Arena The NBA Thread

this is always the answer

 

i think... that if the rockets do make the finals, i'm not watching any of it for the simple reason i find the way they play basketball repugnant about 80% of the time, give or take a bit. constant dribbling late into the clock, oops you fouled me. harden is literally my least favorite player to watch right now, and i just don't think i can take another series of his stoned face free throw line train.

 

Ugh, Chris Paul :cries:. I pulled my hamstring in February. I haven't been able to run since. Expensive MRI, perscription strength anti inflammatory and physical therapy...I can walk... finally! So I really, really feel for him.
Second why do the freakin' Warriors get so lucky? Please James Harden prove me wrong, but I don't see Houston winning this series

 

Mark Titus gets it. This is a fantastic piece about LeBron and Ohio and the possible end of this chapter.

 

Honestly, The Block may be one of the greatest sports plays I've watched live.

But if LeBron loves Ohio so much that he moves to LA and says it's because Ohio voted for Trump... That'd top it... maybe...

 

these last couple games have felt like throwback games to me. both teams just constantly getting after it on defense, getting into each other, trying to impose their will on the other team. it has been really ugly at times, but i love it. i really hope the warriors win, but i also hope chris paul is okay. this series has been way more evenly matched than i expected, mostly because both teams are built to actually defend, on top of what they're capable of on offense.

 

It will be very horrible if CP3 is ruled out for Game 6, much more the series as it puts the Rockets in a very serious disadvantage. It would be like the Kawhi situation from last year, but moreo as the Rockets have the Dubs on the brink of elimination.

Would Iggy make a difference in the last two games? Yes because of his calming presence, basketball IQ and ability to score, which Looney and Bell have been lacking in their substitution of Iggy.

Again, the Dubs turned the ball over more than 16 times, which have been their Achilles heel all season and now the playoffs.

As for KD, well, the Rockets have been doing a wonderful job in making him take difficult shots and driving to the hoop. When KD was posting up and was turning towards the hoop, the Rockets would send the double team which often caused a missed shot.

There were a lot of hustle plays that the Dubs were losing, like loose balls and rebounding. The Rockets have been beating the Warriors to the punch in those aspects as well.

The Dubs' offensive is in limbo. Meaning, because KD often has a mismatch, as he's guarded by a smaller player, it's hard not to take advantage of it, especially since it worked so well earlier in the series. Additionally, when the Warriors are struggling to score. However, the KD iso plays take the Dubs out of their normal offensive of ball movement and spreading the floor. It doesn't help that Curry is struggling with his outside shot either.

 

Rockets announce CP3 will miss game 6

 

so here's a question: does anyone else miss 2016 curry? not necessarily as a fan of his, but simply seeing the spectacle of what he was doing every single night? and does anyone else feel like durant joining the warriors completely robbed us of seeing exactly where that could go? because i really do. we've seen flashes of 2016 curry, showing he can still do that, but with durant there it's like... he just won't do it anymore. and that's really what made the warriors the warriors more than anything, the ball movement around curry being bonkers. i feel like we were robbed of something something really special with that durant move, whether it would have resulted in more championships or not, who knows, but just getting to watch it was kinda awesome now that it's just not really there anymore.

on KD, he's just pressing way, way, way too hard. he's doing exactly what made him go to the warriors in the first place when the thunder lost when they were up 3-1. he and westbrook just pressed and couldn't make it work. he really, really needs to get out of that mindset and stop trying to control the offense and have it running through him all the time, when that's not when the warriors are at their best, or when they managed to actually get back into the game. hopefully he realizes that and we can actually see the warriors playing like the warriors instead of wannabe rockets.

chris paul being out would suck for any number of reasons. not getting to see the best game is a huge part of it. but oh dear god i do not want to hear the litany of "the warriors just got lucky and couldn't have beaten the rockets with paul still playing" if they beat the rockets without him. that idea is old even before it happens. >_< if for nothing else, i want paul playing because i don't want to hear that ad nauseam.

EDIT

*sighs* great...

that's a real shame because he finally, finally came up big when it mattered in the playoffs. it's like he's cursed or something, and that just sucks. hopefully he can be back for game seven, because it seems pretty obvious that there's going to be one now.

 

melting down and chucking his mouthpiece into the stands while blowing a 3-1 lead?

Yes. I miss that Curry.

 

so you mean injured and couldn't move laterally curry.

you seriously don't miss seeing what he did in the regular season at all? just from a basketball perspective? even if you don't like him, you had to respect the year he had. doesn't seem like we'll be seeing anything like it again for a while either.

