2022-23 NBA Season

[raw]

So obviously, the Suns have to be championship favorites. I still think Boston/Milwaukee have a shot to win it all if either comes out of the East, but the Suns have gone to West finals game 7 or NBA finals the last 2 years.

 

But the interesting team to me is Brooklyn. Am I crazy or do they still have a pretty decent team? They are 5th in the East and it'll be interesting to see if they can hold on to a playoff spot. I'd imagine they'll at least get into the play-in. But this isn't a terrible squad

 

G- Dinwiddie (17.7 ppg, 40.5% 3pt), Ben Simmons (he rebounds and passes and stuff)

G- Cam Thomas (best player in NBA history the last week, 42.7% 3pt for season), Seth Curry (46% 3pt)

F- Mikal Bridges (17.2 ppg, 38.7% 3pt), Joe Harris (40.6% 3pt), Cam Johnson (14 ppg, 45.5% 3pt)

F- Finney-Smith (9 ppg, 35.5% 3pt), Royce O'Neal (9, 4, 4, 40% 3pt), Jae Crowder (imagine he's traded again?, 9 ppg, 35% 3pt)

C- Nic Claxton (13ppg, 9 rebs)

This reads more to me like a list of players who can maybe get them some more first round picks to stockpile now that, for example, all the West teams have a new team to try and chase down.

 

Yeah, I'm an NBA idiot but it reads like a list of guys who are 3rd/4th options on a championship caliber team. A fairly deep list of those guys, but still, the types that everyone gets excited about only at the trade deadline because teams are looking to patch a hole rather than build a title contender.

 

Well yeah, I wasn't saying they'd win a play-in game or a playoff series, but if I was a Nets fan* (assuming the bleach drinking didn't take) I'd be somewhat interested in watching this team if they stay together thru the year.

 

 

 

*caveat is if I was a Nets fan I wouldn't have existed 4 years ago, but you get the point.

[SouthSideRyan]

jordan better peak, lebron more impressive career. same as peyton/brady

 

I get what you are saying from a longevity perspective, but Manning/Brady probably isn't the best comparison. Jordan still has more titles than LeBron....when I think of Manning I think of a guy who was probably the best QB in the league in many of the years that he played but never the unquestioned best QB (mostly bc of Brady). And then the next thing I think about is how the only Super Bowls he ever won were against Rex Grossman and in the final year of his career with a defense that almost literally carried him and what was left of his noodle arm to a championship.

 

The thing that makes the GOAT comparison difficult is 1) they played in much different eras and 2) they were different types of players, similar in some ways but you can't do an apples-to-apples statistical comparison. I absolutely think that LeBron's longevity should be a factor in his GOAT case, but not THE factor. Jordan had a long sustained peak that lasted as long as many careers, however Jordan didn't have the option of joining the NBA out of high school, or after his freshman year, or after his sophomore year. Not to say Jordan was ready for the NBA out of high school like LeBron was, but those are 3 years LeBron had to accumulate stats that Jordan didn't have as an option. Also he literally retired to try to play another sport in the middle of his prime which is still bizarre to me. Give him those 4.5 seasons and he still has more points than LeBron and probably 4 more championships than him instead of 2 more.

 

Daryl Dawkins went pro out of high school 9 years before Jordan was drafted. Don't blame Lebron for putting more miles on his body at a younger age. Why are we giving Jordan 4 more championships exactly?

[UMFan83]

 

Daryl Dawkins went pro out of high school 9 years before Jordan was drafted.

 

Sure and Moses Malone and a few others did too:

 

In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court decision Haywood v. National Basketball Association ruled against the NBA's requirement that a player must wait four years after high school graduation (which in most cases was spent playing in college) before turning professional. This ruling allowed players to enter the NBA draft without waiting four years, provided they could give evidence of hardship to the NBA office. The NBA's rival, the ABA, had already instituted a hardship exemption in 1969.

 

Moses Malone was the first to play professionally directly out of high school in 1974, though with an ABA team before the merger of that association with the NBA. Two high school players, Darryl Dawkins and Bill Willoughby, applied for hardship and were declared eligible for the 1975 draft. They had applied and gave evidence of financial hardship to the league, which granted them the right to start earning a living by starting their professional careers earlier

 

I suppose Jordan could have applied for hardship or whatever the requirement was but it was simply not common as 99.9% of players went to college for at least 2-3 years before going pro until KG kicked off the trend in 1995. I'm not using it as a knock against LeBron just pointing out that the trend of going from HS to pro allowed him 3 additional years in the NBA to accumulate stats.

 

Why are we giving Jordan 4 more championships exactly?

