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waltz

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  • 2 months later...

This year's playoffs are so good. Full of great little story lines.

- d rose coming back from injury

- all teams left in it have either never won or haven't won for a long time

- first year coaches with the best records

- Tristan Thompson and Jimmy Bada$$ playing max contract level after not looking capable in precious years

- JR Smith looking like he's found a home

- LeBron's return

- key player injuries forcing bench guys to step up

- Austin rivers making his dad proud

- deandre Jordan making free throws

- Dwight showing glimpses of Orlando for

- short white guy point guards stepping up (Reddick, Delavadova)

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm absolutely loving JR Smith and Shump soaring like eagles at the Cavs. I just find them both really entertaining to watch,

 

Lebron is a monster. Not to traipse out the good old GOAT debate but seriously... how dominant can someone be in their chosen sport?! Absolutely unplayable when he goes on a tear like he did in the 3rd (?) and took every possession.

 

Maybe i'm dreaming but I honestly think Harden looks capable of getting to that level. When he drives to the paint there isn't a single player out there who can stop him consistently. He plays the game with more style than Lebron and is more consistent with the step back J.

 

Totally different player but I find Steph Curry more and more dislikable. He seems to have adopted this aloof air of feigned disinterest. It rubs me up the wrong way. The mouth guard chewing thing really annoys me for some reason. He was undoubtedly GOASeason and is probably one of the GOAT pure shooters I've ever witnessed (taking out the 3pt specialists) though.

 

Man... these playoffs are everything

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It's weird that a LeBron-led team is so likeable. I was disappointed they beat the Bulls but on this form, and the depth on their bench, they look like they could take their first NBA title.

This season has been great. My favourite element of it has probably been either the Hawks doing well, the Clippers looking like proper title contenders even after the Sterling debacle, or Schumpert being on a winning team. One of those three.

Shout out to Mozgov by the way. I'm a fan.

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I'm loving the playoffs.  I still find it difficult to care about the East if I'm honest.  The Heat have been replaced by the Cavs and it's business as usual.

 

The West is terrific and it's amazing seeing teams that haven't been up there for a while back.  I want Golden State to win it all.  Steph has been unbelievable and I don't think Houston has what it takes to beat them over a series.  I think it will be 4-1 or 4-2.

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I'm loving the playoffs.  I still find it difficult to care about the East if I'm honest.  The Heat have been replaced by the Cavs and it's business as usual.

 

The West is terrific and it's amazing seeing teams that haven't been up there for a while back.  I want Golden State to win it all.  Steph has been unbelievable and I don't think Houston has what it takes to beat them over a series.  I think it will be 4-1 or 4-2.

Bizarrely, I prefer the Eastern conference, although everything about it says I shouldn't. No idea why.

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Shout out to Mozgov by the way. I'm a fan.

Him, TT and Delly have been great.

You're right, It is very strange rooting for a Lebron team.

I'm not so sure about the east being weak this year. The Bulls were up 2-1 and 17 pts against the cavs before they thibadeaud, the hawks would be in the West conf finals and a fully fit wizards team would have been in with a chance. Fuck, even the Celtics had some fight in them, and their average age is what? 7 and half?

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Yeah they had fight but it's the playoffs, if a team can't play hard and to the death in the playoffs they shouldn't be in basketball.

 

Yeah the Hawks and Cavs are top tier but that's what the East has been for years.  The Bulls too were on the verge maybe a little more time with DRose actually playing and they'd be better.

 

Look at the West though 5/6 of those teams could have got to the finals and could really take on the winner of the East to 6/7 games.  East has got much better than 5 years ago but the West has so much depth.

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Delly starts tonight!

I have to say, the way he's been talked about by the pundits is verging on disrespectful and probably pretty racist. He's consistently being referred to as a plucky weak player, lucky to be there. Shaq just said 'dellada-whatever-his-name-is' and Jalen rose calling him little Matty the other night in a pretty condescending way.

