battle of the NBA’s next point gods

what's the hawks record in december?

i salute trae for putting up good stats for seven games, not going to say how many of those were loses

as a fan of the team that owns the hawks picks from 2025 to 2027, i am very excited about the trajectory of the atlanta hawks basketball franchise

it doesnt make sense that theyre this bad at defense theyve got a bunch of supposedly good defensive players and a supposedly good coach and yet theyre a bottom five defense can trae and bogdan really be that bad

guess i could see if they were starting them and playing them a lot together but theyre not

They lost Jalen Johnson and fell apart

a whole team shouldnt be dependant on one jalen johnson, i honestly just dont see what their deal is, if they had just a middling d theyd be decent, instead they have great offense and terrible defense, its no way to live

is capela cooked, he still gets rebounds and blocks

The Hawks bench is wafer thin. They have an eight-man rotation when DeAndre Hunter and Jalen Johnson are actually healthy. I don't think they're dying to play the Matthews brothers or Paddy Mills or Bruno Fernando.

hunters started 22 games, theyve got eight good players when healthy, wes mathews is averaging 12mins a game which is the most out of those four guys

xp will not stand for patrick thrills slander, just on principle

Ha I k ew shit would fly for mentioning that Trae’s a p good point guard. Y’all r like knicks fans or some shit. Bing bong

Hah ILH does not like Trae

hes not valid

we still have never caught him in dyckman

Need to add Coby White to this list I guess :)

Coby White tonight:

24 PTS
8 REB
9 AST

Averaging 25/7/6 over his last eight games. https://t.co/GuALxCyPYD

— StatMuse (@statmuse) December 19, 2023

Scottie Barnes’ shooting leap has rightfully garnered tons of attention, but De’Aaron Fox is having a similar, if not bigger, shooting leap.

He’s hitting 40% of his 3s and taking 9 of them each game. 40% on pull-ups and catch-and-shoots! Insane numbers.

— Jackson Frank (@jackfrank_jjf) December 29, 2023

As the league gets ever friendlier to the offense and more difficult to defend, what used to be first team All-NBA PG stats are becoming almost commonplace. The talent level among starting guards and the blurring of distinctions between point and shooting guards means the kind of separation Steph Curry achieved between himself and his nearest peers isn't possible any more. Half the starting PGs can put up point god numbers now.

i think my three toxic opinions regarding these guys are as follows

1. i believe in ja the basketball player a lot more than you guys

2. fox is an ultimate dog in the chest x ray player to me & has been since he was punking lonzo on national TV in college. the widespread acceptance that the kings “traded the wrong guy” feels very premature to me

3. i’m taking cade over like half of these guys

so my rankings are …

1. anthony edwards

only guy on this list who sometimes looks like michael jordan. i do think the real team playoff success will come down the line when this roster has turned over almost completely. i don’t actually see him as a PG, i think you’ll need a real secondary ball handler who can shoot at guard with him but the derrick whites of the world are out there. i think he’s showing this year at the end of games that he is hitting the point of “getting to my spot and you can’t do shit” on offense and top tier on ball individual defense. SGA has been mentioned as the current d wade equivalent previously but like…

pic.twitter.com/vSwOpC6vq2 https://t.co/vJKInChuvS

— Brett Usher (@UsherNBA) December 29, 2023

I will just say that Fox was the guy I wanted Philly to take at 3 the year they traded up for Fultz.

I forget who the other big pg in college was that year, but Fox took it personal and ate him up in tournament game.

Lol, I think it was Lonzo. Put up 39/3/4 on him. Lonzo had 10 points.

yes my love of fox is rooted in that game

that fox/monk kentucky team was so much fun, only right that they’re teammates again

i don’t like the way he plays basketball & it feels like this iteration of their team is smacking its head against the ceiling and there is blood running down its face.

