free throws, providing a comprehensive measure of shooting efficiency.
Notably, Curry’s TS% was influenced by five end-of-quarter heave attempts—long-distance shots taken as time expired—which are typically low-percentage and can affect shooting statistics. When excluding these heaves, his TS% for the series would have increased to 61.8% . 
Despite the Warriors’ loss in the series, Curry delivered a strong individual performance, averaging 30.5 points, 5.2 rebounds, and 6.0 assists over six games .
]]
Notably, Curry’s TS% was influenced by five end-of-quarter heave attempts—long-distance shots taken as time expired—
So now Chat GPT knows who will be reading this?!? Clearly it knows Sleepy is lurking...
If that’s a “strong” performance I don’t know what “elite” would look like…
Hey I’ll just be happy if the numbers are accurate and it’s not all a GPT hallucination
> When excluding these heaves, his TS% for the series would have increased to 61.8%
You’re killing me, Eric!!! 😂
As those who have to endure my rants in game threads know, I think counting heaves as FGA is evil, or at best ignorant lol. It’s a perversion of the whole idea of true shooting percentage (i.e. how efficiently do you use possessions?) to call a buzzer heave an FGA — since, far from wasting a possession, you’re actually creating one. If you’re going to punish a player statistically for heaving, you should punish players worse for swallowing the ball.
Road teams in Game 1, conference semis:
W
W
W
?
W
correct. A+
Not even caring about a potential Warriors matchup, I’m going to love Jokic trolling everyone who justified voted for SGA because “OKC is a better team”.
(To my dying day, I will hate that as a criteria for choosing ostensibly the league’s most valuable player.)
If they’re gonna use stats as criteria, I’d rather they give it to the guy with the highest total plus-minus than the guy with the best fantasy numbers.
So… SGA this season, Jokic last season, Jokic the season before. Draymond in 2016. 😊
So should LeBron have won MVP over Steph in 16 because “the Warriors were the better team”?
They’re saying that “better team” shouldn’t matter, not that it’s a demerit.
…and post-season results justify regular-season awards, apparently
Will Jimmy go nuts against his old team? We all expected him to against the Heat, but he was kinda quiet.
Not sure if anyone’s left to grudge at…
JB had friction with KAT (now NYK), thought Wiggs (MIA) underachieved but liked him, and was angry at Thibs (NYK) and GM Scott Layden (retired). Even the ownership is changing over.
The fans maybe? lol
Oh yeah, MIN fans definitely will still hate Jimmy, but I don’t know if Jimmy will have the revenge buff for his own performance
The buff will be more like a +1/+1 (offense and defense) rather than the more typical +3/+3 you’d expect for a more connected revenge ball scenario.
I believe that players might perform better in a revenge scenario in the regular season because it's so hard to get up for 82 games, so a little extra motivation helps. I would think in the playoffs, most of that dissipates. One would think everyone is focused at this point. They all know what they're playing for, and enough losses sends you home.
To all the old heads who are still on about how they'd have stopped Steph / the W’s by beating them up and overwhelming them with physicality: Y’all can f*ck right off.
That series was seven games of pure Thunderdome, and our guy came through with 24, 6, and 6 on 63% true shooting. Lololol.
What are they gonna say now???
I can tell you what they say. I was listening to the 'Locked on Rockets' podcast, and the host was saying that Steph was CARRIED by his teammates in that first half. He seems to have no understanding of how the Ws play and Steph's role in the system. Unbelievable.
Geez, JOKER with 42 may be worth HOLMGREN + HARTENSTEIN X 2..They went for 12 pts each...GORDON got 22 and MURRAY 21...SHAI with 37...what a battle!
In other news: sharks with arms, refugees from shark week, demonstrate deadly advanced dessert technology by putting a cherry on top of a dagger. EA, did I get that right?
doh just realized I forgot to put the shark music over that part
I also wanted to do a part about how Buddy has to always be massaging the ball
Oh well, I was in a rush and the damned playoff schedule don’t give us any time to savor a win
My wife and I got our usual dose of satisfaction from listening to your witty observations and humorous commentary. Thanks a lot.
