NBA 2020-21 Season Catch-All

Looking back at the 00-01 stats, I still can't believe Shaq didn't get MVP over Iverson. League Leaders, expand, and you'll see Shaq everywhere. 3rd in ppg, 4th in blocks, 3rd in rpg, 1st in FG%, 1st in efficiency, plus/minus, win share, 2nd value over replacement, all kinds of advanced stuff as well as traditional.

All Iverson had was ppg, spg. He's also 1st (tied) in minutes and 1st in usage by a wide margin. Ball hog, extraordinaire. 2nd in attempts only cause he played 9 less games than Stackhouse that season. Chucker.

Still the most undeserving MVP award in my opinion. Let him have the scoring title, but that's all he should have had. His influence on the game is nothing good.

Interesting conversation. I also agree that no one has changed the game recently more than Curry. When all is said and done and the lists of best players comes out, he's probably still going to be behind Jordan, Kobe, and Lebron but no one has changed the way basketball is played more than he has at least in the last 20 years or so.

And the question about Dr J also made me think... does Larry Bird even make the NBA in 2021? Bill Simmons isn't here so I assume there is a civil conversation to be had. I grew up a show-time Lakers fan so I saw enough of his game and how great he was back then, but the way is game is played today, is he just a Draymond Green type player?

At least with Iverson, the entire offense was completely built on his ability to score. Looking through that roster, there's not a single other legitimate threat on that team.

Derrick Rose is the other guy on the list that stands out to me and also had an outstanding counting stat year.

Yeah to me Rose is the most egregious recent era MVP. I thought at the time he shouldn’t have won. Talk about an inefficient chucker.

Stele wrote:

Still the most undeserving MVP award in my opinion.

Agree

Stele wrote:

Let him have the scoring title, but that's all he should have had. His influence on the game is nothing good.

I couldn't disagree with this part more. He brought to the culture of the game a willingness to be himself in a way the NBA hadn't seen for a long time. The modern NBA is cut through with creative and interesting personalities that we wouldn't see if Iverson hadn't broke down barriers to players being themselves on and off the court.

You may not like who he was as a teammate, but the social interaction between players, media and fans is one of the most interesting things about the modern NBA and Iverson helped accelerate that trend.

I mean the "we talkin' 'bout practice" press conference was great. That's about it.

Ted Lasso did it better.

I used to be anti-Iverson, but I've come around.

Stele wrote:

Let him have the scoring title, but that's all he should have had. His influence on the game is nothing good.

Could not disagree more, or more strongly.

THE KNICKS ARE GUARANTEED TO BE .500.

HIT THE DAMN MUSIC

Who was on the Knicks the last time that happened? Carmelo? Ewing?

Anybody else watching this Marvelcast on ESPN2?

I love the animations, especially when a shot goes up. Shades of NBA Street.

I hate this trend of all of these weird uniform colors. Why can't teams just stick to their regular, classic colors? They look better and are recognizable. I turned on a game the other night and I literally had to take at least a couple of up and down sequences to even figure out which team was which until I recognized one of the bench players. Why does Dallas have white and yellow uniforms tonight? Since when is yellow a color for the Mavericks?

This is funny to me, because it’s my wife’s big pet peeve. She casually watches basketball with me while she works or surfs. She’s not a fanatic or anything, but mostly understands the league, knows a decent chunk of the players for a causal fan.

She loses it whenever the Lakers are wearing blue, the Blazers are wearing brown or the Heat are wearing pink.

The short answer is increased merchandise sales.

Thoughts on the play in games?

I usually don't watch much at all until the playoffs. This is making me pay attention more.

Caught the Trailblazers beat the Lakers the other night.

Hoping the Lakers + Celtics end up in the playin and drama. Would love to see Washington + Golden State sneak in.

jowner wrote:

Thoughts on the play in games?

I loved it last year in the bubble. But I also really loved the regular schedule of the bubble with afternoon games and everything available to watch.

Now that it's back to home arenas I'm sure there's going to be 10pm eastern play in games to milk the west coast prime time dollars too. Less fun but I'll probably still watch dammit.

jowner wrote:

Thoughts on the play in games?

I usually don't watch much at all until the playoffs. This is making me pay attention more.

Caught the Trailblazers beat the Lakers the other night.