 

2016 curry needed klay to drag him past the thunder, then couldn't beat tristan thompson one on one off the dribble. and yes, injury was part of that but that really just tells me that 2016 curry had durability issues the same as 2018 curry. what he did during the regular season was great obviously, but i don't think that left. he broke the record for threes in a game with durant on the team. he carried the team into the playoffs last year with durant hurt and they rode that momentum through a dominant playoff stretch and didn't really lean on kd until the finals. this year's inconsistency i think is pretty clearly due to injuries, i don't think he's a different player or that it's fair to expect him to duplicate one of the greatest individual regular seasons of all-time.

bummed about paul. i hope he can play if the warriors can force a game 7, and iguodala too.

 

but he never even got the chance is what i'm saying. we don't know if he could have done it or not, or if he could even have been better. and we'll never know because he hasn't needed to. i just would have liked to know what his upper limit actually was. and what he could have sustained.

and it wasn't durability issues in the playoffs, he slipped on a wet spot and strained his knee. that he even came back at all was kind of amazing. that has nothing to do with durability, and everything to do with bad luck.



how's that durability? someone else fell, he slipped on their sweat. in the first round, and was never the same after it.

 

it was a little of both i think. a more durable player might not have sprained their knee when they slipped. and don't forget he missed the two previous games with a sprained ankle. 2016 regular season was his upper limit, i think that's pretty clear. the warriors for the most part don't play that much different during the regular season with kd, they're just a little more balanced. his field goal attempts only went down by 2 from '16 to '17.

 

I thought he/they learned some bad habits that year due to basically having a year long hot streak. Curry (and everyone else) started thinking 35 foot shots were good shots; to be fair, it's because he was hitting them at an insane percentage that year, a percentage that couldn't possibly hold up, and hasn't. That shooting, that season, was an outlier.

The whole team learned to count on those heroic shots, and got away from their real bread and butter. The 2016 team's offense wasn't executed nearly as well as the 2015 team. If anything, I feel like the spectacular play of Steph "robbed" us of the 2015 team's dynamic.

The 2016 team was more about individual performance than team play when compared to the 2015 team. Durant's arrival just pushed it even further in that direction.

 

CP3 is likely done, that's not an injury you can gut through. Not a pain thing, but like RJR said it literally prevents your legs from running-- he'd have to have a pretty insane recovery. Unreal break for the Warriors.

The "Curry was injured in 2016" line is tiresome. I watched him drop 38 points in Game 4 live, he moved laterally just fine in faking out Kev and Shump to drill a three at the top of the key. Maybe he wasn't pristine 100%, guys rarely are after 90+ games, but too often I see it used to diminish the Cavs' effort (like Kev's big stop). I'd hope we wouldn't parrot that here.

In fact, so I don't just sound like a homer, it's the same thing with LeBron-- "he's gassed." Well yeah, but Boston's also making him fight for every inch to the rim. You gotta credit them, and if he & the Cavs can't respond with similar energy there's not even gonna be a Game 7.

 

fair.

 

I'd rather diminish Kev's big stop based on the fact that it was absolutely awful offense from Curry. Not good defense as much as really bad, predictable offense. Literally everyone in the world knew exactly what Steph would do, and Steph did exactly what we all thought he would. Steph actually had a big step on Kev and a wide open lane to the basket, but stayed at the three point line, just like the whole world knew he would. In fact, Steph had three chances to go to the basket on that possession, and passed on them all to go for a three.

For me, that was just typical of those bad habits he learned. His mind was just locked in to heroic three mode, and couldn't do anything else. It made him really predictable, and really easy to guard.

 

or his knee wouldn't give him the burst he needed to actually get by him. that's also possible.

 

roll your eyes all you want lloyd. i never questioned when lebron said he was injured like so many others did. i don't question him getting tired now. i didn't question the cramp situation he had in miami. don't question kawhi being hurt now, never doubted derrick rose wasn't ready until he thought he was (not that that ever really happened), none of that. didn't actually think kyrie should have tried to play in game one back in 2015. thought he should have waited one more game, especially in the game because he didn't really look right then either. i don't even doubt or get after harden for getting tired in the playoffs like he has the last three years, and i can't stand him. just because curry refused to use it as an excuse doesn't mean it wasn't there to the eye test in the way he moved. and it was like that the entire rest of that post season.

 

I’m not one to really get into the goat discussions but a) I’m always going to say Jordan is the best (and he is) but b) LeBron is just insanely ridiculously good and we’re lucky to watch him play even though I want his teams to fail always

 

So I read this

neither starting PF or C for either team scored in the entire first half, for either team.

Guard's league.