2022-23 Team Developments: News / Trades / Free Agents / Rumors

This doesn't prove anything. If you have the two best of anything in basketball, you'll be successful. Think about it: the two best rebounders of all time? The best ball hawks getting steals? The best defenders of all time? The best mid range shooters of all time?

I think it's clear that there are many ways to win. Slick isn't wrong... GSW won by having the best shooters of all time, it's not something you necessarily need, we just beat them in 6.

 

Not sure what to say to this really. It's much more likely the Warriors shot at their season average of 38%, and if they did that tonight, they'd still lose.

 

some three point shooting is necessary to win, but it just depends on how you build your offense. we can win with below average distance shooting because we're so good converting in the paint. and we can pretty much turn bad shooters into meh shooters because they have all day to shoot (which paradoxically makes good shooters terrible here for some reason?).

anyway, lots of ways to win. it's about leveraging whatever advantages you have. gs does that with shooting because they have the shooters. the clippers do it with midrange isos because they have guys who are really good at that, league-wide numbers be damned.

i will say that the shooting teams tend to do better in the regular season and can struggle in the playoffs. gs last night reminded me a little of when houston flamed out in that game 7 a while back. nowhere near as bad, but similar in that when the crazy threes stopped dropping, everything fell apart. when divincenzo (finally) airballed that ill-advised stepback three, i thought the game was over. you could see it dawning on them that they can't just come down and fling stuff up expecting enough will drop.

 

Even steph 3-13 on 3pt.fgs alot of that tho goes to the D mainly shroeder

 

I’m sorry, but FOUR Championships in 10 years proves my point.
Did the Warriors have the two best rebounders of all time throughout this span? Did they have the two best defensive players of all time? Did they have the two best passers of all time?
Nope.
The had the two best SHOOTERS of all time and this was the strength and overwhelmingly most dominant factor of their enduring greatness.
To say that shooting from distance “over rated” or is not effective is just denying what took place in the NBA over the past decade.
Also, if it’s not a path to success, why has nearly every big man been turned into a shooter for spacing? Why has nearly every single NBA team significantly increased the amount of threes they take over the past decade?
I honestly don’t think you understand the modern game if you think the three point shot is “over rated.”
I prefer 90s style ball, as well as guys who master the mid range game over chucking, but for the most part, League wide, that’s not where the game is at today.

 

well said. the NBA basically revolves around the 3 these days. i f***ing hate it, but that's just what the league has become

 

3 point shooting is vital to a teams success because it helps open up space for players to score in other ways, such as post ups, penetration, etc. It provides balance. Even in 2020, 3 pt shooting was not our forte, but we still had Green, KCP, and Kuzma creating space for Lebron, AD, Dwight, Rondo, and JeVale. It seems Pelinka has went back and fourth with this, but now he realized how important it was, so he went and traded for some shooters, and now we have had the best record since the trade deadline. Perhaps not directly from the shooters, but the spacing helps open things ups for Lebron, AD, and Reaves. Just the Dlo for Westbrook swap at PG alone has done wonders, due to the gravity he creates. You have to have shooters. They don't necessarily have to be the best players on your team, but they need to be there.

 

ehhh yes and no. we won a ring as a meh-to-bad three point shooting team, and we're in the conference finals with another subpar three point shooting team.

obviously, you need guys who can hit it enough to keep defenses honest, but you don't have to work outside in like gs or gear your offense for threes only like lots of teams do. that's overbuying the analytics--i could go on a rant about causation here, but i'll spare you (short version--some of the numbers glorifying the three come from teams that were successful doing it; this doesn't mean everyone should do it).

anyway, as showtime said, just having russell and reaves as the guards instead of westbrook and beverley is enough. teams play us totally differently. and we're not running plays to get those guys threes, nor is it even one of our primary desired outcomes on offense. we want to get into the paint first, second, and third.

 

I really don't know what they were trying to do before. On opening night, they started WB (Horrible shooter, great penetrator), Bev (Good shooter, but not really a volume guy, single digit scorer, mostly known for his defense), Walker (up to that point was a mediocre shooter at best, good penetrator), James (mediocre shooter, great penetrator and passer), and Davis (inside player). They had mostly players who like to attack the paint, and they had only one real shooter to speak of in Bev, who shouldn't be relied upon to be your best shooter. Maybe they felt that since they have a shooting curse anyway, that they would just focus on defense and scoring in the paint? I don' know, but it was ugly, and it wasn't working. 3-pt shooting is a significant part of the game in today's NBA.

