And how does one fit 3 max contracts + solid role players into a payroll?

There's a reason why the current supporting cast of lebron is flawed

This has been the big issue with both his hand picked "super teams." 3 Max contracts makes team construction difficult. The reason why the Warriors are so good is they were paying 3 guys heavily under market price (Green/Thompson/Curry) who were all great (in addition to all the other decent stuff they have) and obviously enough space to add in Durant due to the big uptake in salary cap.

Cavs keep taking in old vets who are either not good or overpaid. I don't think it was wrong to add Deron Williams late but obviously against the Warriors he's a giant liability. RJeff/Shump are not good enough really to play minutes against the Warriors which again is another big issue.

I am excited for tonight! Sounds like lots of FA gonna stay put but always movement in the NBA.

I'm not super knowledgeable about the specifics of the cap and the available free agents in 2010 and 2014. I'm basically just assuming that if Lebron could get Wade/Bosh and Kyrie/Love(while having room to give Tristan a huge contract) then he probably could've sought out 2 SF/PF hybrids of similar value.

imo LBJ/PG13/GHill >> LBJ/Kyrie/Love for the upcoming season (playoffs)

the offense would remain great, the defense would be much better
Cavs maybe too afraid of LeBron leaving to make the necessary deals

I can't believe nobody has pointed out the most important factor in the hill vs Kyrie debate (besides Kyrie being way better in pretty much any scenario except maybe if he had to play next to his clone): George hill is only good for like 37 games a year and is 32

Hill/PG/LeBron vs. Kyrie/LeBron/Love is definitely an interesting thought exercise.

I think in reality George Hill's health woes is probably the deciding factor. I think the Kyrie/Love team is still better. If Warriors didn't exist then Kyrie and Love are part of a dynasty that would have won like 4-5 titles.

I do understand the temptation to gamble on the unknown of PG/Hill rather than the known not good enough Kyrie/Love, but let's be real that team still probably gets rekt by GS and then it's a disaster if PG leaves for LA and u just traded Kyrie on sick contract and prime Love for 32 year old George Hill.

To be clear, I agree with this and I would never trade Kyrie for Hill because of it. My points were mainly to do with optimal superteam construction philosophy.

Cavs should trade LeBron. Get two very good players in their prime and just be a great team guaranteed for like the next 8 years.


LeBron and TT for Hayward, Burks, and Gobert.


Kyrie-Burks-Hayward-Love-Gobert would be sick for a while .

I will admit I didn't realize how crazy efficient hill was this yr

.600 ts on 23.5% usg 40% from 3 17ppg while a plus defender

LeBron has a no trade clause

Lebron and ISO Joe together would be more unfair that steph and kd

Hayward is a free agent.

Dedmon seems like a real nice backup plan to Iggy

0 ring equity

Nonsense

Kyrie Irving is a great litmus test for determining if someone understands what constitutes winning players. He is probably the GOAT non-dunking finisher at the rim. He is the best ball handler that I have ever seen. Yet, he is a terrible distributor and gives up just as much on defense as he contributes on offense. It's amazing that Lebron won a title when he teamed up with two of the most overrated players from the past decade (Irving and Love).

Defense is really ****ing important. Especially in the playoffs when the opponent ruthlessly attacks your weak defenders. So, to say it matters much less than offense is stupid. I think offense and defense are almost equally important in the playoffs.

Take a look at this from the first three games:

https://twitter.com/NBA_Math/status/872854095522123776

Some of you just aren't understanding how horrific Kyrie is defensively.

CLE dominated defensively with Irving and love lineups in the 16 finals. Do u think they win with hill and not Kyrie

Show your work on "gives up just as much on defense as he contributes on offense" because on that surface that's a pretty asinine statement, especially with such an authoritative tone.

also '11 wade is better than Kyrie now (but not the next 3 yrs of wade with lebron). Wade had a better year than rose that year. So did lebron. Also jwd underrates Kyrie imo

Thinking offense=defense for indidivual players is a pretty good litmus test for not knowing what the **** you're talking about.


Offense=Defense at the team level. But an individual's impact to the team's defense is much smaller than an individual's offensive impact can be. For that reason offense is almost always significantly more important when discussing individual player value.

This is ESPECIALLY true with point guards, as it's even more difficult for them to have a significant defensive impact one way or another.

Rim protection is the one area where an individual player can have a truly big defensive impact to the team.

Basically defense doesn't matter for point guards unless it does. And it rarely does. Kyrie might be bad enough defensively that it actually does matter but the degree is still small. Especially compared to what he gives you offensively.

Irving was 4th worst in defensive points saved from the 2017 playoffs. His DPS was -13.14 and is offensive points added was 28.91.

http://nbamath.com/nba-2017-playoff-tpa-scores/

It's terrible value wise but they get better

I said almost as important.