NBA playoffs
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I am with you on Curry. The mouthpiece deal is kind of disgusting. I used to love Bird and Magic, the best players of their generation. I don’t like LeBron or Curry, the best players of this generation.
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Players I dislike in the League.
Russ Westbrook. thinks way way way too highly of himself. Lebron. ranked second in this category behind Westbrook. James Harden. ranked tied for second. Dwight Howard.
Marcus Smart. I’m sure I am missing a couple.Players I do like.
Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, ALL the current Jayhawks in the League.
Isaiah Thomas. Kahwai Leonard (sp?) I even give props to Anthony Davis
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LeBron thinks TOO highly of himself? In what way?
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Lebron since game 5 of last year’s NBA finals has been on another level. He couldn’t possibly think too highly of himself. He has OWNED the league.
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You may be the champion of the world but you gotta serve somebody. - Bob Dylan
You’re not wrong LeBron, you’re just an a**hole. - Big Lebowski
LeBron has gotten better over the years. I like him better than Kobe at this point. But he has never shown any humility.
He does think too highly of himself, because he is not a God. He wasn’t Mario’s boss. He is a professional basketball player. A great one sure. But extremely self centered.
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@approxinfinity I hated the way he treated Mario!
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@approxinfinity Are you a Jordan fan?
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To me, this is the best part of the playoffs. We’re down to the best four teams. Granted, San Antonio is shorthanded without Kawhi, but Pop could make a couple of adjustments back in San Antonio to at least make those games fun.
Boston doesn’t have a chance against the Cavs, but it’s fun to watch Stevens try to adjust with who he’s going to guard James, Irving, and Love with. He tried to take Kyrie away by putting Bradley on him. That worked, except that James and Love feasted to such a degree that it didn’t matter. The Celtics could have kidnapped Kyrie and they would have lost last night.
It’s also interesting seeing how Cleveland and Golden State are preparing for each other.
I’m not a Marcus Smart fan, but he’s a very sound defender (which is why his flopping annoys me). He can guard 1-3 (although he has no chance against Lebron, but he actually tried to play Lebron straight up, just giving away too much size/strength.
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@justanotherfan Stevens is such an analytics guy I’m sure his head is about to explode… Bron in the playoffs is a different animal. He goes 75% all regular season. You can’t stop 100% Bron. No matter what stats or game plan you have. Just have to hope that Kyrie and Love BOTH get hurt and it becomes a 1 on 5 game.
I actually think this Clevland team might have a chance to beat anyone without Kyrie or Love. Their bench is stacked. Korver, Deron Williams, Derick Williams, Channing Frye, Richard Jefferson, and Iman Shumpert. They have a solid backup PG, SG and PF. Derick Williams, Channing and Jefferson could hold down the fort for a series if Thompson and Love were both hurt somehow. This is the best roster in the league.
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@Kcmatt7 I appreciated Jordan. Maybe my opinion of him is clouded by the nostalgia of youth and it being a time when social media and the fungus that is ESPN hadn’t blanketed everything, but I felt that Jordan was a more complete person than Kobe and LeBron and Curry. He is an insanely competitive and talented player like these other guys, but even though Jordan has his worts, I think he’s a more likeable icon the others. It may well be a generational thing. Jordan is an icon from an era where even superstars didn’t live their lives behind velvet ropes, and weren’t handled and groomed from a young age to be professional athletes.
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Feed me your hate Lebron haters.
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@BShark as I said, LeBron has become a more well-rounded person. But he’s like a Steve Jobs. He might get the job done but he wants to control everything and it’s not pleasant to be a part of and not pleasant to watch.
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Kcmatt7 said:
@justanotherfan Stevens is such an analytics guy I’m sure his head is about to explode… Bron in the playoffs is a different animal. He goes 75% all regular season. You can’t stop 100% Bron. No matter what stats or game plan you have. Just have to hope that Kyrie and Love BOTH get hurt and it becomes a 1 on 5 game.
I actually think this Clevland team might have a chance to beat anyone without Kyrie or Love. Their bench is stacked. Korver, Deron Williams, Derick Williams, Channing Frye, Richard Jefferson, and Iman Shumpert. They have a solid backup PG, SG and PF. Derick Williams, Channing and Jefferson could hold down the fort for a series if Thompson and Love were both hurt somehow. This is the best roster in the league.
Yes.
Lebron has shown he can drag corpses to a title before. Also those REALLY bad Cleveland teams to the finals even though he couldn’t quite push through with them. That was before he totally flipped the switch too.
