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2012-13 Oct/Nov NBA Season |OT| Mavericks Attempt To Defend Title

Eric Gordon

Results are only viewable after voting.
E

exarkun

Member
Smokey said:
What a trash game by the Rockets (going by the box score!)

diehard wut did yall do
i imagine the bigs were feasting down low :l
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It was physical, Asik wasn't able to the kind of work we are accustomed to in the low post. Parsons has had a few nice games in a row though, so he may be getting that swag back.

I have no clue whats up with Lin. Looks tentative as shit sometimes, defers to Harden. He keeps wanting to get that "perfect pass". But at other times, when hes dropping double digit dimes he looks great. His J though...I feel like the shit I shoot at the gym is at a higher percentage.
 
G

Gully State

Member
pilonv1 said:
Klay shoots 2-14 and the Warriors win, I'll take that.
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I wonder what's going on with Klay..I get the impression that his shot is suffering due to all the focus on defense..

Super eager to see what Bogut will bring if/once he's healthy....looks like the team is coming together.
 
P

pilonv1

Member
Gully State said:
I wonder what's going on with Klay..I get the impression that his shot is suffering due to all the focus on defense..

Super eager to see what Bogut will bring if/once he's healthy....looks like the team is coming together.
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I think Klay is forcing it, but I did like how often he took it inside. I think it will come to him, he was really flat at the start of last season too.

Barnes & Green look like real players now. Really don't want Jefferson to return, they need more minutes and I'd rather see Bazemore get some run.
 
F

Future PhaZe

Member
So the Wiz made history last night with our 0-9 start...literally the worst in franchise history.

And it shouldn't really be possible. Not with how we started the season. Loving the tank...but holy fuck.

And you know it isn't coaching. The games have been close. Guys have been playing hard.

It's the talent. It's awful.

Fire Ernie. Fuck Leonsis. I was excited when he took over but he's been a bitch.
 
S

Sharp

Member
Dark FaZe said:
So the Wiz made history last night with our 0-9 start...literally the worst in franchise history.

And it shouldn't really be possible. Not with how we started the season. Loving the tank...but holy fuck.

And you know it isn't coaching. The games have been close. Guys have been playing hard.

It's the talent. It's awful.

Fire Ernie. Fuck Leonsis. I was excited when he took over but he's been a bitch.
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Yup, at the end of the day it comes back to talent. We don't have the talent to compete in the NBA and haven't had it for years. The last semi-competitive team we had was ruined by the Gunbert incident. I still don't know if Grunfeld necessarily did anything wrong--Wiz have been unlucky as fuck--but it's time to clean house.
 
jobber

jobber

Would let Tony Parker sleep with his wife
Black Mamba said:
You lost 4 in a row not even 15 games ago, buddy
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21008c6594cf7a7a5caacddab1c2c361.gif
 
Blackace

Blackace

if you see me in a fight with a bear, don't help me fool, help the bear!
Dark FaZe said:
So the Wiz made history last night with our 0-9 start...literally the worst in franchise history.

And it shouldn't really be possible. Not with how we started the season. Loving the tank...but holy fuck.

And you know it isn't coaching. The games have been close. Guys have been playing hard.

It's the talent. It's awful.

Fire Ernie. Fuck Leonsis. I was excited when he took over but he's been a bitch.
Click to expand...

The Wizards are a mess
 
L

LegendofJoe

Member
I am a little bit jealous of the Wizards actually. You're at the very end of your tank, and thanks to the injuries to Wall and Nene the trade for Ariza and Okafor isn't going to affect your draft position as much as it would have. At the end of next season they'll both be coming off the books anyway, just in time for you to make a decision on what to do what John Wall long-term. You'll also have team options on Vesely, Singleton, and Beal so you'll have a lot of room to manuever. And thankfully for you guys DMC is going to be a free agent at the same time. Most importantly you'll have the cap space to sign him, and also I think being reunited with Wall on a young, talented team would be appealing to him. Seriously, in two year's time this could be your roster:

Wall
Beal
2013 lottery pick (Alex Poythress?)
DMC
Nene

And it isn't out of the realm of possibility at all.
 
D

DY_nasty

NeoGAF's official "was this shooting justified" consultant
This season is a waste. We're gonna need Gordon's expiring to turn into something good, get Detroit and Portland's picks, somehow avoid giving up our own pick to Chicago, AND flip it all for a top 5 at this rate.

