NBA 2015 Playoffs Thread

Convo_sl said:

They wouldn't. I think you guys are a lock for towns or Okafor. Assuming you have top 2 pick. I don't know what sixers would do if they got top 2. I want Mudaiy over Russle. Evan Turner left me scared of Ohio state.

Click to expand...

Towns is a much better fit and I think pretty much the consensus better prospect at this point but I'm not upset with Okafor either, but you can't call it a lock. Those guys could go 1 and 2 and we could very well end up picking 3 or 4.

Stat heads really are all in on Russel this year, but I have similar concerns to you. After watching Turner bomb and Beal essentially turn into a 3 point shooter that does nothing else, I worry about a "do everything" college guards ability to transition to the NBA. I think big men and hyper athletic, long swingmen (like Winslow or Stanley Johnson) are easier to project. When these guys do work out though, they end up incredible impact players as it's the weakest position in the league. It just feels like a much bigger risk.

The real problem though is while you can say "they wouldn't" like any rational person, but we're not talking about a they here. Or any collective group of smart individuals. Our team is run top down by Flip Saunders and he is not a smart man. This guy had the 10th overall pick and made a big board of 9 players then said "we never saw the draft playing out like that!" when all 9 were gone. He then traded down and selected a guy he told a local radio station was on the "do not draft list" the previous day. It doesn't matter if this was posturing or not, it's sloppy and unprofessional. Go take a look at the guy's twitter. He needs a spell check.

The biggest worry is that he has "I'm smarter than everyone else" syndrome just like Kahn did. This leads to things like taking Jonny Flynn over Steph Curry and giving away a first round pick for Adreian Payne (when a team like the Hawks is ready to sell) and thinking Zach LaVine is capable of playing heavy rotation PG minutes.

I'd love to have your confidence in Flip, but I don't. Truth be told, I wouldn't exactly hate a final nail in the coffin to put this team behind me until 40 years from now when Flip dies.

Convo_sl said:

Sounds like if my sixers get 1 or 2 we could possibly rip flip off! Trade you our #1 for wiggins and your #3...

Click to expand...

A much more likely scenario is Flip running Wiggins knees into the ground causing early retirement. Flip played him 40 minutes the 2nd night of a back to back after he complained about knee soreness. This is at 19 years old and it was like the 75th game of the season. Afterwards Flip said he let the intensity of the game get to him.

You're right though. Think about this irony. Remember when the Wolves traded for the 5th pick (ended up being Rubio)? Randy Foye, Mike Miller for the 5th and some scrubs to fill salary. Foye and Miller for a pick that could have landed the Wizards Steph Curry! Guess who is coaching Washington at the time and gave an instant ok on the deal?


Re: Turner. Sorry. Dude has been downright awful for nearly 400 NBA games. Now if you really want to focus on 40 of those as proof of a 26 year old turning it around, we can. But post all star break this year he still shot 43% and turned the ball over 3 times a game and took less than 2 free throws a game. He seems like a marginal playmaker when given the ball full time, but do you really want to do that with a guy that still looks to score in the most inefficient way possible while turning the ball over a ton? If that's the case, you and I have different definitions of solid.

So you can live in the low 40s as long as you're either getting to the line a bunch of you shoot ok from behind the arc. Turner does neither of those. When you look at a very simple advanced stat like True Shooting %, which just incorporates free throws and 3s into the calculation, he's near the bottom of anyone getting major minutes.

Here's the list of guards this year that played 25 MPG or more in at least 40 games. He's 58th.

Player Season Finder | Basketball-Reference.com

So I think it's a bit of a stretch to say "43% shooting as a point guard isn't that far out of the norm".

Here's the same pool of players sorted by turnover %

Player Season Finder | Basketball-Reference.com

So sure, he's 18th in that list at ast %, but he's 3rd in tov %. What is "pretty good" about any of this in comparison to the rest of the league? Seems to me like he averaged 7 APG which looks like a big number but in reality he just had the ball in his hands a lot.