Board 8 > NBA playoffs - where Devin Booker happens

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://twitter.com/BleacherReport/status/1663572573139992577

As the Heat won the Bob Cousi and Larry Bird trophies in Boston last night

ChichiriMuyo posted...

The Heat are running on fumes right now. The Nuggets basically got a full week off, and they earned it. If they don't hang a champions banner from the rafters after this, something will have to go terribly wrong.

lets go injury gods

Malenia posted...

Butler deserves it more than Jokic tbh

ChichiriMuyo posted...

Fair, but the Nuggets deserve it more than the Heat. It will be fun to see if they both make it to the finals.

These two posts from a while back sum it up perfectly for me. Overall, I want Denver to win, but just slightly.

I'm not going to forgive Butler for his antics in Minnesota; he's a great player but "deserves a ring" he is not.

I imagine I'm rooting for the Nuggets here as I want Mike Malone to get a ring, but that may change when we get to seeing the products on the floor. It's hard not to root for the Heat and the underdog

Nuggets have been in the NBA since the ABA merged into it, and this is the first time that the Nuggets have made the finals. They are definitely my preferred choice of champion.

v_charon posted...

I'm not going to forgive Butler for his antics in Minnesota; he's a great player but "deserves a ring" he is not.

The antics of demonstrating why Towns and Wiggins aren't players you can build a championship team around? He's been proven right on that. You can be upset about it as a Minnesota fan, I guess, but he's a guy who has zero patience for people who don't take things as seriously as he does, which is why he left Philadelphia, too, and why he fits in Miami.

But this is the rare NBA Finals where I can be reasonably satisfied with either outcome.

Well, Wiggins has a ring and he was a big part of getting it. Jimmy doesn't have one still.

The thing is, if you put Butler, Wiggins and Towns on the same team and ask the average fan, "OK, which one of these guys is the leader", I'm certain most anyone would say Jimmy was supposed to be the leader. And he failed at being a good captain, in my opinion. I feel like he did later say that his emotions got the best of him and he was only trying to elevate his teammates, but the stories I've read about that practice say he did a really bad job of it. It's a lot of he-said stuff, but the way I view him is that he was upset that the team game KAT and Wiggins contracts but he didn't have a big enough one he was happy with. Which, that's on management, not on KAT and Wiggins. To degrade your teammates in the way he did makes you a crap leader.

I have only ever heard the contract stuff concretely, but I can totally see jimmy losing patience with two guys who seem decidedly more chill than he is

v_charon posted...

Well, Wiggins has a ring and he was a big part of getting it.

You don't draft Wiggins at #1 to be the 4th best player on a championship team, and he was widely considered to be a massive disappointment before winding up on Golden State anyway.

v_charon posted...

The thing is, if you put Butler, Wiggins and Towns on the same team and ask the average fan, "OK, which one of these guys is the leader", I'm certain most anyone would say Jimmy was supposed to be the leader.

if you ask a 2023 fan, sure. in 2017-18 i think more people would have answered wiggins or towns, who were already in minnesota as opposed to being imported, and averaged tons of ppg. playoff jimmy didn't become a legend until the bubble

Season prior to the trade from Chicago.

Butler: 23.9, 6.2, 5.5
Towns: 25.1, 12.3, 2.7
Wiggins: 23.6, 4.0, 2.3

Towns was only in his third year when Jimmy joined the team, and the Wolves had not made the playoffs since KG left. Butler had just been to the playoffs 5 times in a row with the Bulls. I think it's ridiculous to think anyone would not have considered him their leader in 2018.

LeonhartFour posted...

You don't draft Wiggins at #1 to be the 4th best player on a championship team, and he was widely considered to be a massive disappointment before winding up on Golden State anyway.

Eh, Draymond is waaaay overrated. He was definitely third best on that team last year, maybe even second considering Klay's injury.

Eh, Draymond's value is difficult to quantify (positively and negatively, to be fair). They don't win the title without Wiggins, but even then, that's not the role people envision when you take a player #1 overall.

draymond has been better than klay since the beginning of the current warriors' playoff success

v_charon posted...

Season prior to the trade from Chicago.

Butler: 23.9, 6.2, 5.5
Towns: 25.1, 12.3, 2.7
Wiggins: 23.6, 4.0, 2.3

Towns was only in his third year when Jimmy joined the team, and the Wolves had not made the playoffs since KG left. Butler had just been to the playoffs 5 times in a row with the Bulls. I think it's ridiculous to think anyone would not have considered him their leader in 2018.

from a "veteran leadership" perspective maybe - but scoring >20 for towns and wiggins is arguably more impressive given that they had another 20ppg teammate. plus both wiggins and towns were drafted at #1 overall. the bulls made the playoffs but were never once contenders with butler. those lebron in cle years were crazy weak for the eastern conference.

LeonhartFour posted...

You don't draft Wiggins at #1 to be the 4th best player on a championship team, and he was widely considered to be a massive disappointment before winding up on Golden State anyway.

Warriors do not beat the Kings this year without Wiggins. He was their secret MVP easily

https://twitter.com/shamscharania/status/1663945135682465793?s=46&t=5rs-V2N8ZuS_S2f1lfBvCg

do it

https://twitter.com/stephenasmith/status/1663885673558863872?s=46

More compelling than being a stat nerd.

Wiggins is a fine player, not worth #1 overall but still better than some #1 overalls.

Draymond is a case of his usefulness eclipsing his skill. He does the unsexy things like defending and passing instead of scoring, which fits GS's system extremely well, and that makes him more important than he would be on an average team. He is a good player as well, but not a "3rd star" as he is commonly made out to be in skill. But he kind of is in terms of importance to the team.

