Leferd

My concerns about the Warriors: 1) Exceptional starting five, but least productive bench unit in the league 2) reliance on excessive isos and post ups for Klay and Harrison Barnes 3) when jump shots aren't falling =doom. 4) streaky team - on both macro and micro level. Their runs can be both epic and disastrous. 5) good enough to beat and scare any team in the league in a playoff series...but lack the machine like consistency of say...the Spurs. Weaknesses on individual key players Curry - high turnover rate. Only shooting 40% from three. Prior to this season, his career avg was .442. He's become a bit of a chucker. Klay - glorified 3 and D guy. Mediocre handles and passing ability. Avi Lee -No D. Bogut - loss full range of motion on his right arm. Effecting his shooting/scoring effectiveness. Iguoudala - glorified role player - too comfortable with his role, causing lack of aggression. Barnes - lack of decisiveness with the ball. No progression since last year. Draymond Green - love his game and attitude but his shots ain't dropping. If Boogie Cousins was a team, he'd be the Warriors.

Yep. http://sports.yahoo.com/news/sources--pacers-to-sign-center-andrew-bynum-141508053-nba.html

Looks like it's going to be Oden vs Bynum for the Eastern Conference Championships.

Boogie Cousins is an intriguing player. He has a mercurial personality and is clearly polarizing. But he is also the most skilled true center in the league and is having a breakthrough year: 22.6ppg, 11.6 boards, and 3.0 dimes. His combination of on court dominance, theatrics, and susceptibility to have an on court nuclear meltdown make him one of the most entertaining players to watch, despite the Kings being 15-29. Does he deserve to be an All-Star? I'd say yes, based in talent, production, and the pure entertainment value of his WTF scowl when things don't go his way.

To be fair, KD's recent tear has really manifested itself after Westbrook went down.

Actually, the Chicago Bulls are defending their NBA Championship Belt against the Los Angeles Clippers Friday night. http://nbachampionshipbelt.com/

Avellone will be writing a novella for the setting, which was included in the $50+ tiers for the Kickstarter. I'd imagine It'll probably be released as an add-on as well.

All that is right with the NBA: http://www.brewhoop.com/2014/1/7/5283406/it-is-amazing-what-i-am-experiencing-gianniss-new-blog-entry Plus this tweet: https://twitter.com/g_ante34/status/425376868334727168

Nellie thought that Nash deferred to Nowitzki too much and was begging Nash to shoot more. When Cuban refused to match Phoenix's offersheet to Nash, both Nellie and Nash were heartbroken, and in Nellie's case, he lost his passion for coaching. When the Warriors drafted curry, Nelson gave Curry the keys to the team and tried to mold him into the Nash he wanted Nash to be.

Pretty close to my thoughts. Both have similar skill sets but with different focus. Nash is the better athlete and focuses on being a distributor while Curry has slightly better hand eye coordination and of course, is a scorer. Don Nelson, who coached both, instantly compared Curry to Nash upon drafting him. Everyone thought Nellie was being Nellie. Nellie also said that Nash was the best player he ever coached. And he coached a lot of Hall of Famers.

Man, I almost forgot about this one: Richard Sherman is a media goldmine. Only appropriate that it was with Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith: The McLaughlin Group of "expert" sports punditry. "I am better at life than you" Lols.

That's precisely why I was shaking my head when Detroit acquired him. How do you run an offense when in your core 5, you have three front court players: Monroe, Drummond, and Smith who can only score near the paint and two chuckers (Jennings and Stuckey) in the backcourt?? ... I don't think there is a star-level player who has to rely more on guile, craftiness, and pure basketball skill to dominate than Curry. Accounting for and with all due respect to (healthy) CP3 and (healthy) Steve Nash.

I love the Simmons/Lowe/Goldsberry triumvirate on Grantland. Must read for any serious basketball fan. Plus anytime Simmons and Jalen Rose get together to shoot some videos is pure gold.

Nope. It's already established and published that Stephen Curry is the alien: http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/warriors/2013/10/30/stephen-curry-alien-three-pointers-record-golden-state/3307171/ Charts and graphs to prove it.

Sherman's response: http://mmqb.si.com/2014/01/20/richard-sherman-interview-michael-crabtree/ To be fair to Crabtree, I think it was quite disingenuous to portray Sherman's attempt to shake Crabtree's hand as anything but condescending. He played for Harbaugh at Stanford too.

So there were reports and witnesses (Gre Rosenthal of NFL.com) saying Seattle fans were throwing food at Navarro Bowman as he was being carted off thee field int the locker room. https://twitter.com/greggrosenthal/status/425091656350580736

Richard Sherman gives spectacular interviews.

Definite classic.

At the time as an outside observer looking in, I actually found the whole Hollins vs Hollinger situation both predictable and hilarious. And to be honest I took some enjoyment out of it. I was at a game a few years ago where the Warriors blew a 20+ point lead in the fourth to the Grizzlies, and have hated them since. Lols.

Pera bought the team right before the start of last season. Pera and Hollinger essentially cleaned house on a 56 win team. Much like the Nuggets.

