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right now they'd match up w/ the cavs in the playoffs and will lose but they just blew them out in cleveland like 3 days ago and there's no one on cleveland who has even a prayer of guarding embiid

series would be good but bron would win out yea

the sixers starting line up of simmons-redick-covington-saric-embiid has a net rating of 18.8 in almost 500 minutes, there's very few lineup combos across the NBA that compare to that in a similar amount of minutes. their bench depth is shaky and inexperience will prob flare up in the offs this year but their core group smokes people, it is what it is

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, March 6, 2018 12:37 PM (fifty seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they run past sleepy teams and generally do a lot of weird shit that wont play against a prepared good playoff teams, it might not really be what it is, not to mention redick is prob gone after this year and convington just had a weird hot streak

i mean what happens when all those weird running hooks simmons takes are pushed a couple steps further out

what they want to do is get that matchup with the pacers

that line up just makes a lot of sense on paper to me. on offense you have two elite shooters (saric for his size anyway) and embiid is unstoppable. i don't personally buy the logic that all of a sudden ben simmons will be exposed in the playoffs as if teams are just letting him score now for fun. i buy into his sheer talent & understanding of the game regardless of his shooting, he's a special player... rondo was good in the playoffs and straight up took over some games for instance. and covington is a pretty good 3 and D guy, several teams especially in the east have worse 5th players. and that line up has been good defensively too, they should be able to switch just fine.

they will def have that problem where it feels like they're hanging on for dear life when embiid is sitting but for a team whose three best players are all 23 and younger that's a pretty ok place to be?

simmons is def a special player but playing very tall guys who cant shoot at all as yr primary ballhandler, well theres a good reason you dont see it a lot, and maybe he can overcome these fit issue but it is very much a situation where he has to overcome them, whereas if you had a team whos construction could accommodate a tall non shooter that wld be easier and simpler, long term youd assume theyll play fultz at the 1 then have a three man front court rotation with embiid/simmons/saric, the embiis/simmons fit isnt totally ideal cause of the lack of shooting but theyre both so good that it'll still be doable, obvs a lot depends on fultz coming around, anyway circling back to my original point they have a ton of talent but theres also a ton of question marks, way more so than most talented young teams, like its not hard to game out all of that stuff working out for them, but also thats not usually how it happens

i really think simmons cld be amazing at center btw, in transition where hes by far the most dangerous at this point he can still handle the ball and just be a positionless guy, then in the halfcourt you play four out and put him in all sorts of actions facing up posting up coming off screens and let him attack the basket and create slice up the defense with his passing hed still be a major ballhandler but just not really operating on the perimeter where he has to deal with the fact that defenders can play off him, hes shown signs that he can be a really good interior defender too, and the fit with saric who can shoot is good, but of course phillys best player is already a center

the thought of most centers attempting to guard him is ludicrous

i think they are good not great and will lose in the first round. but they will get better. I worry that simmons could go the way of michael carter williams. embiid health concerns are very real tho and imo that makes their window smaller and sooner than a normal young team arch. Like his prime is gonna be 24-27 not 26-30. Fultz the big question mark here obv.

mirrors my thoughts. Criticism of Embiid upthread are typical ones of just about any young player.

def its not unlikely that embiids game matures as he does, but there are lots of young players who you dont have to ask that question about, also imo he plays notably undisciplined ball even compared to his contemporaries, and his personality which is very charming online is very much in line with that too, both on court and off he doesnt come off like a very serious person, which is all fine and good in life but isnt the best predictor of nba success

any comparison between simmons and MCW is insane... not all non-shooters are created equally

the sixers are already actually good tho

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, March 6, 2018 11:07 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they have four less wins in a much easier conference tho hmmm quite perplexing

that's like saying buddy hield could go the way of ray allen

and embiids style of free wheeling play is def not the best for someone w his injury history, he shd at least try to drop some weight or something

well the t wolves are good too? i'm not sure what we're actually arguing here

the twolves were good for like 15 games

you were good for like 15 games

ill take it

both on court and off he doesnt come off like a very serious person, which is all fine and good in life but isnt the best predictor of nba success

