NBA 2018-19 Thread

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Nice run in day 2. In the top 25% in the big money pool I'm in as far as top possible remaining points - so that's a plus. It's all on you, Purdue.

 

[Diemen]

pfft, get back to us when the nhl thread doesn't say 2015 anymore, mister moderator.

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

 

[iron yuppie]

I thought I read somewhere that the Lakers have a worse record playing without Lonzo than they do playing without LeBron. Not that there would be a direct causation factor there, but interesting nonetheless.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Then yes I have UCF beating Duke in the Rose Bowl to win the College World Series on an overtime goal on a wrist shot from the right circle in a driving rain in the Astrodome.

Tough break man, that was almost the hottest call of the decade.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

RJ Barrett with the huuuuuge push off on the offensive glass to win the game

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Yeah :/ would’ve been our biggest win ever, obviously.

Up 3, Tacko should’ve either stepped off and let Zion take 2 or fouled him with a wrap-up to ensure he didn’t get the shot off. Allowing the and-1 was the worst thing he could’ve done.

 

[Hewson]

Duke, Texas Tech, Purdue, KY
Purdue to win it all.

$1 Million is mine baby.

I, too, have Purdue. But just to the final four.

.

It's all on you, Purdue.

That was a tough one...when that missed FT ended up all the way in the backcourt and VA still somehow tied at the buzzer I knew it wasn't meant to be,
Thought I was gonna nail the final 4.

Oh and Go Celtics to stay on topic.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

That was a tough one...when that missed FT ended up all the way in the backcourt and VA still somehow tied at the buzzer I knew it wasn't meant to be,

Thought I was gonna nail the final 4.



Oh and Go Celtics to stay on topic.

Fuck Perdue and the fucking chicken they rode in on

 

[mikal]

I'm now in 1st in my work bracket because I picked Texas Tech to reach the Final Four and Virginia to win it all.

I am not feeling good about my Virginia pick though even though they pulled the victory out just now.

 

[Jerry Dunk]

Westtown

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Sup NBA

 

[LuckyNumber7]

How bout old man pop

 

[mikal]

Bucks in 6.

 

[DaveC]

Bucks in 6.

 

[mikal]

Fuck I'm so nervous. The last time the playoffs mattered for the Bucks, 9/11 hadn't happened yet.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Wizards in 2026

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Fuck I'm so nervous. The last time the playoffs mattered for the Bucks, 9/11 hadn't happened yet.

The last time the playoffs mattered for the Bucks Ernie Grunfeld was still employed... by the Bucks.

 

[mikal]

The last time the playoffs mattered for the Bucks Ernie Grunfeld was still employed... by the Bucks.

Lol.

These were days before trading Ray Allen for a semi retired Gary Payton. And Tim Thomas was actually "good".

 

[Hewson]

And Tim Thomas was actually "good".

He was always good, won a Stanley Cup with the Bruins.

Spoiler

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Here's a fun game that I can actually play because ding ding the witch has mercifully finally been fired...

But which of these moves, all done by the same dude, is worst?

A) Still in his prime Ray Allen, Flip Murray, Kevin Ollie and a 1st for the ghost of Gary Payton and Desmond Mason

B) Trading the #5 pick in the 2009 draft for Mike Miller and Randy Foye instead of using the pick to draft a scrawny point guard out of Davidson by the name of Stephen Curry.

C) Drafting Jan Vesely in 2011 over Klay Thompson, Kemba Walker, Kawhi Leonard or Tobias Harris.

 

[Hewson]

D) All of the above

 

[mikal]

He was always good, won a Stanley Cup with the Bruins.

Spoiler

[emoji23]

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Looking at JJ Reddick’s career stats makes me wonder if he will plateau after he retires.

 

[Diemen]

“[Zion] can't hold a candle to that boy," LaVar said of LiAngelo. "Why? Because he'd shoot his lights out—and he's stronger than Zion. [Williamson] can be big, but he ain't no Big Baller. He's a Williamson. Williamsons ain't stronger than Ballers.”

Riiiiiiiiight.

