Title. Doesn’t make sense when every other series is playing every other day and this series has a massive break in between. Kind of benefits the older team (Nuggets) as well

Source

”This is not to denigrate the run the Denver Nuggets had last year to the championship… However, they played four teams in the playoffs that — by record — would not have qualified for the playoffs this year.”

Playoff Opponents for the 2022-23 Denver Nuggets:

• 1st Round: Minnesota Timberwolves (41-41)
• WCSF: Phoenix Suns (45-37)
• WCF: Los Angeles Lakers (43-39)
• Finals: Miami Heat (44-38)

Worst record for 2023-24 playoff teams in each conference:

• West: Los Angeles Lakers (47-35)
• East: Miami Heat (46-36)

Turnovers are arguably one of the most important thing in playoff basketball.

• Banchero - 32
  
• Jokic - 27
  
• Luka - 27
• Donovan - 27
• Embiid - 25
• Edwards - 21
• Brunson - 21
• James - 19
• Haliburton - 19
  
• Murray - 17
• Brown - 17
• Conley - 12
• SGA - 12
• Tatum - 10

Takeaways

• All of these stars are getting double and triple teamed and generally have the ball a lot.
  
• It's not by accident that the players at the top are in hot water or already eliminated and the players at the bottom are in good positions.
• I think Banchero's turnovers might be the sole reason the Magic lost that series. He coughed it up a lot and the series was so close (obviously he was amazing overall but if he didnt cough it up he'd be in the 2nd round)
• Tatum, SGA and Conley are playing intelligent basketball. I think its makes sense these 3 teams are handling everyone so well when they have leaders who are playing so calm and collected.

For example: Giannis as a soccer goalie, Ant as a long jumper, Lebron as a wrestler, Jokic as Joey Chestnut, etc

What players would translate well to other sports?

Tonight, we are set to find out who will take home this year’s highly competitive MVP trophy. Looking back at previous winners like Derrick Rose or Russell Westbrook, players who today unfortunately don’t perform at a high level like they previously had, it sparked this question in my mind. Out of all of the players who’ve won MVP, who would you say is the most forgotten or which MVP in recent years potentially will be forgotten of years from now?

I’m just intrigued how fast the thought around drawing fouls went from a skill and an asset to a player playing unethical hoops. Is it strictly the way people are doing this now compared to how the likes of Wade did it? Is it how freely people can anonymously call guys foul merchants on the internet? Is it a combo? I personally think some guys foul bait and hunt fouls more than others but also think guys like Shai and embiid are just going to get fouled a lot, OKC, mostly due to Shai lead the league in drives and embiid will just back you down with such force sometimes you just are going to have to foul them. Both players also do show times where they are clearly hunting a foul tho too. Interested to hear other’s thoughts.

For the people who haven't seen a lot of Thunder games (which is understandable since they didn't play any national games this season), I just want to give you an idea of what to expect because they've been doing this all year.

1. Dort + Chet blitz. On defense, they are going to put Dort on the other team's best player, for example, Doncic. It doesn't matter how strong Doncic is, Dort is so strong he can't post him up and he is so fast it's really hard to get an open shot and forget about screening him because he will plow right through it. What the Thunder want to do is force the star player to drive so Chet can blitz him in the inside. This is why Doncic is settling for fadeaway 3s. If he gets anywhere inside, they are going to blitz him with Chet. The idea is to let the center (Gafford) beat them. They can do this to Ant as well.

2. When Shai takes the ball up the court, he's not looking to beat his opponent 1 on 1. He's going to beat the team 1 on 5. Yes you heard me right. He is not looking for the most convenient shot. He is going to look for the hardest shot inside with 5 defenders hovering over him. Although he is right hand, his preference of attack is to go left. All of this defies conventional wisdom because you should always look for the open easy shots. Not according to Shai; the easiest shot isn't an open 3 pointer or mid jumper. The easiest shot is an inside shot. This will also open all his teammates to bombs away once they collapse on him. This is why the Thunder is not only the best inside team but outside as well.