May as well re-sign Mullens now just in case he turns into AmeriDirk. (He actually plays damned good when he decides to play within 18ft or posts up. Dunlap manages to turn him into an average defender at times too)

#killme
 
L

LegendofJoe

Member
We're not making the playoffs dy. Chicago, Atlanta, and Indiana are going to leap frog us soon. At the very worst we'll be the 9th seed. Which is even worse than being the 8th seed, but I don't see either happening. It's going to be:

Miami
NY
Brooklyn
Boston
Indiana
Chicago
Philly
Milwaukee
Atlanta
Washington
Detroit
Us
Toronto
Cleveland
Orlando
 
A

Adam Blade

WWKC
Best in the West! Also they’re #2 in defensive efficiency and #3 in offensive efficiency. (They’re actually number one in the west for both metrics). They’re also #2 in pt differential (10.42) with the Knicks being first (13.64) and OKC at third (8.07).
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.
 
D

DY_nasty

NeoGAF's official "was this shooting justified" consultant
LegendofJoe said:
We're not making the playoffs dy. Chicago, Atlanta, and Indiana are going to leap frog us soon. At the very worst we'll be the 9th seed. Which is even worse than being the 8th seed, but I don't see either happening. It's going to be:

Miami
NY
Brooklyn
Boston
Indiana
Chicago
Philly
Milwaukee
Atlanta
Washington
Detroit
Us
Toronto
Cleveland
Orlando
Click to expand...
In what world is Detroit or Washington beating us out?

Detroit is absolutely terrible and they don't have the offense to even "get hot" and surprise people. Teams have to roll ove for them (and Boston is one injury to KG away from being shit level too... they've struggled against Washington and Detroit this season). Philly is in real jeopardy if Bynum doesn't get back, Indiana is going to be digging its way out of a hole until Hibbert unfucks himself too.

We're going to lose our pick to Chicago at this rate.
 
K

KingGondo

Banned
LegendofJoe said:
We're not making the playoffs dy. Chicago, Atlanta, and Indiana are going to leap frog us soon. At the very worst we'll be the 9th seed. Which is even worse than being the 8th seed, but I don't see either happening. It's going to be:

Miami
NY
Brooklyn
Boston
Indiana
Chicago
Philly
Milwaukee
Atlanta
Washington
Detroit
Us
Toronto
Cleveland
Orlando
Click to expand...
I'm appreciating all the newfound pessimism for the Raps.

When we got their draft pick everyone was saying "it'll be a 10-15 pick at best, they've improved, etc."

Looking like a surefire top ten right now. I just have to hope they don't out-tank 3-4 other teams.
 
K

KingKong

Member
LegendofJoe said:
We're not making the playoffs dy. Chicago, Atlanta, and Indiana are going to leap frog us soon. At the very worst we'll be the 9th seed. Which is even worse than being the 8th seed, but I don't see either happening. It's going to be:

Miami
NY
Brooklyn
Boston
Indiana
Chicago
Philly
Milwaukee
Atlanta
Washington
Detroit
Us
Toronto
Cleveland
Orlando
Click to expand...

Brooklyn the 3 seed? o_O
 
S

Smokey

Member
exarkun said:
It was physical, Asik wasn't able to the kind of work we are accustomed to in the low post. Parsons has had a few nice games in a row though, so he may be getting that swag back.

I have no clue whats up with Lin. Looks tentative as shit sometimes, defers to Harden. He keeps wanting to get that "perfect pass". But at other times, when hes dropping double digit dimes he looks great. His J though...I feel like the shit I shoot at the gym is at a higher percentage.
Click to expand...

He thrives in iso situations. Not happening in Houston. I also think he hasn't fully recovered from his knee issue. He still can't go left. He's just not a very good basketball player at this point in time.
 
L

LegendofJoe

Member
DY_nasty said:
In what world is Detroit or Washington beating us out?

Detroit is absolutely terrible and they don't have the offense to even "get hot" and surprise people. Teams have to roll ove for them (and Boston is one injury to KG away from being shit level too... they've struggled against Washington and Detroit this season). Philly is in real jeopardy if Bynum doesn't get back, Indiana is going to be digging its way out of a hole until Hibbert unfucks himself too.

We're going to lose our pick to Chicago at this rate.
Click to expand...

