So you pretty much guarantee switch harden and KD for whole 2018 season rockets win the chip and not gsw? What do you think gsw vs rockets reg season record?
Nope. Warriors would have still been better. The more star power you have the better, any day. The players know this, which is why guys are teaming up.
You need players if you want an NBA. The owners know this and are making plenty of money with the players making max contracts. They wouldn’t have agreed to the CBA if they didn’t KNOW that they were going to make a ton of money.
Again, players need the owners FAR more than the owners need the players. If the owners wanted to discourage superteams, the easiest way would be to get rid of max contracts and have a hard salary cap. I really don't understand the point you're trying to make. Your arguments are going nowhere.
so if KD can't even carry the rockets farther than Harden, how can you even be absolutely sure he is better? I think rockets won;t win as much reg season games with KD and GSW will be 1st seed while Rockets 3rd seed
I know you don't. But realize, only the top players get max contracts and the NBA is a star driven league. Period. No stars, then your product suffers. The CBA is negotiated, and the NBA the players association isn't going to give max contracts away. Especially, when the TV contracts are huge. Besides, Superteams are great TV whether it's in your market's best interests or not. Why would the owners want to upset their business partners? TV contracts make the owners a lot of money and the revenue is shared amongst the teams. So who's really losing?
Absolutely wrong. In a strike, the players suffer exponentially more than the owners. And by virtue of having superteams, the product already suffers. Also, what you fail to understand is that there will always be stars. If you remove the top 30 players currently in the league, #31 will become a star. The fans are losing. If the league had more parity, don't you think it'd be even more popular (and therefore more lucrative)?
I'll give you that some poorly run franchises (headed by the owner themselves) give max contracts to a few guys that aren't deserving. That's very true. But the players and owners are making money, so why strike? BTW, the Modern NBA was built on Superteams whether built organically through the draft or whether you have guys teaming up via free agency and forced trades. They have always been Superteams. The NBA marketed the hell out of it too. (80's-Celtics, Lakers, Sixers, Pistons), (90's Bulls) , (00's Kobe/Shaq Lakers, Duncan-Parker-Ginobli Spurs, Kobe/Gasol Lakers, KG, Pierce, Allen Celtics), (2010's- Lebron, Wade, Bosh-Heat), (Steph-Klay-Draymond-Warriors), (Lebron-Kyrie-Love- Cavs). They've been around forever. If you take the top 30 players out of any professional league then you have dramatically weakened the product. The NBA included. That's like deleting both of the league's all-star teams and thinking you haven't hurt the product. Nonsense. You have the top players, the owners are the top businessmen and the league's television partners want a show to showcase (Superteams are a show). And are willing to pay a king's ransom to do it. Why would they change? You say the fans are losing but here we are debating in the league's offseason about how a successful NBA could be even more successful. I say stay the course & you say change up. The league is fine man we just see things different.
Plenty of players get max contracts. It's not limited to the top players. Players and owners have always made money, and there have still be lockouts in the past. Players shouldn't be allowed to sign max contracts and then force a trade to a destination of their choosing with multiple years remaining on their contracts. I can't imagine that owners are pleased with this development. Most of those aren't superteams. Having a pair of all-stars isn't a super team. Of course it hurts the product in the short-term, but IMO, the long-term benefits justify the short term pain. Why would they change? To create a better product with a wider fan base. If the same 4 teams reach the conference finals for the next 5 years, you don't think that would alienate some viewers? Again, there have been strikes in the past despite the NBA being successful.
Off-topic but I had no idea harden had so many clutch game winning MID-RANGE jumpers with us. Half of these i dont even remember i generally thought he sucked in the mid range, which is why he never took them. If harden used mid-range more in the playoffs i think his game wouldnt be as predictable. I wonder if it was morey who told harden to abandon the mid-range. Harden probably could have won a ring in houston if he used half the shots in this video can somebody tell me what game and year that was at the 2:23 mark of this video edit NEVERMIND.. I FOUND IT
2018 was on Morey. His "high variance" BS. If only he allowed the team to take more midranges even just a bit. Daryl then defended the team’s decision to go for so many threes, even in a Game 7 where they weren’t falling. “We took a lot of criticism,” started Morey. “With Golden State, we took even more threes against them. Well, they were the better team. If the other team is better, you should go for high variance.” Morey has a point here. The strategy was working well until the unfortunate injury to Chris Paul in Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals shifted momentum of the entire series. “People are critical because we missed a bunch of threes,” continued Morey. “I think we set some record for missing the most threes in Game 7. Well, yeah, that sucked. But we also have no chance of being in Game 7 against them unless we played this high variance style that gave us a chance to beat them even though they were better than us.” https://spacecityscoop.com/2020/04/13/daryl-morey-houston-rockets-competed-golden-state-warriors/
I'm still baffled at the entire team--Morey, MDA, Harden, etc.--for deciding that hoisting that many 3s, and never considering that maybe getting a midrange bucket or something closer to the basket or getting FTs would have been a decent Plan B.
Order's came down form Morey to MDA to players inlcuding Harden. Mda should have not followed Morey, players and harden shouldn't have followed MDA but it starts from Morey. upto this day he still swears that there was no chance for rockets to win without taking all those 3s
This is a pretty dishonest take, because several of the 3s that houston took they were fouled on. A big part of 0-27 was the 4-5 times where houston was fouled on a 3 and it wasn't called. This also allowed the warriors to hack/crowd the shooters more because they knew foster wasn't gonna let them lose.
