niremetal

When they told Josh that he needed to develop some "touch," I think Josh misunderstood...

Also, once you subtract JJ's ppg from our team's total ppg (102.3 - 21.5), Jamal scores 22% of our team's non-JJ points (17.5 / 80.8 = 21.6%, to be exact). So if 22% of JJ's assists go to Jamal, that is EXACTLY the proportion one would expect given our team's scoring distribution. As I said, I think people just see what they want to see. Exactly. No one said that JJ is Crawford's "meal ticket" in the sense of JJ creating Crawford's offense. Just that having JJ on the floor has opened up things a LOT for Crawford compared to past years.

It sounds worrisome until you realize that Horford routinely kicks the sh!t out of 7-footers. In the modern NBA, strength and athleticism are more important than having a couple inches in height at the center position. Horford is an All-Star. McGee is a scrub and, as someone who watched him every night in Washington when I lived there, I'm pretty confident that he always will be a scrub. He has no offensive skills, can get outmuscled by my 10-year old sister, and has some of the worst on-ball defensive instincts I've ever seen in the post. I'll take Horford over him 5345 days a week.

I don't think this trade would help either team, certainly not in the short run.

Is there a site that shows assists from/to individual players? Because if there is, I would be truly shocked if there was any statistical evidence of JJ not passing to Jamal. I think that's just another instance of people seeing what they want to see. Against Detroit, one of JJ's 5 assists was to Crawford, and all 4 of his other assists came while Crawford was off the floor. Against Wash, 1 of his 5 assists was also to Crawford. And the game before that (NY), same thing. And the game before that, 2 of his 4 assists were to Crawford. And I'm not gonna spend anymore time on that. Seriously, I don't think JJ passes to Crawford any less to anyone else. And minus JJ, our offensive talent outside of Crawford is seriously no better than what he had for most of his previous career. The number of open looks he'd get without JJ would go down, and so would his shooting percentage. Fewer points while shooting a lower percentage from the field and with a worse Ast:TO ratio while playing for worse teams. Seriously.

Actually, one would expect someone to score more when they play for worse teams. Considering that's how, you know, it pretty much always works in the NBA. And Jamal is shooting a higher percentage from deep because teams leave him open from deep MUCH more than they do JJ. And JJ draws double teams way, way more than Jamal. And doesn't the fact that Jamal plays more often against the other team's bench kinda explain why he scores slightly more per minute this year? Pretty much everyone except you and a couple other JJ haters have said or at least recognized how having JJ around has allowed Jamal to be more efficient than he ever was before. You're beyond laughable, dude. You're incapable of making a post without hating on JJ. Every post you make just hammers home that you have nothing to offer but BS to back up your hate.

That's funny. Because Jamal has always scored fewer points while shooting a lower percentage from the field and with a worse Ast:TO ratio while playing for worse teams. Oh, and he only cracked 20ppg once, and then just barely. And Jamal shoots a lower percentage than JJ on game-winning shots and in the clutch.

I'm sure you can find people who will say that about their starting PG everywhere. But go check out a Blazers blog sometime and see how many people think Blake is a floor general. There's a reason the Blazers kept trying to get another PG, and traded Blake once they did.

Mike Bibby is a floor general who gets and keeps his teammates' respect. Steve Blake is not and does not. Incredible how many people overlook the importance of intangibles in a PG.

Yeah, no way was the NBA as strong in the 90's as it was in the 80's. The 4-team expansion in '88/'89 diluted the overall talent, and the aging of the Lakers and Celtics took out the two dominant teams from the decade. Jordan's Bulls never had world-class competition for the title until the Jazz peaked - and even the Jazz had below average talent surrounding their two HOFers. But I think that winning the NBA title in the early 2000s was a lot harder than it was in the 90's and a lot harder than it is today - the Spurs and Lakers from those years would have been contenders in any era.

Then seriously, what the hell were you talking about when you started this thread? What did you want Sund to do?

This is Diesel we're talking about. He thinks pulling Steve Holman out of the broadcasting booth would give us an upgrade over Marvin.

