What does this mean? He will be lucky to go down as a top 40 player all time? I think 97% of people would agree with that.

Plumlee, Barton, even olds like Millsap/Jameer have seemingly had mini-renaissances in Denver. You can say it's the Joker-factor, but most of those guys don't share the court with him. It's why I get annoyed at fans or the Dunc'd on guys saying Malone is a bad coach. Maybe his in-game stuff is questionable (I don't agree), but it's hard to argue with always having a team where guys develop and would all run through a brick wall for you.

Nurk and Mudiay are exclusions however. I kind of understand both though because they were put into rough situations with little upside, and both had/have to take lumps as a player because the fully-actualized version of them is a little more than a role-player.

This is great. Raptor is an elite mascot

this slander session surrounding mitchell is weird. too many people are hating and projecting the jazz' offensive deficiencies completely onto him. he has shot selection issues*, but also clearly has the skills to be a very good player. in particular he has shot creation skills that no one else on the team has and that a lot of nba players don't have. how he develops remains tbd, but writing him off is so silly. we're ~a quarter of the way into his second season. seadood, i know you have said he is "old", but that is really just an argument for you to comp him favorably to murray. which is fine, maybe his further along than murray. even if that's so mitchell just turned 22 and is still prob 3 seasons away from entering his prime.


*possibly exacerbated by the jazz' lack of offensive firepower. guess what joe ingles' usg is w/o looking (or ppg if you prefer). rubio on net is like a decent offensive player, but offers very little as a shooter/scorer. great passer ofc, but this only accounts for so many plays per game. somebody's gotta shoot and this case someone has to shoot a lot. they also play like molasses which further increases the need to have a bailout option. the woyas do this when curry doesn't play and it's a big reason why kd transforms into a chucker sometimes


there's certainly an argument that mitchell chucks b/c he's a chucker and not just b/c it's advisable and i would tend to agree. however they benefit from it-- a lot-- imo and again he's a young player. doesn't make much sense to put him in a box unless it's "he probably won't be a top 5 nba player." which like, whatever

Nah, he just sucks.

But for real I said he was a top 50-75 player as is, and my issue is the push he’s been given as a future superstar when very little of that has bore out on the court. Re-calibrating his expectations closer to what he actually is shouldn’t be called slander because it isn’t. And wrt his shot creation being an asset I agree, but I question why he’s not passing, rebounding, or why his defense has slipped in the process.

Slander would be saying he sucks or is just a chucker, and I don’t think I’ve said that once.

I'm usually #TeamSteph but this is just embarrasing

Such a cop out bull**** lie.

Whatever, keep selling Brita water filters you not durable superstar.

You have Steven here who LIES to a little girl meanwhile LAbron builds an entire school for a community and pours his heart, soul, and finances into it.

At least he got the hashtah right, damn mofo's

the yazz are playing worse defensively largely across the board. again idk why mitchell is being singled out there. i agree passing is a fair critique. rebounding? is he a bad rebounder? it's hard for a perimeter player to be bad enough at rebounding for it to matter a lot.

as for "what he is." you've decided what he will be and are working backwards imo

Mitchell STINKS

DMitch needs to check himself before he wrecks himself, Thay Thay.

Dude doesn’t need a serving of humble pie. He needs the whole thing!

Rumor mill has the Magic interested in FRANK. I would like to see the Knicks go for Isacc. Frank and a top 5 protected or something might be able to get it done.

FRANK is a 7 foot wing spanned Derek Fisher.

Is that good? Stay tuned to find out!

craptors -9.5 a lock tonight. lowry will be in reg season mode

Mavs fan here. How does this "Carlisle = good coach" stuff go unchallenged year after year?

I guess there are enough terrible NBA coaches that maybe he's threatening the 50th percentile or something, but he still sucks a fairly remarkable amount.

In ten years, with a lot of prime DIRK and mostly solid rosters he's managed to advance in the playoffs in two seasons.

