2015-16 NBA Around the League Thread

[clonetrooper264]

DJ White was the real prize of that trade.

But former 82 game starter Keith Bogans was the glue that made that deal work.

 

[clonetrooper264]

KD out with a sprained toe. What a wimp amirite

 

[RamiTheBullsFan]

So, here's a real interesting question.

Would/should the Cavs still make that trade with the T-Wolves (getting Kevin Love for Andrew Wiggins)?

I think it's a good debate to have.

 

[Raskolnikov]

So, here's a real interesting question.

Would/should the Cavs still make that trade with the T-Wolves (getting Kevin Love for Andrew Wiggins)?

I think it's a good debate to have.

if they don't win a championship in the first three years it's a bad trade. If Love had walked it was a bad trade. It made a lot of sense in terms of rebounding and floor spreading for ball handlers Irving and James at the time. The game is moving toward small ball though which makes it worse and worse if a trade as time goes on and Wiggins develops. It was and is a no brainer for the immediate now, but they need to take care of business but then surprise Steph Curry broke basketball and Aldridge chose the Spurs.

 

[Johnnyt237]

Bulls as of right now have the Kings 1st round pick. It means someone like Bryce Alford, Perry Ellis, Justin Jackson, Xavier Rathan-Mayes, or Marcus Paige are in play at the middle of the 1st.

 

[SilenceS]

So, here's a real interesting question.

Would/should the Cavs still make that trade with the T-Wolves (getting Kevin Love for Andrew Wiggins)?

I think it's a good debate to have.

Wiggins is going to be a superstar. James just wanted his way for his goals. Wolves may be better than the Cavs in a couple of years.

 

[czman]

Bulls as of right now have the Kings 1st round pick. It means someone like Bryce Alford, Perry Ellis, Justin Jackson, Xavier Rathan-Mayes, or Marcus Paige are in play at the middle of the 1st.

Right now the Kings get to keep their pick. We will have a much better idea in March.

 

[SilenceS]

Holy shit, reports are that John Calipari told the Nets and Kings that he would leave Kentucky for a 10 year 120 million dollar contract. Lulz

 

[clonetrooper264]

Holy shit, reports are that John Calipari told the Nets and Kings that he would leave Kentucky for a 10 year 120 million dollar contract. Lulz

I'm guessing that means he don't want to coach them. No way he's serious...or is he...

 

[Enasic]

I'm guessing that means he don't want to coach them. No way he's serious...or is he...

If anyone is dumb enough to do that, it would be prohkorov. He has nothing to lose.

 

[SilenceS]

I'm guessing that means he don't want to coach them. No way he's serious...or is he...

I think he is completely serious. I think he likes Kentucky but if you make him the highest paid coach. He would make 1 million more annually than Pop. He would do it in a heartbeat especially if they give him full control. Both those teams are dumb enough.

 

[RoseMVP1]

So much for LeBrons "answer" for Steph and the Warriors tonight ??

 

[knoxville7]

So, here's a real interesting question.

Would/should the Cavs still make that trade with the T-Wolves (getting Kevin Love for Andrew Wiggins)?

I think it's a good debate to have.

IMO it was dumb when they made that trade and it still is. imagine a fastbreak coming at you with kyrie pushing it at you with LeBron and wiggins on the side. that shit would be unstoppably nasty. love is basically just a 3 point shooter on the cavs(and an extremely high paid one at that)

 

[Scoot26]

IMO it was dumb when they made that trade and it still is. imagine a fastbreak coming at you with kyrie pushing it at you with LeBron and wiggins on the side. that shit would be unstoppably nasty. love is basically just a 3 point shooter on the cavs(and an extremely high paid one at that)

I thought it was an immediate sell out and pretty much made LeBron's words worthless when he went back to Cleveland. He said he didn't expect a title right away, but all those moves were clearly made so he could have a title right away. He didn't want to wait.

I thought keeping Wiggins was a no brainer in that situation and would have been much better for the long term.

 

[knoxville7]

I thought it was an immediate sell out and pretty much made LeBron's words worthless when he went back to Cleveland. He said he didn't expect a title right away, but all those moves were clearly made so he could have a title right away. He didn't want to wait.

I thought keeping Wiggins was a no brainer in that situation and would have been much better for the long term.

yep, just goes to show you what happens when you let the inmates run the asylum. LeBron thought he knew what was best to try and win right away, but in reality he hurt his chances in the short term and the long term by pushing for that trade to happen. good thing though for us, because like I said in the previous post....trying to stop a fastbreak trio of irving, wiggins, and james would be a nightmare for the entire league.

