NBA Season is Returning This Year!!!!!!!
- Thread starter DAHITMAN
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It’s gonna depend on Greek Freak. They can sign who they want but ultimately how far they go depends on him.
Man that dude lying but shit that’s a genius excuse lol.
So did he just wake up one day and realize that guy supported Trump lol?
You can name 9 better 3’s then Middleton? Or 9 better centers than Lopez?
Who else got at least 4 players in the top 10 at each position though?
Their nice for sure just not the bonafide top roster as Perkins said
Idk maybe he started getting vocal about it around the players.
All these superstars, GMs, and coaches running to the East. Nobody wants to be in that shadow bruh. Tried to tell cats on this board for a decade.
KD, Kyrie, and Harden need to build a superteam to dethrone the Lakers and save Jordan and Kobe's legacies from LeBron. None of them have Black families they are raising, so they could actually work as heroes and saviors next season in the NBA.
Yep like i said I've never seen a case where a dude is by far the best player and biggest reason his team won't win shit
Yo real talk if I was Ainge I would try to get Harden for Kemba, Hayward & bunch of picks.
Harden, Tatum with Brown, Smart & that core of young players will really be a contender in the East.
As a Rockets fan I want no parts of that cac Hayward so maybe they trade him but I'll take Kemba with a bunch of 1st round picks.
When and why did Jrue Holiday become this wanted?
Ive never seen him change a team.
Ive never seen him change a team.
He’s really underrated. His a efficient scorer, playmaker and defender.
Celtics would screw themselves adding that type of player to that team. Taking the ball out of Tatums hands is a no go.
Actually sitting here thinking about it I can’t lol
He might be all those things, but when did he ever take a team to another level? Whether its a good or a bad team, ive never seen him do it.
Im just saying, for Boston to wanna replace Walker for him...
Kemba, while he’s improved his defense is a liability in half court sets defensively
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Tatum can play off the ball, it will have to take adjustments for Harden no doubt but don't discredit that he's a good facilitator. He's averaged around 8-9 assists on the regular.
Boston ain't winning a chip with that current roster around Tatum, adding another star like Harden makes them a contender in the East.
Most of Hardens assists came on early read drive and dishes though. His assist numbers are misleading
Says a lot about Kemba's knees. He's put a lot of strain on his body being undersized and playing as hard as he has for so long. Reminds of how A.I broke down later in his career
I hate that Bill Simmons argument and its not accurate, assists are assists. As someone who's watched Harden play on the regular dude has very good pg instincts, he finds the open man even in regular sets. Thats why D'antoni made him pg when everybody thought that was crazy to do.
Bill Simmons?! Hate that clown too but I’ve watched him play a lot. Rarely is he actually facilitating the offense. D’Antoni putting him at PG was a great move because it changes defensive schemes drastically. And yes assists are assists
Harden was basically the back up pg in OKC behind Westbrook who could score... he just turned out to be an all world scorer with the Rockets. I just think your under selling him as a facilitator. He ran the offense in Houston and put cats in great positions to score so how is that not facilitating? Clint Capela got paid because of Harden and he resurrected a lot of cats who were one foot out the league (Green & McLemore most recently.
But back to Boston, I would take that gamble for Harden. Harden playing with Kyrie will not work.
I tried too and I couldn't honestly lol. Now at 2 guard you can probably name 15-20 for sure if not more.
I’ll give you that he did help resurrect a few guys careers. Lots of their shots were wide open because of Hardens ability to score at will which shrank and shifted defenses once he crossed half court with the ball.
I agree that him and Kyrie won’t work. He would be better off in Boston than Brooklyn I think but do you think his play style would hinder the development of Tatum and Brown?
I'm wit it. I hope it doesn't involve Bol but I feel like it will
Hes been on bad teams for so long most of us rarely see him play on primetime. My only issue is Bledsoe and hill are also good defensive guards so I don't know if jrus is that missing piece.