Hoping the Lakers + Celtics end up in the playin and drama. Would love to see Washington + Golden State sneak in.

Love it. Adds just a little extra incentive to teams in the middle of the pack to finish top-6, top-8, or squeak into 10th depending on their trajectory the past few years (The Raptors clearly didn't care about getting to 10th). Top-6 teams getting a little more rest should also be a good thing, especially since this season was such a condensed grind.

The most chaotic Play-In scenario this year is the Lakers end up in it but LeBron is stuck in COVID protocol because he got exposed and can't play because he didn't get vaccinated.

I love the play-in and I think the new format is more concise and fair. That said, not everyone feels the same way about the quality of the talent of the teams in those slots.

Roke wrote:
jowner wrote:

Thoughts on the play in games?

I usually don't watch much at all until the playoffs. This is making me pay attention more.

Caught the Trailblazers beat the Lakers the other night.

Hoping the Lakers + Celtics end up in the playin and drama. Would love to see Washington + Golden State sneak in.

Love it. Adds just a little extra incentive to teams in the middle of the pack to finish top-6, top-8, or squeak into 10th depending on their trajectory the past few years (The Raptors clearly didn't care about getting to 10th). Top-6 teams getting a little more rest should also be a good thing, especially since this season was such a condensed grind.

The most chaotic Play-In scenario this year is the Lakers end up in it but LeBron is stuck in COVID protocol because he got exposed and can't play because he didn't get vaccinated.

Didn't think about the extra rest. Hopefully next season they actually don't go back to 82 + it's more spread out.

DSGamer wrote:

I love the play-in and I think the new format is more concise and fair. That said, not everyone feels the same way about the quality of the talent of the teams in those slots.

Chuck might not be wrong. Historically I wonder how well a 7 or 8 seed has ever done.

There's the funny part. Just by trying something new they have hooked my attention to a bunch of teams that might just get absolutely smacked once the actual playoffs start.

Since the league expanded the playoffs to 16 teams in the 1983-84 season, No. 1 seeds in the East and West combined have won 67 of the 72 first round series against No. 8 seeds..

Actually a couple more times than I thought. Now a 10th seed play in could possibly jump into 8th even. I'm sure some years it will be a totally outclassed team that doesn't belong. In the future though it's going to be some pretty decent team that was maybe ravaged with injuries with all the key people coming back.

Yeah I remember the Denver Nuggets being the first 8 seed to win in the early 90s. I honestly didn't realize it had happened 4 more times.

So there has been a lot of talk about how the game has changed and how much rougher it used to be. That teams played defense then and players like Curry wouldn't exist if they still allowed hand checking and the league hadn't gone soft. And I sorta bought into it because that was my heyday for watching basketball too.

But I stumbled across this video of the 2001 all star game and while I admit it is a fantastic all star game, my and several basketball pundit's rosy vision of what was is showing its wear. Again these are fantastic athletes, talents and basketball players but... they would get smoked by today's game.

First, the point about defense and hand checking, as in there was only a tiny fraction maybe 10-15% hands on. And the other "real" defense didn't look any more intense than players today. And maybe it is because I watch a lot of Warriors games but it seems a lot easier to defend "iso ball" than Warrior's style of play.

And then lets talk about the athleticism and the offense. Honestly, stuff they were being praised for is common place in today's game. I have nothing but admiration for Kobe but he made maybe 3-4 pull up jumpers with someone in his face and was lauded for it when that is so common in today's game. Marbury made some really pretty long jumpers and threes but again, that is so common of even teams that don't make the playoffs.

Kevin Garnett looked like a monster and Iverson was the MVP. Garnett was the only one that gave the impression that he was timeless and would succeed in any era. But Hall of Famer Duncan looked like a journeyman and Iverson looked slow compared to someone like Curry. (don't hate I have nothing but love for Duncan) Guys (all stars) just weren't hitting open easy looks and it is no wonder that era had the elite teams only scoring 90-100 points.

I know I know, it is an all star game and it is just one game. But just watch it. Because as basketball fans it will open your eyes in both directions. It was a damn good game let alone one of the great all star games. But it also lightens the mystique of old school defense and makes apparent the contrast for the athleticism then and now.

