Around the NBA:2025-6

[60WinTim]

The combo of NAZ and Rocco might eventually help combat the Wemby minutes...

[Q-is-here]

The Wemby running back lowering his shoulder and running straight into Caruso was wild. Rudy does that, easy flagrant 1. I'm beginning to not like the guy.

But I can't help but marvel at his play. Catch it in the post, turn around tiptoes slam. Top of the key, one dribble poster dunk. Out at the 3, he'll take you off the dribble and hit a midrange. Gets fouled, makes his free throws. Teammate hits rim, he's going over the top of a 7 footer and putting it back. Throw it 12 feet high, he completes the alley-oop. For good measure, he hits a Steph Curry range 3. Oh, then he can hang on the perimeter on D and swat/deter everything at the rim. He can come from the 3 point line and block a layup. It's truly insane. He will run this league if he avoids serious injury. I don't doubt that he will win DPOY and MVP in the same season in the near future.

Yeah, he's really tough to scheme against because you almost need five elite - not just decent - but elite shooters on the floor because the Spurs are willing to give up 3's to the weakest shooter in order to keep Wemby in the lane. And Wemby in the lane literally cuts off nearly every shot from the free throw line down. It's incredible to watch.

Caruso was the guy the Spurs forced to take those shots and he almost pulled it off. I highly doubt he shoots that well again though. The one thing OKC can do is turn you over and get out and run. That has to be their strategy along with winning the Kornet minutes. If it's a halfcourt battle with Wemby in the game he's going to win nearly every time.

[Q-is-here]

The combo of NAZ and Rocco might eventually help combat the Wemby minutes...

Naz for sure. Rocco definitely has potential as a shooter, but he has more work to do in terms of his defensive positioning and strength.

It's interesting that Time Lord had some success against the Spurs, as he isn't a threat to shoot at all, but he's super quick off the floor and bouncy. I think on offense, quickness and athleticism are probably better tools against Wemby than power and strength. As even if you get your shoulder into his chest, he's so damn long that it's not hard for him to still contest or block your shot even if he's knocked back a couple feet. Clingan, Randle, iHart, Rudy....minimal success.

Enter Joan Beringer....

[rapsuperstar31]

I know his salary looks bad but i think a player like Jaylen Brown, a two way player, is the type of player we need to help our D but also take pressure off Ant. He is used to being a #2. And can rise up to a #1 if Ant is out. Unlike Dubious. Most of the time.

He doesn't want to be a #2 tho

I'm also not sure another ISO player is the way to go. Plus I've not seen anything to indicate Boston is thinking of breaking up the Tatum/Brown pairing.

Brown did his job well this season with Tatum out keeping them in the top of the East. The drop off of Derick White probably hurts his trade value, so to make a major splash for Giannis, trading Brown makes sense. I think Brown would be good for us against OKC, but I don't think he's a good enough 3 point shooter to help us enough against San Antonio. He did averages 5.1 assists per game this year, which is a skill we do need.

[AbeVigodaLive]

iHart played 12 minutes in a Double OT game last night.

I know you don't want to build your team to compete against one opponent, but Wemby just makes traditional bigs like Rudy and iHart almost completely obsolete.

If you look at the bigs Wemby has played against in the playoffs - Grant, Clingan, Time Lord, Rudy, Naz, Randle, iHart, and Holmgren - guess who has played the best? NAZ REID! 51% FG, 46% 3Pt, 14 pts, 8 rebs, and 2 assts in 29 MPG. None of the other guys are even close to those marks in terms of scoring efficiency. Time Lord also had some success, but played fewer minutes on lower volume than Naz.

We'll see if Chet bounces back as he's sort of a mini-Wemby in terms of his paint protection and skill level as a shooter. But I don't see iHart factoring much at all in this series, which makes me question why we'd spend another year paying Rudy all this money to raise our floor only to have minimal impact in a series against the Spurs or OKC. We probably need to rip the band-aid off and just accept the risk that raising our ceiling comes with the tradeoff of potentially lowering our floor.

