Hey, the Cavs picked up their 2nd win! And the Nuggets appear to be crashing back down to earth, having lost a 4th straight game.
How about that Jimmy Butler trade, by the way? The Sixers got a hell of a lot better and T-Wolves really blew it in terms of a return. Robert Covington and Dario Saric are decent pieces, but Butler is a franchise talent.
A franchise talent that doesn’t want to be there or take the responsibility of a franchise talent is sometimes worse than nothing. Publicly tearing down your teammates and demanding a trade are not the building blocks of a strong team.
Yeah, but supposedly the T-Wolves passed up much better offers, or at least one better offer from Miami. And finally they got stuck with this deal.
The Lakers seem to have found their mojo and made hash out of the Blazers last night. McGee is an animal, and James was hitting threes from everywhere, bypassing Wilt Chamberlain to become the 5th highest scorer in NBA history. The Blazers should just have tossed in the towel in the 3rd quarter.
Five years ago if you’d said JaVale McGee would be an important part of a good team, my eyes would have rolled to the back of my head. But he has really matured since his days in Denver, when was basically the NBA’s biggest clown.
And don’t overlook the Lakers picking up Tyson Chandler. That’s huge to have one of the great pick and roll vets be able to spell McGee for 15-20 minutes a night and not miss a beat. It means LeBron never has to be the enforcer under the basket, he can just run the floor like he’s meant to.
McGee has replaced Babe Ruth as the Sultan of Swat.
The deal isn’t that bad, considering that Butler is a free agent at the end of the year, and was clearly not resigning in Minnesota. Covington is on a very reasonable contract through '21-'22, and Saric is on his rookie deal, so Minny will have his restricted free agency rights. That’s two very nice pieces at good prices for the long term. I think it compares reasonably with Cleveland’s return for Kyrie Irving, and San Antonio’s return for Kawhi Leonard. You’re never getting 100 cents on the dollar when the star is out there demanding a trade, so you do what you can.
Supposedly, Thibs had blown up the Miami deal by demanding changes to the trade at the last minute (which allegedly prompted Pat Riley to call Thibs an MF’er). It’s notable, at least to me, that the Butler-to-Philly deal was brokered directly by T-Wolves owner Glen Taylor and 76ers managing partner Josh Harris, not Thibs. So, sounds like Thibs was passing on every offer (and trying to convince Butler to play out the season) until the decision was taken out of his hands.
Carmelo Anthony wore out his welcome with Houston in a hurry. I wonder if anybody is going to want him, given his reputation.
I think 'Melo gets a bad rap. He’s not a locker room cancer, teammates like him. He’s played like a million minutes in his career. His skills may have diminished, but he could be a contributor on the right team. And frankly, Houston kind of made him the scapegoat for Chris Paul’s struggles so far this year. That whole Rockets team has been poor at shooting, Paul in particular. Portland and New Orleans are reportedly interested. I wouldn’t hate it if Denver brought him back, they could maybe use a veteran leader. But on the other hand, I wouldn’t want to disrupt what they’ve got going on.
How about this drama with KD in Golden State? Draymond told KD to leave, said they don’t need him, they can win without him. Damn.
I really hope he doesn’t come to Portland. They’ve tried the ‘aging star’ thing in the past and it just didn’t work out with this young squad. Anthony is not likely to change his style of play and with Portland finally getting their passing game working well, a ball-stopper is not what they need.
The good: thanks to his buyout, Carmelo’s next team, like Houston, is only on the hook for $2.3 million for his services.
