The 2013/2014 NBA Thread (LBJ is a Cav)

3 way trade happened

Warriors get - Jordan Crawford and MarShon Brooks

Celtics get - Joel Anthony, and picks

Heat get - Toney Douglas

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Oden made his season debut today, looked pretty good for a guy who hasn't played in the NBA for 4 years

 
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It's starting to get annoying how hard the league is pushing the sleeved jersey look. This year's All-Star jerseys:

adidas-nba-all-star-jersey-east-west-clipped.jpg


 
The nba is turning fugly jerseys into an art form.

I loved the Wizard's "Bandwagon Cam" during the Heat game last night. lol
 
Its a hint that the SuperSonics are coming back =P
If a team ends up back in Seattle, here are the teams I think would end up going:

Minnesota

Toronto

Memphis

Milwaukee

Toronto and Milwaukee are kinda long shots since the NBA wants to keep a presence in Canada and as long as Herb Kohl is around, the Bucks stay.

Though I think Seattle deserves a team, I still wouldn't want anyone else to loose their team. Expansion is well out of the question.

It's a shame the Sonics left, I think Stern used it as a way to get what he wants from other cities.

 
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It was nice to see the Cavs pull off a 3-2 road trip after being terrible on the road all year long, so hopefully they'll do well on their homestand for the next five games.

 
Coach popovich your thought on the 3rd quarter?

Pop "we're behind.."

Lmao.

Jesus, Durant is on a tear I haven't seen from anyone in years. Pretty much locked as this season's mvp.
 
Too bad the Mvp is a popularity contest and will be given to Lebron again.
LeBron led the league in win shares, win shares per 48, and PER in each of the last 5 seasons, typically by large margins. He earned all of them, and probably deserved a 5th instead of Rose in 2010-11.

If you're looking for popularity contest MVP votes, look to 2007-08, when Kobe won over Chris Paul. Paul was first in win shares (Kobe 4th), 1st in win shares per 48 (Kobe 8th), and 2nd in PER (Kobe 8th). LeBron beat Kobe in those categories as well in 07-08, finishing 2nd in win shares, 5th in win shares per 48, and led the league in PER.

Unless LeBron decides to start playing both ends of the court for the rest of the season and gets hot at some point, the MVP is Durant's.

 
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Yea Durant should win it this year, Miami been coasting too much for LeBron to get it. 

Anyone see the All-star rosters? A lot of snubs this year. How did Derozan get in over Lowry? Joe Johnson got in lol? No love for potential MIP Lance Stephenson. Then you got Anthony Davis, Duncan, Cousins, and Dragic being left out in the West. Pretty surprised Westbrook didn't get some popularity vote in. Also Kevin Love is starting over Aldridge? But I guess the West is pretty stacked so not everyone can get in..

 
But I guess the West is pretty stacked so not everyone can get in..
This is basically the case year in and year out. This year Anthony Davis is the victim of being in the West. I do agree with you though...Joe Johnson!? What the hell? I would've taken a few players over him. You named a couple in Stephenson and Lowry but I'd also throw Aaron Afflalo and Evan Turner on that list. Oh well the coaches can't get them all right.

 
Nobody is taking the MVP from the Slim Reaper this year. Nobody.

And I don't think they've announced Kobe's replacement in the West for the All-Star game yet, so there should still be another name to come.

Oh and today is officially the last day of David Stern as commissioner.

 
Have some pictures from the Pacers vs Suns game 1-30-14.

I was in the nosebleed section using my old Cannon Power Shot S5IS and I did some cropping, so sorry for the quality.

I will be going to the Jazz game in March and hopefully a few more, so hopefully some better pics to come.

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The Pacers have signed Andrew Bynum. The deal is for $1 million and this season only.

And let the Adam Silver era begin!

 
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Hahaha I saw that too.  Yeah I'd be salty if I was in Washington. Seattle got robbed of a championship winning franchise with a ton of history. I actually liked the Sonics a lot growing up in the 90s.

 
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I'm sure most of you don't know the name Terrence Jones, but he's quickly becoming not just one of my favorite Rockets players, but one of my favorite players in the NBA. What other sophomore PF in the NBA can pull this off?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtolAK63wuA

Big fella had yet another night where he went off for at least 10 points in the first quarter.