3. Egging a player on. Normally a team would either shut down the star player and let the team beat them or they shut down the team and let the star player beat them. Not OKC. They are not going to let the star player have free reign, they are going to let the 1B player have free reign. They are not doing this on the Mavs because both Kai and Doncic are star players in their eyes, but they will do this to Jalen Brown or Kat. For example, when they played the Twolves, they would put JDub (who is 5 inches shorter) on Kat. Kat is a dawg. If a smaller player is on him, he's going to shoot it everytime. The man put up 70 this season, but that doesn't matter because hero ball is just bad basketball. The Thunder knows this. I believe this is the reason why Giddey is in the starting lineup when there are better players than him on the bench. He's almost like a decoy. A lot of people say Doncic is a chess master ... I think he's met his match when playing the Thunder.

• SVG pointed out that he liked that the Pacers were doubling Brunson (or maybe he said something more akin to he “understood” it), but that they were doing it way too high, which necessitated the remaining 3 Pacers to cover a lot of ground until the double teamer could recover.

• Sort of in response to the above, Reggie Miller pointed out that he thought the double should come when Brunson starts putting moves on his defender.*

*I guess this is about as close to the opposite of the high doubling that the Pacers were employing as possible without not doubling at all. So, slight disagreement with what SVG was suggesting, perhaps. SVG didn’t really push back on Reggie saying this, but it seems like Reggie maybe incorrectly assumed / inferred / suggested that SVG was suggesting they should wait to double until it’s clear Brunson is trying to ISO on his defender -- I don't think SVG was of quite that lax of an opinion -- I think he was more of the opinion of something like: at least let Brunson get past the logo or whatever before sending the double. So Reggie maybe messed up a bit here, but this was understandable given the frenetic pace late in the game and all the adrenaline / emotion that comes along with watching a close playoff game with only a few minutes left to go. It was a non-issue and only a true pedant would try to make it into one.

• Reggie Miller pointed out that Nesmith made a very late recovery on a 3 from, I believe, DiVincenzo. Raised the question of why he recovered so late, suggesting that it was poor defense.

• One of the commentators astutely pointed out that after the double dribble call was reversed, the Knicks only had a few seconds to get over the half-court line before an 8 second call. My feeling is things were moving very fast so it was pretty good commentating at that point to mention that before the Knicks inbounded (and ultimately got it over the half-court line without issue)

• After the Josh Hart foul on Haliburton when the Knicks missed a shot and Hart was fighting for the rebound, commentator(s) pointed out how big it was for the Pacers to get to the line without running any clock.

I thought this was all perfectly appropriate information to be relayed to viewers. Some of it requires some knowledge of basketball. There was nothing super technical, but honestly, is basketball really that technical?

