thecampster

LOL @ Gallo showing the ref scratch marks on his arm.

3 really bad 3 attempts from JC tonight.

LOL at his halftime interview. 3 word answers and out. No typical Kevin color. All bzness tonight

Anyone else feel like Toronto's defense is just 5 long guys running around crazy waving their arms?

We're talking about turn your head and cough and bend over and spread your cheeks days at MEPS. I think questions of going too far have been blown by and lapped.

Well that's $3000 in therapy down the drain. Thanks for bringing that back to the front of my mind.

Tony Brothers: "Do you know how long I've been referrring son?" Trae: "I don't give a damn, he told me to turn my head and cough!!!"

If I had a defense of the refs, I have no idea how they are supposed to referee an NBA game. It can be so fast, so furious and these jamokes are running up and down the court wheezing the whole time with 23 year old gazelles. Sometimes, I think they call fouls just so they can catch their breath. How do 3 people see what 10 people are doing when they're running around and all dodging and weaving traffic. But on ball play, yah, they should be able to say that yes its a foul when Avery Bradley is checking someone's prostate out there.

Lets try to remember that even the 15th man on a team is 3000 times better at basketball than 99.9% of people posting on message boards. If you need a refresher on this...go back on youtube and look up college player challenges Brian Scalabrine

It all goes back to the rule changes targeting certain players at the beginning of the year. I really, really hate that Trae is mouthing off on the court, but its a lot like what Deandre said to the official yesterday when Westbrook just barreled into him. "What am I supposed to do?" This is on an assistant (IMHO) to say something and take a tech. An assistant needs to get hot, look into a mic and say "This BS has to stop". The assistant needs to take a tech for Nate (he's limited as well). You could have easily fouled Avery Bradley out of that game in the first half. Westbrook could have had 4 in the 1st half easily. In the previous game, our announcing crew jokingly said, "I guess hand checking is back" and its true. Trae is getting bumped, checked, impeded by moving players at least 10 times per game. I'm more concerned with him getting hurt than suspended. IMHO, a suspension would be little different than him getting a day off for rest. The easiest way to get a Tech in the NBA is to use the term B$%@S%#$. BS. Tell a ref who gives you a foul that's a BS call and you'll get your tech. Make sure its near the scorer's table and loud enough to get picked up on the mic. It'll make sports center and the BS will stop.

So mechanically speaking I've seen a small flaw on Knox and its an awareness thing. I can't believe a coach hasn't mentioned it to him. Bogi is the best comparison for this. When you see Bogi spotting up from 3, he's got catch ready hands and feet. This is a really big thing for consistency. How you set up, rhythm is everything for a catch and shoot shooter and a quick release. Bogi is really, really good at this. Gallo when he top 3rd of the circle and in transition does a good job with rhythm here as well. You get your feet into the right width, direction and twist your body to the direction of the ball hands out, chest height. There should be minimal foot movement before the dip and spring. This is to build consistency in the shot direction and spring height. See this older video on Bogi which will show these mechanics over and over. Bogi will open the lead foot to get the past then twist his lead foot and body into the basket while starting the spring. Its very minimalist movement in the lower body and why when he's really going well, he's very good (it is also why the knee injury bothers his shot so much). He's a mechanics shooter, not a chucker. Both Kevin and K'von are inconsistent here. What's funny is K'von has been working on it and is worse and his good mechanic catch and shoots because it hasn't become muscle memory yet. Back to Knox. See this video. These are all makes but the mechanics issue is the same. 20 second mark, he's hunched over to keep his hands high/leaning left on the catch. He springs high to exaggerate shooting at the top of the jump (too much variance possible). 38 second mark, he isn't set to receive the pass and leans left to get it. On the spring he is still leaning left. He shoots this all hands and guides the ball at the basket. It goes in pretty but this is due to a late rotation to get the pass and not having his feet set. He worked too hard for this make. 55 second mark. Great decision by Knox not to force a 3. He kicks it back up top and then receives the pass back. But his feet are wider and springs up less. Still goes in as this is a highlight video but his upper body is dong the work. Its part of the problem with having a thin/elongated lower trunk. He could do with some leg work in the offseason to build the base. 1:16 mark. This. This is very pretty and exactly the form he should have on every catch and shoot. He's positioned early, feet lined up with shoulders. Feet never move, catch twist shoot, medium lift, very little effort. This is who he needs to be. 5 star shot. 1:32 mark. Very good as well. Almost as good as previous make.

