The NBA Thread

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Turned the game off about halfway through the second quarter and only bothered to check the score when there happened to be only 30 seconds left. Tuned back in just in time to see the tip-in kek
 
Brunson legacy game. Also jesus christ OG what the fuck. Probably the best role player in the league, this sort of elite defensive 3&D wing who can guard any position with good offensive output is the exact fantasy player literally every team would like to have. I genuinely can't think of someone who would be more in demand that's not a star (or at least a first option) or some young player with huge future upside a la Flagg.
 
Dragged Into Sunlight dijo:
If Popovich was coach, I think the Spurs sweep this. That new Spurs coach just doesnt have it.
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I don't even watch the NBA outside of the playoffs and even then I only tune in if something incredible happens, like the Knicks being in the Finals so someone correct me if I'm wrong, and my brain is just stuck on old school basketball thinking and this new era is just way too high IQ for me...

...was that not some of the most dog shit coaching in an NBA game, ever, let alone on the biggest stage of all? If you're up 29, why are you not hammering into the players that they need to take as much time off the shot clock as they can and look for high percentage shots to keep a steady lead? Why are you allowing players to take 3 after 3 after 3 when they just aren't falling anymore? Why are offensive rebounds immediately met with a kick out and another 3 when you're up 20+? Why is Wembenyama sparingly occupying the paint on both fucking ends of the court, AGAIN, ALL THE TIME? Why are you not rotating more to keep players fresh down the stretch when you have a massive lead? I just looked at the box score and this mutt only used 4 players off the bench and the Knicks used 7, why?

I just cannot fucking wrap my head around this high risk high reward mentality where you're up 29, but you feel the need to keep shooting 3's and leaving 12+ seconds on the shot clock every other possession. As much as a retard as Dr. Brother De'Aa'ron'e Foxson is, it's not his fault that his coach has no spine or fire in his belly to crack the whip and lay down the law and put him in a position where his pea brain couldn't take the pressure of losing a 29 point lead.

Disgusting.

@Active User , you're more in tune with the modern NBA than I'll ever be, please make something make sense to me. I'm begging you.
 
OJ Simpson dijo:
Why is Wembenyama sparingly occupying the paint on both fucking ends of the court, AGAIN, ALL THE TIME?
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His conditioning sucks and he'd die by halftime if he was sprinting across the court on every possession. Even with how he's used right now he's completely gassed by the fourth.
 
OJ Simpson dijo:
@Active User , you're more in tune with the modern NBA than I'll ever be, please make something make sense to me. I'm begging you.
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Hello, it is I, modernity apologist. TL;DR, Spurs choked but to attribute everything to that doesn't give the Knicks enough credit.

..was that not some of the most dog shit coaching in an NBA game, ever, let alone on the biggest stage of all?
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No, but only in a "damned by faint praise" kind of way because there's been some comically bad coaches in the past and I don't think we can overlook the player execution aspect. It was certainly bad, but he didn't get into a fistfight with a player so it can certainly get worse.

If you're up 29, why are you not hammering into the players that they need to take as much time off the shot clock as they can and look for high percentage shots to keep a steady lead? Why are you allowing players to take 3 after 3 after 3 when they just aren't falling anymore?
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Why didn't the Spurs waste the clock? I don't know. Why were they going for so many 3s? Some of it is bad decision making and inflexibility but it's also the Knicks' defensive game plan. The Spurs shooting like 70% from 3 in the first half was obviously not sustainable, the Knicks pushing them to continue taking those shots to allow the variance to level off was deliberate because it gives them much more of a window to fight back than small but consistent gains get you. The Spurs aren't a good 3 point shooting team. If they really do shoot 70% from the 3 all night and beat you? Not like you could have done much about that anyways, that's just some unlucky anomaly. Really, a couple things are true. It is true that the Knicks did everything in their power to deny the paint and actively played to force the Spurs to take more 3s, but it is also true that the Spurs did not need to jack those 3s with 10 seconds left on the shot clock.

Why are offensive rebounds immediately met with a kick out and another 3 when you're up 20+? Why is Wembenyama sparingly occupying the paint on both fucking ends of the court, AGAIN, ALL THE TIME?
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The Knicks did a great job denying the rim, in particular with Wemby. They DID NOT want him in the paint and OG in particular was quite capable in stopping that. Since the Spurs aren't a 3 point team like that, it's safer for them to sag off guys and dare them to shoot. Wemby in particular was clearly gassed in the second half. Knicks do a great job tiring him out, he's young and this is his first playoff run period so he's not used to all the extra games and physicality, but also he was barely on the bench all game. He played 44 minutes of a game where they were up by 29, which is ridiculous, but the reasoning for it is basically a fear of KAT.

