did people really question it? i thought it was largely between him and henderson, and the lowest anyone thought he should fall was 3. i also thought that by draft time, he was the consensus #2 pick. maybe i'm misremembering, though. i do remember that the primary concerns were off-court character stuff. anyway, he's definitely got a star trajectory going. he and lamelo are a pretty dynamic backcourt, but you're going to have to surround them with very strong defenders if that's going to be the core.
So does it appear Henderson is “not” all he was cracked up to be having been taken that high …. still coming off the bench …. or just not yet up to the play of the starters against NBA competition?
yeah, there was a period a few months before the draft where a couple wackos were trying to say they'd take him over wemby or something, but by the time the draft came, i think he had a bunch of folks suggesting that he might not be that great. he's super young and plays pg, though, so it can take a little longer. the easiest transition to the nba is for wings, imo. it's why i'm down on lewis, as i think at his age and position, he should be ahead of where he is right now. then again, there are lots of stories of guys improving dramatically after flaming out early. when i watched footage of henderson pre-draft, i didn't get the hype. he's not a morant/derrick rose type athlete, as the hype sort of suggested. i was imagining chris paul meets derrick rose or something, but he's sort of a combination of a poor man's version of both? again, though, he's like, 20.
I may have to take back some of the diss I been doin' on Trae: they went into MSG and caught, overtook and then kept a 10 point lead in the 2nd half to beat the Knicks, and they looked like a machine. Three very young teams are looking really good right now: ATL, HOU and OKC. Damn. The crowd at MSG was raucous and the Hawks were cool. Down by 7 at half, they blitzed the NYK 34-16 in the 3rd, played a basically even 4th for the win. ATL has won in both BOS and CLE so far this year. Not bad. And how many of their guys can you name off the top o' yer head? Four? "Lemme see...Trae...Capella's still there, right? one of the Bogdanovics...uhhh...Daniel Dyson excuse me Dyson Daniels...some guy named Jalen?...De'Andre Hunter! Dude can score off the bench." Okay, so 4 1/2... --------------------------- Watched the insane GSW@HOU game. Kuminga hits a FT with 3:03 left in the game to put GSW up 90-84. 17 secs later Jabari Smith misses a 3. Looking good for GSW. Draymond misses a shot and they get the rebound, but turn it over on a clock violation. Jalen Green attempts a 3 with 2:06 left but Draymond blocks it. GSW still up 6 with 2 mins left. GSW gets it: another shot clock violation. With 1:22 left Sengun misses a shot, but HOU gets the offensive board and Van Vleet hits a 3 to cut the lead to 3. The defense of both teams is frantic, intense. Both teams have players on the NBA All-Hated team: Dillon Brooks and Draymond Green. One of those guys has a bunch of rings though, while the other? Hope to never see him get one. Out of a TO, Draymond's pass is intercepted. 30 secs left: GSW 90, HOU 87. From 3:03 to 27 secs left, the only points made by either team was Van Vleet's 3. This is when Sengun goes hard to the rack with Looney draped on him, Sengun uses his body perfectly, to make a contested layup. 90-89 GSW. 27 secs left in the game. The Houston crowd is goin' loco. Okay: so 27 left, GSW inbounds the ball and gets it to Curry, the wily vet, up 1. It would seem like you let it get down to 7 or 6 before you take a shot. A two made and HOU has to hit a 3 to force OT. A 3 and you ice it. Steph decides to ice it, but he shoots WAY too soon: with 11 on the clock. He misses it. Payton 2.0 gets the offensive board, the Rockets swarm the backcourt, Payton Jr doesn't quite handle it cleanly, shovels it over to Kuminga, but Jalen Green throws his body on it and tries to call a TO with Kuminga trying to pry the ball away. A whistle with 3.1 left. Maybe the refs call jump ball here: but noooo. I expected a TO, maybe jump ball. But one ref - didn't get the name - called a FOUL on Kuminga. HOU gets 2 FTs. Green hits them both. GSW timeout, HOU up 1, 91-90 ,after being down 90-84 with 3 mins left. GSW hasn't scored a point the last 3 mins. GSW barely beats the 5 sec clock to get it in, Curry hits Podziemski for a 3, but Jabari Smith blocks it: game over. It wasn't a good look at all. I listened to Kerr's postgame. Once again, livid, totally pissed a foul was called in that situation. I also think it's a bad call. Jack Black would've loved this game because it was a combo of tenacious D and the refs swallowing their whistles. GSW only shot 9 FTs the entire game, making four. Turned out they really needed some of those 5 points they left at the line. Laker fans know the feeling. HOU only shot 10 FTs all game, making 9. It was pretty insane. A really intense game to watch if you're an NBA fan. Too bad it was marred by a lousy-azz call that decided it.