True enough. But Hollins never gave the statistical approach a shot. He criticized it on multiple occasions from day 1. So yeah Hollinger crossed the line once, and Hollins over-reacted. It was clear that Hollins was NEVER going to buy in to the approach that Owner Robert Pera wanted to install. Hollins vocal criticism in the media made his departure inevitable. As for Rudy Gay - he was traded with 37M$ left on the last two years of his contract and every statistical analysis showed that he simply wasn't worth that type of money anymore. Plus Memphis is a small market city that had invested 55M$ in long term contracts to Gasol, Conley, Z-Bo and Gay and they were pushing the cap limit hard. Gay was a cap casualty. Harsh reality but true. Don't get me wrong, Hollins is a good coach but he was a bad fit with Pera's approach and he went out of his way to make sure everyone knew about it. I find it a little surprising that you seem to be criticizing Hollinger's analytics when you seem to be a supporter of them elsewhere. Maybe it's just the particulars of Hollinger's PER? I actually did think, as was mentioned by me (much) earlier in this thread that the Rudy Gay trade was a good long term move by Memphis. However it is hubris and disrespect on Hollinger's part to take immediate steps to alienate your players, coaching staff and fan base to disrupt a team - and a damn good one, just so he can put his immediate stamp on his team. What made things worse with the unauthorized "coaching" was that it happened during the playoffs! Seriously man, what the hell was he thinking? Look, he's well within his rights to trade whoever he wants and to hire/fire his coaching staff, but the dude needs some serious people skills and to utterly disrespect a coach with Hollins' credentials a few months in his first basketball job in front of his players is disgraceful. I'd love to see Hollinger pull that stunt with Popovich. I'm all into advanced metrics and own Bill James' baseball abstracts since the 1985 edition, but they are tools and should be used to paint part of the picture in conjunction with traditional methods. Advanced metrics say that there really are only three shots a team should only take: inside the paint, or the corner three. Good luck trying to up get that against a good defense. The third shot? Isolate your best scorer for a one on one matchup. All cases lead to unwatchable basketball: see Rockets, Houston. *****edit**** I'm not sure I'm completely sold on PER as a catch-all stat. It's decent enough but It's not nearly as robust as how as WAR is in baseball. I do like offensive rating and defensive rating, though not so much for individual players, but as a whole for teams or more specifically per 5-man units. Win Shares tries to measure how impactful a player is to a team's win total, a basketball conversion to Bill James' baseball stat. I do like how Sports-VU cameras have been installed in arenas through the league. Lots of good and measurable raw data that is going to come out of it and will really advance the amount of knowledge and metrics that can be derived from its analysis. Many of the more data centric teams will take full advantage of this.

Don't be absurd. Lebron wouldn't have won those championships without Allen and Battier knocking down corner treys. Not without Bosh hitting 20 footers from top of the key. And especially not without D-Wade sacrificing his game to be Lebron's sidekick. And also not without a flexible coach who designed their unorthodox offensive and defensive schemes specifically catered for Lebron. Without Lebron, the Heat would still have a shot at going to the Conference Finals. (That's a dig on how weak the East is) C'mon Volo, you're being especially obtuse. Did anyone in this thread say Lebron is not the best player in the game. Hell, by the time he's done, he'll be the greatest basketball player of all time. I think he's already better than that prick, Michael Jordan, ever was.

Yep. There already was animosity between the two, and Hollinger really rid overstep his boundary when he stepped on the practice floor and essentially instructed players where and how to take their shots without even having the courtesy of asking the coach for a go ahead. You're Lionel Hollins, the most successful coached the franchise and highly respected league wide. Your defensive schemes are 1B to Tom Thibideau's 1A, and you've been consistently producing winners for several years. Suddenly your new owner decides to hire a writer from espn.com to be VP of Basketball Operations and your new boss. Ok, great, we're getting another David Kahn...just so long as he lets me do my job, we'll be fine. Then almost immediately you get notes from upstairs saying you need to play this guy x minutes and tell this person to stop taking these shots. Thanks boss, but please let me do my job, I'm good at it and we've been pretty successful. I'll keep your notes handy. He then proceeds to trade away your best player. Ok fine, I'll adjust and we'll keep rolling and does so....and the wins keep on adding up. I can do this, just as long as he lets me do my job. Then one day during practice he witnesses Hollinger actually trying to coach and instruct his players on when and where he is allowed to shoot the basketball. What do you do? You tell him to get the frak out of my practice floor and stay the frak out! Hollinger is a terrible boss. Hollins has been around the block and there is a certain amount of pride these guys have. Unless you are Jerry West, Michael Jordan, or Larry Bird, front office types can observe but should never meddle with directly coaching the players, especially during a structured practice session. Well, Hollinger got what he wanted, a lapdog for a coach and a chance to be the next RC Buford and David Morey.

Yeah, this is an example of John Hollinger's hubris. Where are they going to get their scoring? In consecutive years, they've gotten rid of their best scorer and their very successful coach, because they don't buy into his pet PER stat and he had the audacity to meddle into the coaching realm. There is a huge difference if you are Jerry West and give a few pointers to players, but who the hell is John Hollinger???

I was actually going to list PER but I have an anti-John Hollinger bias. Lols.