Round 1 MATCHUPS @thething G: John Wall G: Donovan Mitchell F: Kevin Durant F: Dirk Nowitzki C:LaMarcus Aldridge Bench Dejounte Murray Devin Booker Julius Randle vs @LCAhmed G: Kyrie Irving $18,868,626 G: Buddy Hield $3,675,480 F: LeBron James $33,285,709 F: Lauri Markkanen $3,821,640 C: Clint Capela $2,334,528 BENCH: G: Lou Williams 7,000,000 F: Aaron Gordon 5,504,419 C: Jakob Poeltl $2,825,640 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- @daywalker02 @Yung-T PG Kemba Walker SG Victor Oladipo SF Khris Middleton PF Draymond Green C Nikola Jokic PG Terry Rozier SG/SF Marco Belinelli SF/PF Michael Beasley vs @Jmcballer88 Pg Damian Lillard Sg Klay Thompson Sf Jayson Tatum Pf Giannis Antetokounmpo C Jusuf Nurkic Backup Guard- Malcolm Brogdon Backup Foward- Kyle Anderson Backup Big- Bobby Portis ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- @Horry33 Russell Westbrook Gary Harris Robert Covington Karl Anthony-Townes Joel Embiid Spencer Dinwiddie Eric Gordon Jaylen Brown vs @BigMaloe Chris Paul James Harden Trevor Ariza P.J. Tucker Kristaps Porzingis Josh Richardson Will Barton Pascal Siakam --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- @Plowman PG/SG - Tyreke Evans SG/SF - Jimmy Butler SF/PG (any position really, can defend anyone) - Ben Simmons PF/C - Kevin Love C/PF - Anthony Davis Bench - PF - Kyle Kuzma SF - OG Anunoby PG - Delon Wright vs @lwqbulb PG: Jamal Murray / Marcus Smart SG: Jrue Holiday SF: Paul George / Luc Mbah a Moute PF: Dario Saric C: Demacus Cousins / Myles Turner
We have Morey on our side! Kidding. I think we have Elite Passing from the Post Bigs and good shooting. Furthermore, everyone switches these days, so this lineup is good for switching on Defense. Spoiler
TheThing vs LCA It’s intriguing because thing has a lot of good talent but it just seems poorly constructed. Whereas LCA has much better comprised team but less talent. For TheThing, I think it’s best served having Donovan be the 6th man and start booker for spacing because there is too many guys who need the ball in the starting lineup. I also don’t find Durant having enough space with Aldridge wanting the same spots. But you can’t bench him because he’s too talented and important so it seems cluttered. The biggest concern for me tho is defense and foot speed from the front court. Dirk is unplayable on defense, especially at the 4. Aldridge isn’t great although he’s ok. Defense looks really weak while offense looks cluttered. I understand Durant and Murray are very good-great but everyone else is just average or below. As for LCA, I also see a team with bad defense, maybe even more so but the offense looks crisp and clean. We have seen this roster configuration with LeBron be very damning and of the best all time offenses. Lebron hunting out aldridge/dirk on switches is insane to think how he could attack and then has 3 great shooters and an elite lob guy. Also, he could switch onto wall/booker/Mitchell and abuse them in the post. I think this defense is bad, and TheThing has some penetrating to attack this defense at its weaknesses, lebron and capela provide just enough chase down blocking and rim protection to overcome their weaker defense because of the synergy on offense.The benches being similarly on par relatively to each other I don’t see any advantage either way. I’m giving LCA this series in a pretty fun, high scoring but close series; where the better offense prevails. Yung_walker vs JMC On day_tizzle team it appears to make sense to put the defensive guru of draymond next to jokic but it starts getting a bit convoluted. Both jokic and draymond operate and facilitate greatly and they probably could work together but where it starts getting confusing is with Kemba and Victor who both need the ball to operate. I can’t tel who the offense would truly run through. Maybe a total egalitarian offense is possible but that diminishes the backcourt slightly because of the complete mismatches created from the interior passing. I think this offense at times could look incredible and unstoppable while at times being bogged out. I just feel like this offense would have such highs and lows leading to inconsistency. As for defense, draymond is a monster. Oladipo is great and the other 2 wing players are decent. But jokic will always present a problem. I think draymond can help more than anyone to protect that weakness and I think the starting 5 has enough to be a decent defense. I think rim protection is a serious problem tho and there is no option off the bench to make me feel comfortable even with sliding draymond to the 5. The bench provides more offense but no defense although Rozier rounds out a very nice guard rotation. JMC built a nice team here. It’s like a generic version of the warriors in a sense. Giannis controlling the ball with great shooters is great. He has shown incredible ability to get to the rim with less spacing. Draymond is an ideal matchup but jokic will get targeted. If you do limit Giannis dame as a secondary playmaker is scary because now he can attack or facilitate against a defense with jokic and no draymond. And if both these options get ate up by draymond