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@BShark LeBron was an unstoppable force when he was young. And man, how I hated him and his arrogance and his “crab dribble”. But athletically there was absolutely nothing you could do to stop him when he had a full head of steam.
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LeBron is good enough he shouldn’t have to travel. Best in the league, no doubt about it. He’s also completely unlikable as is the NBA as a whole. I had no idea the playoffs were still going on…
When does KU play next?
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@approxinfinity How you could like Jordan and not like LeBron based on what you said is astounding. Jordan was far from a “complete person.” His arrogance is well-documented. He was much more self-centered on the court than LeBron has ever been. MICHAEL JORDAN PUNCHED STEVE KERR IN THE FACE. He routinely laid into Horace Grant and Stacey King. Pippen had migrains and Jordan would give him crap for them. When Jordan does these things he is “the greatest competitor ever.” When LeBron does them, he is an asshole treating our poor Mario badly. If Bron had punched Mario, I could only imagine the outrage.
That is just on the court. Do we want to talk about extracurricular activities? Jordan’s gambling problems have been well-documented. As have his extramarital affairs. As have him being a pretty poor father. In fact, Jordan is a completely crappy human being outside of the court. If social media existed, I could only imagine the things we would have heard about Jordan.
LeBron though, married his high school sweetheart, attends a ton of his kids AAU games, and generally has his head on straight despite being video taped everywhere he goes. THE MAN CAN’T EVEN RAISE MONEY FOR CHARITY WITHOUT BEING CRITICIZED. He has the weight of so much more on his shoulders than Jordan could even imagine. And in the face of it all, he acts like a standup human being.
I just can’t stand when people say they don’t like LeBron because he’s selfish or an asshole when he is 10X the person any of the other great stars were. He’s unselfish on and off the court. More than you could say for Jordan or Kobe or Wilt or any other great.
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I think part of the hate for today’s athletes (not just Lebron) comes from the overexposure they all have. We see everything about these guys. When’s the last time you went more than five days without being confronted with a random famous athlete even casually outside of their sports? You don’t have to watch the games because they are on social media, in commercials, on the news for everything. Being a sports star makes you part of the news cycle.
I’ve never heard about Lebron or Steph Curry getting in trouble with the law, or generally doing anything that was reprehensible. Yet they are “arrogant” and “self centered”. I think it’s just fatigue more than anything. Lebron says he’s great, which is more a statement of fact than a statement of arrogance. He’s one of the three greatest players OF ALL TIME. PERIOD. The most well rounded player of all time.
I don’t think he’s ever been in trouble with the law. I’ve never heard about him beating on or cheating on his wife. You don’t see him showing up in clubs. He just happens to be maybe the best basketball player to ever live, and he’s aware of his skills (which is part of his greatness).
I do a little teaching on the side sometimes, and one of the most frustrating things when I teach is working with a student that is unaware of their abilities. They actually hold themselves back because they don’t think they are able to do things sometimes. The same thing happens in athletics. Athletes cannot be truly great until they understand their own physical ability. Lebron understands that now. When he was younger, he understood his athleticism, but not how it fit into the basketball context. Now he understands both and makes basketball a joy to watch. I watch Lebron and try to see what he sees on the court. At this point, Lebron could be half the athlete he is and still be a star because of his understanding of basketball. Just brilliant. Fascinating to watch.
I don’t mind that some don’t like the NBA. You have your reasons and that’s fine. But let’s not trash a guy that, from all appearances, has basically been a working man that comes home and takes care of his wife and kids. That’s all any of us want to do in life.
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@justanotherfan Amen.
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@justanotherfan @Kcmatt7 I can’t really argue with anything you guys said. It’s all true. But he is still the guy I root against. Maybe it was the Miami announcement with it’s fireworks and not one not two garbage. I didn’t like Shaq either because he bulldozed people. Maybe it started with the physical dominance that made me dislike LeBron and morphed into me looking and finding signs of arrogance. Maybe it’s the way he does interviews. There never seems to be an extra thought given to his teammates or coach as people just as assets. Maybe it was the feeling that Mike Brown and Erik Spoelstra were his puppets. Maybe I didn’t like how Blatt got run out of town. I know I didn’t like how Wiggins got treated. There are other people that treat their family well that I don’t like professionally. At his job, he is Faustian. What other star in the league tries to control the front office like LeBron? I probably don’t like any that do.
