The Official 2016 NBA Playoffs Thread

[Fidatelo]

I feel like LeBron should get finals MVP win or lose unless he has some sort of horrible game 7 (which I can't imagine happening).

[nol]

Originally Posted by Fidatelo

I feel like LeBron should get finals MVP win or lose unless he has some sort of horrible game 7 (which I can't imagine happening).

Yeah, if the Warriors won this game and Draymond Green had played relatively decently, I could have seen him getting it, but LeBron should have it win or lose beyond some very extreme choke job combined with someone on the Warriors putting together a LeBron-esque game. Just goes to show how silly it was for Iguodala to win the Finals MVP last year.

[rjolley]

So, what led to Green pushing Lebron at half court towards the end of the game? The Curry fouls or just Draymond channeling his inner Rodman?

[nol]

Originally Posted by rjolley

So, what led to Green pushing Lebron at half court towards the end of the game? The Curry fouls or just Draymond channeling his inner Rodman?

It's funny how people are able to go back and forth between being surprised at stuff like this (obviously LeBron has been called every name in the book before and was just trying to provoke Green at the end of Game 4) and talking about how soft the league is. People have been shoving each other around and talking shit for decades; most of it was just never on camera in the 'golden days.'

[kingfc22]

Warriors need to figure out how to play defense again and Barnes needs to get some confidence as he's the one Warrior ending up with all the open looks.

[nol]

Originally Posted by kingfc22

Warriors need to figure out how to play defense again and Barnes needs to get some confidence as he's the one Warrior ending up with all the open looks.

Yeah, the most common question I've gotten from friends when watching these games is something along the lines of "Are the Warriors just gonna win the title every year for the foreseeable future?" and it comes back to the idea that win or lose on Sunday (and a win should be more likely than not at home), Harrison Barnes and Festus Ezeli are going to command $35-40 million/year between the two of them in the offseason, and no matter how poorly they've played in the Finals, it's not the easiest thing in the world to let them walk and have the only other players outside of Curry/Green/Thompson all be north of 30.

As far as the defense goes, the last two games have been a pretty good indication that, once LeBron is trusting his jumper, you need Iguodala guarding LeBron and Green helping at all times to even slow him down a little (which is insane by itself considering those are 2 of the best 3-4 defenders in the league best suited to guarding him or any other wing player), and Iggy wasn't looking too good health-wise today.

[CU Tiger]

Ha-ha hah omg

Watching NBA TV and Isiah Thomas just said, " when golden state goes to their small line up , LeBron James is the biggest guy on the court. And when LeBron is the biggest guy on the court he is bigger than everyone else on the court and he is the biggest guy on the court"

That's some in depth analysis there

[wustin]

Harrison Barnes still has the same issue he had at UNC. The dude can't dribble to save his life. He probably wouldn't be able to get past Steve Nash in his prime lol. I feel sorry for any team that wants him and I hope GSW doesnt match any offer sheets unless it's reasonable.

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[nol]

Originally Posted by wustin

Harrison Barnes still has the same issue he had at UNC. The dude can't dribble to save his life. He probably wouldn't be able to get past Steve Nash in his prime lol. I feel sorry for any team that wants him and I hope GSW doesnt match any offer sheets unless it's reasonable.

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That sounds nice and all if you're trying to argue that Harrison Barnes won't be a future All-Star, but if a team offers $20 million a year (which is a lower percentage of the salary cap than a max offer the year before would have been) and the Warriors don't want to match, who's going to replace him? Keep in mind this needs to be a guy who can make three pointers at a respectable rate and guard either perimeter players or guys as big as Zach Randolph depending on the matchup. Otherwise Iguodala, Livingston, and Bogut are all going to be worse than they were this season, so unless Kevin Durant signs in Golden State there's nobody out there who's going to fill Barnes' role plus make up for the decline of the role players.

Other than that, you're critiquing a 6'8 guy for not being able to break people down off the dribble and make plays for himself, which is to say he's not a LeBron/Durant/Paul George/Carmelo type of threat on offense. OK, sure.

[Vince, Pt. II]

Don't forget that Barnes rebounds better than nearly everyone on the entire team as well, and without that (and his defense) the small ball lineup is pretty much DOA.

[Groundhog]

Barnes is an underrated post guy too. Don't see it a lot because of how GSW play, but he's underrated in the post against smaller defenders. He's inconsistent from three, but I'm still furious since draft night that we took Waiters over Barnes.

