Kyrie joins Bird, Durant and Curry as the only players in NBA history to finish a season scoring 26+ ppg on 50/40/90. He's just the 9th player to have a 50 40 90 season.
after his first game with them, he had a couple game stretch where he was seemingly almost trying to not take any shots. to the point it was hurting the team because he was passing up so many chances. considering they only ended playing 8 games total, those had an outsized effect on those 19/12/8 numbers (unless one of KD or kyrie was out but i don't think so). so i would expect the scoring to be higher and assists to probably be a little lower. although they'll be facing washington so everyone on both teams should be putting up huge numbers in 140+ point games.
hopefully the nba is really serious about doing something about offenses going forward (like in woj's tweet). current stats have become as ridiculous as 1960's stats (although with a little less volume and more efficiency).
Shooting has been crazy good this season. With the increasing emphasis/importance of 3pters I expect to see the rising %. But free throw shooting seems amazingly improved this season. Curry's 91.8% is only good for 5th! CP3 leads the league at 93 with dame, kyrie and galo all above 92%. Don't remember having so many above 91% ft shooters in the league.
i bet cp3 still wont get more first place mvp votes than curry, even though both he julus randle should
if harden is averaging those numbers in the playoffs on the same elite efficiency he has been this year, ill take it. those are basically prime magic johnson numbers
It's not really a little less volume. The attempts gap is still massive. And the efficiency is night and day. That really was the most garbage era of basketball.
my god bigs are soft nowadays. Imagine Duncan/Yao/Shaq/Garnett etc with all the switching.... The closest we see right now is Jokic and Embiid and honestly if you switch guards on to them in playoffs its over for you bottom line is Harden gets away with defensive foul here you can't put two hands on the back of a offensive player and push him
jokic and embiid are not problems for harden. Harden routinely makes elite big men like rudy gobert look average
He means Harden guarding big men, not taking them off the dribble. Also Gobert has no offensive skill unlike Hulu has live sports and Jokic
yea harden is the only guard that’s allowed to be routinely hand checked and undercut in games. They don’t even reward him with free throws when he is clearly in a shooting motion
Harden is an elite post defender in aggregate against the whole NBA in a small sample size. You honestly think Harden can lock down or massively contain they best 2 offensive big man/post players in the NBA right now? If that was the case, why were the Nets so ready to sign LaMarcus Aldridge (now retired) and Blake Griffin when they already had an "elite" post defender?
Because depth with actual rotational players matter. Something that is a foreign concept to Tilman and LTS. Nobody is signing either of those two to lock anyone down. They're being signed to eat up some spot minutes as reliable vets.
Nets didn't sign LMA and Blake for their defense. What even is this post? They signed them because Claxton and DJ were absolute zeroes on the offensive side of the ball without Harden also on the court. LMA and Blake have range and they can create their own shot without needing a playmaker on the court. Also, and I'm not sure why this isn't obvious - being an 'elite' defender doesn't mean you shut everyone in the league down. Take the past 3 winners - Giannis, Gobert, Draymond. Those three are good against whom? Against the NBA as a whole, in 82 games. If those 3 constantly had to guard an Embiid, Jokic, Harden, LeBron, Curry, Beal, Doncic etc for all 48 minutes, their defensive numbers wouldn't look as good.
BG and LMA were signed for size, not offensive prowess. You honestly think a team with Harden/Durant/Irving/Harris cannot score 120 every game without those 2? That was not my point. My point is that against elite teams, Giannis and Draymond guards the best offensive players even in the playoffs or clutch situations. If you think the Nets will willing want Harden to guard Embiid or Djokic, or even J. Randle for Knicks; I don't know what you are watching.
LMA and Griffin were absolutely signed for their ability on offense - a thing the Nets wanted more than their size. Again, they had Jordan and Claxton on the team already. Size wasn't an issue. If all the Nets wanted was size, they would have gone with Drummond and Cousins - both of whom are physically bigger and harder to move around, than LMA and Griffin. Obviously, even without LMA and Griffin, the Nets can score easily. But, and here's a novel idea - why not make it easier on Harden / Kyrie / Durant when we add two bigs who can create their own shot and have range? It also makes it harder to leave Griffin and LMA to go double. Harden is never going to win a DPoY like Giannis and Draymond. But to say he isn't a great post defender just because players like Jokic and Embiid can score on him most of the time, does Harden a disservice. There aren't too many guards 6'5'' and shorter than can play post-defense like Harden can.