somehow, because he is capable of doing that with his elite rotations and helps defense, you have a third option in taytum who can get his own shot in a diet Durant lite esque fashion. That’s not mentioning the quickest trigger in the game klay who if he catches with space it flies. Nurkic takes space on offense kind of but isnt a problem. The defense here is good but can be attacked. Nurkic is a good defender protecting the rim but can be attacked in switches. I’m going to take JMC in a 7 game series. This was really hard for me to decide. Plow vs lwq I’ll start with lwq, because I think it makes better sense to start smart and use Jamal as the 6th man. It also makes your starting backcourt/ perimeter defense just phenomenal. Overall your wing/perimeter defense is just great but is a bit nullified with Murray starting. None the less, the front court isnt nearly as capable defensively. I think it works because the perimeter defense will prevent a lot and that protects Demarcus and Saric protecting the rim. Offensively, it’s good but not great. This is where I understand the desire to start Murray because you have no elite go to facilitator so you have a couple good secondary guys. This lineup I think leads to a lot of inside out with Demarcus getting a lot of postups. Not the best recipe for success but he showed improved passing this year and this team has good spacing and shooting. Still, as always, cousins is the wild card. I do really like your bench and see it as a strong point. You can throw out 4 elite defenders + cousins and also you can go offensive. Very flexible team. With plowman, I think the spacing isn’t great but can work around Davis as we seen with rondo. I know tyreke shot around 40% but still color me cautious. I think Love/Davis works just as good if not better as Davis/Mirotic. This is a beefed up versions of this years playoff pelicans. The defense is there even with Love being a weak spot. The offense has adequate spacing as long as Simmons is holding the rock because as soon as he’s off ball the spacing disappears. This may make it hard for Davis to operate but everyone else is decent enough passers for their position to exploit mismatches if an opponent doubles Davis. This is the hardest matchup because moth are pretty evenly matched. Pg vs Butler. Jrue vs Simmons. Love vs Dario. Tyreke vs Jamal. Are all interesting and even enough. I think lwq has the advantage in the bench but Davis is way better than cousins. When it comes down to it tho, I think star power outweighs great bench. I got plowman in 7
if the Pacers had somebody decent instead of Gerald Green in 2013, we would've beaten the Heat in conference finals Pacers vote for LCAhmed in that matchup, also his team just has more talent i think edit: i meant previous round.
I always judge by the amount of star players—fit can be worked in later. Superstars count as 2. Don’t look too deeply into it-i mess around with who’s a star and who’s a superstar. My team has 5 guys that could be considered stars (Wall, Mitchell, Booker, Durant, and Aldridge). And one superstar in durant. Daywalker vs JMC: Daywalker has 4 stars (Walker, Oladipo, Green, Jokic). JMC has 3 (Lillard, Thompson, Antetokounmpo). But dang it, there are no superstars on daywalker/yung so I’m going with jmc since Giannis is a superstar. Close one. Bigmaloe has 3 stars and 2 of them superstars (harden, paul). Horry has 3 stars. So bigmaloe wins. Plowman has 3 stars and lwq 2 stars, so plowman wins.
One heck of a argument though. We have 9 brehs and there are only 6 superstars arguably. What are the other 3 going to do? Forfeit?
How can u consider rookie Mitchell a star after one season with bad shooting stats and 20.5, 3.7, 3.7, while Middleton somehow isn't a star although he had 20.1, 5.2, 4.0 and a lot of solid seasons? Is this tmz?
I don't necessarily agree with your thought process, but I can respect it since you make your own judgement.
The argument is flawed because not all stars are created equal and not all superstars are created equal but it’s his opinion and vote to do as he pleases. But to add to your point, I don’t see wall as a star anymore outside of name recognition. He’s not a player I would want on my team. I don’t consider Wall, Middleton or Donovan stars. Wall “was” a star, Donovan isn’t a star yet and Middleton is a super role player.
Get more stars? It sucks not having a superstar. Makes it way tougher. That’s why it’s so rare to win championships without one in the real world.
Hard to argue Wall isn't a star since he literally made the all-star team this year, but everybody has their own classifications and that's fine. Respect everyone's opinion. My thought process on Mitchell vs Middleton is that Mitchell was the best player on a second round Utah team, whereas Middleton is the second best player on a team that flamed out in the first round. And Utah really has no one else that can kill you so he's the guy you gameplan around. Milwaukee has Giannis. Could be partly because I don't watch the Eastern conference that much. Sorry. He's obviously really good, I just don't know if he's a role player or a star that no one knows about.