[wustin]

Barnes was offered a max by GSW last year. A max for Barnes this off season would be 21-23M. It's just baffling a team like the Lakers or the Knicks are going to offer him that much money and GSW will probably have to match it. They also have to extend Curry's contract this offseason too, he's going to make double his current salary.


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[wustin]

There's also a rumor about a sign and trade of Barnes for Batum if Barnes wishes to play elsewhere.

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[rjolley]

Originally Posted by nol

It's funny how people are able to go back and forth between being surprised at stuff like this (obviously LeBron has been called every name in the book before and was just trying to provoke Green at the end of Game 4) and talking about how soft the league is. People have been shoving each other around and talking shit for decades; most of it was just never on camera in the 'golden days.'

Actually, I was asking because I missed part of the game leading up to that time and wondered if I missed something since it was a bit more than just normal shoving around half court when both teams are in their half court set. Not surprised due to the situation, but curious.

Didn't call the league soft, though. Not sure where you got that idea. I think the reason the Cavs and OKC have had success against the Warriors is the adjustment they've made to be more physical, especially with Curry and Thompson. One way to counter speed and quickness is with physical play when you can get close to them.

[Groundhog]

Cavs are attacking Curry on picks the same as OKC did, but it's kinda strange how much it seems to affect Curry in the postseason vs. the regular season. Part of it is the talent he's up against, but a big part of it seems to be mental to me. He seems real passive off the dribble compared to his normal MVP self, and he's giving away the ball at a high rate when passing out of the trap. And a lot of those passes are real lazy ones, too, which is strange given you'd think it'd be a major talking point when re-watching the tape post-game.

[wustin]

Allegedly he's playing with a sprained right ankle so he can't cut going left too well. There's also some other rumor that Curry is getting surgery right after the playoffs but I don't buy that.

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[JPhillips]

If Barnes is worth a max or near max, can they afford four max contracts? If not, who would they get rid of so that they could keep Barnes?

[murrayyyyy]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

If Barnes is worth a max or near max, can they afford four max contracts? If not, who would they get rid of so that they could keep Barnes?

The cap is jumping rather quickly over the next few years so it's possible but I figure most teams won't go for 4 maxs unless it's a Heatles 2.0 situation.

Barnes will look good in Celtics green next season.

[murrayyyyy]

If Harrison barnes shot Tupac he would still be alive

— joshua hollie (@Joshua_hollie) June 17, 2016

[nol]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

If Barnes is worth a max or near max, can they afford four max contracts? If not, who would they get rid of so that they could keep Barnes?

This has always been the thing. They lucked out because Steph Curry accepted an extremely lowball extension offer because 1) he had an extensive injury history and 2) as the son of a millionaire NBA player he likely wasn't extremely concerned about maximizing his earning potential. I can't think of a single NBA player who turned down a rookie extension in the $11-12 million dollar range and didn't get offered more the following summer. Even players like Brandon Knight and Enes Kanter whose teams decided to trade them rather than come to terms on an extension ended up getting paid by someone.

That's helped the Warriors immensely in terms of affording to bring in good role players, but once the bill comes due they are going to be the highest-paid team in league history (which makes perfect sense given that they won 73 games with players who are younger than the key players on the '96 Bulls in an era when the salary cap's the highest it's ever been).

[JPhillips]

Regardless of Barnes' value, it seems pretty clear that he's the fourth most valuable player on that team. I don't think a team can max out their fourth most valuable player, so either he signs for less or he moves on.

[nol]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

Regardless of Barnes' value, it seems pretty clear that he's the fourth most valuable player on that team. I don't think a team can max out their fourth most valuable player, so either he signs for less or he moves on.

It's the exact same thing that happened with the Cavs and Tristan Thompson last year. You can quibble all you want about whether or not he's a true 'max player,' but from the Warriors' perspective they can go over the cap to keep him and if not, he's getting paid about $4 million so you'd have to replace him with someone making that amount if you let him go and choose to re-sign other players such as Ezeli. For a championship-contending team, overpaying a player like that by a few million a year is infinitely better than cheaping out and hoping you can replace Barnes' production (and Groundhog touched on his value, but he was definitely essential to their ability to match up with a team like Memphis last year) with some bargain free agent like Solomon Hill. And in reality, Solomon Hill will be making more than $4 million a year this offseason, and that's a guy whose team didn't even pick up his rookie option.

This is pretty much why I'm not super high on Ben Simmons. His weaknesses are hand-waved with some thinking along the lines of 'just surround him with guys who can shoot and defend and he'll be great.' Well, Harrison Barnes is one of those guys who fits that description (and if you'd disagree with that assessment based on what he's done the last couple games, that further underscores how scarce such players actually are) and it's going to take a 4 year, $94 million contract for him to even think about leaving the Warriors.