Last I checked, the coaches vote by position when they vote for the league awards, and don't make "at large" selections just naming the 5 best players in the league. Duncan was always classified as a F back then (still is, I think), Deke a C. Duncan had to compete with Garnett, Malone, PJ Brown, Bruce Bowen, etc. And that year, as with every year between ~1998 and 2008 (ie after Hakeem and Admiral started declining and before the rise of D-12), the defensive competition at C was pretty weak, which is why freaking Shaq (who never broke a sweat playing D until the playoffs) made the all-D second team. So the comparison between the two in that regard is not persuasive to me. That's because we have different opinions. It happens on blogs every once in awhile. I think Iverson was the NBA's best player that year. No one could stop him on offense and Brown actually managed to get him to give a sh!t on D. Ratliff/Deke aside, his teammates would have had trouble cracking the starting lineup on most teams, and their starting PG (Snow) was hurt for 30+ games, but the Sixers won 56 games. In any case, the difference between MVP and DPOY in this regard is, in my opinion, a matter of degree, which should be clear from everything I've said. I think that if coaches were polled for MVP and DPOY, their results would diverge from the sportswriters more for DPOY than for MVP. Do you disagree with that? If so, we have a difference of opinion. Woohoo.

Plenty of teams have contended for and even won titles after overpaying to get/keep players who weren't worth it (the Magic with Rashard being the most recent example). But there isn't a single team since the dawn of free agency in the NBA that has won the Finals after letting an All-Star walk for nothing. Overpaying for Joe > letting Joe walk. You don't let big-time assets go for nothing.

Those links all use the NYDN story as the only "source." Such is the problem with this modern age of hyperlinking.

If you believe anything that's written in the Daily News or the Post, then you must not have ever been to New York. They are tabloids. They don't check sources, and they print gossip as fact. The Post was the paper that ran the "Kerry picks Gephardt as VP" headline the day before Kerry announced that it was Edwards. The Daily News has run about 23534564 "done deal" trade stories that turned out to be a load of crap. I think they also blew the Obama VP pick 2-3 times, including one with Hillary. If it appears in the Daily News and isn't from one of the wire services, the chances of it being correct are seriously only a hair better than the National Enquirer.

That is, of course, your opinion. Personally, I would put Duncan as MVP every year from 2000 to 2007 except '04-'05 (when he missed 16 games and I think Nash did deserve it) and then Kobe and LeBron the next two years (that would make it 55%), but that's just my opinion (and I realize that no one would ever vote someone MVP 6 times in 7 years). My point was that you could at least make very strong arguments for everyone on that list and, relatedly, that if you polled coaches and GMS, you could find more than a few that would agree with each MVP selection. On the other hand, I don't think you could make a very strong argument for Deke over Duncan in 2001 or Camby over...well...almost anyone in 2007. That is largely just a function of the fact that MVP takes into account ALL facets of the game (including offense, defense, and off-court), while defense only takes (at most) 1/2 of it into account, which allows for more variability on how things are weighed with MVP. I frankly think that DPOY is 1 for 10 this decade. The only one I agree with is Wallace in '04-'05. So even on the narrow basis of "how often I agree with it," my opinion lines up more with the MVP selections

I think a lot of it is similar, but definitely not "100%." Voters give more thought and pay more attention to nuance (making teammates better, otherwise having an impact beyond the stats) when they vote for MVP, even though the importance of defense still gets the shrift in that voting. But like with the Golden Gloves in baseball (the Palmeiro win in a year that he played almost all of his games as a DH is the best example), I'm convinced that most voters just don't think for more than 15 seconds when they fill out the ballot for DPOY. They look at the leaders in blocks/steals/rebounds, think about the player's reputation for a few seconds, and that's it. I can't think of any MVP awards from the past decade that I strongly disagree with. The best argument is Dirk in 2007, but that was a year when there was no one who clearly deserved it (Kobe was at the peak of his selfish jackass phase and took tons of possessions off defensively, and Nash's already-mediocre defense crumbled to just plain bad). Shaq, Duncan, Garnett, Nash, Kobe, LeBron - those are all guys who you can argue with a straight face were the most valuable players in the league when you consider all the factors that go into it. I don't think you can do the same with Camby, Eaton, or (again, sorry) Deke (at least for his first and last awards).

