Around the NBA 2024-25

Curious what team will come out of nowhere and be good, and what team we think will be good will not be.

I'm going with Memphis will be worse than people think. I just think they were worse than just missing Ja Morant.

I'm tempted to say Minnesota will be better than people think because I'm seeing so many things that say we'll be much worse than last year, but I think I'll go with Orlando being better than people think. Banchero another year older and I think Suggs takes another step this year. Plus the East is just the East: mediocre outside of a few teams. They can be good playing against bad competition.

Combating the narrative wars:

Ant got in trouble for saying the league had no skill back in the day. That’s because it became among the most repeated lines from HTB, and infected other podcasts. Anyone who is a fan of the NBA and watches games with their eyes knows that was all nonsense. I don’t think we fully understood why.

The framing of prison ball is bs, he is deleting the context that Egg, Stephen all benefited from FOM in 2018-19. It wasn’t multiple things that exploded offense it was this, and pace, offensive rebound shot clock only resetting to 14. It happened overnight and miraculously none of these big pundits that cover the league for a living told fans why, until a change was made again last year.

By prison ball what he means is teams can play basketball again. In basketball one team is supposed to play something called defense to prevent the other team from scoring. The analytics birds convinced the league efficiency rules supreme but it is not true without FOM. It likely extended Mike and CP’s career given now if they have a step downhill defenses have to allow them their path to drive.

It’s like how he tried to frame the second apron as hurting the middle class of NBA teams. It was solely designed to curb mega wealthy owners from massively outspending the rest of the league. The league is in a much better place now because of that, unless all you want to watch are KD and LeBron super teams, but we have different goals.

I think if OKC stays healthy they're easily the best team in the West. I'd love to have their roster and pick cache.

It'll be interesting in Presti actually starts using them...

Dallas with Klay is not going to go well, IMO. Sure he's a better shooter than DJJ, but the Mavs were so good because of their defense with Luka being a wizard offensively. Klay is going to tank their D IMO, and Lively/Gafford will start getting annoyed with having 3 sieve perimeter defenders around them. I think they got hot at the right time and swapped out solid role players for question marks.

The idea with FOM was now everyone could generate easily now or get free throws. This wasn’t ten years ago, it was 2018-19, as was pace getting rid of the 24 second shot clock (devaluing offensive rebounds). Most interesting storyline, is it still going to be easy for teams to generate 30-40 quality 3’s a night. If the rule change is for real, it should be harder again. I still need to see it, because until it’s in black and white rules, it makes it harder to say something bad concretely changed.

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Khobi Price: JJ Redick clarified that he was being sarcastic when he said he wanted the Lakers to take 50 3-pointers. Says he wants the team to average 5-6 more 3s per game. “I think 40 is a lot. But if you’re generating good ones, that’s a great number.” – via Twitter khobi_price

NBA fans will like this segment, because it's sort of the first attempt at addressing from the NBA Intellectual Dark Web at why the regular season looked like shit for the last six years, until the last third of last season. I can't believe it wasn't talked about every single day, because it looked so bizarre to anyone who had watched basketball prior to 2018-19. I have no idea how this wasn't nixed that first season, other than it was fun to pretend the league was more talented than ever now.

Narrative wars, the reason there are corner three's is because FOM made it so everyone could drive to the paint, Hibbert was removed from the NBA so he wouldn't be there to meet LeBron at the rim, meaning if LeBron's body hit him in the lane and Hibbert wasn't going perfectly straight up it was turned into a foul, this is well before FOM, but part of why he went from a defensive force to out of the league seemingly overnight. And Hibbert's was an actual rule change as well, something with verticality I think I posted it in here one time, but the difference between that and FOM is it devalued one player, versus completely reshaping the entire league, and inflating the value of small waterbug scorers over everything thing else. Ended point guards for a time, limited centers, and turn PF's into Kevin Love Duncan Robinson types versus the Julius Randle and Derrick Favors bruisers I prefer.