Good luck finding 3 Harrison Barneses, because there's plenty of teams around the league who thought they signed/drafted a player like that only to be mistaken by quite a bit. Just looking at his draft, he went 7th, 2 teams drafting ahead of him ended up with some pretty notable busts in Dion Waiters and Thomas Robinson, and there are only 3 (maybe 4 if you like Evan Fournier, who will also be getting $20+ million a year this summer) guys drafted after his pick you could say are as good or better than him in Green, Crowder, and Middleton, 3 more guys who don't come cheap and are apparently pretty hard to identify during the draft process given some of the players who were selected before them.

Originally Posted by rjolley

Didn't call the league soft, though. Not sure where you got that idea. I think the reason the Cavs and OKC have had success against the Warriors is the adjustment they've made to be more physical, especially with Curry and Thompson. One way to counter speed and quickness is with physical play when you can get close to them.

Didn't say you did. Not sure where you got that idea. It's just that players shoving one another around and cussing at one another and hitting one another in the nuts is clearly at odds with the popular notion that the players are all friends with one another and it's not as competitive as it used to be. Anyway these are not the first teams to come up with the idea of "be physical off the ball with Curry and Thompson" - the Clippers and plenty of other teams certainly do that. Besides, how many teams would you say are going with the alternate strategy of "just let the two best three-point shooters of all time run around get open?"

It just turns out that the players you mentioned are not exactly pushovers despite how they look plus "when you can get close to them" tends to be easier said than done given that they're always cutting off the ball and have very smart and capable teammates who can find them when open, so you have to play good physical defense and also have extremely good talent - otherwise you can certainly put together a lineup of players that limit Curry and Thompson offensively, but that just means you'd be losing 95-70 rather than 125-100. As a matter of fact, that's almost exactly happened in the Memphis series last year once the Warriors figured out that by not even pretending to guard Tony Allen, Memphis couldn't score on them.

It's also where "the losing team played iso ball down the stretch" tends to be pretty lazy and reductive analysis. Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook would be fine with winning games by running the Princeton offense or whatever one thinks the Thunder should be doing instead, but the fact of the matter is their teammates are more defensively oriented and aren't capable of playing efficient offense if asked to handle the ball for extended periods of time.

[albionmoonlight]

I get that owners want to save money. But if you are one of the few teams who are actually within a championship window, how do you not overpay to extend that window even for another year or two?

A 35-win team overpaying for a guy because they feel they need to make a splash? Stupid. A 60+ win team overpaying for a guy because they have a shot at a title? Smart.

[Arles]

I'm not sure it would be good for team chemistry for Barnes to be making between $6-10 mil more per season than each of Curry, Klay and Draymond.

[nol]

Originally Posted by Arles

I'm not sure it would be good for team chemistry for Barnes to be making between $6-10 mil more per season than each of Curry, Klay and Draymond.

Well, it doesn't seem to have hurt them too much that Curry has been the best player in the league over the last two seasons while being the 5th-highest-paid player on the team.

It's also not good for team chemistry if the team's 5th starter is not a good player and you lose games as a result.

[Arles]

I'm more worried about Draymond and Klay than Steph.

[wustin]

Curry has endorsements out the wazoo.

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[nol]

Originally Posted by Arles

I'm more worried about Draymond and Klay than Steph.

Because those are both guys who are all about receiving top billing as the team's star? It's purely a function of the rising cap. If Draymond Green were that intent on getting paid more than Harrison Barnes he'd have signed a one-year deal last summer. Instead he kept the team in mind by taking less than what he could have made on the open market (FWIW Barnes is likely doing the same thing based on reports that he's fine with $20 million/year).

And the obvious main point is that Curry has more reason to complain about his salary relative to how he performs than any veteran player in recent NBA history, so how is anyone else on the team going to complain when he doesn't?

[Logan]

At the very least they should be considering matching and later trading to one of the teams he was interested in signing with.

[Atocep]

Of course the Knicks would be the team interested in trading for Derrick Rose.

[whomario]

Couldn´t really follow the playoffs unfortunately and no time to partake in discussions about it ... But caught up today watching/browsing through all finals games. Lots of big swings with both teams systems looking pretty "fragile" in a way: Great when working, a hairs width away from failure.

James in games 5 and 6 has been absolutely stunning. 82/24/18 with just 3 TOs and 50+% from the field is stunning production. Making smart reads. staying agressive. I am impressed.