 

[Hewson]

riiiiiiiiight.

lol.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

LiAngelo is like Cooper Manning, if Peyton was Eli and Eli was in the AFL.

 

[DaveC]

i really like that the best game of the tournament was the final.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

I dislike that people will now try and copy UVA's ugly horse shit style of defense.

Good game, tho

 

[Hewson]

Don't know if it would have mattered but the replay call on the out of bounds in OT, that was really splitting hairs, should have just stayed with the call on the court.

Virginia definitely had a horseshoe up their ass, all but dead in each of their last 3 games in the final seconds of regulation only to pull out miraculous wins.

Go Celtics.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

How good was Dirk Nowitzki’s peak? For three years, he was arguably the NBA’s best player
By Jake Kemp 2h ago 14

Every​ sports​ fan​ overrates​ their​ favorite​ players.​ That’s​ just​ part of the​ experience.​ The result is countless​ hours​​ spent trying to convince other fans your guy really is as great as you say he is, or was. Every fan is certain if others could only see the player how they do, they would get it. This is then internalized as disrespect, and round and round we go. We all do it, and to a degree, we’re probably all chasing ghosts.

With that out of the way… I really don’t think Dirk Nowitzki got the respect he deserved during his prime. As their careers wind down, Howard Beck recently examined the relationship and rivalry between Dirk and Dwyane Wade. He included this quote from Pat Riley, which was fed through the aggregation machine for a few days:

For about a three-year span Wade was, in Riley’s view, “the best player in the world.”

“Dwyane was better than Kobe at that time,” Riley says. “He had a better year by having the impact on winning—in the Finals, in the biggest moments, on the biggest stage. And you get that moniker.”

That’s not necessarily crazy. If we consider 2004-05, 2005-06, and 2006-07 to be the three year-span in question, Wade actually does compare favorably to Kobe in some of the catch-all, cumulative statistics. In Player Efficiency Rating (PER) during this timeframe, Wade checks in third (26.2), just a couple of spots ahead of Kobe who sits fifth (25.9). In Win Shares per 48 Minutes, Wade is 10th (.210) while Kobe sits at 13th (.192). If we use pure Win Shares without factoring in minutes, Kobe is seventh (36.5), while Wade is 11th (34.1). When you compare this specific portion of these two careers using all-in-one statistics, it’s clear Wade actually was neck-and-neck with Kobe. Maybe Riley was on to something.

Here’s the caveat. Would you like to guess who was first in every single one of these categories? Dirk. Dirk was. Every one of them. If you prefer a stat like Value Over Replacement Player, which attempts to control for a player’s teammates, Dirk trailed only Lebron James and Kevin Garnett during this time. There is a real case to be made that Dirk was the best player in the league during this stretch, and you never hear anyone say this.

CATEGORY RANK PER WS WS/48 VORP
DIRK 1 1 1 3
KOBE 5 7 13 8
WADE 3 11 10 5

I can think of a few reasons why Dirk fails to get the respect he deserves. If we refer back to Riley’s criteria, Dirk obviously didn’t win a title during this span, and Wade did. During this three-year interval, the Mavericks went a staggering 185-61, the best regular season mark in the league. However, these three years contained the 2006 collapse in the finals, followed by the dubious distinction of being at the helm of the first one seed to ever lose to an eight seed since the NBA adopted a best-of-seven format in the first round. These two events clearly did irreparable harm to Dirk’s legacy in the eyes of some viewers.

Part of it might simply relate to the type of player Dirk is, and is not. Despite scoring the sixth-most points per game during this timeframe (Bryant was first, Wade fifth), Dirk was not a traditional “scorer.” Really, all that means is that he wasn’t a guard or wing, because his shooting efficiency was through the roof. He scored nearly as much as Wade or Bryant but eclipsed them both in effective field goal percentage and true shooting percentage.

PPG RANK TS% RANK eFG% RANK
DIRK 25.7 6 0.59 3 0.511 8
KOBE 31.8 1 0.567 12 0.493 17
WADE 26.1 5 0.573 7 0.494 15

Dirk was scoring nearly as often, and doing so far more efficiently. In catch-all stats like PER and Win Shares, he significantly surpassed both Bryant and Wade over this three-season stretch. Yet you rarely hear him mentioned as a player who, at his peak, was the best player in the league. The stats clearly indicate otherwise.

