Nice work.

This is gonna shock most of you, but apparently PokerHero77 did not, in fact, find something that all the ex-NBA coaches and other experts missed.



Lol "ball which is alive" as apparently something different from "live ball".

The rules here seem pretty clear - ball must have a chance to score.

https://official.nba.com/rule-no-11-...e-goaltending/

11-f:

Saw this stat on Twitter. The starting PGs for Phoenix in first two games of their last two series have a 22/1 A/TO ratio, 44 assists to 2 turnovers. I'm not a math geek but that seems pretty good.

I think they were mainly checking how much time to put back on the clock

Maybe, but the Suns were about the third best team this year overall during the year. I thought it was because they were the most healthy and you'd see them thinned out in the playoffs, but I was certainly wrong. Generally these series seem to devolve into stars being stars and then slowly, almost one-by-one, you'll see role players become less and less reliable until it turns into a rock-fight down the stretch.

I thought given the Suns lack of apex superstars that they'd struggle, but if anything their system and collective IQ has made them even stronger. Perhaps if they are pushed we'll see them struggle a bit, but they are playing with a ton of confidence right now.

If MIL makes it past Atlanta I think I like the Suns.

Not sure how well Lopez would hold up vs Suns, and Bucks don't exactly have the depth to go small for long stretches. Also, tough to do that vs Ayton if you can't spread him out, which the Bucks really can't. No 1 leg Harden to milk on D over and over either.

As the Bucks/Nets series is in the rearview mirror I find myself downgrading the Bucks even though they won the series, they struggled to score against a team with 2 good defensive players in KD and Bruce Brown. Blake was solid defending Giannis/the rim but had issues in space. Harden/Harris/Shamet awful. Suns have no one like that.

George played well in this game He's not Ben Simmons

It's been exactly this in the playoffs too. Lakers minus AD, Denver minus Murray, Clippers minus Kawhi. Sweeping Denver was still impressive I suppose, but honestly they haven't done anything really to raise opinion of them above what it was entering playoffs IMO. It's just that literally everyone else in the West has fallen apart.

I'm a big Luka fan, but for the moment he's more Westbrook than LeBron.

Trae and Ayton landed in better situations but both are really thriving. Neither of those teams is in the conference finals without them.

"Touch any ball from within the playing area when it is above the basket ring and within the imaginary cylinder."

The very rule you quoted says it's not goaltending as the ball is not from within the playing area.

+1

Well said.

what a game, sad I missed it....

So much hate for a guy who scored 6 points in the final minute including two potential game winners. To be fair I guess everyone forgot about all those plays since they happened like 30 minutes earlier. If you have the option to pause/record NBA games and you're still watching them live, you're doing it wrong.

Yeah I feel really bad for PG.

Lol. Don't do Book dirty like that.

Why wouldn't Lopez hold up?

They didn't attack Harden on D at all. He hid on Tucker mostly and the bucks didn't involve him.

I think the nets, Blake in particular, did a good job on Giannis, and Milwaukee just ran bad shooting the ball. That's kind of the thing with Giannis though, the Suns would probably play good D vs him and things would look ugly at times but he is still such a freak that he's going to go like 8 BPM. Which is kind of hard to overcome when your best player is like a 4 BPM guy.

Beating the nets with KD playing the way he was and with Blake, Bruce Brown, and even Jeff Green stepping up is still a nice win. Also overcoming those game 7 refs.

I think Suns-Bucks would be a close series though. Yesterday before game 2, when both teams had about the same odds to win their conference finals, Milwaukee was -105 to title and Phoenix was +130 if I recall.

Yeah this is an obviously correct call given the rules. However, they should probably change the rule such that it penalizes the person who last started contact with the ball, opposed to the last person who remained in contact with the ball. So if you are in contact with the ball entire time, someone else causing the ball to roll off of you doesn't count as you touching it last, but the ball bouncing off you still does. I think that's much closer to how the rule has historically been applied in the absence of a replay.

To be fair to Bud here, Tucker had to (a) rest for D and (b) I'm not sure he could have even taken advantage of Harden. For all of his warts, Harden is a super good defender if getting backed down. I think this series will be far more indicative of Tucker's potential involvement in a PHX series, seeing if MIL tries to post and back down Trae will be more indicative for whoever guards him for PHX (Booker?). Tucker isn't someone who is going to run off a ton of screens and I don't think he's a great pick and pop threat from the wing, more of a corner 3 guy. He's the perfect place to hide Harden.

Yeah I agree with that. It’s hard to involve Tucker so he’s a good person to hide someone on. I was just pointing out that they didn’t milk Harden on D over and over like the other poster said.

Harden is a good one on one defender, especially if he tries which he will do if he thinks you are targeting him. He is just awful at team defense and rotations.

This is obviously the intention of the rule and how it has been given the whole time up until now. You could even (at a linguistic stretch) interpret the current rules as meaning this (it says "touched it last" not "was touching it last", one could argue to "touch" something is the action of initiating contact with it. Obviously not the most natural interpretation I'll admit but when there is history/intent on your side...). But agreed they should definitely clean it up as being clearly your definition.

Calling that ball out on Booker is similar to what's happened in baseball with replay. You'll have a guy slide into a base, clearly safe, but he'll do a pop up slide and slow-mo replay shows his spikes came off the bag by an inch. By rule, since the tag was kept on him, he's out. I think most will agree that's not what replay was meant for. But what can you do? Out is out.

I didn't realize calls in the past were not ruled like this one was. But I think if a player can cause a slight losing of the grip off the ball by the dribbler, more power to him. I look at it like if the defender poked the ball causing the defender to fumble the ball OOB, then still a turnover. This case here is like the defender caused a micro-fumble.

mehh, missing 2 FT's like that in the final 10 seconds for a 86% FT shooter or w/e is pretty bad. Term choke is overused in sports but not sure what else to call it.

Pause/record is kinda meh for sporting events. I'm interested in the result and would like to see it live.

Lopez could have a lot of trouble playing conventional pick and roll defense vs CP/Ayton. Not saying this will happen for sure, but potential exists. That is 1 nice thing about the Suns, you can't really go small vs Ayton and you can't go big vs CP with most bigs. Makes it very tough to find a good defensive lineup. You need an AD or Giannis probably, luckily for the Bucks they do have Giannis. However, taking Lopez off the floor for Connaughton is a legit downgrade.

As far as Harden goes, they hid him on Tucker but by game 6 the Bucks realized the Nets had no transition game and just had Tucker crash the offensive boards as Harden was very physically limited to box him out. Offensive rebounding (again because no threat of transition) kept the Bucks in the first half of gm 7 when their offense was gross as well. When I say milk, I didn't mean involve in the action every play, I meant just a general massive liability in his current hobbled form.

They also involved Harden/Griffin in pick and roll late in game 7 which led to 2 huge Holiday buckets in the 4th (step back 3 and baseline jumper)

His rotations were generally awful in those 3 games as well. I thought they were clearly better with him out here, but his defense was a major issue in the 1st half of game 5 especially.


It is a nice win in the sense it was KD + HC but that version of the Nets was clearly inferior and I think the Suns would wax them a lot easier.