I wondered about that. :)
It's OK to miss a couple of brushstrokes when you're painting masterpieces once a week.
Once a week I can handle… the every other day schedule is super rough… but these are good problems to have
I don't know how you do it, TBH. Spending several hours for each one, frequently overnight, is more than I could ever do (we had some all-nighters at Sybase/SAP, but they weren't every damn week).
I (and many of us) are grateful.
Still savoring.
Warriors were 3-1 against Minnie this season. All before JBB joined the team. Seems like the Warriors have an edge based on past returns?
I see how you might think so. And that may be the case.
But it's not like the Ws didn't give up anybody in the trade. Notably, Wiggs tended to play better against his old teams, so I wouldn't be surprised if he had a little extra sauce in those games.
On the whole, I still think you're right, partly because the team post-trade >>> the team pre-trade. But I guess we're about to find out...
Denver winning game 1 over OKC should be reassuring to those that think the Warriors can take game 1 over a well rested Twolves. I'm sure it'll take them some time to get used to playing an elite defense after the non-stop ISOs against Luka and Reaves.
I don’t think it’s the same. Steph just played 45 min. Our stars are 5-7 years older than jokic with way more mileage. And that Houston series was definitely more energy exhausting than the clippers one (from an outsiders perspective of course)
I had a look at Buddy’s monthly splits for this season, thinking ‘was his winter 3 point shooting slump really all that bad?’ Answer: yes, it was miserable. in Dec/Jan he shot 59/190 from 3 (31.0%).
But looking at the stats, I was surprised to see his consistent DRtg. Hovered between 112 and 117 every month after October. Minutes Played fairly steady all season. Of course we want to see him shoot (a higher percentage) more consistently. But the balance of his game is just another reason Kerr has so much faith in him.
So... is the Thunder's lack of interior size going to be their demise? They were +9 in TOs, +12 on stocks, got a good Caruso shooting game, at home, on hella rest, against a team just coming off a Game 7... and they still lost. Chet has some nice highlight plays defending Jokic, but you look at the box score and Jokic has 40 points on 60% TS, and the Nuggets have outrebounded them by 20. Hartenstein is fine, but he's not defending Jokic alone in space either.
Side note, Chet sounded like an 82 game player when he was blithely asking "where was the foul" after getting dunked on by Gordon. The Thunder are going to have to play way harder than this if they want to win anything meaningful.
I got that same impression from Chet. Russ, Jokic, and AG totally bitched him at rim a few times
First real experience with the playoffs, I think. OKC is a great team. Maybe they don't have the mental toughness quite yet, but they'll probably get there this series.
Denver's been through the fire several times, and they have monster competitors (Jokic, Gordon, Murray, even Westbrook). It may take OKC a couple of games to raise their play to Denver's level.
One can only hope.
I hear people talk about OKC and Houston and other teams with promising young pieces, and they seem confident that they'll get there eventually. I'm not so sure. It might happen. But I remember how good the Kings looked a couple of years ago. I remember the dynasty they were building in Memphis. Stuff happens. Guys get unhappy with their pay or playing time. Personalities clash. The salary cap starts squeezing the team as the young guys come up for bigger contracts, and there isn't enough money to pay them all. Front offices get impatient and blow everything up, hoping to land one guy that will turn it all around.
All that's to say, we'll see soon enough who is right -- and who is dead.
Thunder allowed 5 possessions to occur over 4 seconds (13 sec remaining to 9). Too many chances for something to go wrong, and that's what happened on Holmgren FTs.
I’m down for an upset and rather play an older and slower Denver team, if we get that far
Denver ain’t that old, and they’re much more dangerous in the clutch. Denver just has to win the close games when those young Thunder butts pucker up
Denver average age for their rotation is like late 20s. Okc is early to mid 20s. I think there’s a decent difference here.
They’re clutch but we’re clutcher ☺️
Late 20s is like prime age for basketball players when it comes to winning meaningful games.
I agree :)
I agree with that
Just like in our last series, I don't care who we play in the next series, I just hope we win this one and get the chance!
I mean it's Jokic. They had both Hartie and Chet in there. Not sure how much bigger you can get. Side note: hard to believe no one's called him jock itch.
