You just can’t leave Curry open at 35 feet.
If Curry keeps this up for a few more seasons we can have some legit “better than Jordan” discussions.
Maybe, but the issue is that Curry, while being the best shooter of all time and probably the most efficient player of all time, has so many parts of his overall game that are lacking. His defense is well below that of an all time great player, and he tends to do poorly against certain aggressive types of defenders. Curry is dominant in a similar way to how Shaq was dominant. It’s extremely impressive, and completely unprecedented because Curry is doing it with three pointers, but I’d have a hard time putting him a conversation of the best all time, even if he goes on like this for a few more years, when he cannot be relied on one side of the floor.
What kind of aggressive defenders is he poor against? And why aren’t teams using them? He’s a small guy relatively, surely most teams have a lanky 6’5 to 6’8 guy who can chase him around all night. And I disagree with him being bad at defense. I think we haven’t seen him defend as much one on one because the Warriors are so great in team defense. Curry doesn’t have to lock anybody down because they’ve got Klay or Iguodala, just like Jordan had Pippen or Rodman to do most of the defending for him.
I don’t know about best all time, Jordan is hard to beat in that category, but if he keeps up this pace just this season and wins a championship while breaking the Bulls’ record, you can put him up in the top 20 all time right now
Steph Curry is great, no doubt about it. I reluctantly must admit that even in the tough guy 90s era of NBA basketball, he would be great. Even with all the physicality, hand checking, etc. Steph creates his own shot and seriously, you can’t just full court faceguard him nonstop. I hear people yelling for teams to extend their defense, but Curry too good a ball handler and, frankly, they’d just pick and roll or pick and pop more.
You can never fully isolate one player’s greatness to himself, because so much depends on the team. I think Draymond Green is the glue that binds the Warriors into their current dominating aggregate (he’s a 6’7" PF, which is kinda amazing), because a big part of their success is defensive rebounding. They don’t give their opponents many 2nd chance opportunities, which their opponents tend to need a lot more than they do.
It may be a key, but you’ll note they got out rebounded by 30 by Oklahoma ( 62-32, giving up 16 offensive rebounds ) and yet they still won. I’ll say it again - they’re absurd this year :p.
That’s one game. OKC is not a good defensive team, their bench sucks, and Westbrook is the only guard they have that requires any real defensive attention.
GS’s offense is so much better than everyone that their opponent needs 2nd chance opportunities just to keep pace. They make two more 3 pointers a game than anyone else.
I agree, GS has the perfect supporting cast for Curry’s game to work at optimum level. A second dead eye shooter in Klay Thompson and a PF who can run the floor, rebound and, perhaps Draymond Green’s most underrated skill, pass the ball. It is not at all uncommon for Green to have double figure assists in a given night.
Looks like the Spurs are the only team that have any chance of preventing the Warriors from repeating.
Long, annoying defenders. Even Dellavedova shut him down for a couple games. That should never have happened. It was so stark that you had a guy people are claiming is the best player in the league not even be the MVP in the finals? All time great player usually are not overshadowed by role players on their teams when the chips are down.
I like Curry a lot. I have seen him twice in person, and often watch Warriors games. He is almost assuredly the best shooter ever. But he is just not a complete player yet. Even when we limit the discussion to PGs, guys like Magic could defend almost anyone on the court at a time when zones were illegal. Curry will probably never be able to do that. That is an issue IMO.
Most don’t actually. Or at least they don’t have one they can sacrifice given the offensive shortcoming of many of these guys.
Jordan is a far better defender. It’s not even close, and Jordan didn’t shy away from locking down another superstar (neither did Magic and other all time greats). Curry has improved, and the rules allow smart team defense to hide his individual shortcomings and allow him to pad his stats with steals, but let’s get real here. When the Warriors played here in DC last, Wall had 41 and 10. Wall is good, but not that good.
Yeah. Just his shooting alone (assuming we get a few more season at anywhere near this 2-year run level) puts him in the top 20. My hesitation in arguing he is or will be a top 5 guy after a few more seasons is that I would have a hard time picking him as a guy to build a complete team around without any guarantee on getting a very specific set of complementary players. Even when you compare peak Curry (now-ish presumably) to peak Lebron (a couple years ago), I think building an all time great team around Lebron is much easier due to his skill set.
When you see the Warriors in person, you can really appreciate how much of their dominance comes from being well-coached, in good shape, able to play small, and having two of the best long range shooters ever. That’s obviously a credit to their organization and their players, but I just cannot imagine Curry leading a team like the '09 Cavs to the finals. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong, and I almost hope I am because Curry is such a likable guy, and Jordan is such an unlikable cunt, but I just cannot see it happening unfortunately.
So game 2 of the regular season goes to the Spurs; they and the Warriors are now 1-1 against other good teams.
Sam Hinkie is out in Philadelphia. End of “The Process”?
It was a good plan, in theory, may even have been brilliant, but in practice it’s nearly impossible to make it work; it requires not just the patience to endure year after year of on-the-court futility, but it also requires (what proved to be) an insurmountable amount of pure luck to acquire the right picks, have the lottery balls drop just the right way, and most of all have superstar-caliber players available to be drafted, none of which worked out in their favor during Hinkie’s time in charge. He made a massive gamble on Joel Embiid, who still has yet to set foot on an NBA floor, and never got the ping-pong balls to fall his way; taking the “highest-ceiling” guy available left him with 2 top-3 centers plus Nerlens Noel via trade, and no point guard.