People act like Bledsoe is a bum he's a tough physical guard.
And hill is a decent guard off the bench. If I were the bucks I'd go all in on Chris Paul.
Bucks need a playmaker because stuffing the ball to giannis isn't it in the playoffs.
Middleton is too slow to create his own shot.
Don’t Wanna Be Here |
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The next two weeks will be frenetic but also refreshingly familiar (and presumably safe) throughout the N.B.A. |
The league’s Transaction Game, as we like to call it, has resumed with a flourish and is one of the few aspects of the forthcoming season that should not be endangered by coronavirus interruptions. |
The 2020 draft, delayed since June, is Wednesday night. Free agency opens Friday at 6 p.m., Eastern time. A freeze on transactions in effect since March 13 was lifted Monday and quickly served up blockbuster trades that have Chris Paul on his way to Phoenix and Jrue Holiday poised to head to Milwaukee to team with Giannis Antetokounmpo. |
Forecasting what happens in the draft has rarely been more difficult, with no clear-cut franchise players to choose from, but there is no shortage of around-the-league buzz to discuss when we tap into the grapevine: |
The Charlotte Hornets and the Knicks are the only teams with verifiable trade interest in Houston’s Russell Westbrook. |
It must be emphasized, though, that both teams have conditional rather than aggressive interest. |
The Knicks, for starters, have weighed a trade that absorbs the three seasons and $133 million left on Westbrook’s contract, as I reported last week, but I’m told there are multiple voices in the organization that have reservations about such a move. |
In the Hornets’ case, there is a belief in some corners of the league that their appetite for a Westbrook trade increases significantly if Charlotte does not land LaMelo Ball with the No. 3 overall pick in Wednesday’s draft. Michael Jordan, Charlotte’s owner, is a known Westbrook admirer. Should the playmaking Ball be drafted before the Hornets’ turn at No. 3, according to the theory, there is a much stronger case to be made for trading for Westbrook in spite of the cost and attendant risk. |
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Some league insiders believe that the Hornets, at Jordan’s behest, want Ball at No. 3 should Minnesota and Golden State keep the top two picks to select Anthony Edwards and James Wiseman. Others see Charlotte springing a surprise at No. 3 and selecting the fast-rising Onyeka Okongwu. |
Houston has problems — plural. |
The Election Day edition of the newsletter was headlined by the challenges the Rockets face to keep James Harden happy after their coach, Mike D’Antoni, and longtime general manager, Daryl Morey, abruptly walked away from the franchise in the wake of a second-round hammering by the Los Angeles Lakers in the playoffs. |
Just two weeks later, Harden is forcefully angling for a trade — to the Nets. |
The Rockets’ position on Harden, for the record, hasn’t changed: They don’t want to trade him. Unappetizing as it sounds, Houston wants to play the long game and see if it can rebuild its relationship with Harden before conceding that trading him is the only alternative, even after Rafael Stone, the new general manager, made a forward-looking move in his first major trade by agreeing to send Robert Covington to Portland for Trevor Ariza and two future first-round picks. |
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Houston reclaimed a modicum of leverage on the Harden front late Monday when New Orleans struck a deal to trade Holiday to Milwaukee, nixing the possibility of the very interested Nets trading for Holiday. Yet that alone isn’t likely to lead to a change of strategy. The Rockets have Harden under contract for at least two more seasons and are not obliged to just send him where he wants. |
Houston also surely understands that, if Harden is traded first, it would face even more hurdles trying to move the unhappy Westbrook when the whole league knows Westbrook wants out. |
The Nets have a lot to think about here, too. |
As much as the Nets covet a third star to join Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving — and a durable one given Durant and, particularly, Irving’s injury histories — there is much logic working against the idea of adding Harden to the mix. |