 
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"I would disagree."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k0Xf25r-mY

The Beard always comes out with the funniest Footlocker commercials.

 
It's insane how this Bulls team is remaining at .500. DJ Augustine playing the best in his career.

The Pistons and Cavs have no excuse to be as bad as they are right now. I feel bad for Deng.

 
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It's insane how this Bulls team is remaining at .500. DJ Augustine playing the best in his career.

The Pistons and Cavs have no excuse to be as bad as they are right now. I feel bad for Deng.
The Pistons offense is dreadful. The only player shooting better than .331 from 3pt while taking more than one 3 a game is Kyle Singler. And he's shooting .342 from 3.

 
It's insane how this Bulls team is remaining at .500. DJ Augustine playing the best in his career.

The Pistons and Cavs have no excuse to be as bad as they are right now. I feel bad for Deng.
Also wanted to comment on the Cavs. Bennett might be a worse first pick than Kwame Brown, Mike Brown is one of the worst head coaches in recent memory (this is his 8th season and third radically different roster, and he still doesn't have an offensive scheme. That is simply inexcusable), Kyrie Irving has regressed, they traded three picks for a 29 year old wing player whose best season came 7 years ago, and Dion Waiters was chosen when Andre Drummond, Damian Lillard, Harrison Barnes, Terrence Ross, John Henson, and Terrence Jones were all on the board. Waiters was a marginal player in college, and the Cavs front office decided to take him 4th overall?

The only decent players on Cleveland's roster are Deng, Irving, and Varejao, and Deng's marginal and likely gone after this season.

Oh! I had totally forgotten about Tristan Thompson at pick 4 in 2011. Two straight years with picks 1 and 4, and three of those players are Tristan Thompson, Dion Waiters, and Anthony Bennett? That is pure disaster.

 
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The format for this years dunk contest is terrible.  The format wasn't the reason people began to loose interest, it was that most stars have stopped participating.  Dominique won his last dunk contest in his eighth season.  Lebron has never seriously considered it. 

I think the prize money is a factor now.  Back in the 80's the winner would get $12,500 which was a decent amount compared to player salaries at the time.  I think it has only increased to about $35,000.  That's nothing to someone making 20 million a year.

Also, I can't remember last year's contest and if this happened then.  But please, PLEASE, don't let Kenny Smith emcee the contest.

 
Also wanted to comment on the Cavs. Bennett might be a worse first pick than Kwame Brown, Mike Brown is one of the worst head coaches in recent memory (this is his 8th season and third radically different roster, and he still doesn't have an offensive scheme. That is simply inexcusable), Kyrie Irving has regressed, they traded three picks for a 29 year old wing player whose best season came 7 years ago, and Dion Waiters was chosen when Andre Drummond, Damian Lillard, Harrison Barnes, Terrence Ross, John Henson, and Terrence Jones were all on the board. Waiters was a marginal player in college, and the Cavs front office decided to take him 4th overall?

The only decent players on Cleveland's roster are Deng, Irving, and Varejao, and Deng's marginal and likely gone after this season.

Oh! I had totally forgotten about Tristan Thompson at pick 4 in 2011. Two straight years with picks 1 and 4, and three of those players are Tristan Thompson, Dion Waiters, and Anthony Bennett? That is pure disaster.
The Cavs GM was just fired today.

http://hangtime.blogs.nba.com/2014/02/06/report-cavs-fire-gm-chris-grant/?ls=iref:nbahpts

 
Also wanted to comment on the Cavs. Bennett might be a worse first pick than Kwame Brown, Mike Brown is one of the worst head coaches in recent memory (this is his 8th season and third radically different roster, and he still doesn't have an offensive scheme. That is simply inexcusable), Kyrie Irving has regressed, they traded three picks for a 29 year old wing player whose best season came 7 years ago, and Dion Waiters was chosen when Andre Drummond, Damian Lillard, Harrison Barnes, Terrence Ross, John Henson, and Terrence Jones were all on the board. Waiters was a marginal player in college, and the Cavs front office decided to take him 4th overall?