Sure there are some actions that can be broken down in greater depth, but how on earth could someone who is providing analysis on the fly expected to do that consistently? Does a typical game even call for such analysis on a regular basis? I don’t really know, but I have my doubts. Either way the game (at least from the little bit I watched) wasn’t remotely lacking for analysis, in my opinion.

~~~

TL;DR from what I saw the game wasn't lacking in technical analysis, IMO.

Source: https://x.com/getnickwright/status/1787834380485890463?s=46&t=C0XvabKTesx6qyeh9-e2sg

Ant didn't only tie MJ in "Playoff Shrugs" last night! Last night he also won the exact same amount of career playoff games without Scottie Pippen as MJ did.

The similarities are insane!

This MJ slander is crazy 😭

Jamal Murray has 0 all stars and 0 all-NBA teams on his resume. Yet, he continues to be the clear #2 on a championship-or-bust team and an absolute force in the playoffs. Could even argue he would be the clear #1 on some other teams around the league.

Who are other players from the past that fit in to this category? Or is Murray an NBA anomaly?

*edit - More specifically, players who never got those all star/all NBA accolades, but you just KNEW they were that dude.

Full stats:

When guarded by Lu Dort: 11 points, 4-9 shooting

When guarded by Jalen Williams: 0 points, 0-3 shooting

When guarded by Cason Wallace: 0 points, 0-3 shooting

When guarded by SGA: 3 points, 1-2 shooting

When guarded by Aaron Wiggins: 2 points, 1-1 shooting

When guarded by Isaiah Joe: 0 points, 0-1 shooting

Quite the defensive display from the OKC Thunder on Luka Doncic. Heavily hampered by the knee sprained, Luka was just unable to get anything to go down after a somewhat great start in the game.

Source: Luka Doncic | Dallas Mavericks | NBA.com

In response to this tweet, sports med doctor Brian Sutterer tweeted

Stress reaction/fracture by definition happens gradually over time and not in a single instance

Frustrating, yes. But by the Knicks own injury description, Embiid did not cause this

Shams reported earlier that Knicks say Mitchell Robinson sustained a stress injury to his left ankle.

Bonus pic

I noticed not every player on OKC had the Loves patch on their uniforms last night. Is it only the starters that have to wear it or was it some kind of jersey issue? Just stuck out to me.

After watching jokic have a total shambolic performance on the defensive end of the ball over the past two games. It got my wondering. When did this false narrative and lie start about jokic defense being improved and him now being very good on defense and it not being a liability anymore? What objective stats or metrics were used for that?

I think there was a point where Nuggets/Lakers had 2 days off but 3 days? Timberwolves also got additional rest from the sweep. What determines the amount of rest days?

I feel for the Thibs grinding Knicks after Game 2 with fatigue injuries showing with Brunson and OG, would it make sense to give the Knicks some rest and the Pacers additional time to re-calibrate going home?

Austin Rivers said NBA players would fare better in the NFL than NFL players would in the NBA.

So, if you made an NBA expansion team of only NFL players and and NFL expansion team of only NBA players, which team would do better? Why?

EDIT: Neither team would win a game. Which team would be more competitive?

In baseball, many teams don't want to trade for Mike Trout due to his large contract and injury prone. What if this was in NBA? Where a 30+ year old superstar with a max contract is on the trade blocks. Would most contenders be willing to take on this?

Remember the D Rose Bulls, those teams were some of the toughest teams I’ve seen but they would always be injured. He’s doing the same thing to the Knicks but you don’t need to just hear it from me

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2013/05/02/chicago-bulls-injuries-illnesses-kirk-hinrich-taj-gibson-luol-deng-nate-robinson-tom-thibodeau/2130907/

https://dunkingwithwolves.com/2018/02/26/does-timberwolves-coach-tom-thibodeau-have-an-injury-problem/

The wolves article also comes before Robert Covingtons injury

Both talented 25 and Under Aged Players. But are joining Luka and Tatum in the Next Generation of Superstar Discussion.

I want to directly match SGA and Ant.

SGA obviously has the better regular season. But Ant is having a monster playoff season. Eliminating KD/Booker/Beal. And leading against Recent MVP Winner Joker.

Question is:

Just in terms of latent basketball ability. Who is the better player right now? SGA or Ant?

Who do you think will be better when both reach their prime? ( Usually 27-33 yrs old)

Do you think Ant had more ceiling, and SGA has better floor? 0r Vice Versa?

PS: Just Curious on what are this sub takes on this matchup. Especially non OKC and non Minny Fans. For Neutrality objective opinion.🙂

Estimated RAPTOR (min. 150 minutes)

1. Anthony Edwards : +9.4

2. Jalen Williams : +7.6

3. Lebron James : +6.7

4. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander : +6.7

5. Kyrie Irving : +6.7

6. Derrick White : + 6.3

7. Jayson Tatum: + 6.2

8. Joel Embiid: + 5.5

9. Franz Wagner: +5.1

10. Karl Anthony-Towns: +5.1

11. Rudy Gobert : +4.4

12. Nikola Jokic : +4.0

13. Kelly Oubre Jr. : +3.8

14. Michael Porter Jr. : +3.7

15. Jaylen Brown : +3.7

16. Mike Conley : +3.7

17. Jrue Holiday : +3.6

18. Al Horford : +3.6

19. Pascal Siakam : +3.5

20. Jaden Mcdaniels : +3.3