I had a dream last night (before the Finals game 😭) in which the W’s made a 4-team trade: Butler to Brooklyn for Cam Johnson, creating a $30M trade exception, which they used to acquire Porzingis from Boston; the second half of the trade was much less detailed (and even more far-fetched), but we ended up getting Booker from Phoenix.
Just posting this here in case any aspect of it proves clairvoyant…
Rough final game for SGA, but just as a PSA: **FG% is not a measure of efficiency.** He put up .449 TS for the game (still bad, but not as bad as .296 implies) and .574 TS for the playoffs (not spectacular, but fairly solid given his ultra-high usage).
Or if they’re intrigued by Kuminga and think he’s a nice hoops/age fit with Giddey? Kuminga has more size and upside than White. I can see the appeal of a straight Kuminga/White swap if I’m a Bulls fan.
It's a lose lose. It's not unfathomable to think that's the closest he'll ever be to winning a title, so if the team doesn't let him play it could be a regret that nags at him for the rest of his life.
I'm not saying that makes it the right decision to play through the injury, just that there's nuance to it, and of course it's easy for us to say in hindsight that he shouldn't have been allowed to play.
Agree. Bob Myers called it days ago. I called it days ago. I’m sure many others did. KD should have written it in stone: calf strains lead to achilles tears if you play on them.
And you know a star will want to play, so it's on the coach and especially the team doctor (because the coach is paid to win) to save the player from himself. Then again, where was our medical staff when KD played with his calf strain?
Im impressed by both them and the Pacers. The basketball was better in this playoffs than it has been for a few years and the Thunder and Pacers were the two best teams
They don’t have a lot of impressive scorers. They have SGA who is elite,JW who is very good and a bunch of guys who are not great offensively.
Their defense is extremely impressive. Watch that game and tell me how many easy shots Indiana got in 48 minutes? So many really tough shots. Ironically the one guy who went on a small scoring spree was McConnell in the third and all his shots were really tough as well.
Problem with McConnell is that he committed 7 turnovers. Kept getting trapped near half-court. And when he wasn't turning the ball over or scoring, he was dribbling back and forth as the shot clock wound down without gaining any kind of advantage, which explains why no other Pacer scored in a 12 minute span of the third and fourth quarters. Reminded me a lot of Podz that way.
It's not exactly weird. It's understandable. It's because they haven't been there, they're young, it feels like they don't exactly belong. In five years if they have four trophies or so you'll be like "That is one impressive team."
But there's no specific structural reason why OKC should not be great again. They aren't aging out, there are no injuries, they're only going to get better with age if they have good health, they also have draft picks. Eventually they'll have to pay everyone but for now the future looks bright as heck.
Eventually they'll have to pay everybody, and eventually is not far off. They're in good shape for '25-'26, with everybody under contract. (Mitchell and Jaylin Williams have club options.)
But in the summer of '26, Holmgren and Jalen Williams (and Mitchell) are RFA, and things will get expensive. They might need to make some moves to stay under the 2nd cap. (I haven't broken that down but Perks probably has.) In the summer of '27, SGA, Hartenstein, and Dort will be UFA and things could get VERY expensive. Of course they have a bunch of picks coming so they are in a good position to deal. But if they want to keep this core together, they'll have to get creative as soon as a year from now.
In the immediate aftermath of the last 3+ NBA Finals, the team that won the championship looked poised to win again, just as these Thunder look poised to win again. Honestly, since 2020, the team that won the championship wasn't expecting much turnover, and was the favorite to repeat... sure, the Thunder are generally a bit younger, and they have more draft picks... but draft picks are just draft picks until they actually work out. And all those former champions have performed well in the follow up season, but none have even made it to The Finals.
Not saying OKC is going to win 4 or 5 titles in this day and age but they are awfully good and very young. What is cool about them is they have so many second rounders that play and Dort was not even drafted. J Williams was a nobody out of Santa Clara.
SGA was never expected to be elite. The only big name super high draft pick and player they have is Holmgren and he is way below SGA and Williams in the pecking order.
SGA is a great player like him or not.
His game in a lot of ways is more old school, before 3’s existed.
He is so good because he doesn’t rely on 3’s at all which is so refreshing and means he has very few bad games. You can count on his 25 to 30 almost every night. Very difficult to guard and showed his all around game in these playoffs.
Seems like the team is made up of good dudes as well.
Great front office and so many assets.
They certainly should be better next year with all the experience gained and so many young guys just improving year by year.
Houston next year. East is an absolute trash bin 🗑️ of a conference especially with Tatum out all yr. They need to seed the best 16 teams regardless of conference.