Detroit and us are going to be close at the end of the season, but I think they'll come out ahead of us. Stuckey has been playing like total ass and I don't see that continuing for the rest of the year. When he gets back to playing like he normally does and as Drummond gets more PT they will improve a lot.

I don't know what Philly will do, but they've been competitive without Bynum. Jrue is my pick for MIP, I'd be surprised if they don't make the playoffs. And there is no way the Pacers don't turn it around. They're starting Gerald Green in place of Granger for crying out loud, that would make any team struggle. Green single handedly won us the game against them. Once he goes back to where he belongs, the bench, the Pacers will be a much better team. Really, this season has just been strange as hell so far. I attribute it to all the injuries that happened in preseason and during the offeason. Once that sorts itself out things will settle back to where we expected them to be.

edit: if the Wolves, Wizards, Pacers, and Mavs were at full strength we'd be 1-9. That should put things in perspective.
 
D

dalVlatko

Member
KingGondo said:
I'm appreciating all the newfound pessimism for the Raps.

When we got their draft pick everyone was saying "it'll be a 10-15 pick at best, they've improved, etc."

Looking like a surefire top ten right now. I just have to hope they don't out-tank 3-4 other teams.
Click to expand...
Varejao for Perkins and Toronto 1st

Y/N
 
T

theignoramus

Member
scott brooks actually had Perkins on steph curry the other night, for a spell anyway. full court pressure too. I was yelling at my screen for steph to go at the motherfucker every single possession
 
L

LegendofJoe

Member
I'd be willing to give OKC a lot for that Toronto pick. I don't think we have anyone they'd want that would be enough though unfortunately. We could try to match Perkins with Haywood and Sessions I guess. OKC would only take that if they needed the cap space to sign an upgrade over Perkins though.
 
G

Gully State

Member
exarkun said:
I have no clue whats up with Lin. Looks tentative as shit sometimes, defers to Harden. He keeps wanting to get that "perfect pass". But at other times, when hes dropping double digit dimes he looks great. His J though...I feel like the shit I shoot at the gym is at a higher percentage.
Click to expand...

He's got no confidence in his jumper. There's actually a good piece on cnnsi summarizing Lin's struggles...I personally think that Lin should have the ball in his hands more instead of having Harden trigger the offense. Turn Harden into more of a scorer rather than burden him with too many distributing responsibilities. The only time I would have Harden initiate the offense is when Lin goes into turnover mode (which surprisingly hasn't happened that often).


When Jeremy Lin was at the height of his fame back in February, he was billed first and foremost as a great story, his meteoric rise creating a cyclone of narrative power. As an undrafted, twice-waived Taiwanese-American putting up All-Star numbers for one of the most visible basketball teams on the planet, Lin’s career launch was prime for packaging and widespread consumption.

But in condensing Lin’s 2011-12 tale into a self-contained drama sold through headlines or products, many ignored the fact that the Knicks were merely his first act. He was quickly established as an unlikely protagonist and showed early and massive success in his nationally televised call to action. It made for good basketball and better television, but his first real NBA tour was far too saccharine (and later much too unfortunate) to be a real, complete narrative. No career is without struggles. The madness of “Linsanity” eventually faded, and this offseason, Lin made a high-profile move from New York to Houston, where he is being challenged like never before.

A capable prospect of a point guard, Lin now stands disconnected from his fairy-tale roots, as all principal characters are when the tone begins to shift in Act 2.

Lin hasn’t been horrible this season (10.3 points, 7.0 assists, 2.2 steals and a 13.8 Player Efficiency Rating in 34.3 minutes a game), but he also hasn’t yet mustered the kind of production or efficiency that made his rise in New York so staggering. Opposing defenses — through concentrated scouting and a more standard NBA schedule — have made him look entirely mortal.

That attention has revealed certain limitations in Lin’s game. His ability to function as a team’s primary playmaker was overstated by his 2011-12 performance — misrepresented not by a small sample size, but by defenders who at first underestimated and then overcompensated for his potential impact. Lin was more than capable of exploiting the lack of public familiarity with his game and equally good at attacking defenses that paid a bit too much attention to his drives and lost track of Tyson Chandler, Steve Novak and Landry Fields in the process. Yet with all of that balanced out in Houston, Lin is left to work against informed defenses that understand how to best challenge him.