Speaking of, who won the white guy award this year? I must have missed it. What do they call it?... Player of limited ability or something?

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You can almost justify the actions. A game of tic tac toe is based on taking a turn each. In this case, you could get two gos in a row, which would throw you off.

 

Still... morons

 

I'm gonna be traveling the whole time the finals are on. Probably won't see a single game. :(  Pretty gutted to be missing my boi Delly breaking the splash bros' ankles with his 'hustle'.

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Both were flagrant 2s for me.

 

I can't understand the debate to be honest. Horford threw an elbow in an unsportsmanlike way. Very hard to tell if DOVA made an extra lunge at the end so he got the benefit of the doubt. 

 

Again, the snidey racism* came through in the aftermath punditry. 

 

*I use that word because i'm not sure what else to call it. It's not malicious or anything, it's a basketball clique thing. There's a definite 'this is a big black guy's game' vibe going on amongst the pundits at times.

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You seem vehemently anti-the-east. I don't know if I've ever once heard any pundit or analyst suggest the current east is relatively stronger than Jordan's era. The game is different in a lot of departments so the comparisons are pretty meaningless anyway. 

 

Those stats could also suggest that there were more fodder teams in both conferences in previous years. You could massage those stats to mean a lot of things.

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I'm not anti East.  It's just been a weak conference for close to a decade.  

 

I've read quite a lot recently about Lebron and what he's done where he's played, so many conference finals, 5 straight championship games.  I just think it's ignored how they got to those games, usually the first 2 rounds would be against teams that wouldn't have made the playoffs in the West or at least wouldn't have got out the first round.

 

Some guy has done even more numbers here.  

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/37lwdl/jordans_east_vs_lebrons_east_an_elo_ratings/

 

It's not damning and I'm not saying he's not great but you certainly make finals easier in that conference.  The average rating of the teams Tim Duncan has played to get to finals is much higher for example.  I just find it interesting to go back and look at all this stuff.

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I get what you're saying. I do think though, that the discussion around Lebron's status as one of the GOATs should be entirely separate to any stats. Watching the guy play it's clear how good he is regardless of how many above 500 teams with over 18 offensive rebounds per game with rookie coaches who won back to back NCAA championships with two freshman starters who each averaged a double double per game post all star break he's played against... it gets so boring all that slicing and dicing stat shit. That too wasn't as prevalent back in MJ's day and i'm sure you could make whatever case you want to make for who's better and who's worse.

 

The degradation of the eastern conference is an annoyingly self-perpetuating thing. The Bulls do as much as they need to do to make the playoffs, which means they don't push to be better than the likes of OKC, Clippers, etc... who they'd be dueling with in the West. That means the gulf between the rank rotten teams and the decent ones doesn't grow. The rank rotten teams in the West have to get much better their equivalents in the East to stand any chance of making the playoffs. Point is, the Bulls are bad because the Pistons are bad, the Rockets are good because the Pelicans are good (relatively speaking). The likes of the Raptors and the Wizards showing signs of emerging as decent teams is a good sign for the East and I hope it maintains.

 

It is clearly easier to make a finals in the East than the West but Lebron doing it with two different teams has to boost his credibility, even among the more hardened of stat-pointer-outers. Cavs sucked last year and they're in the finals this year, Heat were in the finals last year and sucked this year... the common factor being Lebron. I don't think you could make the case for a single other player in the NBA being able to do that, regardless of the difficulty of the passage.

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Yeah those are good points, I don't know how the East hasn't bounced back in honesty.  They get good draft picks but the teams that get them never seem able to build on them.

 

I'd say the major common factor is that the Cavs have gone all in to build the team this year because they have Lebron.  They wouldn't have traded for KLove or have JR if Lebron wasn't there and they were 100% sure they'd be challenging.

 

That could be used as another argument for Lebron again, teams that have him are so confident of competing that they can go all in.

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