Golden Nuggets: A team no one wants to face

Unicorns can kick numbers collective asses

bc he went wizards at +16. close one.

i won, i went over gallo’s 16.5. barely won that one.

We were on the Wizards side – 16 points is a lot to cover.

makes me a little scared. bc we tend to run teams out of the building in the late 1st early 2nd quarters due to our 2nd unit being top notch. very similar to the 08-09 season.

there are no b2bs or 4in5. guys like lebron and wade will play 43+ minutes per game.

But LeBron has carried Cleveland teams and played almost 48 minutes in the playoffs. He single handedly took his team to the finals.

They’ll up their minutes for the playoffs, they’ll also play a faster pace. Also, LeBron is starting to be the screener with Wade – and this combination has been deadly. It’s like they finally figured out how to play together. Look at what the team has done with Bosh playing the 5.

Based on what he did at Syracuse. To be fair, he is a good player and can elevate a 20 win team to a 40 win team. He’s just not an elite player – and people thinking he’s an elite player does him a great disservice.

If the Knicks expected to get a very good player, who you can build a team around, they got him. If they expected LeBron or Wade, they’re way off.

Lawson, is not, however a Jameer Nelson.

I don’t think either are franchise players – although Rose is closer to a guy you’d build a franchise around. Lawson is at least equal of a defender as Rose, and he gets more steals. Anything that creates more possessions for your team is good – charges taken, steals, etc. He’s also much, much more efficient on offense. You’re going to say well he shoots less – well that’s a lot of the value of Lawson, he only takes good shots.

At the end of the day I think it breaks down like this: Rose is the type of player who turns a bottom feeder into a 35 win team. He does this because he can use a high number of possessions more efficiently than the average NBA player. However, he will never be extremely efficient because he’s not that type of player – he’s a guy who takes shots within an offense rather than a player who can create a reasonable shot consistently. Lawson is a guy who might add a few wins on a 15-20 win team, but won’t transform them. However, on a good team, or a contender, he’d be by far the better choice because he only takes layups and open 3’s / jumpsuits.

I’d prefer Lawson because I don’t want my PG to be a high usage guy because it’s hard for PGs to be really efficient, and their 2nd elite skill – passing, can be matched by other positions. This is why I think Rondo is so valuable – he rebounds so well for a guard. Lawson gets steals and deflections (deflections aren’t tracked) but it’s hugely valuable. The only guy who’s really efficient at PG with high usage is CP3 (for the record, I’d make him a franchise player). I think it’s hard to win with a franchise point guard because he can’t add a 3rd elite skill (the first 2 being scoring and defense). The first skill, scoring, is hard to do efficiently, and a big man can score efficiently + rebound + block. Nene is more valuable to me than Rose cause he gets boards, passes, defends and scores efficiently.

If anyone should be the MVP it’s James. Howard should be in the picture, as should Dirk (have you seen how bad the Mavs are without him)? Do you think he’s MVP good because your eyes tell you he is or because the media says he is? He’s like the current version of Kobe – a pretty good player, but no longer an MVP.

You can’t just remove a player from a team and decide how much he meant because you have no idea about how bad his replacement is, how the team was built around him, etc.

While Rose is much improved, I’d take several players over Rose – CP3, Deron Williams, Rondo, Parker, and Lawson. In fact, I’m going out on a limb here and saying Kyrie Irving is going to be better than Rose and I’d take him too. People tend to judge a player by his point totals + the kinds of plays he’s capable of making when closely guarded – and to be fair, Rose probably shoots that kind of volume because he is better than the other options on that team. The Bulls are middle of the pack in offense.

Lawson is as good of a defender as Rose, gets more steals (more possessions = good), is way better with his shot selection, and way more efficient on offense. I’d rather have a guy who shoots layups and wide open jumpshots slanted towards 3’s than a guy who might be a better creator but takes way more inefficient shots.

This season seems to me to have the potential to be a perfect storm for a championship run (32 win foundation before depth injection that other teams haven’t figured out how to beat yet).

and we were on our way again last season before things fell apart. The extra motivation for Melo was lost though after Melo fouled the Utah guy (after the Utah guy stepped out of bounds) at the end of game #2 last playoffs and this season was bad before the all-star break..

He’s just not an elite coach. Can’t make basic coaching errors vs the Spurs, or even the Lakers.

SBNation model of recruiting quality local team bloggers and making them part of a network was pretty genius. Combine that with the commenting software that they use and next thing you know, adult people from all over the nation will spend numerous hours commenting on blogs with strangers instead of billing hours.

Although not having Anthony Carter helps alleviate that problem…

Eagerly awaiting the Invesco concert in May.

Make that 20 years….or more

big fish in a small pond. Think about it, he has little competition from any other major league sports teams in the area. So, perhaps his ego is fed quite nicely in SA.

is the same type IMO

just went to Austin for college

I don’t think these are really playing that much with chips. They are playing for their futures. Karl and Kmart probably have the most to prove at this point…being that the clock is ticking for both of them.

NBA championship + trade + COY the year after he recovers from cancer? I’d love tha tstory

Look at the Bulls last year. An average team with a decent defense and a horrible offense. Now, look at the Bulls this year: a championship contender with the league’s best or second best defense (depending on your perspective) and a decent offense. Carlos Boozer may have helped the offense, but it was Thibs that brought Chicago’s defense from middle-of-the-pack to top-of-the-league and he deserves credit for it.

However, if you can guarantee me that Pops will succumb to the COY curse, then give Pops the award.

I think you have to look at the whole body of work because there’s a lot of randomness in one playoff series. There can be injuries, you can happen to run into an unfavorable matchup, you can happen to have an off shooting night while the other team happens to shoot lights out. In the NBA, hell, you could run into the wrong official and lose a playoff series.

In some cases, like Butler, it’s coaching – they’re consistently good because of coaching. In some cases, the team wins in spite of bad coaching – John Calipari teams.