battle of the NBA’s next point gods

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

“Even dating a pretty girl gets boring after a while if she can’t guard anybody,” - Rick Carlisle, out of context, about his team.

— Tony East (@TonyREast) December 30, 2023

I just feel like SGA has proven enough at this point and is playing well enough to annoint him as the winner here. and it truly pains me to point this out but I did vote for him a month ago as documented above

SGA in december: 32.6/5.5/6.7 with 3.3 steals and 0.8 blocks on .648 true shooting, despite having a weirdly bad 3 point shooting month (.256), just feels like he’s already arrived and planted his flag. hard to see now he ends up out of the top 5 of the MVP discussion at this point

he’s done enough in the last month to definitively say he’s the best of all these guys?

sga was the easy vote just because hes already really good, and also cool, most or maybe all of the other guys will never be as good as he is now

i’m not gonna tell anyone who voted for shai that they’re wrong. but it’s worth keeping in mind that ant edwards is 3 years younger than shai and the gap between them right now is definitely real but i wouldn’t say it’s massive or anything

I definitely wouldn’t fault anyone for choosing edwards either, but picking shai just feels like a bird in the hand situation to me. he’s doing it night in and night out, seems like he’s a playoff series win away from breaking into the luka/tatum tier

yeah its not hard to imagine ant maxxing out as better than shai, hes obvs got the stuff to do it just gotta put it all together

btw just started listening to the thinking basketball podcast best players under 25, they chose luka then ant 1-2 (shai doesn’t qualify), I recently watched the youtube for the channel for the first time and found the voices attached to the faces very upsetting, it seems like they should be reversed and someone should look into it

lol

hali last two games combined 43 points 43 assists 2 turnovers

fucking hell

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

point god shit

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

PBKR gotta be responsible for making the official ILH take maxey > ja

Completely sentimental one for Maxey because I love this hooper so much.

― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Wednesday, December 6, 2023 12:50 AM (three weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

this video makes the observation that haliburton tends to avoid defenders rather than challenge them, which is an interesting approach, kinda seems like it wouldnt work cause the defense wouldnt be compromised enough but i guess when you see the court as well as him its ok

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WK-xtv3xWI

These shows are a complete waste of time lol

Malika Andrews: "Is Tyrese Maxey the best PG in the East?"

Brian Windhorst: "I think he could make a strong case…"

Kendrick Perkins: "…You know who I'm going with…Jalen Brunson!…proven in the big moments…"

Malika: "No one's taking Tyrese Haliburton?…"

Perk: "…excellent… pic.twitter.com/5RvJz4ElqB

— New York Basketball (@NBA_NewYork) January 13, 2024

absolutely haha

Really makes you appreciate ILH