TheNorthCydeRises

Definitely agree.

My Bengals SUCK My Reds SUCK My Hawks are gonna SUCK And my VOLS can't win big games to save their lives, so they may as well SUCK too I'm at the point in my life in which I just can't keep getting emotionally invested into my favorite sports teams.

Dennis with 27 pts - 8 assists . .. and 7 turnovers, in a loss to Spain. Spain just had too many weapons, led by Marc Gasol ( 28 pts - 10 rebs ). Germany has no weapons, outside of Dennis and the Theis guy. Welp, this was a good experience for Dennis, in the "I'm the man" role. He'll get to shoot the ball a lot this year. If he can cut down on the turnovers, we all should be pleased with Dennis' progression as a player.

First off, those 3 PGs have 9 championships between them. The non-point guards? Jordan has 6 Duncan has 5 Kobe has 5 Wade has 4 Shaq has 4 Lebron has 3 Second, there have been PG dominant teams that have lost in the Finals. Allen Iverson is the guy that Kyrie could compare to, from a scoring and ball dominant standpoint. Jason Kidd, who made it to 2 Finals, was ball dominant from a playmaking standpoint. Gary Payton and John Stockton. were the leaders of their team. And Tony Parker has an NBA Finals MVP award, along with Chauncey Billups. Iverson, Stockton, Parker, and Billups will all be in the Hall of Fame one day. Westbrook and Chris Paul will be too. And so will Kyrie Irving.

I was definitely thinking about Dolfan earlier today. Prayers to him, his family, and everyone in SE Texas. And a damn good call by him, for completely leaving the state, despite Louisiana getting socked as well with flooding.

He would've been a much better backup PG than Delaney. And with the playoff performance that Hardaway Jr had, we'd be better off with Jordan creating offense and making shots.

On the surface, I would agree. But the departure of Gordon Hayward may give Joe one more decent production season on his resume. He already has his 20,000 points, which is normally the automatic benchmark to get into the Hall. Only 2 guys who have reached this mark are not in the Hall of Fame ( Tom Chambers, Antwan Jamison ). The other guys who have reached this mark, but not in, are either still active, or waiting for their 5 year hiatus to be up, so they can be elected into the Basketball HOF. The big thing though, will be his knack of making clutch shots. That's his main legacy right now. And barring injury, and a complete decline in his skills, he's going to become only the 13th player in NBA history to have 20,000 points - 5,000 rebounds - and 5,000 assists in his career. He's currently 82 assists and 113 rebounds shy of 5,000 in each categories. Only 16 players are in the 15,000 pts - 5,000 rebs - 5,000 asst club. And all are in the HOF. Joe honestly needs to join one of these "superteams" after this season, to try to get a ring as a veteran role player off the bench, Maybe he'll have a clutch performance or make a big shot for a team like that. Joe is likely to finish his career with 21,000+ points with 5,000 rebs and assists.

Joe is also a borderine Hall of Famer.

Yeah, I guess ya'll missed this last season. He got called up by the Pelicans in March, and signed a 2 yr contract on the cheap.

I see the Joe Johnson comparison, when they talk about his midrange / pull up game. Dude will be a monster in college, and a very good NBA pro. Too much in his skill set for him not to be.

http://www.hoopsstats.com/basketball/fantasy/nba/playerstats/17/2/fga/7-1 So there were 7 PGs that took more than 18 shots per game in the regular season last year. James Harden, who should've been on this list as a PG, makes 8. - Westbrook ( 24 FGA ) - Lillard ( 20 ) - Irving ( 20 ) - Thomas ( 19 ) - Harden ( 19 ) - Walker ( 18 ) - Wall ( 18 ) - Curry ( 18 ) - All 8 made the playoffs - Kyrie and Curry met in the Finals . . Wall played in the ECF. - Only Tony Parker ( a low volume shooter, low assist PG ), broke the mold here, mainly because he plays alongside a top 5 player in the NBA and maybe the best all-around player. - Kyrie shot 47% FG and 40% from 3 point range last season. Kyrie is also a 90+% free throw shooter. http://www.hoopsstats.com/basketball/fantasy/nba/playerstats/17/2/ast/7-1 Conversely, there were only 7 PGs that averaged 7 or more assists last season. Add James Harden, and that makes 8. - Harden ( 11 asst ) - Wall ( 10 ) - Westbrook ( 10 ) - Paul ( 9 ) - Rubio ( 9 ) - Teague ( 8 ) - Holliday ( 7 ) - Lowry ( 7 ) - 6 of the 8 made the playoffs - Only Wall made it to a Conference Finals When I see how knowledgeable NBA fans like yourself view Kyrie, but undervalue the impact of elite and clutch scoring in the NBA, I see why Kyrie wanted to leave Lebron and get out from under his shadow. It's the only way he's going to get his proper respect as a superstar caliber player. Role players like Crowder are nothing, if they're not playing alongside an elite alpha dog scorer ( i.e. - volume scorer ). If you don't have that alpha dog, it's hard to win. The Hawks did it for 2 months, but even they suffered because they didn't have that alpha dog, and broke up the entire team because of it. If we get the "Playoff Dennis" version of Schröder next season ( 24 ppg - 8 asst - 46% FG - 42% 3FG ) . . on 18 FGA . . the Hawks will be much better off as a team. But make no mistake, there is little difference between 24 ppg - 8 asst . . . and 29 ppg - 6 asst. From a points created standpoint, the impact from both stat lines will be about 45 ppg. Points created at the PG/playmaker spot is a huge indicator on who has a true impact on a game. The reason why a guy like Ricky Rubio can't hold a candle to Kyrie, despite being a better playmaker and defender, is because he can't score at a volume level, or score efficiently. Mr. Irving can do both things at a high level, which is why he's going to be a future Hall of Famer.