I don't know about that. The East's supposedly fifth or sixth best team came awfully close to beating the West's supposedly best team. These things are hard to gauge until you play them out.
So was Phoenix, they'd made the finals before trading for KD. They were a more fearsome team, when they traded for a KD 3 years younger. Yes Houston could be a good team, but I'm not sold on them. I feel the Dubs would have beaten them in 5 if Jimmy didn't break his butt. Last years 2-8 were basically the same teams separated by a couple of wins. Without a point guard I feel they'll be similar to Phoenix, somewhat one dimensional. Besides, they don't have a reliable scorer beyond KD and if Reed Sheppard doesn't take a leap, they don't have shooting as well. We may not like Dillon Brooks, but I think they are going to miss him
I had a dream last night (before the Finals game 😭) in which the W’s made a 4-team trade: Butler to Brooklyn for Cam Johnson, creating a $30M trade exception, which they used to acquire Porzingis from Boston; the second half of the trade was much less detailed (and even more far-fetched), but we ended up getting Booker from Phoenix.
Just posting this here in case any aspect of it proves clairvoyant…
Ugh that was horrible. So, so brutal.
So whatever happened to getting a technical for flopping? That was a good 2 months before that call completely disappeared.
Riley Curry is playing in the youth national volleyball championships age 10-13. She's looking hyped like Steph out there.
In case you weren't feeling old enough today. Lol.
Meanwhile i told my wife my Kevon Looney better make the 8th grade A team after investing time and money on volleyball lessons all offseason
SGA shot 8-27 in the final game for an inefficient 29.6%. 11 of his 29 points were FTs.
Rough final game for SGA, but just as a PSA: **FG% is not a measure of efficiency.** He put up .449 TS for the game (still bad, but not as bad as .296 implies) and .574 TS for the playoffs (not spectacular, but fairly solid given his ultra-high usage).
Alright its timmmmmmmeeeeeee
Steph, Podz, Himmy, Draymond, horford(FA)
Melton(FA), Buddy, Jaquez (Trade for JK), moody, Post
Robinson (Trade for JK), Draft Pick, FA, FA
Hoping one of the FAs is Loon on a cheap contract
I’d rather take Coby White in a JK S&T honestly
Chicago isn't foolish enough to give away Coby White unless the Warriors front office has mind control powers.
Or if they’re intrigued by Kuminga and think he’s a nice hoops/age fit with Giddey? Kuminga has more size and upside than White. I can see the appeal of a straight Kuminga/White swap if I’m a Bulls fan.
MDJ to Bulls GM Marc Eversley as he drives up with Coby White stashed in the back seat: "This is not the guard you're looking for...."
TBF Chicago’s front office is pretty foolish
That would be a dream scenario
Gui?
Meh
Gasp
Honestly I’m a bit upset the Pacers failed to save Hali from himself.
Didn’t he just play a game pretty well on the same strained calf in game six? Where was the outage then? This smells of consequentialism.
There were a few of us in the game thread worried about the same thing despite him playing well..
It's a lose lose. It's not unfathomable to think that's the closest he'll ever be to winning a title, so if the team doesn't let him play it could be a regret that nags at him for the rest of his life.
I'm not saying that makes it the right decision to play through the injury, just that there's nuance to it, and of course it's easy for us to say in hindsight that he shouldn't have been allowed to play.
Aaron Gordon has a strained hamstring, not calf
Ok, ignore that part (just edited to remove it cause the part before it was the main point)
It's unforgivable tbh.
Agree. Bob Myers called it days ago. I called it days ago. I’m sure many others did. KD should have written it in stone: calf strains lead to achilles tears if you play on them.
At least 2 times that we know of...
Giannis won a chip playing on a calf strain and was fine.
They can't all run like a gazelle though.
And you know a star will want to play, so it's on the coach and especially the team doctor (because the coach is paid to win) to save the player from himself. Then again, where was our medical staff when KD played with his calf strain?
NBA draft is on June 25th to June 26th.
Congrats to OKC. They were by far the best regular season team.
The Hali injury robbed us of a classic G7.
On to the offseason, finally.
I know they won a lot of games and the title. But is it weird that I'm still not that impressed with OKC?
Im impressed by both them and the Pacers. The basketball was better in this playoffs than it has been for a few years and the Thunder and Pacers were the two best teams
They don’t have a lot of impressive scorers. They have SGA who is elite,JW who is very good and a bunch of guys who are not great offensively.
Their defense is extremely impressive. Watch that game and tell me how many easy shots Indiana got in 48 minutes? So many really tough shots. Ironically the one guy who went on a small scoring spree was McConnell in the third and all his shots were really tough as well.