i watched a good chunk of that one, and the defense was definitely solid by both teams, though i must say that there were a ton of unforced offensive errors by both teams. maybe that's fatigue from the defensive intensity on both ends? but it was sloppy, and not "fouls making it sloppy", just dudes throwin' the ball to the other team like lebron. gs must have had 5 or 6 shot clock violations. the thing that frustrated me about the game as a laker fan was that gs manages to have the 4th best defense in the whole league whilst playing hield, curry, podz, some guy named lindy, etc. don't tell me we have no choice but to be the 28th best defense simply due to personnel. the rockets would have put 120 on us and looked like an offensive machine.
abeer: >the thing that frustrated me about the game as a laker fan was that gs manages to have the 4th best defense in the whole league whilst playing hield, curry, podz, some guy named lindy, etc. don't tell me we have no choice but to be the 28th best defense simply due to personnel. the rockets would have put 120 on us and looked like an offensive machine.< This. Totally. Saw GSW come out at the beginning of the season with a really good defense. I get Dray/Looney/Payton Jr as defensive players, but all those other guys? Their staff got them to buy in on playing D and it worked. There's no reason why we can't be a top 10 defensive team. And yea, good D tends to force other teams to make "stupid" unforced errors: you're forced to be too mindful that your pass might get picked off, if I go baseline I'll get trapped by two guys so may as well dump it off now, best to shoot this contested 19 footer because they have the paint clogged, etc. It ruins the rhythm of the offensive team. I watched OKC the other day and it felt like every guy who got the ball for their opponent was double-teamed. Like the Bags against DAL in the Finals last year. Takes a lot of endurance, communication with teammates, and yea: junkyard dawg tenacity. It takes a certain kind of court intelligence. Maybe the best way to counter this kind of really good defense is for a Big to get the ball top of the post or even near the FT line: guys constantly cutting: all it takes is one guy to lose their man for a second: you hit 'em with a pass: buckets. Hit a guy for a pick-n-pop. One-on-one hero ball will not get it done against these teams that put up a wall wherever you're tryna go.
just still so mad we moved away from a defensive identity. we had it and just blew it up for whatever this is.
I wuz there! I done seen it: watched DAL@GSW tonight: they broke that record. Smashed it: 48 3s: 27 from GSW, who started hitting them, heavily, after falling down something like 38-19. Luka had 41 going into the 4th in a close game, but only hit two shots in the last 12 mins to finish with 45. Halfway through the 3rd you couldda made some money off me: I thought he was going for 60, 50 at the least. He missed a ton of shots in the 4th. I got the feeling he was feeling he couldn't miss, but maybe his conditioning wore on him late. (Was he any smaller when he went for 73 that one game, though?) GSW breaks their team record for made 3s, loses. A lot of it was their ex-teammate Klay: 7 for 11 from 3. Kyrie, Steph, Lindy Waters III...all shot well. Draymond was 5 for 9 from corner 3s. At one point he hit like 4 in a 5 minute span. Draymond! Still, they lost. DAL: 19 FTA from just Luka/Klay/Kyrie GSW: 11 FTAs entire team. DAL out-rebounded GSW 47-37. Their only true big Looney got boxed out pretty bigitme by Lively/Gafford/Luka. Luka had 11 boards in addition to 13 dimes. Man... I have to say: neither team was playing what I thought of as "bad" defense, either. Just...the shots were falling. It was insane. DAL was up 79-74 at the half. Good defense, better offense. Usually when you see this, it's one team, and only for a quarter or 16 minutes or so...here it was pretty much both teams, most of the game. I actually saw a lot of really good defense by both teams. Lots of very physical play in the paint. The shooting, though: insane. Freak game! DAL 143 GSW 133
Going 27-54 from 3 and losing the game is crazy . Reminds me G1 in 2023 when they hit 15 more 3s than us and still lost
maybe never happened before? 25+ threes on 50%+ shooting should be a 30 point win, tbh. as zoyd said, it's not like these are two bad defensive teams, either. when i saw gs had 18 made threes at the half and were down, i couldn't believe it.