So I mentioned that privately to someone on this board like 5 days ago and publicly like 3 or 4 right before the first story broke but its starting to simmer now.

Well that's a fine! LOL Trae: "Tony Brothers said to me, "do you know how many years I've been calling this league?" and I said, "I don't give a damn!".

OO makes me realize what Bruno could have been.

Media starting to talk about this now in a bid to help smooth the way for Harden to Philly. https://www.yahoo.com/news/brooklyn-nets-super-team-teetering-154213367.html Between Brooklyn, Philly and the NBA there is a lot of money behind this nonsense right now.

Because Philly's offense will revolve around dump and kick, draw and kick, penetrate and kick. Atlanta's offense is much more movement based with more screens, cuts and roles. This requires a plethora of finishers to go with 2 solid shooters, not 3.

I've taken a few days trying to unravel the chatter and a few conversations I've had. Here's what's going on based on those conversations and my warlock crystal ball. The first thing you have to unravel is what is Philly's preference. Philly wants to pair Harden with Embiid and shooters. They want to run an ISO kick offense where teams have to dedicate a double team to either Embiid or Harden depending on who has the ball and that will leave a shooter open. They see the failure of Simmons is in not being a viable shooter and that ruins their options on offense. The Harden opting out and signing with Philly in the offseason chatter is just that, chatter. Its meant to hold Brooklyn's feet to the fire to trade Harden or lose him. A Philly trade with Brooklyn would look something like this: http://www.espn.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=y2n7qm7d All of this has been an attempt by Philly to get Brooklyn to move Harden early, dangling Ben as his ball handling replacement. The onus being to not lose Harden for nothing and thereby not being to replace him with a salary (they are way over the cap). Philly's talks with Atlanta, Sacramento and Minnesota were mostly opportunistic. The price was set very high so as to "not" get a deal done but to make it seem like there was significant buzz about Simmons to make Brooklyn question if they could lose Harden in the offseason for nothing. Although the 3 teams most prominently mentioned are possible landing places for Simmons, it would again require a dialed down Simmons for 2 players or a 3 team trade to facilitate and no one wants Harris at his salary and length regardless of picks. Philly has been caught with their hand in the cookie jar here of trying to keep these other deals as last resorts, saying the right stuff in the media about letting this go beyond the deadline. They now may be stuck with Simmons without him playing. Harden is making $44 million this year. The only path to Philly for Harden is a trade unless Philly unloads all of Simmons, Harris and (see below) neither of those options may be an option now. The league is now seriously looking in the background at starting a tampering investigation on Philly as they believe (without Brooklyn's permission) discussions as to what an opt out new salary for Harden would look like have taken place through back channels. As with BB and Milwaukee, Philly could lose any opportunity to acquire or trade for Harden as penalty and they may end up on the hook for Simmons. That will depend on what Brooklyn wants to do. Morey has overplayed his hand and the market for Simmons is now tanking. Sacramento is not "out" as the media has reported. They are out at the current ask level. The price has to now come down significantly in order for them to re-enter. As I stated 2 weeks ago, the interested teams made their final offers on Simmons already. There hasn't been any fresh talks and almost all suitors have realized Morey is playing them as pawns (as does the league) in the media and have broken off any new discussions.

Meh....like I said before, I think the Knicks move him in the summer and he finds his opportunity on the next team.

JC was an absolute menace against penetration last night. 4 blocks doesn't tell the story. There were a few Celtics runs at the baskets that should have been layups but the guard peeled off thinking JC was there again. Sometimes God makes beauty that only a select few see!