I was too young to dislike Jordan and the media didn’t negatively portray him at the time. I can’t change how I felt as a child. But I agree that MJ isn’t likeable by my standards now and trying to defend him is illogical.
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Fair enough. The NBA is a business and that sours a lot of people on it because the business side of things is never far from the surface.
Lebron creating the Wiggins trade probably benefited Wiggins in the long term (and possibly in the short term).
If Wiggins doesn’t get dealt, he plays a lot fewer minutes as a rookie because that Cleveland team wasn’t built to develop young players - it was built to win immediately. That means they still bring in veterans like JR Smith and Iman Shumpert, leaving Wiggins on the bench for long stretches of the season. Maybe he can help defensively as a big wing in small ball lineups, but he certainly isn’t getting to play 35+ mpg and be the go to player as a rookie.
As a second year player, he probably gets more minutes, but again, he’s not getting big minutes and likely isn’t turning into a 20 ppg scorer because they aren’t trying to develop a young player. He’s playing barely 20 mpg in all likelihood. Maybe finally this year he’s getting substantial minutes, but how much growth would have been stunted by the goal of winning immediately? Look at a guy like Jaylen Brown. Top 3 pick in his draft. McDs AA. Averaged 17 mpg this year. 6 points, 3 rebounds. He’s starting to get some minutes in the playoffs, but a Cleveland team with Irving, James, Smith, etc. on the perimeter isn’t going to give a young Andrew Wiggins playoff minutes.
Compare that to #2 pick Brandon Ingram. He played almost 29 mpg for the Lakers. His numbers weren’t great, but he played lots more than Brown did and had more opportunity than a team fighting for the playoffs could afford to give.
But that’s the business side. If you’re on a contender as a young player, your role is almost certain to be limited. Development is secondary to winning on a playoff/championship caliber team.
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@justanotherfan definitely better for Wiggins. But in an alternate universe, the LeBron that I like does one of two things… 1. He calls Wiggins, explains why it has to be Love, congratulates him on being the #1 pick, how he’s going to be the alpha dog wherever he goes, whatever. Or 2. He embraces Wiggins as the other big scorer with a nice rookie contract and starts working on recruting some big bodies to come on board for a championship run.
That moment with Wiggins going to the Cavs was the moment for me where I was ready to give LeBron another chance. I really was. Maybe Love was the right choice. Or maybe they win with Wiggins and some upgraded big journeymen (you know the guys that went to SA and GS). Who knows. That would have been the more natural thing.
When you guys talk about LeBron dragging a corpse to the finals has it occurred to you that he is the one responsible for recruiting corpses like Udonis Haslem, James Jones and Mike Miller, or getting rid of youthful assets like Wiggins ?
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@approxinfinity I think the best move LeBron could have made was making a switch PF and letting Wiggins play the 3. I think they would be built much better to take on the Warriors in the finals. But at the same time, you just never know how a rookie would fit or develop. Wiggins certainly isn’t the defensive player or rebounder that I expected him to be. Love was a safe move and LeBron knew the recipe for winning from Miami. Him plus a scoring guard and a stretch 4 and you can really do some damage.
Part of the reason that those guys have to come with LeBron is because they can be signed and he is comfortable with them. Once you go over the salary cap, the only guys you can sign from free agency are league minimum deals. So you are literally sifting through dead bodies in search of vets with maybe just a little life left. Or at least a tool that can be used in certain situations. The NBA cap rules are by far the strangest of any professional sport. I personally think that the Cavs have the best roster in the league depth wise. Nobody else would have Derrick Williams as the last guy off of their bench. Whoever is in charge of their roster has assembled quite a unit. Albeit, an aging one.
I mean if Kyrie and Love went down, their lineup would look like:
- PG - Deron Williams - Former All-Star
- SG - Kyle Korver/JR Smith - Korver is shooting as good now as ever before
- SF - LeBron
- PF - Richard Jefferson/Channing Frye - Huge upgrade over Mozgov
- C - Tristan Thompson
That team could make the playoffs right there.
When they started the season though, they didn’t have Korver or Deron Williams. Those were huge mid-season pickups.
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Just saw the recap of the Dubs beating the Spurs rather handily last night. Looks like Golden State and the Cavs will sweep each of their respective teams. I’m going to try to watch the Cavs game tonight and if it gets out of hand early, I doubt I’ll finish.
These conference finals just seem like a warm up between the Cavs and the Dubs, which is fine with me Btw.
the talking heads at ESPN have said that this is bad for the NBA game. How? How is it bad?