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Durant has apparently thrown his support behind a reunion with Harden, and it must hearten (and intrigue) Nets officials to hear that Harden wants to join the project. It can’t hurt that D’Antoni is now an assistant coach for the Nets. Just don’t forget that the ball-dominant duo of Durant and Irving has yet to play one second together in a real N.B.A. game. How sure can the Nets be that Harden, after years of dominating the ball like no other, would make the needed accommodations to play in a three-star alignment when we can’t even be sure how the first two cornerstones will mesh? |
The Rockets will likewise be looking for the sort of haul of future first-round draft picks and players that New Orleans just scored in the Holiday trade if they do decide to part with Harden. The Nets don’t appear to be in the best position to supply that. |
The early signals emanating from Philadelphia suggest that Morey, the 76ers’ new president of basketball operations, wants to give Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons every last chance to click before trading one of them. Houston, just to name one non-Nets option, could decide to wait to see if the Sixers’ stance changes. As wary as the Rockets must be about doing a deal of that magnitude with Morey, we’ve seen that front offices that know each other well often find it easier to collaborate on the biggest of trades. |
The Knicks, at least so far, are taking a measured approach to the idea of trading for Westbrook. No, really. |
It’s a serious struggle to imagine where Houston would be able to dispatch Westbrook if both the Hornets and the Knicks pass. And the Knicks’ posture on Westbrook is best described as “weighing, but resisting.” |
After surrendering so much draft capital to acquire Westbrook, Houston hopes to come away with at least one future first-round pick if it trades him. The Knicks could furnish a projected late first-rounder they acquired from Dallas in the Kristaps Porzingis trade, but that is the most attractive asset they appear willing to include in a Westbrook deal. The best offer Houston can reasonably expect from the Knicks features players not in the team’s long-term plans, such as Julius Randle and the disappointing Dennis Smith Jr., and even then it’s no lock that the Knicks would agree to take on the $133 million left on Westbrook’s contract over the next three seasons. |
Although it is widely presumed that Tom Thibodeau, the Knicks’ new coach, would be in favor of a Westbrook trade — given Thibodeau’s longstanding win-now reputation — Leon Rose is the one responsible for plotting the team’s course as the new president of basketball operations. Rose has had nearly nine months to map out his first major roster move. Does he really want to christen the Rose era by taking a chance on Westbrook when the point guard is no longer regarded as an automatic choice among the game’s top 20 players? If so, it would be an admission that the Knicks know they are unlikely to be deemed an attractive free-agent destination any time soon. |
Westbrook, 32, receives too much criticism for the current state of his game; let’s not gloss over the fact he averaged 27.2 points, 7.9 rebounds and 7.0 assists per game for the Rockets last season before a combination of injury and coronavirus issues hampered him during the N.B.A. restart at Walt Disney World. The risks with Westbrook, though, are undeniable. He has a worrisome injury history for a player who relies on his athleticism, holds debatable appeal as a free-agent draw for fellow stars and wouldn’t appear to be the ideal fit alongside RJ Barrett, one of the Knicks’ few keepers. |
Westbrook and Thibodeau are both relentlessly competitive, which seemingly makes them a match, but a measured approach here is the sensible one. Even the Knicks, famed for chasing the game’s biggest names at all costs over these past two decades of futility, seem to see that. |
The Rockets, amid all the focus on Harden and Westbrook, are fortifying their ranks with some imports from Australia. |
I reported last week that the Rockets are hiring Will Weaver of the Sydney Kings as an assistant to the newly hired Stephen Silas. Weaver was a finalist for Oklahoma City’s head coaching post that went to Mark Daigneault. |
Word is that the Rockets will also soon be adding one of Weaver’s players from the Kings. The rugged swingman Jae’Sean Tate, who played at Ohio State, is also expected to make the move from Sydney to Houston after free agency begins Friday. |
Why? When Murray proved he's top 15 probably.
He's always been on bad teams. The one legit team he had with the Pelicans was when they traded for Demarcus Cousins who eventually got hurt.
Very possible.
I couldn't recognize him during the playoffs.
Even after the long break.
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