[BBALLBREAKDOWN] Meet the ONLY team that can beat the Warriors

so which GM of a good team can possibly give Klay the chance to be their best player/#1 option?

if you can't name anyone then you know there's none right?

 

Why does the team have to already be good without Klay, when I only said he could be the best player on a good team (a team on which he is playing)?

Just pick a shitty team, put Klay Thompson on it and add some other good role players, and I think that its possible such a team could be good with Thompson as their best player. In other words, I don't believe it is a prerequisite that a good team in the NBA has to have a ball-dominant scorer as their best player. That might be the easier path to becoming a good team, but its not required.

 

Switch Klay with Harrison Barnes. . . . . . How many more games does Dallas win?

Rocket River

 

3-5

 

Klay is capable of being the best player on a 35-40 win team...if everything goes right, maybe he could lead a team to 45 wins

Klay would have similar results to Ray Allen when he was on the Sonics, and even Allen was better than him at creating offense for himself and others

 

Ricky Rubio sucks dude. His inability to shoot makes him a liability in any offense

Um, did you forget we have Nene?

 

14 assists...lulz. Paul won't get that, because Crispy knows winning basketball is allowing Harden to run the show a lot. But really, it's about spacing.

Doesn't matter. Rubio plays losing basketball, because all the other players in th system would suffer, tremendously, by having such a really bad shooter on the floor.

He's such a bad shooter, Utah won't even let him play a floor general role anymore...and he will lose his PG role to Mitchell eventually, and become a journeyman looking for a team who will let him play his game for the fans (just like Lin).

Rubio getting 10+ assists is bad basketball, or Utah would be playing that way. The NBA knows those stats for Rubio has nothing to do with winning basketball.

 

Good take.

 

This is the first real season where I actually think we can win it all since the Barkley, Drexler and Olajuwon trio. It's a good time to be a Houston sports fan.

 

Poor Bev got roasted...

 

This is actually a great scenario for us. What we need is for the cap to jump up again so that the Anderson contract becomes less of an albatross and we will have more room to make moves under the cap and potentially resign Capela and maybe PG or a different wing.

The reason we want it to be this season is because the Warriors are already locked in to the repeater tax for next year just with the 8 guys that they already have under contract (2 of which are rookie scale guys).

The reason the cap spiked so largely in the first place (other than players union not choosing cap smoothing) was that the Warriors had the 73 win season that caused a lot of interest in the regular season and more viewers/ticket sales/merchandise sales. If we can pose a real threat to the Warriors this year that will cause ratings to go back to similar levels causing the cap to inch closer to what those projections were back then.

 

Didn't the cap increase so drastically due to the huge, new TV contracts starting. The rise was predicted from a few years out.

As opposed to some local TV contracts, National TV contracts are locked in, so regular season revenue for the NBA doesn't fluctuate based upon ratings, although obviously the networks can make more or less from sponsors based on ratings, but the NBA cut is frozen, right?. NBA does get more money for more playoff games, though, hence why they were under projections last summer, due to GSW routing everyone....or at least one of the reasons they gave.

 

Legit question. I have consistently said it is an extreme exception for a player to break out significantly after his fourth season and after two years you can pretty much define his upside.

Here's a few of those exceptions off the top of my head:

1. Steve Nash - he was past his fourth season when he broke out big in Dallas.

2. Chauncey Billups - was a vagabond journeyman about to be out of the league when he got to Detroit.

3. Detlef Schrempf - when he finally made the All-Star team he was in his thirties and it was unprecedented for a player his age to be a first time All-Star.

So I acknowledge it's rare to break out later. However I don't think Rubio is going to break out. I doubt Rubio ever become a plus shooter. I think he can become a decent catch-and-shoot player like Jason Kidd became. But I simply don't believe Rubio will ever become any kind of stop-and-pop threat.

I simply don't believe Rubio has to become that to be a great player. I believe Rubio is already a great player that would thrive with the ball in his hands in a pnr system with great catch-and-shoot shooters around him. (I thought he was going to get that opportunity in Utah. But Snyder went a different way with the offensive system.)

The way I look at a point guard - there's three main pieces that I look at.....shooting, playmaking, and defense. When I'm scouting the college kids and prospects in other leagues this is what I look at. If a point guard or otherwise a guy that's making the plays can do two out of three of these things at a high level then I feel they can be an impact rotation player at the NBA level.