The only decent players on Cleveland's roster are Deng, Irving, and Varejao, and Deng's marginal and likely gone after this season.

Oh! I had totally forgotten about Tristan Thompson at pick 4 in 2011. Two straight years with picks 1 and 4, and three of those players are Tristan Thompson, Dion Waiters, and Anthony Bennett? That is pure disaster.
This all may have led to why the Cavs fired their GM today.

 
Tristan Thompson isnt too bad, he's improved every season. He won't be an all-star or anything but he should have a good career.

And yes the format for the dunk contest is terrible. What is it? 90 seconds of do what you can to impress and then a 3v3 East vs West dunk contest? Too many dunk attempts imo.

 
Bennett might be a worse first pick than Kwame Brown.
Very bold statement my friend. We're talking about the JaMarcus Russell of basketball when you bring up Kwame Brown. When Bennett does enough to deserve a Stephen A Smith rant just trashing him, then he'll have made it. But just like you need multiple years of domination to be compared to the likes of MJ and all them, you need multiple disaster years to be on Kwame Brown's level of suck.

 
Looks like Anthony Davis is going to replace Kobe at the All-Star game. I'm sure it's not coincidence with the game being in NO this year, but he's playing like a beast and deserves it.

 
Very bold statement my friend. We're talking about the JaMarcus Russell of basketball when you bring up Kwame Brown. When Bennett does enough to deserve a Stephen A Smith rant just trashing him, then he'll have made it. But just like you need multiple years of domination to be compared to the likes of MJ and all them, you need multiple disaster years to be on Kwame Brown's level of suck.
Not that bold. Rookie season, per 36 minutes:

Kwame Brown: 11.4 ppg, 8.7 rpg, 1.9 apg, 1.9 topg, 0.7 spg, 1.1 bpg, 38.7% FG, 70.7% FT, 11.2 PER, 96 ORtg, 105 DRtg, .048 WS/48

Anthony Bennett: 10.0 ppg, 7.7 rpg, 0.8 apg, 2.6 topg, 1.3 spg, 0.6 bpg, 28.9% FG, 68.2% FT, 3.8 PER, 76 ORtg, 107 DRtg, -.008 WS/48

Kwame Brown was also one full year younger than Bennett in his rookie season. Kwame was a slightly below average player in his career. Anthony Bennett might be the worst player in the league right now.

 
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Tristan Thompson is definitely not a bad player. He's been pretty good as a defender, rebounder, and has been getting better as a shooter to become a regular double-double guy. Dion Waiters definitely didn't work out as a big scorer next to Kyrie Irving, but he's been a big force as a leader on the second team that essentially plays as a starter without actually starting.

The biggest issue this season has been the constant changes to the starting lineup by Mike Brown so that only Tristan Thompson and Kyrie Irving were consistent starters. Alonzo Gee and Earl Clark evenly split time as starters before Luol Deng arrived to provide some stability there. C.J. Miles is the starting SG, but plays more like a 6th man that can hit 3 point daggers. Anderson Varejao had the starting center job until the Andrew Bynum phoenix rise began and fizzled out, so at least he got back what he should've had all along. The minutes played shows a lot of the issue as there are only three players playing 30 minutes or more (Varejao, Irving, and Thompson before Luol Deng arrived) and the rest play 20 minutes or so to make them appear to be a team of sixth men. They've been lucky to not have any major injuries, so there's no reason for there to that much turnover in the rotation other than players that don't fit or belong there.

They need to sort out the SF and SG positions because Luol Deng has Earl Clark, Alonzo Gee, and Anthony Bennett behind him and nobody at SG seems to want to step up to play as a legit starting SG. Luol Deng was out last night, but Jarrett Jack started in his spot, which says a lot about their confidence in either Clark or Gee, so one or maybe even both needs to go. Just looking at his recent performances, Anthony Bennett's playing better and more consistently when he's gotten 20+ minutes lately than just sitting on the bench and coming off for a few minutes when Brown doesn't know what else to do.

