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You're right. His whining and barking at fans does make that easy to forget, as his team has cratered around him on the biggest stage. It's a shame.
this is the only prediction worth bumping. Nothing beats the "arrogant and confidently incorrect" combination.
You're right. His whining and barking at fans does make that easy to forget, as his team has cratered around him on the biggest stage. It's a shame.
Originally people on here said that Denver/Minnesota was the real finals. Everyone was ready to crown Minny. I thought it was funny looking back.
Which doesn't have anything to do with the criticism he's rightly receiving today.
It's also easy to forget Embiid has been chronically injured in the playoffs and never had a roster around him that fit until Simmons was traded.
I'm not an Embiid or 76ers fan, but I hope they can upgrade this off season and get one healthy prime Embiid run, to see the best team vs player contrast (along with Jokic) where they're weakest (considering Porzingis' lack of durability and girth and Horford's age).
For sure that was weird, and also all the confidence riding for the Mavs, here and elsewhere, after their series win. People forget or don't take into account the importance of matchups in basketball, and assumed Luka and the Mavs could plow through everyone as if it were a zero-sum game.
Honestly, looking at the Celtics this Finals it's impossible not to notice how much their core has grown from their series against the Warriors in '22. I was just telling my wife yesterday that the Celtics were playing now, like the Warriors did then. Everyone kept saying the Celtics weren't "battle tested" and it was such a puzzling argument - the J's have been tested more than almost any other player in these playoffs.
Luka has been majorly disappointing in the Finals. Yes, he’s still young but I expected better out of him. He’s been atrocious on defense, has disappeared down the stretch in all 3 games, and has been incessantly whining in the worst possible situations. Acting like the refs screwed him over when he commits a stupid 6th foul that takes him out was the cherry on top.
He's been on Knee injections apparently. No doubt his play style and maturity needs to be critiqued but also playing against this Celtics team on a bad knee is nearly impossible.
Yeah, I mean you can excuse some of the defensive woes + poor 4th quarter play on injuries and him having to carry such a large load on offense against a very good defense…but if we’re going to throw him in MVP discussions and draw parallels to him and other all-time greats, at some point he just needs to perform better. And like you said that still doesn’t give him a pass for the at ude issues.
Still 5>1 after all. Time to run the West with Wemby, tbh.
West is wide open tbh.
Denver is gonna have to make some tough roster decisions soon that should make them worse.
The only other team I'm worried about it in theory is MethKC pushing all of their chips in for a star.
OKC with Lauri would run the West until extension for J-Dub/Chet force them to break things up.
I find it pretty remarkable that the Mavs made the Finals while having to rely heavily on quite a number of pretty limited players (Gafford, Jones Jr., Green, Lively). Sure, them not having more versatile players has a lot to do with poor asset management in recent years, but still, kudos to them for making the finals with that team.
That being said, Boston really has meant business for the most part this season, both RS and playoffs. I think a lot of people still underestimate how good and versatile their defense is. Sure, the offense looks clunky or downright bad at times (see the 4th quarter of Game 3), but it is what it is when you don't have a really great playmaker/floor general in the vein of Doncic, LeBron, Jokic or even, say, Haliburton or Trae Young.
I find some of the criticism directed at Tatum too harsh. He is the main ballhandler and playmaker for the Celtics - a lot of the stuff that opens up for the others is because of that. His three point shooting has fallen off a cliff in these playoffs, but he still has gravity as a three level scorer. He is a very willing team player, ready to let others shine offensively and to do stuff like defend Dallas' centers and get switched onto Doncic after. Sure, he takes maybe two or three bad shots too many a game, especially given his bad shooting in this postseason.
The biggest surprise to me has been Jaylen Brown. I still don't think he is a supermax player in a vacuum with his somewhat iffy ballhandling and playmaking, but he has been very consistent these playoffs and Boston's most reliable scorer. Also, I understand that Boston had to pay him and didn't want to lose him in the first place.
Al Horford has been pretty damn great defending in space in the Finals.
Boston has managed to take away both the easy corner threes and lobs that were the Mav's bread and butter throughout the playoffs. Kyrie has had one good game, and the likes of Jones Jr., Green, Kleber and (to a lesser extent) PJ Washington don't even want to shoot most of the time. Defensively, the Mavs had been pretty good at protecting the rim and ignoring shaky shooters so far in the playoffs, but that doesn't work against the Celtics with all their shooting (which hasn't even been that amazing in the Finals).
As far as Doncic fouling out is concerned: To me, his sixth foul probably should have been a no call - but if a player goes down, refs always seem to feel obliged to blow the whistle. That being said, it was just a bad decision on his part to try and draw a charge in this situation. And he also had like two frustration fouls earlier. He just has to do better in that regard, as well as not being a traffic cone defensively.
i don't mind people getting it called wrong, everyone makes a bad pick, just so long as they own it.
the celtics were the best team in the nba all year but i didn't expect them to go up 3-0 tbh
There are Spurstalk posters who get knee injections and still make it up to the keyboard.
Stop making excuses for Doncic.
Tatum is trash but props to Brown, he’s carried them
Tatum is not trash. He’s not hitting buckets at a normal clip but he is doing everything else. This year’s Boston is very Spurs like. Just all about winning.
Not at all, 36% shooting is horrific, 6th best +/- on the Celtics in these finals (a flawed stat at times but considering how much in control of this series Boston has been that’s not great). Even defensively Luka has had far more success against him than any other Celtic that guard him.
For FMVP he’d maybe be 4th. He’s definitely not a superstar and that’s okay, but thank god for Brown and Porzingis as Tatum’s horrible shot selection would’ve been put on blast even more so. Tatum has been painfully mediocre all playoffs. Brown was trash last ECF but has bounced back. Maybe Tatum will do the same next year. He’s been good before.
Doesnt matter Tatum is winning the FMVP; but this boston celtics team is all about winning the championship.
damn, when you list it all out like that... glorious playoffs
my highlight was watching the Magic and Timberwolves in postseason lol pretty refreshing.
Overall a pretty feel good season and playoffs despite not being directly involved as Spurs fans.
Would have loved to have seen Minny in the finals though.
keying in one stat is silly. His defense, vision, rebounding has been great. Game 3, 12 assists. Game 4 31, 6, &, 6. Game 1 & 2 missed a lot of bunnies.
Tatum's problem is his shot selection.
Someone needs to get Kobe out of his head.
Whenever he gets the ball with not a lot of time left on the clock, it's pretty much guaranteed he'll make the worst possible decision.
Other than that, his finishing around the rim is still subpar. Was always his biggest issue.
See this is what I just don't get. With all the faults that can be found in him, Luka still definitely had an MVP caliber regular season. Got his 5th all-nba first team selection. Then, even though it's his worst playoffs, still led team to the finals. A team basically assembled 4 months ago. At 25 years old. But it seems some people won't acknowledge him unless he averages 50/20/20/10/10 and threepeats. Maybe, just maybe, then he could be an MVP and we could draw parallels to all-time greats. The expectations are unreal.
Agree his shot selection is not the best sometimes especially the step back 3 pointers. He has a nice package of layups and drives in his bag as well. Whenever he is hitting his 3 pointer though he is unstoppable. He still keeps defenses honest and he is a lifetime 37.5% shooter 3-point shooter. A lot of nit picking just because Jaylen Brown has turned into a beast these playoffs. The way the team is set up, in most cases, Tatum is the one that has to sacrifice because he used to feast on the smaller guys when he played the 3, but now he is almost exclusively at the PF spot where he outsized but he holds his own on defense and rebounding and so far they have only lost 1 game in these whole playoffs. At this point, it's just nitpicking.
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