For instance Damian Lillard. Before Lillard lit up draft camp with his play, I was already on to him. I knew he was a great shooter and passer/playmaker. He's a piss poor defender. But he's still a superstar in the NBA because he's an excellent shooter and playmaker.

Same thing with Steve Nash.

Same thing with Jason Kidd. Screech! But Kidd couldn't shoot early in his career and never did learn how to pull up shoot efficiently. Nope! But......Kidd was an outstanding playmaker/passer that could get wherever he wanted on the basketball court without turning it over, and he could deliver the ball through tiny windows to wide open shooters/finishers and Kidd was nails on the defensive end. He almost won a couple championships playing that way on teams inferior to his Finals opponent.
Rubio is Jason Kidd, great passer/creator, and great point defender. The difference has been the teams around Rubio and now the system he's playing in in UTAH. I'm not making excuses for his poor shooting. Never will. And I don't think he'll ever be a great shooter. I do believe, however, that if a coach hands him the keys to a pick-and-roll system with a great big man finisher (Gobert) and three great catch-and-shoot shooters that he will thrive....without breaking out......because he has thrived in that environment his whole basketball life. He's a terrific defender at the top. And he's a terrific playmaker/distributor. And if.......if Utah is going to get into the top 4 in the West it will be when Snyder figures out what I just wrote and runs Rubio out there with the ball and three shooters. (There's plenty of possessions for both Rubio and Mitchell to do their thing just like there's plenty of possessions for Paul and Harden to do their thing.)

I'm using my own homemade metric. It involves number of penetrations into the paint, number of turnovers in the paint, number of passes in the paint that produce an assist or a missed open look, number of made baskets in the paint, and number of fouls drawn in the paint that yield free throws. You are an analyst. You can do the math from there. When you consider paint penetration possessions and all the results of those possessions, you will find that both Paul and Rubio are more efficient paint possession producers than Harden. I probably misstated my point earlier. I should have used the term paint posession producer instead of drawing free throws.

However I have studied that data extensively. And although Harden has gargantuan paint production, at least up until this season, his paint possession efficiency has been watered down too much by his turnovers.

This is part of the reason why I know Rubio's shooting doesn't hurt him. Because when he is on the ball doing the job of creating shots for others, he's hardly ever shooting but he's still getting the ball to open shooters at an incredibly efficient rate. Let him run pnr and follow the play through. He's too good with the basketball. Doesn't matter if they fade off. He'll compress the space and STILL deliver the ball to an open shooter OR he'll pile up foul count against the opponent until they're in the bonus early and then the whole team is trotting to the FT line.

The only time Rubio's shooting hurts him and the team is when they ask him to shoot instead of asking him to make plays. What coaches keep wanting him to do is the equivalent of wanting Harden to be your defensive stopper against the opponent point of attack. That's not Hardens game. He's never gonna be that. You hide Hardens lack of defensive skill and you have him do what he's best at. It's no different with Rubio. Give him the ball, give him shooters, let him go and watch him kill teams with his creative abilities and defense. Don't ask him to shoot. We didn't ask Dennis Rodman to shoot.

We could argue this. In today's NBA ...... I think Tucker is better. However I understand why you feel this way.


As always, with much respect @durvasa. You're one of the best posters in this forum. I respect your opinions and I love your charts and analysis when you bring it. Keep up the good work.

 

The television deal is why the large jump happened, yes. That money raised the baseline on what the salary cap can be, but the national TV money is not the only element of revenue sharing. The salary cap represents ~50% of all basketball related revenue of the league, so when that revenue goes up the forecast goes up. If it goes down, the forecasts go down. The playoffs, like you said, are also part of that.

 

Your first statement sucks dude. You have no clue.

As far as Nene, have you watched Nene this season? Did you forget what he's looked like this year?

 

I'll say it again. Harden was never going to win a championship by playing the way he was playing. He needed a playmaker that was a better passer and more efficient playmaker than him to win a championship. If we can get a little bit better in the paint defensively we've got a great shot at a championship. But it was not possible until Harden gave up the ball to a superior playmaker.

 

Rubio is not a superior playmaker.

Why are you acting as if chris pauls success with harden proves your belief that rubio wouldve been successful with harden?

Rubio can’t shoot very well

 

The fact that the Rockets are better after adding one the best players of all time proves that holic was right about Ricky Rubio.

 

"...Harden's step back which pushes the limit of what a travel is."

It's begun. lol

 

JFC, we are still talking about Rubio.