 

[nbafan23]

This season looks like a reverse of the 07-08 season. Warriors and Spurs will probably have the best 2 records in the league but the East might have more winning playoff teams and seem more competitive.

 

[Scoot26]

yep, just goes to show you what happens when you let the inmates run the asylum. LeBron thought he knew what was best to try and win right away, but in reality he hurt his chances in the short term and the long term by pushing for that trade to happen. good thing though for us, because like I said in the previous post....trying to stop a fastbreak trio of irving, wiggins, and james would be a nightmare for the entire league.

Well the initial trade was a disaster for Cleveland to start last season... The mid-season trade is what propelled Cleveland back up. And while I think Cleveland is playing fine now, one of those acquisitions, Mozgov, has completely fallen off.

 

[knoxville7]

Well the initial trade was a disaster for Cleveland to start last season... The mid-season trade is what propelled Cleveland back up. And while I think Cleveland is playing fine now, one of those acquisitions, Mozgov, has completely fallen off.

and will be a FA after this year I believe

 

[Scoot26]

Speaking of Kevin Love, a guy from Reddit wrote this up:

Kevin Love has been struggling every since he arrived in Cleveland, and I'm pretty surprised people haven't caught on as to why.
In 2013-14 he averaged 26.1 PPG, good for 4th in the league, on 59.1% TS%, which was 20th in the league. That kind of ability to score doesn't just disappear when you relocate cities—even if he put up those numbers without ever making the playoffs in Minnesota.
It boils down to logistics on offense.

LeBron is a middle 1/3rd player. Kyrie is a middle 1/3rd player. Love is a middle 1/3 player who they shove into the corner and expect him to produce like he was if he was playing in the middle 1/3rd.

Playing from the middle of the floor has several advantages for posts. Trapping and double-teaming is a lot harder at the top of the key, and the defensive layers of the opposing team are much easier to identify, which makes it much easier to make decisions with the ball on where to attack and where to pass if the help comes.

Though Love is multi-talented, that doesn't mean he's very versatile on offense. He can shoot, he can rebound, and he can pass, but that doesn't change the fact that he's a 6'8" power forward who isn't particularly athletic or quick by NBA standards. As one would expect from a player who has played in the post his whole life, his ball-handing and ability to break down his man from a stand-still is not great.

It's time for either Kyrie or LeBron to go off ball and play from the wing. It's not the ideal, but with their ball-handling ability, it will be a lot easier for them to adjust to scoring from the wing than Love. You can get away with two middle 1/3rd players in an iso-heavy offensive system, they'll just tag team on possessions like Kyrie and LeBron have been doing for the past season and a half. Basketball's a game of rhythm, and when two players are dominating the ball in iso sets, it makes sense that Love—who has never had to assume a supporting player role in his career before—has struggled when his usage rate has dropped from near 30% during his final years as a Wolve all the way down to 21.7% last year.

When he does get the ball, Love isn't even in his preferred spots on the court. Compare his heat chart from the 2013-14 season to the 2015-16 season and the change is night and day. The very shots that made him a scoring threat in this league where three-pointers from the middle of the floor (2014-15 isn't any better either).

Check out Love's 51-point game from back in 2012 against the Thunder. Out of all of his points in the half-court, how many of them originate from the middle 1/3rd?

I have no idea what Cleveland was thinking when they thought pairing these three together without tweaking anything before making a massive change would work. Wade has always been a strong, versatile player who attacks well from the wing and Bosh was much more of a baseline player than Love ever was, but also versatile enough to be affective from around the floor.

During his six years in Minnesota, he shot only 111 corner threes according to Basketball-Reference. Last year alone he shot 126 in Cleveland, and only made 36.5% of them. If you're going to pay a guy the max, you at least need to make some effort to work with him and get him into positions to succeed.

What Cleveland needed to do when they were thinking about trading for Love was simple. They needed to sit down LeBron, Kyrie, and probably even Dion Waiters and explain that while Love was talented, all three of them would have to give some effort to change their games to accommodate for him. If they had this talk, it wasn't taken to heart by the remaining two because they're sabotaging his success and then tweeting out passive-agressive pot shots instead of trying to help him.

Blatt's offense has always been simplistic, and Kyrie's and LeBron's lack of versatility when it comes to they way they play the game (because they've always been too good to be told to change stuff up) is choking out the all-important third option. All three of them are horse-drawn carriages, and they're wondering why they can't keep up with the Warrior's automobile.

People that are blindly blaming Love must have no basketball sense to not understand why a wheel with threes hubs and only two spokes between them isn't working. This is an institutional failing, and LeBron, Kyrie, and Blatt are just as much to blame as Love.

 

[clonetrooper264]

Eric Gordon fractured his finger last night. Out 4-6 weeks after surgery.