Problem with McConnell is that he committed 7 turnovers. Kept getting trapped near half-court. And when he wasn't turning the ball over or scoring, he was dribbling back and forth as the shot clock wound down without gaining any kind of advantage, which explains why no other Pacer scored in a 12 minute span of the third and fourth quarters. Reminded me a lot of Podz that way.
It's not exactly weird. It's understandable. It's because they haven't been there, they're young, it feels like they don't exactly belong. In five years if they have four trophies or so you'll be like "That is one impressive team."
Or… in 2 years, after two other teams have won separate titles, we’ll be like: yawn, a 4th team in a row is being crowned “The Next Dynasty”
Or that. We shall see.
But there's no specific structural reason why OKC should not be great again. They aren't aging out, there are no injuries, they're only going to get better with age if they have good health, they also have draft picks. Eventually they'll have to pay everyone but for now the future looks bright as heck.
Eventually they'll have to pay everybody, and eventually is not far off. They're in good shape for '25-'26, with everybody under contract. (Mitchell and Jaylin Williams have club options.)
But in the summer of '26, Holmgren and Jalen Williams (and Mitchell) are RFA, and things will get expensive. They might need to make some moves to stay under the 2nd cap. (I haven't broken that down but Perks probably has.) In the summer of '27, SGA, Hartenstein, and Dort will be UFA and things could get VERY expensive. Of course they have a bunch of picks coming so they are in a good position to deal. But if they want to keep this core together, they'll have to get creative as soon as a year from now.
And there was no structural reason for the Celtics not to repeat… same for the Nuggets before them.
I'm not sure what your point is.
In the immediate aftermath of the last 3+ NBA Finals, the team that won the championship looked poised to win again, just as these Thunder look poised to win again. Honestly, since 2020, the team that won the championship wasn't expecting much turnover, and was the favorite to repeat... sure, the Thunder are generally a bit younger, and they have more draft picks... but draft picks are just draft picks until they actually work out. And all those former champions have performed well in the follow up season, but none have even made it to The Finals.
Complete this sentence. "If Halliburton had been healthy for the entire Finals ..."
OKC probably still wins, but I'd be happier :(
Not saying OKC is going to win 4 or 5 titles in this day and age but they are awfully good and very young. What is cool about them is they have so many second rounders that play and Dort was not even drafted. J Williams was a nobody out of Santa Clara.
SGA was never expected to be elite. The only big name super high draft pick and player they have is Holmgren and he is way below SGA and Williams in the pecking order.
SGA is a great player like him or not.
His game in a lot of ways is more old school, before 3’s existed.
He is so good because he doesn’t rely on 3’s at all which is so refreshing and means he has very few bad games. You can count on his 25 to 30 almost every night. Very difficult to guard and showed his all around game in these playoffs.
Seems like the team is made up of good dudes as well.
Great front office and so many assets.
They certainly should be better next year with all the experience gained and so many young guys just improving year by year.
Congrats to a well earned title.
Even though game 7 sucked, I still had a lot of fun this season.
Time for MDJ to cook!
I sure hope the Thunder and their fans don't expect anyone to be impressed by this title, because I sure am not.
Suns fans are taking it well. Lol.
https://www.reddit.com/r/suns/comments/1li5raa/a_city_that_got_a_team_40_years_after_phoenix/
C'mon. It's game 7, leave everyone in until the clock runs to zero.
Hope OKC doesn't repeat
Houston next year. East is an absolute trash bin 🗑️ of a conference especially with Tatum out all yr. They need to seed the best 16 teams regardless of conference.
I don't know about that. The East's supposedly fifth or sixth best team came awfully close to beating the West's supposedly best team. These things are hard to gauge until you play them out.
And Hali… and Dame…
KD's last 2 super teams have been duds. Why do we think this is going to be any different?
Because Houston was up and coming anyway? I mean Smith, Thompson and Eason are entering years 3, 2 and 3, respectively…sheesh
So was Phoenix, they'd made the finals before trading for KD. They were a more fearsome team, when they traded for a KD 3 years younger. Yes Houston could be a good team, but I'm not sold on them. I feel the Dubs would have beaten them in 5 if Jimmy didn't break his butt. Last years 2-8 were basically the same teams separated by a couple of wins. Without a point guard I feel they'll be similar to Phoenix, somewhat one dimensional. Besides, they don't have a reliable scorer beyond KD and if Reed Sheppard doesn't take a leap, they don't have shooting as well. We may not like Dillon Brooks, but I think they are going to miss him
Or we're taking out Houston again next year :) 100% agree on the top-16 playoffs (13-20 for play-in)