i love everything about this sentence

:)

upon further consideration i think i was too hard on halli in terms of my comps — you definitely would have to throw dame in there for him too, and the main reason why people never soured on dame the same way they did/have to whatever extent on harden/trae/luka is primarily because dame is just a stand up guy & halliburton def seems cut from that same cloth. i could easily see halli getting to a similar spot where the pacers aren’t a real threat to come out of the east but winning a playoff series is a realistic goal most years & everyone is pretty cool with that because he’s just a good guy who plays a fun style of ball. i don’t get the sense that pacers fans are the championship or bust types. i think i’m just not sure i see what clearly separates him from ja and fox to pick at least those two, beyond the shooting, which does matter but isn’t the end all be all & also does seem to be one of the more improvable skills (i.e. scottie barnes). like fox and ja can close the shooting gap on halli (fox possibly already is) but there isn’t a way for halli to i.e. attain fox’s speed or ja’s athleticism

well he is a bunch bigger than those two and i dont think they are getting taller

pacers defensive woes are mostly a personnel issue. there are about 3 plus defenders on the whole roster. the team is in a transitional mode right now and i expect they will find more of a balance in the next season... and hali will be continue to be great.

well he is a bunch bigger than those two and i dont think they are getting taller

― micah, Saturday, December 30, 2023 8:27 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

hes also an elite passer, and while the competition might improve their shooting theyre just not gonna get to halis level

you look at guys who can really pass and really score and really shoot and its a pretty nice mix your steve nashes nikola jokices your luka donices, not saying hali is on their level but he is 23 years old averaging 25-4-12 50/42/85, which is not some wildly out of trend year for him, his ceiling is very high, on offense at least lol

the thing about combining elite passing with great scoring is it makes you very hard to double team which is the traditional method for stopping a guy who is scoring too much

other elite passers on the list are trae and lamelo, neither of whom have quite put it together in the way youd like

trae cause hes just too committed to the heliocentric life and lamelo cause he cant stay healthy

hali turning into what i thought lamelo would be

suns big three played last night and they beat the hornets brad beal had six points in 30 mins

incorrect thread

sorry to see that cade is now under the well known “ILH j0rdan poll curse”, I will be praying for him

fair point re halliburton’s size tho it’s a bit meaningless if he doesn’t actually put that to use on defense. his block and steal rates aren’t much or any better than fox or ja — halli’s steal rate has actually cratered this year, must just be the offensive burden. i should have given him more credit for his lack of turnovers, that’s a big thing. but those other guys aren’t slouches as passers either.

he’s amazing at a lot of the stuff that works in today’s league maybe i’m just overthinking it. i think i just will have trouble judging him until their style of play stops feeling like one of those experimental high school basketball teams bcuz it feels a bit like fantasy land to me. but maybe halli is the next steve nash revolutionary! i cannot rule that out. carlisle’s track record the last handful of years of defensive basketball is completely horrid btw, does this ever get fixed? does he care about defense i’m legitimately not sure

23 indy - 28th d rating
22 indy - 26th
21 indy - 28th
20 dal - 21st
19 dal - 18th

he is capable of caring about defense. he has coached good defensive teams further in the past. cubans gm issues are well known and i think any coach would have struggled to field a capable defense around starting center dwight powell for instance

could see how he mightve settled into a if you get me good defensive players i will coach defense but until then i will only dream of getting buckets mode

totes. i think hes maybe more of a realist than most coaches and is happy to just punt defense if he doesnt have the roster for it and isnt going to be in title contention anyway

isn’t myles turner supposed to be a good rim protector? was that overstated or is he just worse now? is every player on the pacers so bad at D that his rim protection is meaningless?

the stuff about the mavs personnel being bad falls on deaf ears for me given how they played defense when j kidd got there and despite even more horrific decisions by the front office including one of the worst moves in the NBA period over the last 3 year (letting brunson walk) have still been better as a team overall since carlisle left even taking last year into consideration

yes - every player on the pacers is so bad at D that his rim protection is meaningless.

and he is maybe a bit worse now.

yeah i’m gonna have stop you guys here and say that i don’t thinking punting on defense is chess not checkers coaching lol. i guess it’s hard for me to watch spo teach a bunch of g leaguers how to consistently play good defense when his best players are constantly in and out of the line up and not think that punting on defense is an abdication of coaching duties. you’re the coach!

they dont have heat culture tho

at one point the mavs actually out cultured the heat!

crazy to think about how so much has changed

the last time carlisle coached a top half of the league defense was the 2016-2017 season

the last time he coached a top 12 defense was 2011-2012

In the last 5 games, the Pistons have a net rating of +.7 when Cade Cunningham is ON, and are -37.2 in the 49 minutes when he is OFF.

— Duncan Smith (@DuncanSmithNBA) December 30, 2023

i’ve seen enough—cade is the mvp