re: General NBA Links

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It’s tempting to cast this Spurs-Heat rematch as the league’s dominant player going up against the best collective effort the sport has to offer. Never mind that Duncan is still mightily effective and almost nearly as great, in a historic sense, as LeBron James. The Heat, while they may rise and fall with LeBron, don’t fall prey to the usual superstar (or let’s just call it “individual”) pitfalls of isos and hero-ball. LeBron is, in a basketball sense, not human, not one man either bucking or buying into a system. He makes the phrase one-man team literal, fulfilling multiple responsibilities, playing every position, guarding all sorts of opponents, and writing a script for the rest of the team with the way he works each trip down the floor.

What LeBron James dictates what the Heat does and not in some reactionary way. It’s his job to make sure the whole team can look to him for a sense of structure. It turns the point guard role inside out and then stands it on its head. It very nearly does the same to the superstar. What’s more, LeBron is almost as constant in his game, with as few peaks and valleys, as the Spurs. Some days he’ll explode just to prove he can but these come across as odd moments of vulnerability. Like the Spurs, LeBron is a machine, a dynamo driving his teammates. It’s not so impressive that a team so dependent on one guy has made it to the Finals. What’s amazing is how little, at this stage in his career, LeBron James resembles any other superstar. The only thing to compare him to is an entire other team.

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built around the Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and Tim Duncan trio. They are able to do what they do only because those players are the foundation, and because that foundation is one consisting of players who have taken highly reasonable contracts.

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What the teams represent is a template for the modern three-heavy NBA offense: ball movement and spacing. Ball movement can come in the form of a dominant creator (Clippers with Chris Paul, Thunder with Russell Westbrook and Heat with LeBron) or a team-wide commitment to pass with the required skill to go along with it (Spurs). Spacing comes in the form of shooting. Lots of shooting. We're at the point where if you don't have a big man who is an elite long-two shooter and/or a passable three-point shooter, you're at a disadvantage.

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Still, plenty of teams have catching up to do. In many ways, the Finals are a crash course for team-builders in what you need to win in today's NBA. The Spurs and Heat model aren't perfectly replicable because it's hard to find great talent. You can't have a Heat without a LeBron, and there's only one of him. You can't have a Spurs without Duncan and drafting two reliable Hall of Famers well outside of the lottery. These are not easy tasks.

But teams can learn from the two franchises' actual on-court behavior. Too many teams lack a corps of shooters to pop in as needed. Too many teams rely on too few shot creators or embrace a system that restricts the natural ball-handling and passing skills of its players

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There are many conflicting stories among the NBA's elite. Memphis rules with a double-big threat. The Clippers have the old-school point-guard-and-power-forward setup. The Pacers rely on a ball-dominant wing and elite defense. The Thunder have their two-headed monster.

But there's something every team can learn from the Miami and San Antonio systems that nod toward team defense while emphasizing passing and shooting. That the offenses are thoroughly dominating the respective excellent defenses in the Finals shows just how powerful the sharing-and-spacing offense can be.

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Long read, basically the reported offers are crap aside from the Bulls, aasuming Mirotic comes over, and the Celtics w/ a shot at Aaron Gordon

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Phoenix Suns - Kevin Love for Goran Dragic, Markieff Morris, Gerald Green, #14 pick in the 2014 draft, get back the first rounder in 2015 draft

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PHX offer is a bit of fools gold, especially with Flip taking the reins again

Dragic was legitimately great this year. Can he do it again in a different system?

Green and Morris were aftethoughts until this season and have the same questions re roles/system.

And the firsts are mid draft. If this board believes 10 is a worthless pick, then the wolves are getting fleeced.

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I do not agree at all. Love is a premier NBA player.

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San Antonio’s ball movement creates sure scoring balance, and in Game 3 eight different Spurs players wound up contributing five points or more (and 11 scored total). The rotating cast of seemingly interchangeable parts draws deserved praise for both Gregg Popovich and his “system” above all else. Within the system catch-all is a specificity of meaning without singling out any particular player; even casual fans of the NBA have some grip on the particulars of Spurs basketball, and it’s through that understanding that this all-time team is generally appreciated

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Parker, meanwhile, finished with a mere 15 points and four assists while shooting the lowest percentage of any Spurs starter.

Even still Parker is the kind of player who can help shape a game without filling the box score. It may have been Leonard and Green who punctuated the Spurs’ runs, but it’s by Parker’s steady hand that those surges in scoring were maintained in the first place. Parker was perfectly balanced in his initiation of the offense in Game 3, which is in itself an achievement against a Miami team that applies a lot of schematic pressure

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One of the deepest contradictions about loving NBA basketball, at least in the post-Jordan years, has been negotiating our uneasy relationship with great man theory in 2014, nearly two centuries after the thought was first articulated, and subsequently, bemoaned. At this point, fans are conditioned to be distrustful of individualistic basketball and are programmed to react quite poorly to it. Long gone are the days of Allen Iverson chewing up 22 seconds of the shot-clock, or Kobe Bryant’s surgical breakdown of a hapless defender marooned on a hardwood island. “Hero-ball” has long been decried as a vestige of a less-civilized age, and “iso plays” are coded as “incompetent coaching” at this point in the game.

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Yet, at the same time, very few fans, casual or caustic, can name the greatest teams of all time, besides the standard-issue 1995–96, 72-win Chicago Bulls, and even from there, most could not name team members far beyond the “great men” that make that team marketable

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The best-laid plans of the then-Hornets have all but perished. On paper, this was a promising return. New Orleans received a budding star in Gordon and a first-round pick, which had belonged to the Wolves and was unprotected. That could be the basis of a strong core, provided that the Hornets nailed the pick and found good use or good returns for the other veterans on the roster.


That framework broke down in two fundamental ways. First, after Gordon played just nine games in an injury-derailed 2011-12 season, the Hornets were forced to make a $58 million decision regarding his future. That was the price of the four-year offer sheet that the restricted free-agent shooting guard signed with the Suns, positioning the Hornets to either match or see a prized piece of Paul's return go for nothing. New Orleans matched, signing a disgruntled and oft-injured Gordon to one of the worst contracts in the league.
Second, Minnesota -- a team whose success would define the value of the first-rounder acquired -- fared well enough in the lockout-shortened season to make matters difficult for New Orleans. This was in part due to a glut of similar performance; notwithstanding the uniquely dreadful 7-59 Bobcats, the rest of the NBA's 10 worst teams all fell between 20 and 26 wins. On the high end were the Wolves, were 10th worst at 26-40. That was a much lower pick than anticipated, made worse by the fact that New Orleans selected the seldom-effective Austin Rivers. There's still time for Rivers to grow into a productive player, but his first two seasons have offered only a smattering of hope.

It's tempting, in retrospect, to allege that the Hornets may have been better off accepting the proposed three-team deal with the Lakers and Rockets that would have landed the Hornets Goran Dragic, Kevin Martin, Luis Scola, Lamar Odom and a 2012 first-round pick (via New York). Had the NBA approved the trade, however, New Orleans would not have been bad enough to luck into the right to select No. 1 pick Anthony Davis in the following draft. Such is an important consideration in evaluating prospect-laden returns: Part of the package, it seems, is bottoming out quickly enough to land a potential star in subsequent drafts.

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everything has about a 40% chance of being made.

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