 

I'm not giving Jordan 4 more championships. He currently has 2 more championships than LeBron. If the Bulls win in 94 and 95 (or heck 99 if they kept it together), he could have 2 additional championships, thus having 4 more than LeBron. You can argue that Jordan's sabbatical allowed him to take a break from the rigors of basketball after winning 3 straight titles, which helped him in the next 3 peat. Maybe they don't win in 96, 97, 98 if he plays in 94 and 95 who knows. Maybe there was just no way the Bulls win in 99 after playing on fumes in 1998. My point wasn't to award hypothetical championships because I said so, just pointing out that Jordan's resume looks even better if he has the additional 4.5 years of games.

[Old Style]

Maybe Jordan didn't play as long because he ran out of things to accomplish. He won championships all of his last 6 full seasons with the Bulls. Plus he never seemed concerned with individual goals. There are plenty of stories out there about how after his Wizards career was over he'd still work the horsefeathers out of current players on the practice court to show them he could still dominate. LeBron hasn't won a string of titles in a row and seems to care about individual accomplishments a lot more so maybe that's why he stuck around longer.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

[JudasIscariotTheBird]

So obviously, the Suns have to be championship favorites.

If you really believe that, check out some of the lines. Via Fanduel:

Boston +280

Milwaukee +400

Phoenix +460

Denver +700

 

Other books have the Bucks and Suns essentially switched, but neither are especially close to Boston.

[soccer10k]

So obviously, the Suns have to be championship favorites. I still think Boston/Milwaukee have a shot to win it all if either comes out of the East, but the Suns have gone to West finals game 7 or NBA finals the last 2 years.

 

Minor nitpick but they lost in the West semis last year. Warriors beat the Mavs in the West Finals.

 

Doesn’t change your overall point of course.

[SouthSideRyan]

 

I'm not giving Jordan 4 more championships. He currently has 2 more championships than LeBron. If the Bulls win in 94 and 95 (or heck 99 if they kept it together), he could have 2 additional championships, thus having 4 more than LeBron. You can argue that Jordan's sabbatical allowed him to take a break from the rigors of basketball after winning 3 straight titles, which helped him in the next 3 peat. Maybe they don't win in 96, 97, 98 if he plays in 94 and 95 who knows. Maybe there was just no way the Bulls win in 99 after playing on fumes in 1998. My point wasn't to award hypothetical championships because I said so, just pointing out that Jordan's resume looks even better if he has the additional 4.5 years of games.

 

Maybe they don't win in 95 like how they didn't win in 95 with Jordan. LBJ is an absolute freak in terms of production for the number of miles he has on him. Kobe was broken down at 35. Jordan saw a clear drop-off in his final Bulls season, and at the age Lebron is now was a volume scorer with the Wizards. An

[UMFan83]

 

I'm not giving Jordan 4 more championships. He currently has 2 more championships than LeBron. If the Bulls win in 94 and 95 (or heck 99 if they kept it together), he could have 2 additional championships, thus having 4 more than LeBron. You can argue that Jordan's sabbatical allowed him to take a break from the rigors of basketball after winning 3 straight titles, which helped him in the next 3 peat. Maybe they don't win in 96, 97, 98 if he plays in 94 and 95 who knows. Maybe there was just no way the Bulls win in 99 after playing on fumes in 1998. My point wasn't to award hypothetical championships because I said so, just pointing out that Jordan's resume looks even better if he has the additional 4.5 years of games.

 

Maybe they don't win in 95 like how they didn't win in 95 with Jordan. LBJ is an absolute freak in terms of production for the number of miles he has on him. Kobe was broken down at 35. Jordan saw a clear drop-off in his final Bulls season, and at the age Lebron is now was a volume scorer with the Wizards. An

 

I chalk 95 up to Bulls shifting to a post-Jordan era and Jordan clearly not being in full basketball shape that season. His numbers (particularly shooting percentage) were way down in that partial season and all went back up the next year. The 94 team was still the first 3 peat Bulls minus Jordan and plus Kukoc and Kerr, but after that year Horace, Pax, Cartwright all walked among other guys. Horace left in part because JR is a cheapass, but also stated that he thought there was a better chance to win in Orlando. Do they keep Horace if Jordan is still there and they've won 4 in a row? Then again, do they trade for Rodman if they still have Horace? We can play the hypothetical game all day long but the fact is that they won 3 championships, Jordan retired for the better part of 2 years (calling it 1.5 is very generous, he returned in mid-March), and then they immediately won 3 more starting his first full season back.

 

Jordan's numbers dropped off in 1998 but silly to pretend he wasn't still a top 3 player in the league that season, and the numbers back it up (for instance was slightly behind Malone for #1 in win shares, 3rd behind Robinson and Malone for WS/48, still had the highest usage rate in the NBA, 3rd in PER, won the scoring title, etc.) We'll never know if that was a permanent decline or whether Pippen missing half the season and being limited in the time he did play affected some of his efficiency numbers.

 

LeBron is a freak in terms of wear and tear and I said that it should absolutely be a consideration in the GOAT debate. But Jordan was pretty much an iron man himself when he wasn't off playing baseball, playing 912 of a possible 919 games in his career excluding the broken foot year (yes I know LeBron never had an injury that kept him out 60+ games, but that was literally Jordan's only injury in his career that caused him to miss more than a game or two a season). There's nothing to suggest that he wouldn't have kept that up if he didn't retire to play baseball or gained additional years by leaving UNC early for the draft.

