I also say Westbrook averages a triple double this season.

And he gets the MVP too.

Good points, Seadood.

For him to do it, I think the team needs to avoid blowouts one way or the other. So far they've done a "good job", as he has played <30 minutes in only 3 games (6, 6 and 5 boards in those).

don't think rwb is alone here. want to say it is true of most good point guards

edit: should rephrase that. not all historically good, but all well above average. but i would imagine that it is true for the top tier pgs (curry, paul) as well

12 career games as a top 5% health outcome? I'd imagine anyone reasonable would disagree.

PER is such a garbage way of measuring players. Also, he's been bad for 5 or 6 of his last 7 games. We're 18 games in so you're saying "his PER is good when you exclude 1/3 of the sample".

He's mediocre to bad in any stat that factors in defense or basically anything other than scoring. He's still shooting an unsustainable percent from 3 as well.

Add me to the "Wiggins is overrated" camp.

I also think RUSS is gonna triple double this year. Hoping he can do it while also leading the league in scoring and over 30ppg.

any thoughts on the Celtics defense this year? I know they've had injuries to Horford and Crowder, but I've been really surprised by how bad it is. For DFS purposes, I've been trying to discern whether to expect it to continue or not, and I don't know what to think. I did a podcast with Aaron where my "gutsy prediction" was them having the most wins in the East this regular season, which obviously isn't looking too hot right now.

I don't watch a ton of Celts but I'd give it some more time, injuries and replacing Evan Turner with Jaylen Brown and Gerald Green isn't helping matters.

Frankly I was shocked they were as good as they were last year. Isaiah Thomas is probably the most harmful defensive PG in the league and his on/off #s are actually quite bad this season because of it. They'll probably improve a bit but I don't see a scenario where they're 4-5th in D like they were last year

It could be that last year was a bit of an anomaly, but they should still be top 10ish. Their biggest issue seems to be that they aren't forcing turnovers nearly as much, which you can probably attribute a lot of Smart and Crowder missing time and not having as much ball pressure.

They have been a top 9 team overall while a lot of guys are missing time, I'm sure they will improve. They suck on the defensive glass, but I think a lot of that is due to their scheme and not so much things like size--their guys are often not in good position to box anyone out, so it's more of a "go and get the ball" type of thing with them--something they really aren't equipped to do. When you aren't forcing turnovers those missed shots mean much less since you're having trouble securing the boards, and it sort of snowballs from there imo.

Well, it wasn't just "a foot injury", it was 3 different stress fractures right? From the strain of playing 600 minutes of college basketball?

He's underrated. He's like my least favorite non-terrible TWolf but everywhere the conversation is about how he's overrated. Overrated by whom?

There are some interesting matchups tonight. Here are my predictions

Dallas @ Charlotte (-11.5) this mavericks team doesn't know how to play team defense and they will be picked apart by Kemba and co 105-92

Milwaukee (-4.5) @ Brooklyn tougher one to judge than most would think, the nets can pour it on at times and play well at home. But in the end I think that their atrocious perimeter defense will do them in vs Giannis and Jabari 106-100

Clippers @ Cleveland (-4.5) I'm picking the Cavs to win a close one at home vs the streaking clips, but unable to cover the points 98-95

Orlando@ Memphis (-2) Orlando is catching their stride a bit and Memphis is scrambling to find a way to get it done without Conley. Orlando takes it in OT 110-108

Miami @ Utah (-9) the jazz are starting to roll and will stifle the Heat in the half court, giving up just 88 point winning 100-88

Houston @ Golden State (-11.5) this Houston squad is pouring it on offensively, leading the league in 3 pointers made and 2nd in offense behind the GSW. They give it a run but golden state wins 116-108

Surprised you like Utah without George Hill. They've been terrible without him and 9 points is a lot to cover for an elite defense/avg offense team like the Jazz.

Utah has been good without Hill, just not winning a ton of games due to schedule. Not sure about the points though as 9 is a lot for a team who plays so few possessions.

They have? They're a noticeably better team with him than without him. 8-3 (5 road, 6 home) +7.9 PD with him, 3-5 (6 road, 2 home) +.75 PD without him. Teams they lost to without him- @Hou by 9, @Den by 14- are teams they crushed with him- Hou by 19, Den by 25. They also had a couple bad home losses without him to Memphis & Chicago.

Utah is undefeated when Hayward and Hill are playing

In all fairness, both the Houston and Denver games were lost on the road and won and home, and Denver's in particular were especially one-sided because both teams came into the other's building right off a B2B.

Definitely much worse without Hill, but they managed to be ok despite a really brutal schedule.

some excellent basketballing tonight.

It has certainly seemed like you are presenting these trade ideas as criticisms of Wiggins. It also feels like you guys have imagined some overblown idea that everyone thinks Wiggins is amazing and then arguing against that, that I just don't think exists.

Like, was that Wiggins + Rubio for Porter + Wall trade supposed to be realistic? If that's what the consensus sort of value is of Wiggins then sure I'll jump on board he's way overrated. I'm just pretty sure Wizards (and every other GM) laugh that out of the office. I dunno maybe I'm the one who's way off.

Don't know why I care anyway, Team Jabari 4 lyf

sucks for them that dunn is looking pretty terrible as well - you would at might expect rubio to regress in a positive direction

My point was just that we have no idea how bad the injury was and how likely he was to come back and be healthy, or how many other problems he's going to have. Him looking like he may be past a lot of his troubles now doesn't prove anything about how bad his initial outlook was/how unlikely he was to actually get here, because we may just be 'living on the outlier' right now and he's hitting best possible outcome. Coming in and saying "Haha he's healthy now told ya they shoulda taken him" is just being results based. And as I pointed out, if you WANT to be results based (obviously you shouldn't be looking at it that way but just if you want to be) then Wiggins was 100% the best option because it got them to Love and a Championship.

I don't really know what GMs think, but he's all over every podcast and NBA news article as some sort of god.

But the reason I keep advocating (if I were them) for a trade has more to do with their roster construction than his talent, he's just the guy I'd want to trade because you can get more for him..

afa Washington is concerned, I really don't know but you're talking about a desperate GM on the verge of losing his job.

Even sans Hill the Jazz seem like a horrendous matchup for that garbage Heat team

I got:

NBA 's
Dallas +11
Bucks -4.5
Cavs -4
Orlando -1.5
Miami +10
Houston +11

Yeah, Dunn hasn't shown much to make you believe he can ever start in this league. He has the defensive chops for sure, but he doesn't really offer anything offensively. Last night was a really bad game for him. On the one hand, he's a rookie PG <20 games into his career; on the other, he was a 4 year player in college and it's hard to envision him developing in the ways he'd need to in order to start. I think a longer, more athletic Patrick Beverley would be a top quartile outcome for him.

That would actually be a really sweet player for them then imo.