Beyond just the way the lineup's been handled, Mike Brown's responsible for the way the team loses big leads after the half or starts poorly to put themselves in a hole right away. The 2nd team this year is much better than the one they've had in previous years since it's not filled with undrafted players that they were forced to play because they had nobody else of merit, but it sort of merges with the 1st team into a mess where it's hard to tell when they've got a full set of #1 players and when they don't. They've got the talent to be in the playoff hunt if they can figure out who the dead weight is that no longer needs to be there.

 
Not that bold. Rookie season, per 36 minutes:

Kwame Brown: 11.4 ppg, 8.7 rpg, 1.9 apg, 1.9 topg, 0.7 spg, 1.1 bpg, 38.7% FG, 70.7% FT, 11.2 PER, 96 ORtg, 105 DRtg, .048 WS/48

Anthony Bennett: 10.0 ppg, 7.7 rpg, 0.8 apg, 2.6 topg, 1.3 spg, 0.6 bpg, 28.9% FG, 68.2% FT, 3.8 PER, 76 ORtg, 107 DRtg, -.008 WS/48

Kwame Brown was also one full year younger than Bennett in his rookie season. Kwame was a slightly below average player in his career. Anthony Bennett might be the worst player in the league right now.
Interesting...but like I said before, Bennett needs multiple seasons of suck though. He's on good pace but Kwame got worse as he moved team to team. All 10 or so he's (I don't know how) played for. I hope for Bennett's sake that he doesn't beat Kwame in that department.

 
Tristan Thompson is definitely not a bad player. He's been pretty good as a defender, rebounder, and has been getting better as a shooter to become a regular double-double guy. Dion Waiters definitely didn't work out as a big scorer next to Kyrie Irving, but he's been a big force as a leader on the second team that essentially plays as a starter without actually starting.

The biggest issue this season has been the constant changes to the starting lineup by Mike Brown so that only Tristan Thompson and Kyrie Irving were consistent starters. Alonzo Gee and Earl Clark evenly split time as starters before Luol Deng arrived to provide some stability there. C.J. Miles is the starting SG, but plays more like a 6th man that can hit 3 point daggers. Anderson Varejao had the starting center job until the Andrew Bynum phoenix rise began and fizzled out, so at least he got back what he should've had all along. The minutes played shows a lot of the issue as there are only three players playing 30 minutes or more (Varejao, Irving, and Thompson before Luol Deng arrived) and the rest play 20 minutes or so to make them appear to be a team of sixth men. They've been lucky to not have any major injuries, so there's no reason for there to that much turnover in the rotation other than players that don't fit or belong there.

They need to sort out the SF and SG positions because Luol Deng has Earl Clark, Alonzo Gee, and Anthony Bennett behind him and nobody at SG seems to want to step up to play as a legit starting SG. Luol Deng was out last night, but Jarrett Jack started in his spot, which says a lot about their confidence in either Clark or Gee, so one or maybe even both needs to go. Just looking at his recent performances, Anthony Bennett's playing better and more consistently when he's gotten 20+ minutes lately than just sitting on the bench and coming off for a few minutes when Brown doesn't know what else to do.

Beyond just the way the lineup's been handled, Mike Brown's responsible for the way the team loses big leads after the half or starts poorly to put themselves in a hole right away. The 2nd team this year is much better than the one they've had in previous years since it's not filled with undrafted players that they were forced to play because they had nobody else of merit, but it sort of merges with the 1st team into a mess where it's hard to tell when they've got a full set of #1 players and when they don't. They've got the talent to be in the playoff hunt if they can figure out who the dead weight is that no longer needs to be there.
Tristan Thompson's DRtg is worse than the Cavs' as a whole. As a frontcourt player, that's inexcusable. He's averaging 0.4 blocks a game in 33 minutes. He's not offsetting that with steals, either, only getting 0.4 a game on that front. He's shooting 45.8% from the field. You can get away with being deficient in one of those areas as a frontcourt player, but you can't be bad in all of them and still be effective.

He's improved in exactly one area in his career: free throw shooting. Everything else has either stayed static or regressed. In both PER and WS/48, he's been slightly below average in his career. There's no shame in that - being a slightly below average big in the NBA should translate into a fairly long career. However, as the 4th pick in a draft, and part of a pattern of similar misses by the team, that's a terrible outcome.

 
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