Optimism Discussion: The Laker's Sky Is Not Falling

that piece is fun, but this stood out to me from vogel:

you find the best shots for your personnel, not the best shot by league-wide averages at all costs (i.e., moreyball). if a good midrange shooter is wide open, he should take it and not muck up the offense to get a semi-contested three. better quality threes -> better percentages.

 

Blaming Morey for the current trash basketball is skewed a little. He has alot of the blame, but it's not all on him. The Warriors screwed the league up. Indirectly but they made the league a 3-point shooting game because they drafted the two greatest 3-point shooters in NBA history. Then, when they fell to the Cavs, they got arguably the 3rd greatest 3-point shooter of all time. Warriors became the outlier in all this and now that they are no longer what they were, the league is being dominated by size and those who can actually run a damn offense again.

 

morey was preaching this (and his teams were trying it) prior to GS's rise, tbh.

GS made a few idiots think that it was a winning formula--but those people totally ignored a) that they had two--and at times, three--of the best shooters in history (as you pointed out), and b) that they ran a ball and player movement offense--not isos and high pick and rolls only. this latter fact was lost on almost everyone. gs was fun to watch despite shooting a lot of threes, because the ball and the players moved. all houston teams were absolute nightmares to watch. same amount of three point shots, but it's how they came about that was so terrible.

anyway, we don't play that way, and i'm glad. in fact, most of the top teams don't play that way. moreyball failed, despite teams shooting lots of threes, imo.

 

Gotta hand it to him, though. That Rockets team ALMOST beat that Warriors team with prime KD, Steph, Klay, and Draymond. LeBron's Cavs couldn't even get close. As much as I dislike the Rockets franchise, they were really close to beating arguably the greatest team assembled. The recipe could work but not when you have chokers like Harden.

 

yeah, but see the points above. everyone acts like 7-44 from a bunch of guys who aren't great shooters just taking whichever three came first isn't something that one should expect here and there. but it is. trevor ariza isn't a great shooter. pj tucker was out of the league for years in part because he couldn't shoot. forcing them into taking a bunch of threes is going to create wild variance.

as for almost beating the warriors, they also almost lost to the thunder in round 1 last year and did lose to the kawhi-less spurs a few years back, for similar reasons, imo. moreyball is cute until you're the favorite. then the chance for stinkers becomes worrisome. it also forces you to build teams/rosters in ways that aren't conducive to winning against top competition. he and dantoni were a match made in heaven in this regard.

 

....oh hell yeah!

 

A C .567


K C .556

 

tyronn lue would have, like, forced the opposing coach (using his jedi mind tricks) to playing his worst combination, too. that's where the value is.

 

Not worried one bit. Montrezl scored 0 points and Danny Green had his 1 out of 10 great game. Still only lost by 1. We’ll rebound.

 

Proud of them, they could have gave up at the end, but kept fighting didn't give up. Literally had a 1 point lead! Tough loss but yes this was a moral victory. Knowing our team hates losing the next team we play will feel our wrath!

 

A bit encouraged that Caruso & Schroeder can start a run that closes a 12 (14?) point gap in the 4th against a good team. We got back in this game late in the 4th, and LBJ/Davis were not involved. I think that is a good sign for the supporting cast.

 

When you see how good this team looks most nights, it's easy to forget that we have a lot of new pieces coming together. Wes has always been a starter and is in a new role. Dennis wanted to start, but he's also trying to find the balance between playing his game and remembering that Lebron and AD need to eat first. The list goes on, but a lot of people here predicted that we'd hover around .500 for the first quarter of the season. Let's just remember that after a short layoff and a lot of new parts, this team is exceeding most expectations. We're doing just fine.

 

oh yeah, they're playing better than i expected. which should concern the league.

 

As long as Lebron is healthy we will win the championship bc he is better than everyone else and Kareem was the greatest player of all time. Very simple and obvious statements but I wanted to say them anyway.

 

We beat the C Bags