A Rockets/Cavaliers match-up would feature two teams doing the feign-crossover/feign-crossover for 20 seconds and then a step-back or pass-for a three, with an occasional fast-break or dribble-penetration.
It’s just not interesting to watch a whole team toss up three point shots all game, regardless of whether they’re actually going in or not. Might as well be playing H.O.R.S.E.
They have A jerk( D. Green )and even he is at least a team player sort, rather than a locker room cancer. He’s the kind of jerk I honestly believe most teams would want playing for them, but dearly love to hate when he is on another team( which I totally get ). Otherwise they’ve mostly seemed to be, subjectively at least, reasonably high character types*.
It was a great deal of luck, mostly. I’m not sure if that general sequence of events could be replicated. Given that I’m not sure if there is any point in making a rule to prevent it, because I’m not sure it could ever happen again.
ETA:
I feel the same way about watching massive centers dunking and banging away in the post :D. The 3-point revolution and the demise of the traditional center has reinvigorated my interest in the NBA. De gustibus non est disputandum and all that.
Regarding points 1 and 2: this will pass. LeBron James will retire. If he goes to LA to play with Paul George, he’ll stop being playoff relevant literally this November. Klay Thompson will go somewhere else and Steph Curry will tweak his ankle and lose a step. Other teams will step up. We’re not getting this back; I just think we should appreciate it for what it is before it’s gone.
As for #3, I’m not sure who on the Warriors is a jerk. Draymond, I guess? Zaza Pachulia?
I’m just saying, watching the Rockets is basketball valium. Effective as they are, I can’t imagine rooting for them to win anything, for fear that their approach will spread.
Yeah, this is true. The current Warriors don’t even exist if Minnesota doesn’t decide that both Ricky Rubio and Jonny Flynn would be better point guards than Steph Curry (!).
More free throws for Rockets, more fouls called on the Warriors. Thompson’s second foul that was all ball, Harden literally climbing on top of a defender and forcing them both down, and Ryan Anderson’s 50 hand checks on Curry every pick. r/nba has a post with all the bad calls, and they’re almost entirely equal. Curry hasn’t shot a free throw since Game 5.
27 missed 3 pointers. Turning half of those into high percentage shots, and make only half of those, with no extra free throws, and you’ve got 14.
It wasn’t the refs, it was the Rockets.
It’s not exactly a character issue as such, but Durant is pretty douchey for joining the 73-9 team that beat him in a close series rather than play them again. And then calling it “the hardest road”
Cavs/Warriors in 2016 form, without Durant and with Kyrie, would’ve been a great rematch. But the Durant warriors basically broke basketball by adding one of the best players on the best team.
The hardest road was having to play with Westbrook and Harden before finding out he could leave the Thunder for a team.
That was going to be my footnote to that asterix I mistakenly left in my post above :). Yeah, I get that - he’s never really going to slip that image of lacking a killer competitive edge for many of this generation of fans. I suspect it won’t be that bad of a tarnish in 25 years( like to a lesser extent with LeBron and Miami )and I could make the argument that the “hardest road” is the disdain he knew he was going to get from fans for making that move. But for now it is not a good look. Which he doesn’t help by his occasional dumb, passive-aggressive tweeting.
But like you said, I don’t really consider that a character issue exactly. By all accounts he is good teammate, he invests heavily in the local community( including in Oklahoma for 8 years )and isn’t a thug or( usually )a diva on the court.
What made Durant going to Golden State much more of a possibility than it should have been was the lack of foresight by the owners and players association by failing
to proactively agree on an easing in of the salary cap spike. Any team in 2016 probably had or could have cleared enough cap space to sign Durant.
Durant will be catching venom for My Next Chapter for 40 years, so in that respect it really was the hardest road.
Basketball-wise, the hardest road would have been going to the Knicks 
Not just the cap spike, but Golden State’s cap situation in particular. Prior to Curry’s newest contract and Durant’s, there was no one making the max. Compare that to the Cavs (3 max deals at the time), OKC (2 max) and others. Golden State was (and to a smaller degree, still is) full of players willing to take a bit less to win championships than they could get elsewhere. Curry only made $12 million during Durant’s first year, and $11 million as NBA champion and league MVP the year before. Assuming they keep everyone they have now, and pick up a few at the veteran minimum or thereabouts, they’re over the salary cap by a whopping $3 million. The Cavaliers? $38 million. Houston is $47 million past the cap. Even San Antonio is $22 million in the “red”. Those teams boast a combined 8 All-Stars (versus 5 for the Warriors alone), only one who has won an MVP award (though likely two after Harden wins this year), compared to the Durant/Curry combo in the Bay. The Warriors are putting on a superteam master class. LeGM needs to take notes, as he’s somehow blown up salary caps for over a decade to put together teams that only made the Finals annually because he played in the East.
