..and I think the Suns, you know, the team everyone fears goes down to the Clips with no PG, while Westbrook shoots around 15% on 19 shots. Incredible.
Chris Paul is just a loser, he runs off his mouth like a baby in frustration in crunch time, wonder why he never won a title.
This Clipps-Suns game is great for us. Please give us 6 more of these. These two beating the hell out of each other for 7 games is good news for us, since I think the winner of this series will be in the WCF. It was back and forth through the entire 4th and a lot of the 3rd. Kawhi and KD guarded each other a lot in the 4th. Minutes played Kawhi-42 minutes KD-45 minutes CP3-39 minutes Book-43 minutes Those first three aren't going to hold up for a third series (whoever comes out the winner) if this series continues this way.
still Hope the Suns can win the series, but they look extremely poor like they haven't jelled as a team their offense the whole 2nd half looked like random guys doing iso plays while the rest of the team watched.
yeah, the clippers knew what they were doing (kawhi iso, every trip) and everyone knew how to play off it. there were stretches at the end were kd was totally uninvolved in the suns offense. that's on williams and paul. cp looks cooked. he's looked that way most of the year, but i thought he'd dig into the bag in the playoffs. he missed a couple pull up 12 footers that used to be automatic. leonard's basically unstoppable, but i agree with jsm that he can't make it through the playoffs playing that much in that role. he did it once, several years ago, and has played like 40% of his games since then.
i'm not shocked the suns gave up the first game, but i am annoyed. you can see where having to rely on the landales and wainwrights of the world vs. the clips getting to trot out wave after wave of highly paid, experienced players will hurt, though. this is again where i worry about constructing a super top heavy team. the clippers preyed on the weaker suns players, imo. let them load up on the big guns defensively. in our game, rui and reaves beat memphis when they loaded up on our big players. a few months ago, we'd have been asking vet mins to do that. and lost by 15.
IDK Abeer..D'Angelo is still getting paid like a superstar tho. I still like keeping that salary slot
sure. but more importantly, we now have rui, reaves, vando, beasley, etc. instead of okogie, landale, wainwright, etc. if you can afford three stars and still have competent players 4-8, then have three stars. but the 4-8 players matter, and they lost phx the game tonight, imo.
exactly the Nets had a lot of chemistry issues, but on paper they managed to have a good roster around KD, Kyrie and Harden. Phoenix gutted their roster to get KD.
yeah, i think people misconstrue my anti-three star stance--i'm saying you can't field a bunch of rotating vet mins around three stars. and our path to a three star team the past few years has required that because we had to rip the team down to the studs and start over. the suns just did that midseason, and even kd's brilliance couldn't save them in game 1. we'll see how it plays out, though. maybe i eat crow if/when booker and kd just outscore the clippers. didn't happen tonight.
oh I'm sure Beasley and Bamba are goners at this point if they can barely get into the rotation. Just hope we can at least get something in return instead of letting them expire just for money reasons.
yes. and i know i'm being greedy, but we have to manage the salary slots down the roster, too. if we just pay reaves and russell, but lose rui and one or both of the salary slots for bamba and beasley, we're back where we were, imo. i get wanting to upgrade on the latter two and thinking that your mle might yield you a better player, but you can't trade the tax mle for a real upgrade if you need it.
We have a long way to go in this run..not counting Malik out just yet. Mo IDK..missing a month hurt him. No way Rui getting away IMO.
