Optimist Prime

Um, guys? Brad Stevens broke basketball.

Playing multiple 50-55 win teams is much more difficult than playing multiple 40-45 win teams. The team that comes out of the better conference (when there is a great enough margin) will be a little more worn down. In regular season terms, it’s like playing a fourth game in five or six nights against a team that’s played three games in the seven nights. The second team will have fresher legs and an advantage in that department. GSW lost to the Cavs for a few reasons, one of those being that they just came off a seven game series against a stingy OKC team that had two uber-athletic superstar players. Curry plays hurt, Bogut (read: only true rotation big) gets injured out of the series. Cavs had essentially swept a weak eastern conference and could have Kyrie and Lebron go all out for seven straight because of no fatigue. Whether or or not that’s the case, having a single team be better than another single team (throwing out the factor of how teams match up with one another) doesn’t mean anything for the strength of a conference as a whole. Using Springsteen’s example above, if one conference fielded seven sub-500 teams with one 50-win team, and the other had eight fifty win teams, the finals matchup doesn’t decide which conference is better. That’s an individual team achievement, and has nothing to do with the rest of the conference.

Isn’t this just an argument that Lebron is good? Using the finals to compare conferences isn’t really fair. Need to look at overall win percentage, at the very least, for both conferences’ playoff teams. Can go deeper with advanced stats to gauge which conference was better after factoring strength of schedule and +/-, etc. I’m not really good with all of that, but I’d be very surprised if the East anywhere close to as strong as the West. Especially in the few years before KD went to GSW.

I mean, I get wanting to be petty. I do it all the time. But he just got blown out at home. I’m happier about that than mad about him leaving early.

I don’t think walking off early in the first game of a series when it’s a blowout loss is that bad. They aren’t going to shake hands or anything. He’ll be back for game two.

Yeah, I think playing with Westbrook made a big difference. And as said previously, being traded twice probably have him an extra dose of motivation. Brings hometown hero helps, I’m sure.

I think I’m happy enough for Oladipo at this point that I’m not bitter anymore that we lost him (probably also because I don’t think he becomes this with the Magic).

Steve Clifford got fired

I’d be surprised if anybody took Young first.

Just read this on ESPN. I can’t believe it. So crazy how quickly things can change.

Always thought he was going to make the jump eventually, but it never happened. Hopefully getting traded will give him the fire he needs to improve and find success in the league. At least he’ll get plenty of PT in Phoenix. It was fun while it lasted.

So while they’re both hyper athletic bigs, their specialties seem to be on opposite sides of the court. Ayton’s size seems like it could be a bit of an advantage. I was just wondering how likely it would be for him to end up having a similar trajectory.

I’d trade for McCollum but no earlier than the deadline. Could be a missing piece depending on the draft and other moves. Help make the team better in the short term and bide time for the other guys to develop with a player of that caliber setting the example.

How does Ayton compare to young Dwight?

Say what you will about Henny, but he would have picked up Mario’s option.