These are all extremely hard to judge, great job on assembling your squads guys! Now for the nitty gritty Daywalker/Tizzle vs JMC Daywalker Tizzle- Draymond is obviously your Pointforward here surrounded by 3 point shooters, and I mean surrounded! Not sure how Dipo and Kemba will work off the ball, I think of Dipo in OKC with Westbrook and remember how bad he was. Your defense is solid with draymond, Dipo, and Middleton, Rozier, Kemba are decent, but then you get to Jokic and the rest of your bench. Very solid team build especially for current play style. JMC- Shooters minus Nurkic. bench is decent with brogdon and portis as back up shooters, Anderson the backup facilitator. Defense wise, Tatum Greek freak and Thompson are studs! Nurkic and Anderson were surprisingly good as well! Brogdon.... Lillard.... Portis..... trash defensively. Greek freak also looks to be facilitator, Lillard I'm not sure how he'll operate off the ball. Overall I like the fit of JMCs team a bit more for Chemistry purposes. JMC in 7. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Horry vs BigMaloe Horry33- Westbrook plus 3 point shooters galore is a good look! You don't have a backup big, which can be scary if you plan on playing both towns and embiid together a lot. Very good defensive team minus Towns. I do wonder how well your big 3 can play together. BigMaloe- Rockets upgraded roster. We all know how well this team will play together. I do wonder how well Porzingis will play against traditional sized centers such as Embiid and Towns with high skill sets especially down low in the paint. I really like this team though! Overall I think it's an easier selection for me to vote for Maloe over Horry mainly because we saw a very similar team push arguably the greatest team ever assembled to the brink and outplayed them imo. With an upgraded team (imo) I think it's hard to not pick them. Close match up, But I give the edge to Maloe. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Plowman vs Lwqbulb Plowman - Great defensive potential here! Tyreke is okay and Love, well he's good at shooting! on Offense you have a lot of shooters and good dribble drive penetrators which should make for a decent flowing offense. I do worry about Reke Butler, and Simmons each requiring the ball to be effective. I'll be honest I don't know who Delon Wright is. Mainly because Toronto is so deep and VanVleet and Powell took a lot of attention. lwqbulb - I really like the potential of this team build. a lot of shooting! great bench depth, good balance of offense and defense. I know it doesn't matter much, but I think it makes sense to have Holiday at PG and Murray at SG, but at this point in the NBA position is meaningless. The potential to go small ball or rung very big cause matchup nightmares. This one is so tough to call, I could see it going either way! With respect to both, however I will make a choice. Plowman I'll give the nod.
@daywalker02 @Yung-T @Plowman @fallenphoenix @Horry33 @lwqbulb @Jmcballer88 Please find time in the next few hours if you can to vote. I know these are tough match ups but we should really be pushing into the next round already.
I have to go with LCA again. The thing has a solid team but I think Aldridge struggles with Capelas pick and roll with LBJ. Having Dirk out there isnt helping either. Booker should be starting. He is one of the best 2 guards in the NBA. Durant should be the starting 4. Which would leave booker guarding Markkenan.
Horry has a really good bench. However they are all guards. I also dont like the Towns Embiid combo. Giving it to big maloe even though he does have two of the weaker starters in the draft in Tucker and ariza.
Plowman vs Bulb is a weird matchup for me I think I am leaning bulb. I like the Anthony Davis Love pairing. I dont like the Ben Simmons and Tyrke pairing. I see ben as a 4. Not that he cant play the 3 but Love Simmnons and Davis doesnt seem like the best fit defensively to me. I like how bulb can put out Mbah Moute at the 4.
Quick note on my team - I designed it so there would be flexibility. We can go - Tyreke Butler Simmons Love Davis Simmons Tyreke Butler Love Davis With both Love and the Brow able to play either spot Simmons, quite honestly will guard LeBron if the time comes. He's a monster defender. I feel my lineup allows for a ton of different looks, while hiding a player like Ben's offensive "challenges" and maximizing what he brings to the table...Sure, he can play the 4 too.Lots of workable combinations with my team. Just giving some more insight here..my 2 cents as it were.
As to voting, please give me a few, guys ,as I'm in the hospital at the moment, about to be released.
Forgive me, if I cannot get the time to evaluate to the tiniest detail here. LCAhmed - See above, I feel the most has been said, although I think Buddy Hield and Markannen are borderline starters on a contender, probably not. Big Maloe - I feel that his chemistry will follow through here, although I also could vote for his opponent as I believe in WBrick unlike others. But in real life, I think Big Maloe just selected the Rockets team. I like the D and the balance. LWQBulb by a buzzer beater and slightly better overall Defense. I think I vote for LWQBulb and his upset here. I think Plowman has the better names on paper and AD is the best player here. My two cents here is LWQ Bulb has 3 players that are very dangerous and could go off in the playoffs while still being able to maintain somewhat very good Defense. Jrue, healthy Cousins(alledgedly healthy), Paul George. Could go off for 30 or 40. Jamal Murray and Saric are also players that can score 20+ on good nights. I dun like Mbah Moute as his Offense is not enough but I think LWQ Bulb can pull the upset. That said, I really like Plowman's selections. The talent level is higher but I feel he has just one complementary player in Tyreke and the length is crazy. Couple of egos. But there could be tension on who gets the ball as Simmons is not great leader and not yet a shooter. In the Playoffs he got exposed and he got Turnover prone. AD is an improved leader but still not championship caliber IMO yet unless he is on Boston the Rox or GSW, has a couple of years to go. Marcus Smart is a very good defender. Ballhandling is okay but I feel the center of gravity is high. If there is a Chris Paul, or even Rajon Rondo, I would have voted for Plowman. Honestly.
