[Grantland] Bill and Jalen's Third Birdmester

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the lowry trade gave us a major piece needed to acquire harden. i'm ok with that. losing dragic and signing lin...

 

Stat wise, possibly.

 

Liked what they said about Houston. Regular season isn't really what people are looking at for us, it's all about the playoffs, and we aren't a team that you'd want to play because of how much Harden and Dwight can swing games on any given night. It's no guarantee it happens, but I like that they acknowledged that we have pretty crazy potential if it all clicks.

 

And Chris Paul is the third best player in the league, and John Wall is Jalen's guy (which I'm taking to mean GOAT). The math doesn't quite add up, I think they were just complimenting players, especially those overlooked for the ASG.

But if you meant to make this about Lin and say they think Lowry and Dragic are better than Lin, yeah, that would be their opinion. Though the show was really about the entire league and progress towards the playoffs, they weren't focusing on just one player.

 

So, basically Morey is no better than Dolan.

And Dragic is like Lin: selling out to the highest bidder.

 

Looking forward to Terrence Jones in the Dunk Contest!

 

Posted on the other thread but -

Bill and Jalen are funny and all, but they just do not do their homework. Jalen probably barely watches games that are only on national TV. Anything he says is not credible because he doesn't do the research. They said Al Jefferson deserves to be on an All-NBA team for fck's sake. I feel the same way about the TNT guys. I just watch them for entertainment.

For informed basketball discussion, I prefer reading Grantland articles or The Starters (formerly The Basketball Jones), because they actually try to watch EVERY single game.

 

so clutch who is having the better season harden or dragic ?
who would you have picked to be an all star harden or dragic ?

 

Here we go.

 

Incoming LOF being stupidly defensive

 

Scary thing about okc and pacers is, they still have nice pieces to make a trade with. How bill spoke about perkins + lamb + 1st for affalo and pacers still have grangers large expiring also to work with at deadline.

 

Sorry, don't agree. Bill is a total basketball junkie. He watches everything and I think he's got a very good handle on the league, the talent, the coaches, and the front offices. I think he could GM better than half the GMs in the league.

Jalen....ex-player..knows the game from the inside...still has major inside contacts with players/agents/coaches, etc. He brings something to the table.


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A couple points I got out of this:

1. MOST TEAMS are playing power basketball. True stretch-4's are hard to come by.

That's a fact that I have known from the beginning of the season and is one of the reasons I still advocate making the twin towers work. Our Twin Towers would provide ELITE power defense agaisnt the majority of playoff teams who are power oriented.

2. Clippers have the problem I thought they had. They don't have a 3rd quality big.

We ought to consider this with guys like Hawes (and possibly Patterson) out there. IF the Clippers or Spurs or another playoff team acquire Hawes or Patterson...it is more trouble for us in the playoffs if we face them.

 

I still don't know why everyone thought the Suns would be so bad, I definitely didn't think they'd be this good, but I didn't see them winning any less than 35 games.

 

At least up till this point Dragic has been better than Harden. Dragic is playing out of his mind this year.

 

Losing Lowery in order to get Harden...... can sleep at night.

Losing Dragic to get Lin & toxic contract...... insomnia, toss & turn.

 

Bill is a talented writer and getting to be a pretty good TV personality, but he is too much of a homer, and quite frankly probably not smart enough, to be a NBA GM. His entire appeal from the beginning is that he's just one of us fans. He is often very very wrong about the inner workings of the salary cap and the CBA. I know he's good friends with Morey but he also just does not really understand basketball analytics at all. I still remember a few years ago when he could not understand the concept of effective field goal percentage.

Jalen's value is that, yes, he's an insider and has played in the NBA for so long and has a unique players' perspective (and hilarious stories), on a lot of issues. When it comes to actual basketball analysis, he's sorely lacking, mostly due to him being horribly unprepared.