I ask in response…How many times have the Celtics and Lakers played eachother in the NBA finals? More than a dozen the last I checked. How is this different? It isn’t to me at all. Just two truly dominant teams that happen to wear different jerseys than the Celts and Lakers. My personal opinions of each respective teams “super stars” aside. I think the NBA finals are going to be epic this year.
Brannen Greene tweeted that he thought the Cavs would sweep Golden State.
I think it’ll go 6 or 7 games and I hesitate to call a winner. Although, I am leaning towards the Warriors.
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The Cavs-Celtics series is just a mismatch and maybe the NBA should have a mercy rule and stop the series to avoid further embarrassment to the proud tradition the Celtics hold.
Without it two stars Leonard and Parker, San Antonio does not have much of a chance. The could have won game 1 but could not hold onto a big lead. San Antonio kept it close in game 3 but frankly did not gave the guns to finish the game. Imagine KU playing without Mason and Jackson…it did lose to TCU without Jackson and if Mason did not play either, KU would lose to Texas and it would get destroyed by a real good team. Yep, that is San Antonio without Parker and Leonard.
Looks like both, the Cavs and Warriors, will sweep their series and go to the finals unbeaten.
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Well I was as wrong as one could be. I thought the Celtics would get slaughtered in Cleveland but instead they won a game coming back from way behind; Marcus Smart had a career game.
When arguably the best basketball team in the land can have a bad game and lose at home to a team it beat by over 40 points on the road a couple of days before, makes it easier to understand how a much less experienced team like KU can also have one sub par performance at a critical time.
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@JayHawkFanToo and like KU in their sometimes inexplicable losses, Clevelands bench barely played. Hmm…
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Warriors just dominated the Cavs last night. Domination is an understatement. It felt like KU was playing a preseason exhibition game in AFH!
Chances are that the Cavs will make game 2 a wee bit more competitive. But the likelihood that they win that game isn’t very high.
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@approxinfinity I hate NBA.
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@Lulufulu Going to be a different game in #2 as long as Cavs make adjustments they are supposed to.
Have to play at a snails crawl. Iso shots with 4 players getting back on every shot. No crashing the offensive board. Anyone taking a shot besides Love, Irving or James better be a dunk or last second forced shot.
Defensively, Cavs just need to rebound. Don’t look for transition points at all. Slow the game all the way down, no second shot attempts.
You have to hold the Warriors to under 100 if the Cavs are going to win. Limit shot attempts and don’t let there be a rhythm to the game. Make it ugly.
Otherwise Warriors run away with it in 4 or 5.
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Cavs had to know they weren’t beating Golden State if they gave up offensive rebounds. Warriors are too good offensively to allow second shots. No surprise they couldn’t keep up with the Warriors when allowing offensive rebounds. Add to that the Cavs turning the ball over a million times and they are lucky it was a single digit game at half.
Game 1 didn’t tell us much ultimately, because we already knew the Warriors were great offensively and the Cavs didn’t do the basics (rebound, stop the ball). I know that wasn’t the gameplan (or its the worst gameplan ever), so we have to see what happens in Game 2.
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Go Dubs! I should have bet $$$ in Vegas. I called them winning in 5 games.
I’m happy for Durant getting his first ring.
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I just can’t believe Coach and KU got the best of Durant. Man dude can just flat out play.
As for the King LeBron? I can’t imagine the pressure that was placed at his feet. When he made his move to the NBA. In all respects he might deserve a lot of love. Yet as a causal fan of the NBA, meaning I really have no team I follow. I just don’t like LeBron. Maybe it’s his greatness and my love of the so called underdog. I don’t know? Crazy as it seems I knew the Warriors were the far better team and the favorites. Yet I took great joy in watching the Cavs and LeBron losing.
I just did.
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As good as LeBron is, he is also the biggest whiner in the NBA. Can you think of another player that complains as much as he does?
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DoubleDD said:
I just can’t believe Coach and KU got the best of Durant. Man dude can just flat out play.
Rick Barnes + only one year in college. If Durant had stayed, he probably would have won the B12.
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Since KU started the streak, in addition to Durant Texas has also had lottery picks LaMarcus Aldridge, D.J. Augustine, Tristan Thompson and Myles Turner, KSU POY Beasley, OU POY Buddy Hield and Blake Griffin. Baylor has Prince and Udoh…
KU has taken on all comers and still king of the hill.
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Looks like Chalmers was right James still can’t win a title without a Jayhawk on the roster.