Yeah, I don't think it would be smart to poke the bear...
It is Jokic, and he is hard to stop (though somebody down thread seems to not even know who this guy is!). But Chet is a stick. He has no chance of keeping Jokic from getting to his spots. Hartenstein has size, and he's a good defender, but not a great one. Maybe there are adjustments they can make, but Jokic may end up with such dominant stat lines in this series that SGAs MVP award becomes laughable in retrospect, even if the Thunder end up winning the series.
Did SGA officially win it? I guess I missed that, but I was expecting it. It's not just in retrospect that that's laughable. Jokic is the best player in the world. Hand him the trophy.
Super-micromanagy post-game analysis: I'm not sure Aaron Gordon would have done that again if he had to think it over.
There were six seconds on the clock in the final fast break, Nuggets down only one, when Westbrook passed it to Gordon. He had run directly behind the three point line. Chet closed fast on Gordon, who shot a three. Sure it went in, but if it had not, he might have regretted the decision.
Because with one side step on Chet, Gordon could have gone right to the hole. No way Chet keeps up with him and there were no other defenders who could have stopped the former dunk champion.
Obviously this is a sort of silly post because they won and it's very hard to think all the options in a moment like that; but I think his higher percentage move was to waste a couple of seconds dribbling to the hole, and go up by one instead of two. Because either way, OKC is going to have to heave a three, so it doesn't matter whether you're up one or two. So you're better off with the highest percentage shot.
You're welcome, Aaron. Hit me up any time for this kind of hot tip that took me ten minutes longer to type than it took you to just hit a badass three.
I think that shot is exactly what you want, actually... if you make it, it's a 2 point lead with seconds left. If you miss, you're crashing the glass and have chances for a putback.
But I don't think Denver could have counted on an offensive rebound. No one was near the basket.
https://www.nba.com/stats/events?CFID=&CFPARAMS=&GameEventID=775&GameID=0042400221&Season=2024-25&flag=1&title=Gordon%2025%27%203PT%20Running%20Jump%20Shot%20(22%20PTS)%20(Westbrook%202%20AST)
By the time the ball hits the rim, Braun has good rebounding position, Jokic is in the paint, Westbrook is ridiculously standing at the 3pt line (I guess he did already use his turbo). They had chances.
Also against my own argument, once you start dribbling you do increase turnover risk.
In that clip, Russ's celebration for the made shot is so un-epic. It's a weird little two hands in the air thing. Odd. But that's Russ.
Maybe he wanted to "hit for the cycle"? He already won a game with a dunk at the buzzer. So this was .... different.
This is very interesting. A basketball cycle. What would that be in a full game?
How about: Hitting a half-court three, a dunk, a circus reverse shot without looking like Steph did yesterday, and one underhand free throw.
It would be outstanding if guys were one half-court three from the cycle and started going for it. "HE'S GOING FOR THE CYCLE, HE SHOOTS IT ..."
I'm listening to a podcast from a couple of days ago right now, and it's hilarious to hear the hosts writing off the Knicks and Nuggets. They're probably still right over the course of the series, but for the moment ...
I'm sure there are also quite a few "Warriors are done against Houston" commentaries to enjoy out there as well if you like that sort of thing.
I was actually surprised by how many "experts" picked the Dubs in Game Seven - it was a good check on my pessimism.
Not gonna lie, after last year, it was kinda nice to see OKC blow an "up three with the shot clock off" situation haha
I can see why fouling up 3 can backfire. The game just wouldn’t end for OKC. The crowd sounded so tense those last 12 seconds of reg
I was here for it.
>>>Mark Daigneault says he doesn't believe that OKC fouling early in the back court even when Jokic was in the sideline was a mistake<<<
https://old.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1kfw9p2/highlight_mark_daigneault_says_he_doesnt_believe/
Over at Canis Hoopus, they seem to think they have a better bench than us. Hmmm.
It's mainly because of Naz Reid who's a certified Warrior killer.
They have 2 guys who got votes for 6th man of the year in Ried & NAW, neither of whom was DDV, who's also awesome coming off their bench.
Outside of Ant he's definitely the dude I am worried the most about