He stockpiled a lot of picks and still did not end up with a superstar player. Would they have landed one eventually? Probably, but how long are you willing to keep making that gamble? 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? Apparently 76ers management ran out of patience in just 3.
At least it was a fascinating experiment to watch while it lasted.
It’s certainly the end of the process. It’s also the end of my interest in the team. Well, it was a… well a bad 20 year run, but it was a run. It’s really frustrating and kind of shocking to me that they had the foresight to hire the guy – who without a doubt told them before they hired him what he was going to do, and then right in the middle of him doing it they pull the rug out and decide to chase after shitty veterans so they can be an average shitty team.
And for whatever it’s worth, I will continue to rail against the argument about how long you’re willing to tolerate losing, and I’ll continue to make lists of things to make myself feel indignant on his behalf. Hinkie was hired in May of 2013. It’s not yet May of 2016. Whether or not you’re willing to be the worst team in the league for ten years with nothing to show for it, it’s been three, and there are things to show for it.
He leaves the following assets in the locker:
2016
The better of the Sixers’ or the Kings’ first rounders this year, which is to say, currently a 28% chance at the first pick and a 74% chance at top 3.
A 44% chance to get the Lakers first rounder, which can be as high as 4.
Miami’s first rounder, currently #22.
Thunder’s first rounder, currently #27.
2017
The better of the Sixers or the Kings’ first rounders.
2018
Their own first rounder plus the Kings’ first rounder, top 10 protected.
3 second rounders this year and the next two years.
They’ve got Embiid, Noel, and Okafor. Covington and Grant are decent wings. Let’s just write off the entire rest of their roster for simplicity’s sake so we don’t have to reduce ourselves to speculating about Stauskas or Canaan or Hollis Thompson’s ongoing utility.
Next year Embiid, by the looks of things, will be on the court in some capacity. He was a recent #1 overall prospect, then he broke his foot, so very uncertain what that is. Dario Saric will come over after winning two consecutive FIBA Young European POTY awards.
What all this means is that the new GM, without doing anything, could very easily start next season with the #1 or 2 overall pick on the court – let’s say that’s Branden Ingram or Ben Simmons. They could also have the 4th or 5th pick – let’s say that’s Kris Dunn for positional ease of use. Then they have two more first rounders.
Starting 5 in this universe without any outside transactions:
2 of Okafor / Noel / Embiid (or whatever you get for trading one of them)
Ingram or Simmons
Thompson or Stauskas
Kris Dunn
And you’ve got two more first round picks, one of the bigs, Covington, Canaan, Jerami Grant and Stauskas on the bench. Plus you have essentially infinite cap room if you decide to try to start spending it, so even though it doesn’t really make sense to include it for Hinkie purposes, you could probably throw a Kevin Martin or Courtney Lee or somebody out there at the 2 (we’ll concede that the Hinkie process has put them in a difficult position to win a bidding war for Bradley Beal or Derozan or someone).
Those are all the things that are already going to happen because of what Hinkie’s been doing. It cannot be a surprise when that’s a much better team. In fact what would be a surprise would be if all of these decent bets all fail to come off – they could end up with only one lottery pick and it could be #4, say, and that guy could get hurt or be a bust; and Saric could be a total bust, and Embiid could never see the floor again, and Okafor and Noel could both be totally untradeable for value and totally unable to coexist on the court, and none of the later first rounders could turn out to be anything, and they could be entirely unable to sign anyone if they wanted to because of a “losing culture.”
But, like, it’s not going to be a big surprise if those bets don’t all crap out, is it? They’ve already crapped out on having Towns, just barely, they screwed up the Porzingis opportunity, the jury’s still out on Embiid but for sure you’d rather have Wiggins or Parker at least so far, and all those were bad luck. One of them hits and things look different.
I just wonder whether, if they have Ingram and Jamal Murray, and both are studs, and Embiid becomes a legit offensive weapon, and they trade Okafor for another whatever you can trade him for, and Noel goes back to wreaking defensive havoc, and Saric and Grant and Canaan and their other first rounders are all serviceable players, is everyone going to immediately say oh shit, this was a good plan? That’s a best (reasonable) case scenario, but it’s also not a wacky one (which would entail all of those things happening and then them throwing their infinite cap room at John Wall or Durant or Anthony Davis).
Here’s the thing with Hinkie: whether you like his approach or not - and I don’t, I loathe it - he has never been anything but clear about his intentions for the team. For his ownership to hire him to implement this plan and then undermine him repeatedly less than three full years into it was bad form. I can totally understand not wanting to lose hilariously for an indefinite number of years, but given that Hinkie told them in advance that’s what he’d be doing I’m not sure exactly what they expected.
People still counting on Joel Embiid to do something? I hear he might be ready to start next season, but mark my words, he’ll get hurt again. Foot injuries are pretty bad news for big men. Look at Yao Ming.
In other NBA news, GS beat SA to get to 70 wins. If they win their 2 final games (@MEM, @SA) they’ll break the Bulls record.
Final 3 games, yeah.
@MEM, @SA, vs. MEM.
Could the Spurs become the first team to finish undefeated at home?
5 seasons of Yao-level production, which is what the Rockets got after Yao’s stress fracture, ain’t nothing. And “counting on” isn’t exactly how I put it.
I’m sorry, but possible “legit offensive weapon” as you did put it, fine. But 5 seasons of Hall-of-Fame-worthy production is pure, unadulterated homer delusion at this point. Again, we’re talking about a kid who’s technically been “in” the NBA for 2 years and has a stat line of zeroes across the board.