I hear ya. But he strikes me as someone that has a healthy amount of devil-may-careness, where it leads to a healthier mindset and makes one an easier guy to play with. He seems to have a competitive drive w/o being psycho about it iow. Could be wrong tho, it's def a fine line between "has good perspective" and "doesn't play with heart".

you could also look at the t wolves as being legitimately good once the team had figured each other out for a bit

they were def coming on bigtime but then jimmy went down

there is def something boogie-ish about the way embiid plays on offense... like he's essentially unstoppable and knows it and so he has a lot of leeway to do whatever he wants basically which leads to more missed threes and turnovers and ill advised drives than you would like. but i feel like that's a pretty minor issue all things considered.

I hear ya. But he strikes me as someone that has a healthy amount of devil-may-careness, where it leads to a healthier mindset and makes one an easier guy to play with. He seems to have a competitive drive w/o being psycho about it iow. Could be wrong tho, it's def a fine line between "has good perspective" and "doesn't play with heart".

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Tuesday, March 6, 2018 1:38 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hes def competitive in game and likes playing basketball and owning his opponents which isnt nothing, just seems to have a laissez faire attitude towards a lot of the other stuff you need to improve, also lol i wonder if hes not going to alienate a potential free agent w all his online shit talk

don't think I can accurately judge him wrt "disciplined game" or things of that nature until see him in playoffs.

there is def something boogie-ish about the way embiid plays on offense... like he's essentially unstoppable and knows it and so he has a lot of leeway to do whatever he wants basically which leads to more missed threes and turnovers and ill advised drives than you would like. but i feel like that's a pretty minor issue all things considered.

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, March 6, 2018 1:42 PM (twenty-seven seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah but in order to live up to his potential which is absolutely mvp level he has to get serious about that stuff, also it wld help to protect his health

yeah for now i'm fine assuming that his game will refine as he ages like most players, he's more of a goofball than a malcontent and so i'm optimistic about him maturing in ways that would improve his game. how he plays relative to his health is another question entirely tho anyone would just be guessing about the relationship b/w those two things. when he eurosteps it makes me very anxious but he could also re-injure his foot doing basically anything.

He goes to the ground a LOT; I know I mentioned that on ILH after seeing him play live. You don't see a lot of the falls on broadcast cause they're away from the ball. Baby Giraffe. Fingers crossed for the dude.

Remember reading somewhere that the flailing and dramatic falling was encouraged by training staff to spread impacts across his body and take pressure of his joints or something.

That aside, the idea of him being out there second guessing himself for fear of injury doesn't seem conducive to growth as a player.

yeah he's said that he falls on purpose

Embiid falls alot. But he told me that's by design. He believes falling diffuses the pressure to his whole body instead of on just one body part.

— Ramona Shelburne (@ramonashelburne) December 16, 2017

Interesting!

but man idk, I envision some entanglements of limbs happening and bad things resulting

steph curry does the same thing re: falls

i feel like it sort of makes sense intuitively but also there's prob no way to know if it actually works. at the end of the day you'd rather him fracture a wrist than blow out an ACL but idk if it works like that...

worry about those hips

HOU @ OKC tonight y'all

im in

also ben simmons is much better than MCW i was exaggerating but MCW was pretty good his rookie year! http://bkref.com/tiny/RcPk2

OKC has been underwhelming so far this season

they have but they have also gotten up for big matchups and provided some wildly entertaining games

OKC's prob is that when they played russ-roberson-PG-melo-adams they destroyed ppl but know roberson is out for the season and none of their other players are very good

yeah they are very thin, they're gonna have to run russ and pg like 44 minutes each in the playoffs

if so, Russ make break a sweat!

lol yeah if anyone can do it ...

the rockets are really, really good

chris paul just hit a stepback 3 in pat pat's face less than 30 seconds after hitting the exact same shot on him after a whistle

the fact that's he's added that shot to his game at age 32 is just absurd man

the things cp3 has done to remain relevant are pretty insane, he hasnt been able to get to the basket in like 5 years and yet he produces like someone who can get to the basket very much

he's 6'0 and an average NBA athlete, him being as good as he is in the first place is so unlikely