Pretty silly to say nothing, especially in terms of projection. He's shown great bball IQ and court awareness and is committed to being the best he can possibly be, but thanks for casually referencing his assist numbers

Thayer I think 90% of all NBA players in the game, possibly more, have a similar work ethic. Most of these guys live in the gym.

He's a 7'3 dude who rebounds, stretches the floor and defends the rim. Just those 3 things will make him super valuable.

Yeah, you are going to have to show your math here. If the Warriors and cavs played today at full strength, I am guessing that the Warriors would be -140 in Cleveland and -300 in Oracle. And these numbers are very conservative, especially the oracle number. The odds of Cleveland overcoming those individual game odds to win a 7 game series are far worse than +200.

Curry fact of the day: Steph Curry has shot 354 3s since the last one was blocked.

Posted it in the Free Talk Friday, hopefully it doesn't get buried. https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comment...ember_edition/

NICE!

Like how Barton/Fournier were both trades for a worse player in Afflalo.

Fournier is so nice.

I like the rap ups a lot but feel you go to the F word too much, almost always comes off as highly unnecessary

I can't believe how good he is. Dude can be cold blooded and hit huge 3s in crunch time too. Love his game.

Edit: Note taken. Thanks for the feedback.

Magic would be a pretty grate landing spot for Kevin Durant.

Yeah this is my favorite part about his game. He has a quiet swag about him that's really fun to watch, like that game-winner (2x) against the Wolves where he was just like whatever.

The Magic have some great pieces that should only get better, but I think they need to try and get a real rim protector instead of Vuc.

much more agility and 'killer instinct' than Dirk imo, more like Durant

http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2015/12/...michael-jordan

Curry currently sitting on highest score per minute average in modern era, and crushing the 50-40-90 club. The factoid that really made me say 'wow' was: "Jordan's most efficient high-scoring season was 1989. Jordan needed 3.5 more shooting possessions and six more minutes per game to score 0.5 points more than what Curry is putting up."

I disagree. At this point it can be hard to remember young Dirk, but young Dirk was pretty athletic.

i never really saw him as an attacker or a slasher in the way STAPS looks to me, but the show Dirk and Nash used to put on was pretty elite

According to this:

http://www.cbssports.com/nba/eye-on-...one-at-the-top

The Cavs are 9-4 to ship, so they can't be much worse than +200 in the finals especially since the East isn't so lol anymore.

I assume the lines are based on the fact that yes, the Warriors are historically good, but are blitzkrieging through unprepared teams in a way that would be less successful in a playoff series where teams have more time to adjust specifically to their style.

In a bizarro way, the player Curry reminds me of most is Shaq. A completely unstoppable force, obviously in the most ridiculoulsy opposite way possible, but not well-rounded like MJ/Lebron. That limits Curry's value somewhat because, like Shaq, he's receiving a lot of attention and double teams, but is usually not individually guarded by the best defender on the other team like MJ and Lebron almost always are, because PGs and Cs are rarely the best 1v1 defenders and are less interchangeable than SG/SF. The best way to play the Warriors is probably to go without a traditional PG and put their best wing defender on Curry at all times but lots of teams rely on their starting PG as the focal point of their offense and don't have 3-4 wings that can start. Part of the reason that the Warriors are so good (and Curry is producing at the level he is) is that if your team relies on a 6-2 PG that carries a large offensive load, there's no place to hide that guy on defense, so he gets put on Curry by default, which is not good because you need to spend lots of energy to tightly chase him around and that still is not good enough because having significant length to meaningfully contest Curry's shots from a couple of feet out is critical to playing good defense on him.

Remember how surprisingly elite the Heat played for stretches when Lebron was surrounded by the likes of James Jones, Mike Miller and Ray Allen, even though these guys couldn't do much other than shoot 3's and were massive defensive liabilities? Curry plays with young, athletic and defensively elite versions of these guys pretty much the entire time he's out there, which is the best possible way to support an elite creator in today's game. As far as how good the Cavs can be at full strength, I think people are vastly underestimating how good Kyrie was and how young he is. He's 2 years younger than Paul George and 4 years younger than Curry. He's not as good as Curry obviously but he's probably the most similar player in terms of skill set and may now be better offensively than Lebron. Part of the game's evolution is that the Warriors are definitely teaching the rest of the league how to play basketball and I think that improves Kyrie's value and Lebron is at the point in his career where he'd be best off the ball, playing a little bit like Draymond and Iggy, except way better and much more versatile, and drawing significantly more attention from the defense. And I think he knows it, from the way he's trying to pump up Love and lets Mo shoot way more than he should.

How does the thread feel about Goran Dragic currently:

Is he still a good player?
Is his 5 year 86M contract (last year is player-option) still +EV?
Have his stats suffered because he and Wade do not have good synergy / not enough 3-point shooting with Dragic/Wade/Bosh on the floor?
Or has he just lost athleticism?

Yes
Possibly
Yes
Not really


This probably comes off as me being higher on him than I am

Haralabob gave a shout out to NBA rap ups on Twitter 👍

He's been so good to me. Just like y'all. Does he post here?

Very rarely. Used to be around a bit more.

What's the current basketball analytics view of taking your star player out when he gets in foul trouble early in a game?

I know the party line has been to say it is bad because you are voluntarily imposing now the penalty you are hoping to avoid later (the player having to sit out). However I know that kenpom has argued that you may still want to sit the player to ensure that he can play at the end of the game, where the leverage is higher, and it is worth sacrificing minutes now to do so.

Personally I'm not convinced and still tend to think it is bad.

You should try and do a segment on Nate Duncan's podcast, He does them 3-4x a week, so there's a good chance he is willing to have you on for at least a few minutes. He might even want you to do something fun like rap about how bad his cohosts are, etc..

It's very situational. Are you thinking of a recent example?

I think it just happened to Durant? Not sure. But I'm talking in general.

This was a good summary
http://erikstuart.com/post/629029612...viorincentives