Technically he was even more disruptive than that but that's the official credit. K'von had a very good all around game. There was one play where he boxed out Horford for a teammate to get a board and I wept a smidge.

If he increases his shooting percentages to 48%/40% and increases his assist/turnover rate to 2/1, every team will want him. Stats tend to win out. He's not terribly far away from those things if he puts in the right work. In my experience, players who say they've put in the work show it on the court. Cam's work on his body last year showed immediately. His abandoning those work outs showed up a few months later. Cam isn't far from it though. Most of it is an attitude adjustment. He's still really young and has time to turn it around (like 3 years). Siakam got a lot of the same criticism his first year or 2 in the league.

For clarity we're now calling Knox Kevin and Huerter K'von or perhaps we should go with Knox as Ksquared. 2 is too many numbers not to activate my spectrum brain.

But he is still part of this year's storyline. His impact will be threaded, impacted through other threads. If we go through a losing streak, its an opportunity for others to say "see, Cam not problem". Just like they did with LP, just like they did with Al years ago, just like they did with Dennis....wait pretty much everyone was happy after Dennis left. I digress. Just because speech is uncomfortable doesn't mean we shut speech down. If its going on 2 years later, I could possibly get onboard but in the context of this season, its now a story line. Feel free to frame that storyline any way you see fit. We don't isolate ideas here (speaking of which, I tried looking up BAN and couldn't find it. Feel free to message me privately to educate me). If someone is taking the opportunity to take shots at you, take a second and be the bigger man. In my experience, hit people with facts. As my lawyer friends on the board will attest, those who have facts pound the facts, those without facts pound the table!

Yah, I'm not okay with isolating thoughts, controlling speech. Sorry!

So its a story line though. Its part of the Soap Opera that is being a fan of a professional sports team. Do I believe Cam is why we've turned the corner (maybe 15% max)? Or do I believe it has to do with getting healthy (closer to 85%). But you can't escape the chemistry part of this. When you have the coach (my first real criticism of Nate) allowing hero ball mentality to reach the floor there is going to be a natural desire from players to want to get theirs too. I saw it with Gallo. Gallo struggled during the last 10ish games he played with Cam. Cam took a shot without passing the ball, Gallo would decide on hero ball the next time down. Ball movement came to a crawl and you could see it all over Lou Williams face. In a 4 game stretch between Dec 13 and 31, Lou shot the ball 9, 11, 3, 12 times. He's only shot the ball more than 7 times twice in any other games all season. It was the middle of the hero ball stretch. Chemistry wise in December, we were not moving the ball at all on the second unit, playing a lot of 1v1 ISO basketball. There was an effect. Was Cam bitching and moaning in the locker room?..."NO!". I don't even blame Cam, but blame management for letting it go on way too long (much like is happening in Philly right now). But you can't deny it affected the chemistry, especially on the second unit. Should Supes admit the Cam asking out disrupted team chemistry? I believe he should, yes I do. Should the Cam negative posters admit that the COVID DNPs played a much larger part than Cam chemistry? I believe they should, yes I do. Should Supes use the angry, negative, intimidating language? No, he should not! Should you be able to tell people let it lie? You can tell them, but they're going to listen to you about as much as they listen to Supes. Its a storyline in a wonky season after an ECF run. People are amped, they care and we are not in the business of shutting down discussion here. If people want to blame Cam, let them. If Supes wants to die on that hill defending him, let him. If history has taught us anything, its that the villains tend to always be painted as villains at the end of the story. Let me throw a stat out most haven't pondered as far as the Cam situation goes. Over the last 3 years our team has played 187 regular season games. Regulation time minutes - that's 44,880 minutes to distribute to players (not including OT/Playoffs). Cam reddish played approximated 3100 minutes as a Hawk or 6.9% of the available minutes to Hawks players in the last 3 years. We're spending an awful lot of time loving or hating on a player who only took up less than 7% of the total available floor minutes for the team. A player who shot under 39% from the floor and under 33% from 3. A player who had more turnovers than assists. More turnovers than steals or blocks. Its an awful lot of board time on a player who was on the floor less than 35% of the time.