Early in the game, Hartenstein missed his little runner over a Wemby contest... and I checked my stats. Haretenstein was 743 - 796 (93.3%) with that shot vs. every other center, including Gobert (or close to it, ahem). Meanwhile, Chet Holmgren is arguably the league's 3rd best center. He's young and bouncy. He has offensive chops that Gobert only dreams about.

And he went for 8 points and 8 rebounds (2 - 7 fg) while Wemby had 41/24 on the other side. The Spurs outrebounded the Thunder by 21 in the game.



Maybe we shouldn't be too upset with Gobert and these are just the new expectations



[Note: And Holmgren wasn't even guarding Wemby. Will be interesting to see if the young guy bounces back and if the Thunder allow him to guard Wembanyama more moving forward.]

[FNG]

Still marveling at what I saw Vic do in the first half last night!

Had to go to bed at halftime because I had a (very) early breakfast meeting this morning with two guys with a connection to my first sports love...the Minneapolis Lakers! The only surviving member of that team (Charlie Mencel) and Vern Mikkelsen's son. Listening to them tell stories about those days for 2 hours was priceless. They were both in Los Angeles decades ago when the Buss family was awarding the Lakers their championship rings for their 3-peat, and surprised the old Lakers with rings for their 3-peat back in the 50's. Jeannie Buss got up and announced that the ring they sized for Vern was the only one that has ever been larger than Shaq's!

I asked Charley how many points he would have scored if he had Wemby guarding him all night. He said he would have faked right, gone left, and blown right by him! I guess some dementia must kick in at 93 !

[AbeVigodaLive]

That's pretty damn cool, FNG.

I can imagine you sitting there with the old timers, sipping on a few Greenies from Tony Jaros' joint...

[FNG]

That's pretty damn cool, FNG.

I can imagine you sitting there with the old timers, sipping on a few Greenies from Tony Jaros' joint...

So funny you mention Jaros’s, Abe. I’m doing some volunteer work nordeast today and just passed it an hour ago…memories. Our breakfast was a little tamer though at Charley’s retirement home.

[FNG]

Antonio Daniels and Rob Perez were discussing the Spurs/Thunder game and took the conversation in an interesting direction. Daniels said IF...if the Thunder struggle in this series because Vic is dominating at both ends (like he was last night), they may decide to use their wealth of assets to go get the one guy who has been more successful against him at both ends than any other player: Giannis. They said that Vic's dominance last night made Giannis that much more valuable, and the Thunder had the most assets the Bucks might want. They didn't propose any deals, but try this one on for size: Holmgren, the better J-Will and multiple first round picks for Giannis. I don't know that the Bucks could get more than that for Giannis, and the Thunder would still have a very potent roster...as well as someone who could compete with Wemby.

If the Thunder end up winning this series, they obviously won't have any incentive to blow things up. But if they get dominated by Vic, I could easily see Giannis going to OkC.

[Coolbreeze44]

Antonio Daniels and Rob Perez were discussing the Spurs/Thunder game and took the conversation in an interesting direction. Daniels said IF...if the Thunder struggle in this series because Vic is dominating at both ends (like he was last night), they may decide to use their wealth of assets to go get the one guy who has been more successful against him at both ends than any other player: Giannis. They said that Vic's dominance last night made Giannis that much more valuable, and the Thunder had the most assets the Bucks might want. They didn't propose any deals, but try this one on for size: Holmgren, the better J-Will and multiple first round picks for Giannis. I don't know that the Bucks could get more than that for Giannis, and the Thunder would still have a very potent roster...as well as someone who could compete with Wemby.

If the Thunder end up winning this series, they obviously won't have any incentive to blow things up. But if they get dominated by Vic, I could easily see Giannis going to OkC.

Damn FNG, I was just going to post this. If they lose this series, getting Giannis is exactly what they need to do. No one can come close to providing the number of assets OKC can. I don't even think they would have to give up both Holmgren and JDub, Holmgren and as many number one picks as it takes. Even if they give up a shitload of picks, they will still have more than enough going forward. I think I heard they have 13 number ones, and 16 number two's over the next 6-7 years. It's really a no brainer, as long as they can navigate the cap.