Dec 19th, 2024, the NBA Cup crapola is over, and it was a weird night in the NBA: -The 5-20 Jazz roll into DET to play the much-improved Pistons. Utah ends the 1st Q up 48-19. WTF? DET outscores them by 16 in the 2nd, 2 in the 3r and 4 in the 4th but it wasn't nearly enough to wipeout that 1st Q blitz by the Jazz. -Favorite non-Laker game of the day, for me: Bulls go into BOS and beat 'em 117-109. BOS was up 4 going into the 4th, and the Bulls immediately went on a 17-4 run. BOS lost their cool: Mazzulla, Tatum, Jalen all got Ts. Ayo Dusunmu scored 9 quick points to put the Bulls up 99-90, and the Bags started to whine about everything and completely lost it. About 5 mins in Vucevic spelled Dusunmu (easy for me to say), and Zach Levine came in for Jalen Smith. Couple of FTs from Derrick White and a 3 from Jaylen Brown and the Bags were only down 3 with 6 mins left. Then the Bags really melted down: Mazzulla and Brown get T'd up, Zach hits both Ts to go back up 5, then Zach immediately hits a 32 foot 3: Bulls by 8. After Patrick Williams hits a 3 with 3 1/2 left, the Bulls are up 9 and then the refs had the gall to whistle Tatum for a foul. He said...some...word...Technical. Goshwhattashame. Zach Levine: 36 points with 6 3s made. With 2 mins left the damned C-Bags are down 9, but I've seen them come back and win this kind of game. But here the Bulls played tight enough D that Bags felt like they needed to jack 3s: Jaylen misses one. Zingis makes one. Zingis misses one. Pritchard misses one. Zingis misses one. Pritchard hits one, but it's with 5 secs left and the C-Bags...drumroll, please...LOSE. In Bahstuhn. -GSW has looked like the finally got their act together. MEM has been playing well. This one, in MEM, looked to be a good game. Which is what you'd think. Not sure who foresaw the Grizz breaking their team record for 3s with 27, while Steph went 0 for 7, including 0 for 6 from 3 in 24 mins. MEM: 144, GS:93 in the most lopsided game of the season so far. I watched the DAL/GSW game a week ago that broke the new record for most 3s by 2 teams in a game, and this one was a good example of live by the 3, die by the 3: GSW tried 36, hit 12; MEM tried 48 and hit 27. MEM was up 69-38 at halftime and you'd expect GSW to come out strong in the 3rd, but MEM annihilated them 40-21 in the 3rd. Game was frikkin' a thing of massive hideosity. A 51 point loss for GSW, and welcome to SF, Dennis! He started, played 22 mins: 5/2/5 on 2 for 12 shooting. -Hawks in San Antonio. Trae 23/16, but Wemby: 42/6/5 with 2 steals and 5 blocks. 7 for 15 from deep. Spurs win 133-126, and of the ATL starters - not that plus-minus tells us a helluva lot, but: Risacher was -4; Jalen Johnson -1; Capela -9; Trae -7, and 6'7" starting guard Dyson Daniels somehow managed a -34. WTF? He only played 28 mins. Sometimes ya's just outplayed... -Clips went into DAL and outscored then 68-46 in the 2nd half to beat DAL. You wonder WTF? Well, Luka and Kyrie were "injured" and didn't play. Clips hang around DAL until SAT like we do in SAC, to play again. I have a feeling the outcome will be different on SAT. -So far this year, the rule is: when KD plays, the Suns win. Pacers go into PHO. KD has 37/10/6...but IND wins. They're finally playing better, but I think the story was 60-59 IND at halftime, IND comes out and wins the 3rd Q 37-24. I love it when PHO loses. -Knicks in MIN. Could be a good game. Wasn't. NYK bombed 20 for 45 from 3, incl 5 for 5 from KAT, who went 32/20/6 coming back to his former city. With 7 mins left in the 3rd, Knicks were up 84-59. Did you expect that? I didn't. How did Julius do? Not bad: 24/5/3 with 5 TOs. Ant had an off game. Stuff happens. -DEN @ POR: Blazers up 104-87 to start the 4th. DEN won the 4th 37-22. Not quite enough, turns out. You're up 17 going into the final 12 and you think you have it? Not so fast: DEN goes on a 16-2 run to open the 4th. Jokic hit a shot with 16.8 left to tie it. Blazer crowd-sound is like a college game. Anfernee Simons makes a driving layup at the buzzer to win by 2. Did not see that one comin' either. Simons started at the top of the key, with Russ on him. I wanna say things were going right for Anfernee there. Russ didn't defend well, and DEN lost. Thought it would be a crap game, was, then DEN made a huge run in the 4th, turned it into a thriller. POR 126; DEN 124. Hey, another surprise. Most nights of a full slate of games contain one or maybe two mildly surprising games. Today was an anomaly.
Man, Wemby is something else. I knew he was special but DAMN. If relatively healthy, he'll break all kind of records...
Agreed on all fronts. When the 3-pointer was a new thing, no one ever even thought of a guy over 6'9" shooting it, much less making them. Then Dirk started hitting them in a major way. Now? A 7'5" guy steps into them and makes 7 of 10 in a game? "Now I've seen everything!"
MIA @ ORL today: MIA up 22 to start the 4th; ORL outscores them 37-8 in win...after Mo Wagner's knee buckled on a non-contact play in the 1st Q and he had to be helped off. No Banchero, no Franz, and no Mo and they still came back from 22 down to start the 4th. To win by 7. Their guys keep telling reporters, it's "next man up" when they're asked about injuries to key guys. So far they've been incredibly resilient. You wonder how long they can sustain this. KCP had 24, and Cole Anthony came off the bench for 35. Suggs didn't play: sprained ankle. Situation in ORL: ORL was 16-8 when they lost in PHI on Dec 6. Franz scored 30 pts and after the game the team announced he'd torn an oblique, which is a notoriously nagging injury that takes time to recover from. Paolo Banchero suffered the same thing, in the 4th Q of the 5th game of the season, a close loss to CHI. Two days before that, Paolo had gone 50/13/9 in a win over IND. Freak injuries. Now the other Wagner brother looks to have sustained a serious injury. You wonder if Cole Anthony and Jalen Suggs can supply enough offense after all this. After Franz went out injured, they won the next game, against PHO. Then they lost to MIL, NYK, and OKC in close games, before holding MIA to 8 in the 4th to win after Mo went out. I don't see how they can salvage this. They're 18-12 now, but if Mo's injury is as bad as it looks, they're gonna sink. Their next 3 games are BOS, MIA, NYK. My gawd what bad luck for them. Gotta hand it to their GM and coaches: they can assemble and coach young talent.
Quick observation about the Cavs: after the NBA Cup was over, MIL went into CLE and the Bucks didn't look like they could play with those guys. So much for the Cup, I say. Yea, Dame was out but MIL really didn't look like they stood a chance in that game. CLE was up 81-56 after Garland hit a 3 with about 7 1/2 left in the 3rd. Game was garbage after that. CLE beat 'em by 23 and I watched it: they are literally the best team in the NBA right now. They beat Embiid-less 76ers today by 27 and are now 25-4. Utah goes into their arena MON, then they hit the road for DEN, GSW, Lakers on NYE, and then DAL. I hope we compete with them. The only thing stopping them is injuries to Mobley, or Darius, or Spiderman. Or: ATL, who beat 'em back-to-back Nov 27th and 29th. Hell yea: Imma say it: they are better than BOS in the East this year. Can they do it in the playoffs? We'll see. Gotta stay healthy. They look like a machine this year.