Lin’s great secret is that he was able to average 19.6 points and 8.3 assists per 36 minutes a season ago without much aptitude for reading help defense. Even in his brightest moments, he still played like a summer league standout, with straight-line drives and good finishes at the rim building the foundation of his game. Lin lacked the kind of spatial creativity or elite athleticism demonstrated by the league’s best point guards. This isn’t to say that Lin’s success was some kind of mirage, but merely that it offered a less stable base for immediate growth than initially thought. He handles the ball well, can get by his defender consistently and makes an effort to attack the basket. But Lin doesn’t yet have a firm grip of how his opponents might counter his initial move, leaving him blind to an opposing big man castling across the lane or the instant checkmate often brought on by his jump passing.

And about that jump passing: Lin has the annoying habit of leaving his feet without the slightest idea of where he’s going, which is a drag on both his turnover rate and shooting percentage. Typically, this kind of move is the crutch of the athletically dominant, but Lin appears to have repurposed it to his own detriment, likely for the exact opposite reason. Nothing that Lin does is particularly explosive, and as a result, the 24-year-old point guard works toward the rim by way of some unconventional timing. He tends to lift off for layup attempts far earlier than he probably should — a move that allows him to get the best of some defenders, but also leaves him incredibly vulnerable to disciplined opponents. Essentially, Lin creates a very slim advantage by giving up his dribble and forcing himself to make a judgment call within a single-second window. In that second, Lin isn’t going through progressions; he’s forcing himself to fully analyze a situation that he seemingly failed to properly measure up beforehand.

The idea behind that move isn’t entirely wrong, but it almost completely erases Lin’s margin for error and eliminates the possibility of forcing opponents to defend anything more than basic drive-and-kick sequences. Those kinds of plays can create a quick reward for skilled players, but they forsake the offense’s position of power. The best thing that an offense can do is dictate the game in a way that forces opponents to make decision after decision after decision. The most stingy team defenses, after all, need to be torn from within by continuous stretching in uncomfortable ways. Lin hasn’t yet shown the capacity to execute that kind of persistent operation.

That limitation is only accented by the fact that Lin struggles to create any positive impact when he doesn’t have the ball in his hands — a scenario made all the more frequent by Houston’s acquisition of James Harden. An erratic shooting stroke makes Lin (who is hitting 25.8 percent from three-point range and 34.3 percent overall) an unreliable weak-side option, and yet when Harden initiates from the perimeter, the Rockets have few other options in terms of placement. And so Lin stands ready on the opposite wing, poised to hoist up a shot that the defense wants him to take or ready to counter-drive with the hope that the D doesn’t rotate in time. Despite his shooting limitations, there’s little actual cutting to speak of in Lin’s game and no contribution to the offense’s spacing through off-ball movement. Lin simply waits to be called on, as if the leather on his fingertips transforms him from witness into ballplayer.

Some of that falls on Lin, but Kevin McHale, Kelvin Sampson and the rest of the Rockets’ coaching staff aren’t excused from the blame for this kind of off-ball inactivity. Defenses are far too sophisticated for a non-shooter to take the floor without any cutting directives, and based on the way that Lin has played without the ball, it seems fair to assume that he hasn’t exactly been put in a position to succeed. Houston isn’t a bad offensive team, but merely an unimaginative (and possibly under-structured) one in need of more strategic synergy between its two primary ball-handlers.

That said, only so much can be done to account for the fact that Lin has been relatively useless away from the ball, but isn’t yet good enough to demand control of it. That makes Harden both the better high-usage ball-handler and the better weak-side option – a tilt of the backcourt that creates a tactical quandary every trip down the floor. A resolution to that particular issue is certainly within Lin’s grasp, provided that his development propels him forward in a matter befitting the lead in any successful second act. Lin’s narrative, however unique it may seem, is bound by a very traditional structure. After all, what great story is without its mid-course hardship?
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O

Omega

Banned
Lin wasn't that good to begin with.

Combine that with the fact that coaches and players were able to watch film and learn how he plays, and that he has absolutely no help other than Harden on that team so it's not a surprise he's putting up average numbers.
 
R

reilo

learning some important life lessons from magical Negroes
RT @tomhaberstroh: Asked Erik Spoelstra what has stood out to him so far around the league. His answer: "Marc Gasol... he's Sabonis."
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All you need to know about Spo. Idiot.
 
jobber

jobber

Would let Tony Parker sleep with his wife
The linear NBA Champions are the Denver Nuggets.

Congrats to George Karl on his first and only fake championship
 
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