Counter point:

This sets up Lebron joining the Celts as a heroic move to take down the Warriors.. He'd pick up the Warrior-hater vote and probably keep some fans from Cleveland who just want him to succeed at the highest level.

The NBA needs this.

See, I feel like this sets up the Lebron to Houston narrative really well. Houston is elite + he's close friends with Paul, though I could be overrating how much the latter means.

I think LeBron wanting to get Chris Paul a ring is gonna factor into his decision big time.

Or this. I really feel that those are the only two options at this point..

Boston has way way way more assets, guys who are improving rather than olds, and play in the East where their only rival is going to be a team that just won 4-1 without Lebron and Hayward in this scenario.... The same team he just beat with Jeff Green as his second option the last two games.

It guarantees his finals, and I happen to think that team is a lot better than GSW... I think Ainge and Lebron will as well. Jaylen Brown would be the smallest guy on the court in crunch time ffs.

I don't want to be a Warriors apologist here because I'm not, but this just isn't true. The Durant-era Warriors team is a ridiculous 28-6 in the playoffs and 7-0 in series. The only series that went to 7 games was this one, and other than that no other series has gone past 5.

Whether or not you want to complain about the level of competition or whether the team is fair, they certainly aren't squeaked by other teams, they are demolishing them.

Celts are drawing dead against this regardless of how many LBJs they sign. NBA correctly figured out that people aren't paying hard-earned cash money to watch defensive teams grind it out.

I am interested in the following bets with odds:

Warriors in 5
Warriors in 6
Warriors in 5 or 6

All other outcomes you win.

Lebron playing point on this celtics team is DRAWING DEAD, haha jesus, hot take central round here. Tatum/brown/hayward (assuming kyrie would have to be gone in this fantasy scenario).

Lot of this is about fit more than just assembling studs, LBJ seems like hed a perfect fit for boston, not so much for philly.

Your 1000 to my 1 US dollar

My 1000 quatloons? Sold!

Also this

By that logic, the odds of them making a 3 pointer, then missing 26, then making another one is:

.00084% * 36.2% * 36.2% = 1 in 906244!!!

OMG. Almost one in a million!

However I'd bet 1000 quatloons that the odds of a 36% 3p team shooting 17% in one game isn't that unlikely. In fact I think I just saw it yesterday.

Working on it

That's not how it works. You're picking one way out of 756 (28*27) to go 2 for 28 in 3 pointers.

Of course there's only one way to go any exact combination of 28 shots. But there's also 100% chance one of those one ways happens.

There's only one way to go 0 for 26. After each 3 pointer they have a new chance. But that's a lot less than 100k chances - whether you look at it by season, series or game.

Even the Cavs forum has twice as many people picking the Warriors to win.

We talked about the LeBron/Celts thing earlier today, now we have GS/Cle for a 4th straight time, barring a miracle, GS is going to smash them.

Does anyone really think LeBron gets crushed here and then is like lemme teamup with Paul George in LA and hope some young guys pan out? It's possible I guess.

Yeah he's tight with CP but CP is old and he always gets hurt at this time of year.

Going to the Celts is a no brainer bball wise. I'm not saying it's going to happen but it feels like going back to Cle in 2014. It was clearly the logical move after they won the lottery then Heat flamed out in the finals, but people just couldn't really believe it until it happened.

Like we've seen LeBron 2 times now put himself in a position to have his team be considered the favorites to win the title so a 3rd time isn't much of a leap. And Celts is the only way he is considered even close to = to GS.

What causes basketball to have so much less variance than other sports? Feels like the best teams make it to the finals at a much higher clip than baseball and football.

they shoot a lot and they play 7 game series

Well since they had 44 shots there were 19 different ways they could have missed 26 in a row.

But the point of the stat is it doesn't really matter that they missed 26 in a row, streaks don't matter in NBA scoring. If you make 22 3-pointers in a row and then miss 22 3-pointers in a row, you've shot 50%, which would be exactly the same end result if you alternated makes and misses.

Maybe I'm just upset at all of the idiots on twitter retweeting it assuming this is some legendarily terrible shooting performance. In the end the rockets shot 17% on 44 shots. It's a statistically significant bad performance compared to their regular season numbers (obviously), but I'm sure if I crunched the numbers of how often NBA teams shoot this badly compared to their baseline it is more like a 1/50 or 1/100 bad performance overall.

And then of course to the crazy stat itself, these aren't 26 independent events. They are heavily correlated, and if the rocket's season average when they are healthy and rested is 36%, maybe after they've missed 10 in a row, we've got some good evidence that their tired, stressed, game 7 baseline level shooting percentage is lower than that value, making the streak much more likely.

Nah that's too simple and makes way too much sense. Must be something else.

Meh, wasn't trying to throw shade at all. I found it interesting that baseball (which also plays series) is a total crapshoot in the playoffs and basketball isn't. Might be a poor place for the question though, apologies. I'll back out. Hope the finals are as good as previous years.

the refs rig it for the best team, consistently

ya, i was saying (it's the refs), Jim

the most similar to WWE in pro sports

Got a couple hours early at work to watch the full game.

Not to cry riggage but thought those 3 non-calls on Harden 3's were total bs and really game-changer. Gordon's drive and Bell screen also bad calls. Not that I think the refs should get everything right and I'm sure there were missed calls on the other end but those are frankly the only obvious non-calls I saw that felt like game changers

Oh well, make or miss league but it just seems like nothing can go against the warriors

Cleveland has 0% equity, bet your house while the series price is still 3 digits