2025-26 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

I guess I'm more sympathetic to Durant here. KD isn't a PG and he's not the same type of playmaker like a comparison like Lebron. He's more like Kawhii. Just not that great of a passer or create for others type of guy. JJ strategy is to blitz guys - he's done it to Murray, Ant particularly if the don't have a secondary creator

Lakers main defensive strategy is the amoeba zone switch to man defense and this hard blitz strategy. If the Rockets don't have Reed and maybe Sengun as an outlet it may have been better to try to free up Durant to post up or come off a pindown. Hell I've yelled at the Lakers for not putting Luka into better positions when it comes too heliocentric

Twolves and Rockets really seem vulnerable to this type of defense.

 

new burner incoming

 

I don't mind seeing Durant looking bad. Finally!! He pissed me off back in the day when he took some shots at Lebron basically saying everything around him is a shiitshow. He is not, nor ever will be, in the GOAT discussion and that is completely on him. He could have accomplished a lot more than he did but his ego wouldn't let him.

 

Sure - unfortunately a******* sometimes win in basketball - MJ pretty clearly was one to a lot of folks lol.
In this case credit should just to Lakers defensive strategy and the Rockets personnel issues.

 

MVP, MVP...

 

A first round rematch with the Wolves is starting to look like a strong possibility.

 

The reason Adam Silver is a fraud full of s***. Because he put out a big memo saying the NBA is outlawing bating fouls. There will be no more in the NBA. In there.

James Harden was affected by it and had to change his whole game.

All of a sudden Shai is doing the same thing if not worse. Initiating contact. Flapping his arms out up. That should be a Flop.

it’s simple to outlaw it. It’s called an offensive foul. Before you know it you have 3 fouls. You can’t initiate the contact.

if you are able to do this you are unguardable. Here are the reasons.

1. I can’t hand check you.

2. now you can initiate contact and bait me into a foul while I’m trying to be aggressive.

3. This gives Shai space to pull up for jumpers or go around you. Because you can’t guard him. That’s the problem with the NBA giving guys too much offense.

4. that’s why Jaylen Brown says this isn’t basketball because it’s not.

5. Make Shai have to play a real NBA game where he has to use his jump shot and dribble around guys. This s*** is a joke and I’m pissed.

 

if there's no handcheck and no contact initiation from the offense, everyone's fouled out in 2 minutes, so the nba will always be officiated slightly different from the letter of the law, as there's no way to write the rules to cover the leeway (though they've tried, hence lebron's complaints about "marginal contact").

that said, SGA is beyond the pale. definitely the current harden, in the same vein that the refs have taken a perfectly good player who'd be a perennial allstar and instead turned them into an mvp hall-of-fame tier guy just by officiating him unlike anyone else. and no, just like in harden's case, it's not about his special ability that creates the need to foul him. he just throws his arms into people. anyone can do that, man. except they can't...because without that really long last name, it's apparently still an (obvious) offensive foul.

if okc gets another ring this year, i expect some fan backlash that silver will have to deal with, tbh. everyone thought it was cute when a small market team went from rags to riches via the draft (tanking) and got a ring. but if they get two, suddenly with a payroll dwarfing everyone else's and a grifting superstar, they won't be the fun plucky underdog anymore.

 

Reaves is also good at foul baiting, but he does it with a bit more tact and craft. SGA straight up hooks you and then throws his arm up - LOL okay.

 

There is a difference between being good at drawing contact (Reeves) vs flopping (SGA) We need a new term too as SGA and Harden with the off hand stuff don't even just flop but they're basically using offensive fouls to trick refs

Add in the forearm shove that only SGA is allowed to do consistently (Luka got away with a minor one on his game winner so I'm not being fair weather here but the SGA whole freaking game is built on that). Someone pulls that me in pickup and next time they make contact with me they're getting one right back refs won't allow it in the NBA so it continues

It's the most bizarre thing as well as that was always an offensive foul until it wasn't? No rule change etc

 

i think this is why i never respected harden nor SGA. these guys know if you played that way in a gym, you'd get popped. and they just kind of smugly smirk about it.

i think if i were defending SGA right now and i was a vet with some respect from the refs, i'd say that i plan to not touch him, but the second he puts his arm on me, i'm grabbing it and pulling. you're going to have to foul me out in the first quarter, or he'll have to adjust his game. choose.