Personally, I’d like to see the max contract disappear, so players like James, Durant, Harden, and Curry can get their full worth on an open market. Granted, they’ll be playing with the equivalent of the 2015 76ers, but we’d have a far better idea of their actual value rather than an artificially capped one. Want to break up superteams? Use the human greed instinct to do so. When Durant and Curry are getting offers for $50 million plus per season to play elsewhere, the dynasty is over. When teams can only pay ONE superstar, parity is far easier to accomplish.
Then you have to account for guaranteed contracts being the norm, especially for players in their prime; therefore the actuarial downside of a franchise putting too many eggs in one basket. Let’s say there’s no max contract rule, the year is 2013 and Derrick Rose is projected to take up around 50% of the Bulls’ payroll for the next 4 years. I think that’s too heavy a burden borne over one player’s unfortunate luck. Something would have to be shaken up with the concept of guaranteed contracts in light of cases where insurance can’t cover the team’s future obligation.
Having a superstar player’s body break down in what should be his prime doesn’t mean a team has to rebuild, although that is the tanking instinct fans often froth at the mouth over wanting and could be a more lopsided sentiment in a similar hypothetical case to the Rose one. Two examples off the top of my head of other such teams are Portland w/Brandon Roy and Houston w/Yao, who both found paths to remain competitive in the aftermaths. I like when teams find diverse ways other than deliberate multi-year rebuilds to be competitors, and they have to, because even if the best players were being paid more in sync with their true value, landing such a player via free agency is fairly unrealistic in most markets.
Sounds like just another way to build superteams, though. Someone with the wealth of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett could hypothetically step in, buy an NBA team, and then offer Curry, Durant, Leonard, Harden, James, etc. each utterly lopsided contracts such as $200 million per year that no other team could ever match.
The NHL and MLB have managed it just fine, why couldn’t the NBA cope? The NHL even manages it with a hard salary cap.
Sure, if someone wants to blow a billion bucks a year on player salary, they can do it. Just a starting five at $200m/year will cost roughly $77 BILLION in luxury tax. If Gates wants to bankrupt himself for one year of superball (that falls apart by the All-Star break due to no bench), he’s free to go right ahead. Extreme examples are ridiculous.
Oh man, this game. I don’t know NBA rules enough to have an opinion, but the vast majority of third-party opinion reddit was that the review and reversal of the charge call is both extremely unusual and pretty bullshitty. But in a series that a lot of people are predicting to be 4-0 or 4-1 for the Warriors, why would the refs want to bail them out in this situation? That makes it a much more interesting series.
Also that JR brain fart, ouch.
That’s a back breaking type game. LeBron and the Cavs in general played their guts out and had it end like that - it’s extremely demoralizing.
LeBron called a TO before JR Smith figured out what the fuck was up and passed the ball, and the ref was standing right next to him looking at him, but didn’t call the TO. Somehow Ty Lue didn’t bother to call one either in that situation.
Ugly way to end it, and I suspect it be a history changer. With a stolen game and stolen home field, the Cavs had a decent chance this series, but I’m not sure they can play another game like this after losing it.
I haven’t looked myself, but apparently on close review LeBron moved. Close finals game in the final minutes, I don’t mind getting it right.
That said I think Cleveland was in fact penalized for what looked like a couple of clean strips earlier, including that foul on LeBron.
Yeah, that’s going to haunt him. But it was really that second free throw miss by Hill that was the bigger dagger - no guarantee a Smith shot goes in. Cleveland really could have stolen this one, 73% from the free throw line was a killer.
Again, don’t know basketball enough to judge these subtle things, but from what I’m hearing from others (including the announcemer when they were reviewing it) is that movement is allowed while still being called a charge, it’s just a matter of whether or not you’ve established yourself in the path of the offensive player. You can say Bron’s shoulder movement precludes that, but KD hit him right in the chest. Maybe it’s a close call, but I much prefer the NFL’s system of reviews - if it’s a close call, then just go with what was originally called, otherwise it feels like the refs are exercising undue influence on the outcome.
That’s a fair point and I do kind of like how the NFL approaches it.
LeBron is my favorite current player, and I’m rooting hard for the Cavs, but that appeared to be a block, as his shoulders weren’t squared, nor were his feet set. Gut wrenching to have the reversal, but seemed to be the correct call, imho.
Besides the all time fuck up at the end of regulation by JR, his steal attempt at the end of the 2nd quarter was monumentally stupid as well, giving Curry a wide open look.