It's been clearly shown that the Spurs' backup bigs are not nearly as useful here as they were against OKC. KAT is the same size as them but bigger, stronger, faster, more skilled, and a legit shooter. Even Wemby is having trouble guarding KAT, he absolutely feasts on Kornet. The Spurs line of thought is that non-Wemby minutes give the Knicks an opportunity to sub KAT in, even if he's already on two fouls, and he'll just kick the shit out of Kornet and Wemby being able to rest for a little bit isn't worth the loss in lead and the momentum.

Clearly this calculation isn't correct, Wemby gassing out has been an issue this entire series and not just in this one game. It's clear that OKC couldn't tire him out as well as the likes of KAT and OG can and the Spurs are failing to adjust for that and need to find a way to give him more time on the bench, but I can understand the thought behind it.

Why are you not rotating more to keep players fresh down the stretch when you have a massive lead? I just looked at the box score and this mutt only used 4 players off the bench and the Knicks used 7, why?
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Politics, inexperience, and bench quality. One by one:

De'Aaron Fox's contract and veteran status is getting him preferential treatment that heuristics say makes sense. The reality is not quite the same. Dylan Harper has been excellent all playoffs and I really have nothing to complain about with him these finals. He's a 20 year old rookie who gets to the rim whenever he wants and plays with absolutely no fear. The Knicks do not have a very good answer for his rim pressure and instead have to try and make up for it on the other end and to lean into him not being the strongest shooter or passer (which I can't be too pressed about given his age and how rapidly he's improved over his short time in the league). I believe he should be getting more playing time over Fox, who's biggest asset should be ball security but the way he's playing this isn't happening. But think about it from the coach's perspective: It's clutch time and you've got two 20 year old guards who are kinda turnover prone and you've got 1 28 year old veteran who you brought on the team for like 50 mil a year for the express purpose of being a seasoned, experienced presence who'll keep the ball safe and have a level head when you need him to. It's not like it doesn't make sense to trust the latter over the former... in a vacuum.

Continuing off of that, his contract. De'Aaron Fox was supposed to be THE big piece that gets the Spurs to legit contention. Him and Wemby was supposed to be the dynamic duo of the future, and he's getting paid like it. He's the all-star, he's the vet, he's the main ball handler. They made that trade not knowing they'd somehow be able to get Harper, after all. What message does it send for the coach to be like "hey yeah secondary star who we're giving a max to? uh you're benched in these critical finals minutes for a rookie." It doesn't matter that this is probably the right choice because of an unusually excellent rookie, managing athlete egos is an important and often unseen aspect of coaching and I could easily see De'Aaron getting pissy at this perceived slight. Harper's quality may add to it, if anything else, because that makes his own job under threat. Seniority really is often important in these spaces to a destructive degree. The Spurs in the past had it easier in this regard because Tim Duncan was unusually willing to play ball and set the tone, helping to establish that nobody, not even him, was bigger than the program. Guy like that is just an outlier in these spaces, dude literally co-authored a chapter about narcissists and inflated egos in a psychology textbook as his capstone project for a psychology degree. This sort of mindset is reportedly more present within Castle and Harper than Fox, and it's definitely more present within the Knicks. They're all as bought in as you can be, there's no bitterness from Brunson or KAT about adjustments to either of their roles shrinking their numbers when they lead to wins.

Inexperience is simple: Mitch Johnson is a young coach. He's coming out of the Spurs organization which is well run and Popovich is still in the picture, but it's not unusual for young head coaches to have their struggles in their early playoff runs. Mike Brown is not a young coach and has 4 rings as assistant coach for the 03 spurs and the dynasty Warriors. His showings on the Kings had him maligned by fans but I think that's just a sort of Kings malaise.