SeabassDebeste posted...

draymond has been better than klay since the beginning of the current warriors' playoff success

I think these playoffs demonstrated that the days of "Game 6 Klay" are over and they're never coming back.

No shade to him, but it's just too much to ask of him at this point after all the injuries he's had in the last few years.

that's true, but honestly i think klay was never really more important to the warriors' success than draymond green. like, he wasn't really better than 2023 jaylen brown overall at any point in his career - he just hit 3s at a higher rate and wasn't ever asked to create the team's offense.

some of that was the warriors' backup guards but a ton of it was draymond's unique ability to make plays as a big.

SeabassDebeste posted...

that's true, but honestly i think klay was never really more important to the warriors' success than draymond green. like, he wasn't really better than 2023 jaylen brown overall at any point in his career - he just hit 3s at a higher rate and wasn't ever asked to create the team's offense.

some of that was the warriors' backup guards but a ton of it was draymond's unique ability to make plays as a big.

Disagree on the first part, draymond's playmaking means nothing if he doesn't have guys like klay to actually score the ball; steph can only do so much by himself. Being a playmaker without being able to score yourself can be a serious hindrance if your teammates can't cover for you.

Draymond is a good player but he's the most celebrated single-digit 3-stat guy ever. He's more of a system player than klay is, and klay was an integral part of that system that let draymond pass so much. Klay would be better without dray than dray would be without klay imo.

KCF0107 posted...

Nuggets have been in the NBA since the ABA merged into it, and this is the first time that the Nuggets have made the finals. They are definitely my preferred choice of champion.

This

The other side of the scale is that if Miami wins it you get people come out of the woodwork to question Lebron's legacy for a new reason, saying how Jimmy is doing more for the Heat with less

SeabassDebeste posted...

from a "veteran leadership" perspective maybe - but scoring >20 for towns and wiggins is arguably more impressive given that they had another 20ppg teammate. plus both wiggins and towns were drafted at #1 overall. the bulls made the playoffs but were never once contenders with butler. those lebron in cle years were crazy weak for the eastern conference.

Those numbers were before they were together, from the previous season. I'm sure all their numbers decreased while they were together or else they'd have been very good that year. I still say that as the oldest and most established player, and the one with a ton of playoff experience to their none, he was supposed to lead them. Also, he wanted out partially because the team gave them more money and he wanted that sort of contract as well. If you believe the practice fiasco, he supposedly told the GM that they could not win without him and in short, "pay me". So I mean, clearly HE thought of himself as the leader too.

In fairness they did go 47-35. It was just that was a season where that was only good enough for an 8 seed with 48 wins being a 4 seed and 49 a 3 seed.

And then it blew up the next year because they refused to pay Butler after they had paid other people maxes (including Wiggins rookie max extension which was questionable). That led to Butler beating the 1st team with the G-league players in practice to prove he was their best guy. Then he was traded after 10 games

SHINE_GET_64 posted...

https://twitter.com/shamscharania/status/1663945135682465793?s=46&t=5rs-V2N8ZuS_S2f1lfBvCg

do it

https://twitter.com/woodwardsports/status/1664090918230663169?t=JbirY5fEmtocwrImlMGFLQ&s=19

They did it!

https://twitter.com/Ibra_Goat/status/1664025302530662400

woof

Malenia posted...

lets go injury gods

No matter how much I may want a team to win, the only prayers I send to the injury gods are "please, stay away." Granted, my team has KD and CP3, but I don't want anyone to get injured.

Nuggets in 5

Suns will go down as the team that gave them the best challenge aw yeah

Game

Curious to see the game plan against Jokic. Since Heat don't have much size.

Denver seems really hungry

Do they have a guy that will constantly dribble the ball into his dick and get a Supermax contract

This was considered the Heat's best chance at a road win right

Crescent-Moon posted...

This was considered the Heat's best chance at a road win right

I think so

Crescent-Moon posted...

This was considered the Heat's best chance at a road win right

I always thought this take was crazy and went all in on "Denver hasn't played in 9 days RUST!!!!" and ignored that Miami is coming off a 7 game series (with the possible mental fatigue that it was one they had a 3-0 lead in) and had a quick turnaround to go to Denver and deal with the altitude.

If Miami beats Boston in Game 6 I might have been receptive to this argument because they'd have the extra time to acclimate to the altitude but once that went 7? No way IMO. But then I felt Denver had this in 4-5 games sooo...

the 01 sixers handed the lakers their only playoff L in gane 1 after they had a 7-game series and the lakers swept the spurs

rest vs. rust is always a weird debate because regardless of the outcome it's confirmation bias for one side or the other

Denver has been unbeatable at home in the playoffs and the Heat just played a grueling series with Boston (and it showed, their role players were all miserable tonight), so if anything, Game 2 is the one Miami has a better chance of stealing.

But I don't think they have an answer for Jokic or Murray in this series, so I don't know what they can do either way other than hope their 3s hit and they just outscore Denver.

changmas posted...

nuggets in 4 locked.

mayyyyyyyyyybe in 5 if jimmy goes nuclear one time

looking good

I can't imagine how hard it is to play away games in Denver. Meanwhile the Nuggets are there all the time and acclimated.

Also, I have to applaud Jokic for the interview he just gave. Bro got back to back MVP awards and he's still humble when talking about his talent.

I didnt watch - too many vidya games now

Suns likely hiring Frank Vogel

well that's not good news for the celtics' assistant staff

The carousel continues to spin

KommunistKoala posted...

Suns likely hiring Frank Vogel

https://twitter.com/NYPunk/status/1664098560546152450

https://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/271768/NBA-Has-Uncovered-Additional-Information-On-Ja-Morant-Discipline-Will-Wait-Until-After-Finals

Ja Dumbass

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