Brow and Kawhi very enigmatic given the extreme situations their careers have placed them in. I can buy an argument for any of those four in any order really.

If a team trades for Milsap do they gain any advantage regarding signing him in the off-season?

they get his bird rights

blake would be really bad defensively as a 5

How relevant is that for millsap?

He isn't a max at his age in assuming

after taking the lol deal in '12 or whatever, he will be looking to maximize dollars this offseason.

Very relevant to teams who will have little to no cap space to work with. This piece projects half the league to have at most $30M in cap space. That includes obvious player/team options that will be exercised. Millsap is still going to command a ton of money. He probably won't get a max, but his max starts at $33M and he's going to garner a bunch of interest.

Gotcha thx



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Marcus Smart had 7 assists on Christmas Day, and I was so excited about his passing I decided to take another look at them. I don't watch that much Celtics, have maybe only seen ~100 minutes of Smart all year, but these are so encouraging-- I don't know if Brandon Knight ("point guard") has thrown 2 passes this nice in his entire NBA career.

One game does not a point guard make, but Smart has been intermittently the backup point guard this year and him being able to do that successfully might really open stuff up for them. In addition to these passes out of the PNR his other 5 assists showed some very basic but strong straight line drive passes out of the post and throw aheads in transition. Pretty basic, but really strong stuff. Ball is whipped out with purpose to shooting pockets on those.

https://3ball.io/plays/horford%20ast...0021600456_212

https://3ball.io/plays/smart%20ast?p...0021600456_372

This one didn't directly lead to a bucket, but look at this one:

https://3ball.io/plays/horford%20ast...0021600456_212

edit: I gave up guessing how to embed since Youtube wrap didn't work

If the Nuggs barely miss the playoffs they are going to kick themselves over bringing Jokic off the bench for silly reasons early in the season. In before they should be tanking

aside from the streaky (and not good) shooting i think the thing that's holding smart back is finishing when he gets in the lane. he's just not explosive at the nba level, especially vertically. he actually has some moves in the post, but thats just never going to be as strong an offense as the PnR.

small sample eye test and all but it seems like when he's moving fast he's too worried about getting the shot off and he often puts up something off balance or gets too fps.

https://3ball.io/plays/smart%20miss%...0021600445_374

https://3ball.io/plays/smart%20miss%...0021600440_388

https://3ball.io/plays/smart%20miss%...0021600494_198

he's definitely strong enough to get in the lane, i just dont think hes mastered a good way to get contact and get to the line. he reminds me a bit of a guy i used to play with who was short, stocky but really good at getting to a spot and then using his strength + clever up fakes to get good looks off. still struggled against length, but he made it work.

harden has the wiz furious

Yea afaik he can't finish or shoot worth a lick still

yeah smart seems like a player but he is too much of a drain offensively to play a lot. he's at 30 mpg at the moment, think that's fine for developmental purposes but he should see the court pretty strategically in the playoffs

Connelly said they were going to sacrifice wins for development, and they sort of needed to see if that lineup had any chance. Biggest loser in all this is Jokic, who would probably be an all star if they had just started him from the jump

They are probably near the lead in the millsap sweepstakes should he be traded, but I think being so far out of the 7th seed may curtail their want take that kind of risk. Still, they seem to be about as good of a matchup as any 8 seed for the warriors right now, Jokic is that good.

Also **** the warriors are smart. Some of those great offensive plays Denver has been running were rotated on so quickly and man they recover nice. Draymond is a bit of a defensive savant out there.

buddy hield seems to be heating up, 56ts on 20usg in december. makes a big diff for the cans if he can contribute something real given how terrible their offence has been

surely jokic could be a bit better if he improved his body, not does he have seemingly no muscle definition at all, he looks like he's about to keel over most of the time. i found this pretty telling pic of him as a young kid ((front right):

Part of me thinks "man he'd be a beast if he shed that dad body" but then another part of me thinks he'd lose his amazing touch and feel out there on the court. I think he's one of those guys that will always look like a skinny fat guy, but hopefully can improve his strength.

He's been gushed about for his passing, but he's also sporting a .641 TS averaging 18.4 pts to go along with his 11.4 boards... And when you look at his shot chart you can see just how amazing he is from pretty much everywhere:



If he gets yoked, I wonder if all of those crazy shots he makes from 7-10 feet go away?

Can't shoot 3s do not want

Amazing from everywhere despite no sample outside of the rim with over 20 attempts

That's what happens when you break it down to 14 zones my dude. If sort by distance the sample looks much more convincing, but I like all the pretty colors.

The West is way too stacked for Jokic to be an All-Star even if he had optimal conditions. Several of Gobert, Gasol, Lillard, Klay, Draymond, Hayward, DAJ, Blake aren't making it in.

west back court should be the same w/ dame getting kobe spot. tho would be kinda funny if he somehow doesn't make it.

remember when the hawks sent 4 guys? and they also won player of the month? that was really weird in retrospect.

That was 2 years ago, right? Will any of those 4 Hawks make it now? Maybe Millsap?

This thread has too much Jokic let me remind you who the best center is

Basketball ref has 28 seasons for a Center with > 0.225 WS/48 and >5 Boxplusminus, 25 of them were done by shaq, Robinson, Kareem, Hakeem.

Rudy is on pace to be the 9th player in history to do so, no other active centers have ever done that. So don't come at me with the lame "bigs are overrated by those stats" because nobody put those kind of stats recently

If he keeps going up, he'll be between 13/14 ws on the season, that would place him between the 3rd and 6th spot last year



This is ridiculous, the man broke the graph scale

The man adds wins like a mofo, I don't care if he doesn't carry the offense, he carry his team, top 15 itl ainec

And he played only 13 games in his whole career with a NBA caliber point guard, the rest of the time he played his minutes with Trey Burke, Dante Exum, Shelvin Mack and Raul Neto no one of them is a top 50pg itl at this moment

Rudy>Jokic>>>Towns/Zinger/Turner>Embiid

Rudy and Nikola are similar in that they are absolutely elite on opposite sides of the ball, but you have to give the nod to the dude who plays more and is technically doing what's most important for his position.

I think Rudy starting in the ASG should be a given, as is him making first team All NBA.

As far as comparing the new bigs, it really isn't close when you look at the numbers, the two late-round Euros far outpace their more heralded counterparts.

AGE / PER / WS48 / BPM / RPM

Gobert 24 / 22.1 / .252 / +5.4 / +4.07
Jokic 21 / 23.4 / .215 / +6.4 / +4.05
Towns 21 / 22.3 / .146 / +2.9 / +1.27
Staps 21 / 18.8 / .126 / +.9 / +2.15
Embiid 22 / 23.0 / .092 / +2.2 / +.75
Turner 20 / 20.5 / .174 / +2.3 / +3.13