Warriors need to play their game in game 7 and just hope the shots are falling, don´t really see much of a Plan b here.

As far as their future plans go, they should really find out what Batum wants money wise. Imo he would be an amazing fit and while a different player than Barnes and less capable of playing the 4 in spurts, i´d think as a 3 he´s actually a better fit ... Could handle the ball some as well to give Curry even more relieve in that regard.

[RainMaker]

Batum is going to get a max contract.

Seems like Lebron has shown the world he's still the player on it. Deserves MVP even if they lose.

[whomario]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Batum is going to get a max contract.

Seems the type of player who might take a discount if the other factors are right ... In any case, i think as the Warriors there should be options out there to be equally good or close to it (they could be 10 wins worse and still a 60 win team after all ) even when loosing Barnes.

[nol]

Originally Posted by whomario

Seems the type of player who might take a discount if the other factors are right ... In any case, i think as the Warriors there should be options out there to be equally good or close to it (they could be 10 wins worse and still a 60 win team after all ) even when loosing Barnes.

The Warriors have no cap room, so it would have to be a very steep discount for it to functionally be a Barnes-Batum swap (not necessarily a sign-and-trade where Barnes goes to Charlotte) that doesn't also require them to dump the salaries of guys like Bogut, Livingston, or even Iguodala. At that point you're almost asking if Batum would be into coming over for the vet minimum (if he's sacrificing about $20 million/year to get to what Barnes is currently being paid, what's another $3 million?), and you wouldn't even need to lose Barnes in that case.

Even if you did trade the two, the 'not being able to play the 4 as well for stretches' is an enormous deal for the Warriors (plus Barnes being 24 rather than 27 surely would factor in). Barnes' main value is what doesn't happen when he's on the court.

The fact that the Warriors' small ball lineup has looked less than invincible against the Thunder and Cavs is due to circumstances exclusive to those two teams. First, Draymond is preoccupied with LeBron/KD. Second, Tristan Thompson, Steven Adams and even Kanter aren't just ordinary big guys but are among the very best offensive rebounders in the league.

Without Barnes though, people wouldn't be as quick to assume that being able to put 5 three-point shooters out there is absolutely essential and that big men are now useless: the small lineup would get killed on the glass on a much more regular basis and you'd be forced to sub in a guy who likely does not space the floor at all. Now you could point to his recent stretch and say it looks like teams don't even need to guard him, but there have certainly been a decent number of big games over the last couple seasons, both in the regular season and the playoffs, in which he burned teams that played off him or tried to guard him with a slow PF.

Barnes' value to the Warriors, a team at the cap that can go into the luxury tax to keep him, is fudamentally different than what it would be if he decided he wanted to try to be a star on his own and took a max deal somewhere else. If that were the case, he'd probably average 17-18 points a game and not be terribly efficent in doing so. Basically Rudy Gay with less capability of having those Rudy Gay kind of nights where he's scoring 30+ and making it look easy, but with the benefit of being the kind of defensive player the casual fan would think Rudy Gay is based on watching Gay's highlights. You could certainly argue whether that would be a wise use of a team's cap space, but a team with Harrison Barnes as the no. 1 or 2 scorer that doesn't just surround him with rookies would at least be 'competitive' and for some people/teams that can be pretty important Hell, if you put Barnes on the 76ers along with whoever they'll end up with as the result of drafting/trading players, Philadelphia would probably be 'competitive' in that same sense that one would consider the Knicks or Nuggets to have been competitive this year.

For a little context, James Harden scored 12 points per game on 37% shooting and got torched on defense (just not in the funny way that people can make Vines of, so almost like it didn't happen) in the 2012 Finals, and that clearly did not scare every single team in the league away from him or affect his ability to get a max contract.

Even disregarding all that, the Warriors are either going to be back-to-back champions or will have won one and then lost Game 7 of the Finals at the hands of what would be the best NBA Finals performance of all time (someone could try to nitpick me and say 'what about Jordan in 93' or whatever but I'd say the Warriors are better overall and especially defensively than the teams Jordan beat in the Finals). Why would they need to make a change for the sake of making a change? If they were even a little worse this year, they wouldn't have even made the Finals. I don't think it's going out on a limb to say that each extra win for teams in the 60-win range is a lot harder to come by than it would be for some team like Phoenix to jump back up to 30-something wins next year.