 

i think they couldn't bench russ and thought he'd play defense. in hindsight, giving beverley to ham was a mistake. he was bound to overuse/misuse him . both bev and russ are backups at this point, and can be used only sparingly as defensive and offensive sparkplugs if you want to be a winning team.

but our other option was...nunn? or none.

 

Yeah, so they had to make moves to get some real shooters in there, and they did. The roster was constructed poorly, but Pelinka rectified it.

 

Sorry FOJ, I think you misunderstood me. I didn’t say GSW had any of those things, I was saying if you have the two best players of all time at any skill in basketball you’re going to be incredibly successful. GSW had probably the two best shooters, but that doesn’t prove you need 3pt shooting to be successful.

Now I’m not trying to argue that 3pt shooting isn’t important, I’m trying to say you can win with being a poor or average shooting team. Miami and us are bad 3pt shooting teams while Denver and Boston/Philly are good shooting teams.

And another point, GSW’s success didn’t just stem from shooting. It came from the fact that they had incredible continuity, are a well coached and well oiled machine and also had a generational defender in Green who allowed them to play small and fast without sacrificing size and toughness.

 

Well, of course a Championship Squad has to have great chemistry/continuity, as well as a great coaching staff. I do agree that every Chip Team doesn’t need to be at the top of the heap when it comes to shooting, but like others have already pointed out, if you only have a team of guys who can take it to the hole ( our team before trades), all teams have to do is pack it in the paint to stop you. As we have witnessed since the roster overhaul, we now have proper spacing with DLo, both Reaves and Lonnie having bigger roles, and to a smaller extent, Hachi.

 

Lebron and WB are two of the best players of all times in terms of attacking the basket and being triple double threats. And we had AD on the team on top of that. That was our big 3 before the deadline and we had no shooters to surround them. So we had to trade the triple double king and top-knotch take it to the hole guy in order to aquire some shooters, and now we are doing much better. Granted both stars are past their prime, but it would of been the same situation in today's game.

 

Case in point, a Lebron/DWade duo worked in a different Era, but likely wouldn't win a chip today. Might sound a bit crazt, but I wouldn't feel comfortable with a LBJ/Jimmy Butler duo, for example. LBJ and Butler are great at what they do. Unless you trade AD and surround them with shooters. LbJ/Butler/AD big 3 with only a couple supplementary shooters. Only room for two non three point shooters playing heavy minutes these days imo. Shooting is crucial. It would be like the WB situation, only not as bad, but still not a success.

 

hmmm...good counterpoints showtime. though i think i'd be glad to go to war with lebron and jimmy. the issue with with lebron and russ was mostly that they both needed the ball, russ can't shoot to save his soul, and russ wouldn't defend or adjust to a different role.

wade and lebron had great shooting around them (bosh, miller, battier, allen, etc.), whereas our other top dog was a non-shooter. also, wade and lebron didn't win until wade took a step back as the lesser player. russ wouldn't do that. had russ done that and played defense, we'd been a MUCH better team.

i'm still with svtzr in terms of the general principle of playing to your strengths (see mike brown in sac this year, for a great example of adapting to your personnel). the argument that gs's strengths were superior is an interesting one, though.

but imagine you have both giannis and AD. you lack shooting, but...lol...good luck, opponents. and i think prime steph and klay shooting was like having AD/giannis in some ways.

 

I agree with both of you showtime and abeer. Oddly enough Westbrook is like a mini Lebron in that he play makes, rebounds and scores going at the rim. But there is only one ball and we just couldn’t get it to work.

I think there are various reasons for that, we’ve seen Lebron and Westbrook go on a tear together in the middle of the year when we were missing Reaves and AD. We saw Westbrook and AD mesh well together when Lebron was out. But we never had all 3 play together enough to figure it out. And unfortunately we didn’t have the spacing around them to even hope it could be successful.

Having said that, I still feel a 2 and a 3 that could shoot and defend, like a KCP and Jaden McDaniels would have probably had us as favourites. Heck even Pat Bev could of been one of those 3&D players at SG.

I also think it’s interesting that when we got healthy we went on a run. I think it’s a fair argument to say Beasley hasn’t been very important for us, DLO was quite injured in the regular season to end the year and so so in the playoffs and Vando has been helpful defensively but a negative offensively. So there are two take aways, one health was huge and two removing Westbrook that was redundant with LBJ allowed us to have better balance offensively.

 

It’s game over really isn’t it. Defensively I think that could be one of the best pairings of all time.

Yes teams would pack the paint and ask the team
to beat them from outside. But you’re going to have to double both of them and even mediocre shooters are going to have all the time in the world to hoist them up. And imagine the transition opportunities with Giannis and AD manning the paint. You swap out Lebron for Giannis right now and we are favourites for the next 5 years imo.