The Indy Talks To Himself (NBA) Thread.

The issue is basketballwise, down 1, taking a running fade from deep would be a choice after trying to penetrate and kick or get to the ft line. Everybody wants the highlight deep shot.
I see an offense standing around and watching with ne sense of urgency.
You see a ball going in the net. Again, why we won't agree. I'm fine with it so you should be as well.

 

The offense was standing around, sure, but I don't think more movement would have changed much there. Indiana switched the screen so he'd be driving into multiple defenders and then kicking to Vucevic who hasn't been good, and going at Myles Turner in that situation isn't a great choice considering who he is. Spare me the "you see a made basket" condescending horseshit, you can't even decide whether you're old-school or not sport to sport

 

Wtf is so wrong with saying if a player gets the ball with 8 seconds left, I expect better play and coaching. Not sure why you are getting so upset. You can't make a basketball argument for it unless you conveniently skip the previous 6 seconds.

 

To be clear I'm not saying there's no possible better shot they could have gotten from the beginning of that play, but there certainly is more to it than DeRozan and his career-high 0.8 3s per game just "wanting the deep shot". He's one of the absolute last people in the NBA to apply that label to

 

I’m not really trying to get involved but you’re talking about 2 vastly different things here

 

I think his PER is up to 26.96 now, per ESPN, top 5 in the NBA, and middle of the road for his career.

Isn’t WS/48 largely based on wins? They’re not winning very much right now, so that stat goes down, yeah? Same with BPM?

And I’m honestly not sure which part of my statement you’re disproving by comparing random numbers from this year to his numbers from his first MVP season.

Your initial reply was that his raw numbers are up because his minutes are up. I’ve since shown you that his minutes aren’t really up compared to the entirety of his career. And stuff like FG% and FT% aren’t really significantly impacted by minutes per game.

It’s not like I’m saying it’s the best season of his career. I’m just saying he’s having a very solid year despite the overall team’s performance.

 

I don’t think you know DeRozan’s game very well if you think that was the shot he wanted. He doesn’t shoot three’s.

 

@NashVol11

Just to further illustrate my point, check out Bron’s numbers for the entire month of December. 31-9-7-1.5-1.5 on 56% from the field, and 40% from 3.

If I’m reading correctly, he’s second in the league behind just Durant in ppg for the season.

 

I realize he’s scoring recently, my point is I don’t think this is close to the best version of LeBron James and his team is losing so it’s not really a time that I would be talking him up. I don’t agree that it’s one of his better seasons.

 

You seem very focused on the losing. You brought up stats that are largely affected by it, and now you’ve mentioned it again here. If they were top 4 in the west, would your stance on LeBron’s current performance be different?

If so, that’s just odd to me. This team clearly has some significant flaws. They completely lack a defensive identity, and the lineups on offense don’t really make a ton of sense. They’ve also been without either their best or 2nd best player for quite a few games now. But none of that is really LeBron’s fault or based on how he is playing.

 

Of course. How is that odd to you having followed the NBA? It’s much easier to rack up numbers on a mediocre team than lead a team to the top of the league. See 2006 Kobe, Minnesota Kevin Love and 400 other examples; there’s a reason MVPs don’t come from bad teams and I hope you’re not about to argue that he deserves that award.

His whole thing was elevating bad Cleveland teams to 60+ wins almost by himself, and now the Lakers are .500 having played the league’s easiest schedule. For them to be actual contenders, AD will have to be available, in which case LeBron’s numbers take a hit anyway.

 

As of now, no, he doesn't. But if he maintains his current numbers and they crawl into the top 4-5 in the West with AD out injured? Yeah, I think he will absolutely be in the discussion. I don't really think any of that is likely though. I agree with your belief that they need AD, and once he's back, Bron's numbers likely take a hit.

The Kobe comparison sucks:

• Kobe FGA/Game:
  • '06 - 27
  • Career - 19.5
• Kobe FG%
  • '06 - 45%
  • Career - 44.7%
    
    
• LeBron FGA/Game:
  • '22 - 20.2
  • Career - 19.6
• LeBron FG%
  • '22 - 52.3%
  • Career - 50.4%

Kobe had an outrageous scoring season in '06 because he started taking significantly more shots at essentially the same efficiency. LeBron is having a great scoring season taking basically the same number of shots as his career average and shooting MORE efficiently than his career average. To say that he's only doing it because his team sucks isn't really a fair judgement.

This whole conversation has just been weird. My initial statement was that he's having one of the best statistical seasons of his career. Not one of his best seasons, just one of his best statistical seasons.

You've tried arguing against that in multiple ways, starting with more minutes, moving to advanced stats, and now recently pointing out that it's easier to compile stats on a bad team, but your argument essentially boils down to "Yeah, but they aren't winning." I get that. But they don't have to be winning for LeBron to be having one of the best statistical seasons of his career.

 

Relatedly, I’m still comfortable saying AD is not their best player. It feels like more people are slowly starting to say this but I think he’s a little overrated; he’s basically a prototypical modern big man and has incredible individual talent but whenever he’s the best player on a team, that team isn’t any good.

 

We just care about different stats. I think advanced stats and on/off numbers give a more complete picture than points per game, and by a lot of those metrics it’s not one of his best seasons.

 

Are you saying that Jordan had a much better team around him than LeBron James did/does?

 

Yes, they won 55 games with him retired and none of LeBron’s teams is doing that

 

Intriguing. That was/is one of the arguments about why Jordan is better on this forum: he was not on "super teams" for his championships, allegedly.

 

I'm trying to wrap my head around this. You are BETTER, with better teams, and WORSE with worse teams, irrespective of individual production. Just [uck fay]ing fascinating. What does being the best player even mean, if a critical factor for the individual is... the [uck fay]ing team? What?

 

Hopefully was met with an eyeroll. That team was loaded and wasn’t facing teams close to as good as the Spurs or Warriors.

 

The best players make their teammates better which results in wins. Kevin Love was putting up 26 and 13 a game in Minnesota and was statistically a top 5 player in the NBA while his team was going 19-63. Turns out on an actual good team, he’s a third option who struggles to find a role because he doesn’t defend. I take stats from awful teams with a heavy, heavy grain of salt.

Another way of framing it is that if you took a G League team and put it in the NBA, someone would average 18 PPG and someone would get 8+ rebounds a night. It doesn’t mean those guys should be NBA starters, just that they’re collecting stats because there are stats to be collected in any losing effort.