The need for more ball-handling outside of Curry is certainly there this series, but I think a lot of that is due to the Warriors being so used to Green being able to handle all of that, which doesn't work quite as well when LeBron and Durant are guarding him while being 100 percent locked in on defense. To the extent it's even an area for improvement, it's probably something I could see Klay Thompson incorporating into his game a little more now that he and the team are aware of the issue.

[wustin]

NBA Salary Cap to Increase More than Expected - Blazer's Edge

Even if they exceed 94M, they can bring in Batum. Luxury tax shouldn't be a huge issue, at least not with all the revenue the organization has made the last 2-3 years.

[nol]

As I said, the Warriors (current payroll: $93 million) can bring in Batum or any other player as long as they first get rid of the salaries of a few role players. You literally aren't allowed to go over the cap to sign players from other teams regardless of how much luxury tax you're willing to pay.

[wustin]

You can in sign-and-trade deals as long as you dont go past 4M beyond the luxury tax which will be 113M.

I looked at the GS's payroll. They're at 94M currently, All of their expiring contracts total up to about 20M. Batum will command around 26M and that leaves about 15M to play around with to resign some bench players or bring in others at the minimum or MLE.

Obviously the idea goes out the window if Batum signs with another team and doesn't want to play at GS

[nol]

Originally Posted by wustin

You can in sign-and-trade deals as long as you dont go past 4M beyond the luxury tax which will be 113M.

I looked at the GS's payroll. They're at 94M currently, All of their expiring contracts total up to about 20M. Batum will command around 26M and that leaves about 15M to play around with to resign some bench players or bring in others at the minimum or MLE.

And as I said, Batum is not even an upgrade over Barnes for the Warriors. Jerry West is a pretty big Barnes fan and I'd tend to side with the guy who stopped the Warriors from trading Klay Thompson for Kevin Love. It's pretty hard to upgrade a 73-9 team either way, so having to let go of Barnes AND bunch of other expiring contracts (like Shaun Livingston, who has certainly swung more than his share of playoff games, most recently Game 1 of these Finals) is even worse. Outside of players retiring, that would have to be an unprecedented amount of turnover for a team that won 65+ regular season games - even the Mavericks team that got upset by the Warriors in the first round brought back their top 7 players.

Anyhow it's 95+ percent likely Batum stays in Charlotte. He's very patriotic and France's national team has to play a qualifying tournament for the Olympics that starts on July 4. He'd have to sign with an NBA team on pretty much the first day of free agency to be available for that. Charlotte didn't trade a recent top-10 pick and a starter so they could only have Batum for one season. With Kidd-Gilchrist healthy this past season, the Hornets could very well have been the 3rd seed and on to at least the 2nd round.

[bob]

Predictions for tonight? I think it's going to be a blowout one way or the other based on Curry. He'll either use game 6 to fuel his fire or will press and continue to miss shots that result in Cleveland running away.

The only result that would surprise me would be a close Cleveland win.

[kingfc22]

If Barnes scores 12-15 points and/or the Warriors hold Cleveland under 100, they win. That's what I'm keying on at least.

[nol]

If Iguodala is reasonably healthy and moving around better, I think that plus home court in Game 7 should be enough for the Warriors. Especially if Kevin Love plays more. It will certainly be fun to see LeBron try to make all that irrelevant though.

Curry 1.03 ppp W/ Love IN
16 guarded shots 39 Unguarded shots (wtf)

Curry .87ppp W Love OUT
23 guarded 27 Unguarded

— Haralabos Voulgaris (@haralabob) June 19, 2016

[wustin]

Love to commit 2 early fouls again.

Maybe he'll purposely get ejected so he can go catch Game of Thrones.

[Groundhog]

Cavs need a combination of Warriors playing mediocre and LeBron and probably Kyrie playing exceptionally.

As I was pre-game 1, my heart says Cleveland, my head says Warriors by 10+.

[miami_fan]

The post-mortem of a) Lebron failed again or b) Steph Curry is overrated will be exhausting.

[kingfc22]

Originally Posted by miami_fan

The post-mortem of a) Lebron failed again or b) Steph Curry is overrated will be exhausting.

Don't worry. Deflategate round 2 will pick up soon enough.

[kingfc22]

Officials allowing normal contact so far which is good for the flow of the game.

[wustin]

Yeah Ezeli is hot garbage. How does a guy with so much intelligence have such low BB IQ.

[Abe Sargent]

Come on Cavs, this is a dynasty-defining win if you can get this!

[Vince, Pt. II]

Draymond is killing it right now.

[kingfc22]

Klay and Kyrie basically canceling each other out at the moment as neither player has showed up offensively.