I don't think any of those guys are non-elite except Camby, Eaton, and Deke the last year he won (a classic example of reputation trumping actual performance). It's just obvious that the voters have no conception of on-ball defense, because those three were actually mediocre-to-bad as on-ball defenders the years they won. Camby and Eaton were actually always bad on-ball defenders, which makes their selections even more absurd. But being elite isn't the issue. The issue is whether the award actually went to people who actually were the best in the league. I honestly think that there are many cases where the award went to someone who was a great defender, but there were others at his position who were clearly better but got overlooked because 1) they didn't put up gaudy block/steal numbers, 2) weren't superstars, and/or 3) the award voters couldn't give the award to someone playing on a team that wins less than 50 games (even if that lack of success was due more to offense than defense). For instance, I know this is sacrilege around here, but Mutombo was never the best defensive player in the league, or even the best at his position. He was an elite shot-blocker and very good help defender, but even at Deke's peak, Olajuwon, Admiral, and Mourning easily exceeded him in on-ball defense and Olajuwon and Mourning equalled or exceeded him as a help defender. Duncan was easily a better defender from his 3rd year in the league onwards, both on and off the ball. If the award went to a big man, his first DPOY should have gone to Hakeem, the next to either Hakeem or Mourning, and the last to Duncan. The only season where I think there's a strong argument he deserved it over those guys was 97-98, when Mourning and Olajuwon both missed 25+ games and Duncan was a rookie. Even then, I think Duncan, Robinson, or Pippen should have gotten the award. Really, Olajuwon should have won the award 6-7 times, not the 2 times he actually won. For much of his career, he was surrounded by mediocre on-ball defenders, but his presence on and off the ball made the Rockets consistently among the best defensive teams in the league. But early in his career, his team didn't score enough to win games, and later in his career, his block numbers plummeted as his athleticism slipped - but he remained the best on-ball post defender in the league and had the best nose for the passing lane of any center in the history of the game. And on the perimeter, it's absurd that Pippen never won the award, despite being the league's best perimeter defender and most versatile defender overall for a full decade.

Probably not. But that's ok, because who wins DPOY has nothing to do with who actually is the best defensive player in the league. Votes and voters for DPOY fall into 3 categories. Most of the voters are idiots like Mark Bradley and Jeff Schultz, who don't know anything about the importance and nuances of playing defense in basketball and therefore vote for the players with the most blocks, steals, and/or rebounds. That's why Marcus Camby - one of the weakest on-ball post defenders in the NBA - won DPOY. And why the Nuggets' defense improved immensely the year after he was traded for a pile of beans. The other categories of players who get lots of votes are 2) superstars and 3) grizzled veterans with a long reputation for defensive toughness (though the latter category never actually wins - they just get a few votes). That's a better basis than looking at blocks and steals, but it's still a BS reason. The best on-ball defenders in the NBA the past 5+ years have been Shane Battier on the perimeter and Tim Duncan in the post. Neither has won a DPOY. For help D, it's been Josh the past couple years and either Kirilenko or Garnett before that. Relatedly, Kirilenko and Garnett were also the most versatile defenders in the league, the only guys who were actually good-to-great at guarding any of the 5 positions. Kirilenko never won, and Garnett only won based on reputation after several players had surpassed him in terms of both versatility and help impact. Josh is the league's best help defender, and his impact playing help D and in transition D makes him one of the 5 best defensive players in the league overall, IMHO. But that's been true for at least 2 seasons past and hasn't led to him getting even an All-Defensive team selection. So I doubt he'll get DPOY this time. Look for D-12 to take it home again and Artest to get the reputation votes. Varejao might get some votes too. I think Josh will finish Top 5, but I would be (pleasantly) shocked if he came close to winning. (Also, a tip to the Hawks' PR staff: Being 25th in the NBA in rebounds isn't exactly a selling point. But the skit was funny.)

First off, he's exhausted by the last 5 minutes. Second off, no team puts the ball in the hands of someone without a reliable jumper (and certainly not someone without a reliable jumper and with shaky handles and inconsistent free throw percentage) when you desperately need a basket, so Smoove will never be "that guy" for those shots. You put the ball in the hands of someone who can create their own shot. What we need from Josh is to crash the offensive glass when JJ/Jamal/Bibby take the shot. But it's tough to do that when you've played 42 minutes.

Misplaced. Every time I see Smoove/Horford/Zaza guarding an opposing guard on the perimeter...well for heaven's sake, Woody, stop with the switching. Double off the pick-and-roll every once in awhile so that we don't have Zaza Pachulia trying to stop TJ Ford off the dribble.

Off the top of my head, we beat Portland twice before their injuries started killing them, Boston before KG went down, Utah, Memphis, Toronto twice, Miami, and Dallas. All have winning records, and all were at full strength. And not incidentally, virtually every team in the league has at least one rotation player either out or playing hurt at any given time. So your post is a load of crap in two ways. Actually in way more ways than that, but let's just start with those. And yes, you are a troll.

I think that he isn't stepping up as much as he could/should offensively, but he's still making a much-overlooked impact defensively.

Come on, now. Everyone was pretty sloppy last night, and I attribute the lack of rebounds to the fact that Josh switched onto the perimeter more than I can ever remember last night. This was a team loss. As for Bibby/Marvin...yeah.