The media?

That's insane.

It makes both of them stronger long term. You now have Kyrie and Hayward as the young building blocks of the team. You just give the Cavs a potential top 3 pick, which might be enough incentive for Lebron to stay in Cleveland . . but at the worst, have a young talent to pair with Kevin Love. I guess we'll just have to bet on Dennis, Taurean, John, Deandre, and next year's draft pick. We need at least 2 out of the 5 to become All-Stars. Can they do it? If they cant, it's purgatory for the next 7 years.

That means the tank will be for nothing then. Hopefully DJ Schlenk can scout well and find an overlooked superstar in the making.

Good Lord . . . smh

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/20421382/cleveland-cavaliers-send-kyrie-irving-boston-celtics-deal-including-isaiah-thomas And Cleveland gets Brooklyn's 1st round pick next year. Hope this tanking that we're doing works. Because the East may STILL be on lockdown for the next 5 - 10 years.

Not true. Plus/minus or points per 100 possessions doesn't tell you everything. This breaks it down a little better game by game. http://www.hoopsstats.com/basketball/fantasy/nba/atlanta-hawks/players/dwight-howard/profile/17/1/6/7

Rondo, it turns out, was the true leader of the Bulls. He had the ear of all the young guys, while Wade and Butler were sulking and feeling sorry for themselves. You remember this? http://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/01/rajon-rondo-rips-calls-out-dwyane-wade-jimmy-butler-instagram-leadership-loss-celtics-vets Also, it was Chicago that had Boston down 0 - 2 in the 1st round. But what happened when Rondo got hurt? That team completely fell apart, with Wade and Butler trying to "lead" them, and they got swept the next 4 games.

8 wasn't enough . . . unlike the old TV show.

I need to pull up an old Dwight Howard thread then. I don't remember anyone expecting 18 pts - 11 rebs from him. I mean, to get that level of production, he'd need far more than 8 post touches a game. He's not one of the best players in the league, but he's still a top 10 center. Too bad the Hawks couldn't fully take advantage of that.

My thing is this. I'm not even saying that Dwight was great. He simply did exactly what he was supposed to do. If someone before last season said that Dwight would average 13 pts - 13 rebs and shoot over 60% FG, people would've been smiling from ear to ear to get that from him, in a secondary role. But when the rest of the team started to suck, we needed him to do more. But when he didn't ( or couldn't ) do more, people made him the scapegoat.

Post what you want sir. Then post all of those horrible shooting percentages from our wings and guards, and see which group were the real culprits of inefficiency.

How? We all saw the games. These guys were missing wide open shots. Baze had to get red hot in the 2nd half of the year, just to raise his 3 point % to just below 35%, which is league average. Millsap took a whopping 241 threes, and only made 31% of them. If Josh Smith would've done something like that, we would've crucified the dude. Delaney, our backup PG, shot a worse percentage from 3 ( 23.6% ), than Josh Smith's career 3 pt % in ATL ( 28.3% ). We were 24th in the league in catch and shoot 3 point percentage ( 35.7% ) and 23rd in catch and shoot shots overall ( 37.5% ) At least our "pull up" game was strong. We were only 27th in the league in pull up 3 point percentage, at 29.2%. Just think of what that percentage would be, had Hardaway Jr not started to heat up in January. We were a garbage shooting team last year, with the strength of the team being defense and the play of our frontcourt guys ( Millsap and Howard ).

Dang . . . Dennis almost lost that game when he let himself get trapped. He was damn lucky that Russia didn't intercept that pass and go the other way. They still did intercept the next pass, but Germany was able to get back on defense.