The bad: Carmelo has very little to offer a good team. He was once an elite isolation scorer who thrived on being able to create and make midrange shots. He can no longer do this (the fact that he no longer can draw fouls is a big red flag, 2.5 free throws/game last year, 2.2 this year). He’s also a below-average 3 point shooter, and a bottom-tier defender. The guy’s just not efficient enough offensively to make up for his awful defense, not even close. 12.1 FGA to get 13.4 points just isn’t gonna cut it. But, since he’s such a bargain, if he wants to keep playing this season, he’ll get offers. Who knows, maybe he can turn into an elite 3 point shooter this late in his career, a la Jason Kidd. Otherwise, it’s retirement, scrapping for a handful of minutes on bad teams, or off to China. Sad way to end a Hall of Fame career, but Melo was always vaguely disappointing like that.
How about this drama with KD in Golden State? Draymond told KD to leave, said they don’t need him, they can win without him. Damn.
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Woo! C’mon Draymond, run KD out of town!
Given that Draymond has made it clear that he’s going for the max after next season, and the Warriors won’t have that space unless losing someone else or utterly kneecapping themselves for years to come. They still have to figure out how to play Klay this offseason, and they’re basically starting at the luxury cap.
Losing either player could spell the end of the Warriors absolute dominance of the league. How do you quickly replace the defensive quarterbacking of Green or the lolbuckets instant offense of KD? If it comes down to someone leaves, I’m generally on the side of booting whoever’s starting it, which seems to be Green. KD had every right to be livid at Green’s terrible attempt at hero-ball - it was a ridiculously selfish move that had virtually no chance at succeeding; Green ain’t KD, or LBJ, or any of the dozen other players you give that last possession to. Green gave KD the same treatment J.R. Smith gave LeBron last year - stupidity on the hardwood.
Fuck you, Blazers. Just fuck you. Back to turning the ball over 20 times a game is just unforgivable and you deserve to get your asses kicked. Hell, the scrubs you sent in for the last five minutes of this debacle played better than both the starters and second team combined. Two games in a row of inept play.
Nice third-quarter comeback last night by the Bucks against the Bulls — and on a night when neither Giannis nor Brook Lopez was playing his best — instead, the work was done by folks like Kris Middleton and Thon Maker. Fun to see the Lopez Brothers guarding each other. Family-friendly but energized arena and crowd.
After barely squeaking out a win over the hapless Knicks, the Failblazers went on to fame and glory to have the Bucks blow them out by 42 points. Milwaukee came out of the locker room locked and loaded and Portland never managed a rally. On the plus side, I had recorded the game was was able to mitigate my disgust by fast-forwarding through the entire second and third quarters.
Woo! C’mon Draymond, run KD out of town!
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If anything, it’s probably time for Draymond Green to shut up and get out of town. They lost to a Cleveland Cavaliers team they should have defeated in 2016, and it’s almost inarguable that the series shifted after his selfish and idiotic tantrums, not just in that one game but in the post-season games leading up to it. There’s also no question that KD put the Warriors over the top in 2017 and 2018, giving them an extra scorer from both the perimeter and at the hoop and adding some insurance against injuries to their other stars.
Re: Melo, you’re pretty much on point. Melo’s been an isolation scorer, and in the mid-2000s that was enough to be a hall-of-fame type candidate. But unlike LeBron, Melo never improved any other part of his game. And at this stage of his career, he’s not even much of a scoring threat anymore.
We may have a chance tonight as some of GS’s major players are out. Maybe we’ll only lose by 20.
I was too optimistic.
In the baseball HOF thread I noted that I’ve never seen an athlete’s career tank so immediately as Rick Ankiel’s. And it happened right on the field. Well, I think Markelle Fultz almost matches Ankiel. Fultz hasn’t done anything in the NBA, but he clearly did not have these problems prior to the NBA. Have you seen his free throws? Pump faking, batting the ball from one hand to the other. The team is saying it’s a shoulder, but it sure looks mental.
James Harden scored 54 points last night, and Houston somehow still lost.
That isn’t even the highest scoring-in-futility game this season - Kemba Walker had a 60-pointer last week.
One of the weirdest things ever is that the all time playoff scoring record for a single game was set in a loss; Michael Jordan’s 63-point performance against Boston in 1986.