The league is the rules. Daryl got the league to change the rules, and the league agreed to it as a way to prop up Steph a fun foil to LeBron, who by the way also required Iggy, Thompson, Green, and KD.

This is really interesting because they address FOM by saying it's 20 other things. Look when the offense spiked. It was not ten years ago. Part of the fewer corner three's are they are hitting a four in the dunkers spot for a baseline mid-range versus corner three every time. Wolves fans can think of Dieng, but much more importantly it's the difference of Steph driving on Gordon backing away from him to a layup pre-all-star break last year, and him not being able to get around (Kings) Murray. All corner three's start with FOM breaking defense, which is why there was an explosion, and alot of the stuff about Harden, and Lou Williams tricking refs, came post FOM. Steph, was doing it as much as anyone. There was that weird period where he and James could completely pick up their dribble, fake a shot, and then step back in to a three (clear travel). All the CP3 bs butt stop, and RIP throughs. The league was so geared to guards, in a way that was so extreme from what basketball was the year prior, and in real time it was mostly ghosted by NBA pods. It's amazing. And amazing the league might be turning it around.

It's true players practice corner three mores, but it comes after the league legislates defense out of the NBA (Kerr's statement last year).

Before the league changed the rules to have to play small ball three chuck fest, pushing pace was something young teams would emphasize, in part because that's how they could compete with vet teams. Ricky Rubio was among the best, in part because he is a true day one starting NBA point guard, but also FIBA actually had a quicker cross half court clock, so he was used to pushing. Pushing pace used to be a skill that teams with a good point guard would execute depending on time and situation of a game. It did not mean both teams sprinting the entire game in sort of pseudo transition the entire game which has kind of been the regular season since FOM.

Under freedom of movement Stephen Curry is much more valuable, as an efficient movement shooter, relative to other skills, post-up, defense, point guard, rebounding, interior d than he otherwise would of been. He is also much more guardable when you don't have to run away from him dribbling towards you as the league somehow decided would be cool for a while.

It's possible we have fix basketball, or at least it could be closer to basketball again. What I would love to see is a team go back to working two bigs inside the paint. In theory Wolves have the personnel with Randle, Gobert, and Mike who played with Zach Randolph and Gasol. What he didn't have then was an Ant Man, should still work even if he's a lot older, but again Finch wants sloppy flow, which will work against young, and tanking teams during the regular season just fine. We might even have the best offense in the league one month. Especially post trade deadline when there's more separation between the tries and the try nots.

Celtics are a super team currently. Holiday, Porzingis, Tatum, and Brown SHOULD hurt, or be a major risk.

I tend to view it more as contracts. Those four are grabbing two guys that would be part of a big three on other teams. Portland sending Holiday there made zero sense for that team, but imagine if they only netted Porzingis last off-season? He misses a chunk of the play-offs, they’re a completely different team even with White, who was also not homegrown.

That bench should be empty, and the gap between their numbers and the league is not accurate, the East was in shambles essentially since that rule change (not just playoffs). They’ve done a decent job with young bench guys but it still comes down to their big boys staying healthy.

Boston is so deep that Porzingis is a luxury, not a necessity. 

He played limited minutes in the first 4 games of the first round, missed the next 2 rounds completely and then played 60 minutes total over 3 games in the finals.

Boston was 10-2 in Playoff Games he missed.

Steve is correct, and now would have been the time to do it. Every team twice, division teams four times. Granted it could be a little lopsided as say the Wolves play Blazers and Jazz eight times, those teams will not be trying to win all eight but it’s what the league has now. It should be a risk to sit guys in the regular season and drop games.

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Dave McMenamin: Steve Kerr credits the NBA for the creativity of adding the In-Season Tournament but ultimately believes that less games and more practice time would enhance the product more than additional games and incentives pic.x.com/oLGK0GeLmK – via Twitter mcten