 

I started off saying I don't both with the GOAT debate and here I am responding to the board's resident Bulls hater lol. But what I said before is true, I am fine if people want to say Jordan and LeBron are 1 and 1a, or LeBron and Jordan are 1 and 1a. As the years have gone on LeBron has won me over for a variety of reasons. I just don't think there's any way he will be able to convince me that he is the GOAT over Jordan, but again I'm biased.

[raw]

So obviously, the Suns have to be championship favorites. I still think Boston/Milwaukee have a shot to win it all if either comes out of the East, but the Suns have gone to West finals game 7 or NBA finals the last 2 years.

 

Minor nitpick but they lost in the West semis last year. Warriors beat the Mavs in the West Finals.

 

Doesn’t change your overall point of course.

 

Yeah, my bad. I knew they lost to the Mavs but I forgot it was semis not finals, even though I also knew GS won it all. SMH

[CubColtPacer]

As far as the Bulls winning 8 straight, Jordan himself has said multiple times that he doesn't think they would have. Considering that is so different from his usual mindset about everything, I have to think that reflects his true feelings. Here's one quote from 1998:

 

People say if I hadn't played baseball for a year and a half, we would be going for our eighth championship in a row. But I don't think so. After our three-peat, the atmosphere on the team wasn't the same.

 

https://www.espn.in/nba/story/_/id/29050123/michael-jordan-phil-jackson-jerry-krause-one-nba-player-stand-most

[soccer10k]

That was a pretty entertaining Dunk Contest.

[JudasIscariotTheBird]

I've never really considered myself a Nuggets fan, but the team is hard to not root for with Jokic playing beautiful ball. The best basketball player to come out of my high school is Reggie Jackson, and the Nuggets recently signed him to be the backup PG for Murray. I'm pretty pumped about the playoffs this year.

[We Got The Whole 9]

McClung can probably do that 540 blindfolded. He knew he had it.

 

Sent from my motorola one 5G UW using Tapatalk

[soccer10k]

Kings beat the Clippers 176-175 in 2 OT tonight. It's the second highest scoring NBA game ever behind Pistons-Nuggets in 1983 which finished 186-184.

[Tim]

Kings beat the Clippers 176-175 in 2 OT tonight. It's the second highest scoring NBA game ever behind Pistons-Nuggets in 1983 which finished 186-184.

It would have been more exciting if they had started each overtime with a runner on second base.

[soccer10k]

Well it only took 60 years but Wilt no longer has at least half of the 70+ point games in NBA history.

[We Got The Whole 9]

Wonder if Lillard set the record for total distance of shots from the basket in a game. He hit a handful from 5+ feet from behind the line.

 

Sent from my motorola one 5G UW using Tapatalk

[ChiCubsFan]

Kings beat the Clippers 176-175 in 2 OT tonight. It's the second highest scoring NBA game ever behind Pistons-Nuggets in 1983 which finished 186-184.

 

How the hell did that happen in the 80s??

[mul21]

Kings beat the Clippers 176-175 in 2 OT tonight. It's the second highest scoring NBA game ever behind Pistons-Nuggets in 1983 which finished 186-184.

 

How the hell did that happen in the 80s??

 

The early to mid 80s were an offensive feast in the NBA. That Nuggets team averaged 123 a game and I remember going to a Bulls game when Jordan was out with his broken ankle and there was some sort of giveaway if they got to 120 pts.

[champaignchris]

Kings beat the Clippers 176-175 in 2 OT tonight. It's the second highest scoring NBA game ever behind Pistons-Nuggets in 1983 which finished 186-184.

 

How the hell did that happen in the 80s??

 

The early to mid 80s were an offensive feast in the NBA. That Nuggets team averaged 123 a game and I remember going to a Bulls game when Jordan was out with his broken ankle and there was some sort of giveaway if they got to 120 pts.

 

It was the Bad Boy Pistons starting about 83-84 when Daley took over that brought in the era of low-scoring late-80s/90s basketball.

 

The League per game scoring average had stayed pretty set at 110 a game until 87 when the Pistons made their first Conference Championship game and then plunged to bottom out 91 a game by 1999.

[JudasIscariotTheBird]

I'm waiting for a plane and don't have much to do, and I noticed a guy was logged in a few moments ago that I'd never seen before. He only made 4 posts in the semi-recent past, so I just went and checked them out. Warning: amazing hot-takes forthcoming, and not from the guy I didn't recognize.

 

viewtopic.php?f=44&t=1820&p=241177#p241177

[Ding Dong Johnson]

Probably should be in the 2022 offseason thread

 

[cl smooth]

[soccer10k]

Draymond gonna Draymond. Classless as always.