The Official Offseason 2016-17 NBA Thread: Waiting for Preseason

Heat can’t stay healthy so trades don’t mean anything. Between that and starting the season with the hardest schedule, everything went down the drain quick. Dragic def deserves better.

LOL at letting the Lakers start 11-0 on us. Erick fucking Spoelstra.

Second game in a row where the starters blown the lead. Walton needs to get clever again with his rotations.

FUCK VAREJAO

James Johnson should have his jersey retired by the Heat too. He’s the only reason we’ve been in a lot of games.

12 points, 5 rebounds, 4 assists. This is becoming a nightly thing.

Even saw a Raptors site praising how he’s played this year.

James Johnson can do a bit of everything and is a big strong mobile guy on defense. He was often underutilized in Toronto, especially in the playoff series when the Wizards slaughtered the Raptors.

Warriors down by 16 at the half, win by 16 in the end.

Nets mannn… That’s fucking gross. -32 for 24 minutes.

He lost 20 pounds over the summer. And Spoelstra is running him as a point forward. He probably has more freedom than anybody on the team on offense. And he’s been the best defender too.

There’s literally nothing he hasn’t done well this year.

Now the Heat gotta deal with Anthony Davis tomorrow, goddamn.

So back to back 19 point lead games…blown away. This is a young a team, but this is also professional basketball. There’s just something baffling about the effort I’m seeing with the Lakers right now. There’s literally no resistance once teams to start going on a run. I’m talking about layups, wide open shots, terrible defense, boxing out, and it’s not the bench. The bench is actually pretty decent for what they give us, it’s the starters.

So two guys in the starting lineup are overpaid beyond belief. We got a guy whose a second/third tier center at best, and another guy who is statistically having the worst season of his career. So Russell had 6 TO, right around at his magic number of 7. Looks more like a spot up shooter than somebody who should be running the offense. Young actually looked pretty good offensively, but the loss overshadows his value on the floor. He’s not the best defender out there, and it is showing in spurts. Ingram still looks like a puzzle being put together.

I was kinda salty when the Grizz let James Johnson walk a few seasons ago… I knew he had it in him to be a consistent scorer in this lg he had Alot of really good gms here as well.

Warriors aren’t the compelling story I thought they would be. They’re not quite the must-see spectacle that they were. Still the best team in the league, but not really exciting.

Biggest draws to me have been Harden, Westbrook, Greek Freak and Brow. Giannis in particular, is basically what everybody thought Kirilenko would have been.

Lots of talk about the refs last couple of days

Frucking refs!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJTAuxgqBZU

Deng is averaging 13 ppg in his last 7 games. He’ll never be worth his contract, but 13-15 ppg is pretty much what you should expect. If he’s playing PF, he’ll get 6-7 rebounds, otherwise 4-5 as a SF. He’ll definitely go cold on some nights.

Lakers are 2-3 wins away from 8th seed. If they really want to make the playoffs, they gotta trade some of those guards for a big. Philly needs guards. A swap for Okafor could be a thing once he’s healthy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hjJuIdZ0Pg

TNT commentary was ass and didn’t do a good job of understanding what they were watching from Justise Winslow. He dropped a career high 23 points and it was only the 2nd time he’d ever score 20. Past 2 games, Winslow finally figured out his strengths on offense. Instead of bricking outside shots constantly, he’s been going in the post instead.

The fact that he’s only 20 years old and already figuring this stuff out is encouraging.

I see Nerlens Noel getting traded before Okafor. The Sixers look pretty determined to not screw this up, especially with Simmons coming back soon.

http://www.espn.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=jqqq35u Trade that helps all parties.

Deng goes back Tibs, he’s versatile enough to play PF with Towns and it moves Wiggins back to SG where he needs to be. The Wolves become stronger defensively which they so desperately need if they are serious about this thing. Kris Dunn becomes the starter who can be very good in a couple of years.

Lakers get an attacking SF that compliments Walton’s system. Gay can still mentor the kids since he’s been around and if he chooses to leave at the end, it just frees up more money. More importantly, it rids themselves of Deng’s contract.

The Kings get a serviceable 1 guard with premier court vision to feed the ball low to DeMarcus Cousins. Rudy Gay has already expressed his desire to leave the Kings after this season, and Casspi is shooting close to 40% from 3pt range which would be a great filler to Gay. The Kings need to make deals because they could lose everything this summer and end up with nothing.

Wiggins is never going back to SG. Lavine is avg 20 ppg as their starting SG.

LaVine is only playing 2 guard because of the lack of depth the Wolves have at the position. Otherwise Wiggins would be there, it was the same position he played most in college.

Wolves bench ranks 29th in the NBA in scoring. They need an explosive player who can come in and put up points right away, they have that in Zach LaVine.

Why would Wiggins play SG, when Lavine is averaging 20 ppg at that position?

He can’t play SF, he’s too small. He’s not a PG either.

I think Fred Hoiberg’s days are numbered. This was a really bad loss.
The GM needs to go with him too.

Earl Watson is going to be out of the league with the way the Suns’ season is going. There were obvious holes going in but I don’t think anyone expected the Suns to be this unwatchable, and at this point the blame falls squarely on the coach. We all know the Suns are never going to get a No. 1 overall pick so there’s no point in tanking…