The Spurs bench with the exception of Dylan Harper is clearly inferior to the Knicks bench, particularly in this matchup. This is also due to a trap a lot of young coaches fall into. And also Thibs. Mike Brown throughout the year has been playing pretty heavy bench minutes and trying a lot of experimental lineups, and it's done to build confidence and to develop the bench into a tool he can actually use as opposed to the previous Knicks strategy of grinding the starters into dust and making Brunson drop 40 a game. He now bears the fruits of this labor in experimentation: Not only can KAT play passing hub, but the Knicks have a strong suite of bench players which means he has a diverse array of tools at his disposal to keep guys from gassing out and also to throw new looks at the opposition. The Spurs are such a young team that they were more preoccupied with developing their starters, and they're sort of like the Nuggets in that they don't really work without their anomaly of a center in the game while the Knicks lack such a singular point of failure.

I just cannot fucking wrap my head around this high risk high reward mentality where you're up 29, but you feel the need to keep shooting 3's and leaving 12+ seconds on the shot clock every other possession. As much as a retard as Dr. Brother De'Aa'ron'e Foxson is, it's not his fault that his coach has no spine or fire in his belly to crack the whip and lay down the law and put him in a position where his pea brain couldn't take the pressure of losing a 29 point lead.
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In terms of general three point shooting, I think that's the wrong culprit. 3 pointers were a lot of how the Knicks made their comeback; OG shot 7 of 9 from the 3 last game and this playoffs has something crazy like 48% from 3 in the playoffs and over 50% these finals. The difference here is what kinds of 3s he's taking: They're mostly wide open, and this open look is generated through good Knicks motion. It's not 3 point or bust for them, it's not even layup or bust. They're trying, above all else, to find a good shot. If that's a wide open 3? Awesome. If that's a dunk? Awesome. If the best we can get is a contested middie? Not ideal, but we're playing for the best shot, not the flashiest shot. Even when the Knicks were shooting poorly, I usually didn't have much of a problem with their shot selection. It just wasn't going in. Can't say the same for the Spurs, they're taking 3s too early without exhausting other options. I know I've talked about this before but a lot of the value in long range shooting should be that you drag your defender out of the paint to guard you. This was displayed in the game winning tip in by OG, where Brunson drawing the double on his shot left the paint wide open for OG to make sure that shit stuck. If you're just shooting 3s and not making enough of them for the opposition to care? You lose that. 3s are a perfectly valid tool, but like any tool you have to know when to use them and you can't get so set in your ways that you're reluctant to use anything else. You can't get so rattled that you shoot yourself out of a 29 point lead.

I do want to end my little essay here with a reaffirmation that this was a Spurs choke. There was certainly a lot of bad decision making going on both from players and coaches and you're seeing a lot of stuff you don't want to see out of them. I just don't think it's fair to the Knicks to leave out the efforts they went to either to encourage the Spurs' bad behavior or to avoid falling into those trappings themselves, the efforts they made to stay locked in even when shit looked hopeless and to just keep grinding it out and playing till the final whistle, and their better application of the more modern principles that can feel so easy to dismiss out of hand.
 
@Active User now that's the sort of insight I've been desperate for that I didn't know I wanted. If I could give you a like, (comment, and su-, no I'm kidding), informative, winner, and feels sticker, I would. I can't so you'll just have to settle for a winner.

When you're not as invested in a sport as you once were, it's easy to distill things down into an overly simplistic view. Which I obviously do in this thread.

My commendation, sir. Thank you for taking the time out and schooling a young-old head on the new version of this game I used to (still kinda, maybe?) love. It's frustrating beyond belief to watch but at least I understand a bit better now.
 
Active User dijo:
the efforts they made to stay locked in even when shit looked hopeless and to just keep grinding it out and playing till the final whistle
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By far and away the most impressive part of that comeback. So many times I've seen a team claw some back, only to see the other team go on a mini run, and it's game over. Lesser teams just crumble when that momentum swings back even a bit. First time was when they cut it from (I think) down 29 to 22, and then the Spurs made 2 or 3 in a row, and they just kept grinding it down and didn't cave. Very impressive to sustain that urgency and focus for that long.
 
Kalergi dijo:
Don't they have him on some kind of minutes cap because of his injury risk issues?
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He plays less than other starters but the difference isn't huge. He was at 30 minutes per game during the regular season and Gobert was at 31, for example.

Gobert gets into the paint though even if he's basically completely useless on offense. Wemby just hangs out on the perimeter on a lot of possessions.
 
If the Knicks win the NBA championship, I won't be surprised to see some fans holding signs like "now I can die in peace" like they some did when the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs have won the World Series championship after all these years. :story:
 
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