There was a persistent narrative that Nowitzki lacked toughness; that he didn’t possess the “clutch gene.” Of course, we now know this to be pure garbage, but it was commonplace 15 years ago. Was there any truth to it back then?

CLUTCH TS% 2004-05 2005-06 2006-07
DIRK 56.6 55.4 60.8
KOBE 47.6 50.5 54.6
WADE 57.6 60 55.3
Source: NBA.com. “Clutch” defined as final five minutes, score within five.

No. No, there was not. Dirk was arguably the best clutch scorer of the three.

So he led the entire league using catch-all stats, was on the edge of top five in scoring but still managed top-10 efficiency, and shot the ball exceptionally well in the clutch. It seems clear the fact Dirk wasn’t regularly regarded as the best player in the game was a bit ridiculous. It’s also clear this is mostly the product of his team’s lack of playoff success. Wade won a title during this stretch; Kobe had already been validated on the biggest stage years earlier when the Lakers won three consecutive championships. Despite the fact that it is very easy to look at Nowitzki’s numbers and conclude he was better than both Bryant and Wade during this period, it seems that doesn’t matter to many fans.

It should also be noted that this period of Dirk’s career that I’m calling his “peak” does not entirely match up with the “peaks” of Wade and Kobe’s careers. Rather, we compare his best three consecutive seasons to Kobe’s concurrent three-year run, because Bryant was commonly thought of as the best in the game at that time. Riley asserted that Wade had passed Kobe at some point during this stretch, and maybe he did. But he absolutely did not pass Dirk. How, though, do Nowitzki’s three best seasons stack up against the best three years of Bryant and Wade, not just necessarily the same three years as Dirk’s peak?

The best three consecutive years of Wade’s career by Win Shares were 2008-09 through 2010-11, in which he amassed 40.5. Only Lebron James and Dwight Howard earned more during that stretch. For Kobe, we consider 2005-06 through 2007-08, when he was responsible for 42.1 win shares. During his peak, Kobe trailed Lebron. He also trailed Dirk, who was first with 49.7. Win Shares is certainly not the be-all, end-all of advanced metrics, but it is relatively straightforward and attempts to account for everything a player does on the floor (if you’re a baseball fan, equate it with WAR). Using Win Shares, Dirk’s three best years not only arguably made him the best in the game; they also surpass the best three-year stretch from Wade or Bryant.

Dirk’s transcendent individual run is discounted because of the Mavericks’ lack of a title in those years, while the opposite occurs with Wade. Dirk played in 42 playoffs games from ’04-05 to ’06-07, winning four series. Wade appeared in 41 postseason contests, winning six series (including, well, you know). Their numbers are shockingly similar. Dirk checks in at fifth in PER, while Wade sits at third. In Win Shares, Dirk is fourth, Wade fifth. VORP? Dirk fifth, Wade eighth. Wade’s true shooting percentage was .571 compared to Dirk’s .556. Wade was not better than Dirk in the playoffs at the height of Dirk’s powers. He did get a ring in a matchup with Dirk, and I’m not saying that doesn’t mean anything in these debates. But I believe in this case, that series has an outsized impact.

Dirk did win an MVP in the final year of our sample. In the two prior years, both seasons in which Steve Nash won the award, Nowitzki finished second. And yet still, most people do not regard him as a player who was The Best In The World for any sustained period of time. This is wrong.

Starting in his seventh season, the three-year tear Nowitzki went on absolutely gave him a valid case to the throne for at least a few years. Whether using all-encompassing metrics, shooting efficiency, clutch scoring or playoff production, Dirk clearly compares favorably to Kobe Bryant or Dwyane Wade during this time. I’m not arguing with Pat Riley; Kobe Bryant might have had the individual belt wrestled away from him at some point in the mid-aughts. But Dwyane Wade wasn’t the player wrestling it away from him.

#TeamDirk