Yes, he binked a title with Dirk going supernova and the stars aligning, but basically what we have here is that someone called him a "wizard" in 2010 or something because one time he tried a zone defense with a quirky lineup and it worked, and the label and idea just stuck. No matter how much evidence piles up to the contrary he's just going be 2. Carlisle forever. I love Zach Lowe but he perpetuates this all the time. Every once in awhile they'll rattle off a few wins and he'll go "how does he perform such sorcery with Maxi Kleber playing rotation minutes?!!!" As if every other successful team is all blue chip talent. Mavs roster is perfectly reasonable this year, as it's been many other years where he's **** the bed.

Sometimes within a single page in this thread he'll be praised during the first quarter of a game for "somehow" being ahead of like the Pacers or something despite being SHACKLED with Barea, and then when they blow the game and lose he gets praised for expert tanking, unironically.

He's probably costs them 2-3 games a year just with his impossibly poor management of timeouts - always sitting at 0 in the final minute of close games. He has to use one after every 5-0 run in the 2nd quarter of course so he can look pensively at the ceiling, making sure it's clear on his pained expression he is suppressing his growing frustration with his HORRIBLE roster of no-talent morons (even though they're usually all veterans since he won't play young guys until recently) in order to remind everyone what a great coach he is.

And his track record of player development ... well let's just pray for LUKA.

Anyway, needed to be said. I TZ though and will be lurking as long as you'll have me.

ultimately a huge %age of people don't know **** when it comes to coach evaluation

things that carlisle has going for him (in order):

a very impressive championship

i imagine cubes controls the press a decent amount in dallas (he withheld access from espn because he didn't like how they were covered)

he kind of looks/acts the part. some guys (ty lue for cavs, joe philbin for dolphins) look like dorks on the sideline. carlisle has a good curmudgeonly demeanor.

Carlisle got a ton of credit for pushing the spurs hard in rd1 a few years ago at the height of the spurs' powers.

I've always been a little suspect of Carlisle because any coach who calls plays for every position is hurting his team, imo. His overall impact seems to be positive though.

I got the Magic's short-term solution at PG right here:



The short one.

Heard Stan Van mention on LeBatard today that Dallas has only played 7 teams with a record above .500.

Jazz have played the most at like 20.

you havin a laff?



if you have a lot of good players you should let them cook. if you lack talent, which the mavs have, it seems fine. maybe even better. but maybe that' why he got run out of detroit? they replaced him with larry brown though who was also a control freak on offense, while being an offense killer

For one they have played a few teams that are juuust above .500. Then when you break it down:

W - @Houston - CP3 and pre Melo removal
L - Indy - Dipo
L - @Indy - Dipo
W - Pels - AD
L -@ Minny - JB/Roco/Dario
L - TOR - Kawhi
W - Boston -Kyrie
-------------------------------

Other than Boston, I think each team is close to if not below .500 if we were to play a season out missing the players they didn't have to go against.

If you take the top 10 Sagarin-rating teams they have played exactly 6 games against top teams, and only 2 of them were "hard" because all others were missing their team's best player.
(@DEN/@BOS)

@DEN
TOR - Kawhi
@BOS
BOS - Kyrie
IND - no Dipo
@IND - no Dipo

They've played a bunch of middling teams with good records and good teams missing their stars.

What this means is that their record isn't that bad for where they are at, probably 2 wins below of 50 win pace or so... The problem is the product that they've produced is much much worse because that tough schedule was actually very easy.

If they can turn it around and be the team they were last year they'll be ok, because even though they have played like a ~35 win team, their record is closer to that of a 45 win one if that makes sense.

I think you're talking more about than DM than me tbqh

Clippers @ Kings will be quite the treat tonight.

vs. time.

Raps are gonna **** up the Warriors lol Boogie.

When Pascal Siakam can defend 4 positions, handle, set screens, and hit an open jumper