2018-19 NBA Thread

Last night's attendance figure was 15,686.

OK.

Kenny and Chuck went all in on the AD debacle and highlighted all of the empty seats as an embarrassment to the league. The arena sounded emptier than it looked, too. Lots of 300-->200-->100 upgrades at the half.

 

Woj bomb -- Pelicans fire Dell Demps.

 

I actually feel for Demps.

What was the package that the Lakers offered for CP3? I actually thought that it was better than the Clippers package. Demps has actually done a decent job. Jrue, Mirotic, AD, Cousins. He picked Hield when others mocked the choice; Buddy's going to be really good. The problem is that Cousins ruptured his achilles.

That, paired with the god-awful mascot, color scheme and uniforms would lead me to stay away as well.

 

The previous coach, of course, was Paul Westhead, who wanted the Lakers to run an uptempo, pressing fast-break style. However, Magic had a knee injury his second season which robbed him of any foot speed he ever had, making the idea of him playing a press defense an absurdity (he couldn't guard guards even in halfcourt defense). And needless to say in his late 30s, Kareem didn't want to press either.

 

In the Lakers deal, New Orleans would have received Kevin Martin, Luis Scola, Lamar Odom, Goran Dragic and a 2012 first-round pick that Houston had acquired from the Knicks.

Instead he went to the Clippers for Eric Gordon, Chris Kaman, Al-Farouq Aminu and Minnesota's unprotected 2012 first-round pick.

I think New Orleans has handled this poorly but I don't know how much you can blame on Demps.

 

Is the real future of the NBA in Dallas? Does it really matter where AD goes or how many points Harden gets?

Oh, watching Harden draw fouls and go to the line is fucking ugly, boring basketball.

 

Was Jones that assertive with the Celtics? And I thought Fitch left because it was either him or McHale.

 

K.C.just rolled out his starting five each night, let them pile up the Ws, and relaxed. He eventually ran his Hall of Fame quintet into the grounby refusing to play younger guys, notably Reggie Lewis, and that eventually cost him his job. He was the opposite of a taskmaster.

 

The common denominator wasn’t those coaches; it was all the HOfers they all had. Riley had Magic, Kareem and Worthy in LA; Jackson had MJ, Pippen, Rodman, Shaq and Kobe; Rudy had Dream and Clyde; Pop had Admiral, Duncan, Manu and Parker; Daly had Isiah, Dumars and Rodman. Fitch and Jones had Bird, McHale, Parrish and DJ. All HOFers.

Which of those coaches won with fewer than two HOFers at one time? Most had three at a time. Spoelstra isn’t an outlier; he had LeBron, D-Wade and Bosh. Again, more HOFers.

People give these coaches so much credit, but as Larry Brown once said of Phil Jackson, see what he does if you put him in Memphis.

 

Phil's time in New York would certainly back this up.

 

I think....Phil deep down in his heart believes the triangle won titles and not the fact that he had Jordan and Pippen and than Shaq and Kobe...He recognizes they were Hall of Famers but in his mind they couldn't have won without the triangle.

And his time in New York proved he was so stuck on that. Taking a non-scoring, tall, defensive guard at No. 8 in the lottery? Not because he thought Ntilikina was going to turn into a taller Tony Parker but because he thought he'd be Ron Harper from 1997.

 

Funny how that turned out right .

Although I have a lot of ways to describe Pat Riley but laid back ain't one of them.