They don't exactly put the most effort in during the All Star Game. That said, I've long thought players from previous eras would get smoked in the modern NBA.

They don't exactly put the most effort in during the All Star Game.

I know. But they did put effort in this game. They even tripled Kobe on the last shot that almost went in and then was almost tipped in by both Duncan and Webber I think the biggest hitch was the lack of players playing with each other which caused passes out of bounds and overpassing.

Other than Kobe, a lot of players were given space too often. In todays game you literally have to block players from getting to half a dozen spots on the court because its automatic, they don't miss from those spots. Also every team has 3-4 people where if given that space will either dunk on you or bury a 3.

To my recollection, Jordan was the first player where the only way to stop him is if he stopped himself. Kobe then followed and now there are a couple dozen in the league.

Spoiler:

Curry, Durant, James, Davis, Giannis, Harden, Irving, Doncic, Lillard, Leonard, Westbrook, Butler, Young, Jokic, Beal, technically any one of the current top scorer list averaging over 20 ppg... And then you have someone who defies description like Chris Paul who you can put me and you on his team and we'd make the playoffs

I couldn’t find a specific representative game. It would probably take too much time and it would be highly anecdotal, but this caused me to browse through famous playoff games in the past.

The most notable thing to me about games from that era is that defense isn’t nearly as tough as we like to think. Sure there are hard fouls and players body up, but because of the illegal defense rules you see players going one on one a lot with players rarely helping. It looks very lazy defensively as a result and the offense is highly unimaginative.

A lot of people are nostalgic for the 90s Bulls, but I think what was different about that decade is that across a bunch of different vectors (willingness to help off their man, physicality, taking charges) teams like the Knicks and Pistons played much better defense than teams did in the 70s and 80s. As a result the Bulls responded with a much more fluid and beautiful offense for much of Jordan’s run.

That beautiful offense was relative, of course. I think once zone defenses were made legal again teams could scheme more creatively defensively which forced teams to respond with more creative offense.

That’s stagnated a bit with Morey-ball, but by my eye test most games prior to the illegal defense rules ending were less interesting and thus the players were, because of the style of basketball played then.

I remember watching the 80's and 90's Lakers growing up and you could mark when they were doing well versus when they were doing poorly by if they were rotating on defense. In fact, in their prime, they would typically tank the third quarter on D to rest so that they could make the big push in the fourth. If the opponent was not able to make a move in the third, the Lakers won by 20. If the opponent made a move then two thirds the Lakers pulled it out and one third they lost.

The most notable thing to me about games from that era is that defense isn’t nearly as tough as we like to think

I looked up some other footage and came to the same conclusion. Players like Anthony Mason and Charles Oakley are the epitome of physical, tough presences. Yet I just don't see the mystique matching reality. They were tougher but not nearly as dominating and quite frankly, could not hold a candle to the intimidation of Anthony Davis's interior defense in last year's playoffs.

Is there another team sport where strategy has shifted as much as in basketball?

It was only in what the last 5-10 years teams/coaches adopted math and statistics and blew out 3 point shooting. In hindsight it's kinda mind boggling how obvious it was.

What's comparable? the shift in baseball probably but less dramatic to how you watch?

Reason I bring it up is I find it hard to compare defense from the 90s to now because the game has changed so much.

I was a huge baseball fan from 1992-2010 or so. I started watching some again last year and it felt like a very different strategy was being employed. Pulling an effective starter after 5 innings, having no infielders between 1st and 2nd, the whole concept of “opening” pitchers... it was quite strange.

To me it felt more different than 90s NBA to modern NBA. To me the NBA feels the same in a lot of ways, just faster.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I was a huge baseball fan from 1992-2010 or so. I started watching some again last year and it felt like a very different strategy was being employed. Pulling an effective starter after 5 innings, having no infielders between 1st and 2nd, the whole concept of “opening” pitchers... it was quite strange.

To me it felt more different than 90s NBA to modern NBA. To me the NBA feels the same in a lot of ways, just faster.

True if you lump in pitching changes baseball is very different.

Football has changed too.
Power running, counter tray
west coast offense
run pass option
pass defense rule changes
wildcat hybrid
defensive games (7-3, or 6-9, no touchdown games)
2 point conversion
field goal changes
kick off changes
concussion protocol