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

So the answer is yes it was a nod to him or a coincidence. Seems like a really tortured coincidence if so?

 

My bad, I edited the last post to include a 2nd quote that you probably didn't see. The words and initials they wanted to use were close enough, that they forced it, as a nod to LeBron.

Here it is again:


"After running the numbers and while seeking a catchy but sensical name, LeBron came to mind. Not just as the embodiment of what impact metrics attempt to measure, but also due to the new metric returning results indicating he’s been the most impactful player from 2009-20 (the length of our database), as well as his name aligning well to the specific components of the stat we wanted its name to outline.


L uck-adjusted player
E stimate using a
B ox prior
R egularized
ON -off


As far as forced acronyms go, I’d say this one works out fairly well."

 

It's a lot of talent, but I'm also skeptical of them. The name of the game on offense these days is advantage creation and without Kyrie I don't think they have an advantage creator. They don't have anyone, whether by P&R, off-the-dribble or post-up, that can consistently draw two defenders and get the defense in rotation. Flagg will get there one day, but probably not yet. Especially if they're playing him at the 3. AD is a good post player, but I think we saw teams were willing to single cover him or bring late doubles because he can struggle making the right reads.

I think there will be nights when their defense leads to easy opportunities on offense and they look great. But I think there will be more nights where the offense looks like a slog.

 

You could be right. I guess I just believe in AD more. Then again, I still think we could have won a championship with him this past season if no trade. (Although I'm glad we made the trade for long term reasons.)

 

I agree with almost all of your assessment but come to a different conclusion. I agree with their weaknesses this past season, and yet they still almost beat OKC if Aaron Gordon were healthy, and would have been the favorite to win the championship after that.

Then they had a great offseason and improved a lot. Cam Johnson and MPJ may be comparable in the regular season, but MPJ was *terrible* this past postseason, so if Cam is even close to average next playoffs, that will be a huge improvement to the team that just went 7 w OKC and could have won the chip. Add in Brown, THJ, and Valanciunas on top of that, and the team is much better. They lacked depth last season, and had ~nobody to backup Jokic (the shell of DeAndre Jordan), so Val alone is a huge boost. So I think they could take out OKC or anyone this year, health permitting.

That said, I also agree with you that they're beatable, and that it will just be about matchups and health. And that a Luka led team could be their kryptonite. I'm feeling good about our chances against them or anyone, but I also recognize that it's gonna be a 1d8 dice roll in the West.

 

This is all fair, and if you don't trust it, that's fine, no need to pay any attention to it. It makes sense to me and looks relatively accurate to my priors, eyeyest, and other metrics, but it's not gospel or anything, just another data point.

A few small comments. I don't think the columns are role-adjusted. Just compared against the average player/entire dataset. Which is why Vincent has a poor rebounding grade, and Hayes has a good rebounding grade. They're not being compared to their positions, but to everyone, including each other. Same for 3pt Guarded, which is why the guards get good grades there and the big men poor grades there. For Ayton, I assume the opposite as you, that if he has to switch onto a 3pt shooter, he's less effective than Smart or Vincent at that, as the opposing guard is likely quicker and can take a dribble step or two to the side and get a better shot off.

 

From Hollywood to Euro league
Maybe Jokic even can recruit him to national team

 

yeah, that last part gets into what constitutes "guarding". if the scheme doesn't want the bigs to close out or take iso bait, they could nominally be guarding someone who's really being left open. as such, failure there is on the scheme/coach as much as the player.

but anyway, i like attempts to quantify things. it's an interest of mine.

 

dont don’t do that to me. I remember when Harden was the young guy in the league. Even him without the beard. Seeing him walk by me at Summer league from CoX pavilion to Thomas and Mack.

that picture is hilarious though. They are wise though.

 

I know exactly what the Clippers are doing. This isn’t fooling me.

Boston Derrick White Jrue Holiday Jaylen Brown Jayson Tatum Kristof Porzingis.

you space the floor out with all three pointers. Couldn’t beat it.

Theyre hanging on this. Kris Dunn playing the holiday role.

Harden Beal Leonard Collins Lopez

Or Harden Beal Dunn Leonard Lopez

or even Collins. But this is the space out offense.

They’ve got two of the best wing defenders in the league Dunn and Jones Jr.


I like us against Denver cause I saw something when we whupped their a**. They had no answer for Luka.


Luka made Murray play defense and we shot them out the building. No more Murray putting 45 on us because he doesn’t have to play defense on the other end.

Russell wasn’t forcing him to do that. Or Shroeder or even Vincent.

that was the difference with AD. Yes I do think that team with AD would’ve won a championship AD was playing like an MVP and OKC had no answer for him.


Ayton is not AD but he will make Jokic work on the other end defending him and Jokic isn’t a great defender. I wonder what Ayton averages or stats against Jokic his whole career. Somebody should get that. It would help.

Back to the Clippers. I’m telling you early. The Lakers better not fall for it and get roped into a track meat three point shooting contest. That’s what the Clippers want to do push tempo.

Lakers should slow it down. This is Ayton series. I always look at matchups in Basketball. Thats why I hated the Minnesota matchup because it was a bad matchup.

But playing the Clipper theirs an obvious matchup mismatch. Ayton I would punish them inside. Zubac isn’t a great defender. Collins is trash on defense. And Lopez is trash on defense. Aytons should average 30 in this series. Like Shaq against Indiana in 2000.

they’ll put Lopez in to try to pull Ayton out we can’t put Rui at Center and fall for it. Kleber will help to. But keep Ayton in And punish them inside.

between Luka and Reaves against Harden and Beal Lakers should have a field day.

 

If the scheme is really leaving someone open intentionally, then wouldn't that reflect on guards as well? They would nominally be guarding them, but giving then lots of space to shoot, while semi-helping elsewhere.

For example, if Smart were guarding Westbrook, he might give him lots of space to shoot 3's and long 2's; but I doubt he would get a D or F on guarding him, as Westbrook would still be missing most of his shots. Alternatively, if Westbrook got a switch and Ayton were now nominally guarding him but giving him lots of space, the grading should be similar to Smart doing so.

So I don't think it's a scheme thing. I think that scheme would affect all defensive players on a team, so a team as a whole might suffer in the grading of that category if a coach is going to extremes with that strategy, but that wouldnt account for the variation in grading between players on the same team. Since Smart and Ayton are coming to us from different teams, we would have to examine their prior situations further, but I'm guessing it's not scheme related and is more so, just that Smart is better at guarding 3 pt shooters than Ayton, which makes intuitive sense and goes along with the eyetest.

 

Clippers aren't stupid - they're going the Indiana route of always fielding a playoff caliber team and setting up similar to the Lakers for FA not having anything on the books 2 years from now. They don't got control of any of their picks till 2030 so they're going to have to continue to do what they've been - finding undervalued guys like Powell and then developing them till they can find a star to build around to replace Leonard.

Harden is a great regular season wins guy to accomplish this pseudo-contending lol

 

They have Tinkerbell, we kind of thought he was an impact player at PG. He might turn it around in Dallas. Dummy is still in his prime. Max should ready for a breakout, and AD is still big time, if he's healthy this season, they are going to be a problem.

 

this keeps going back to whether we know what actually goes into these numbers. my thought is that what constitutes an observation in a given category is shaky and could be affected by scheme. the argument you're making is in favor of the overall D-LEBRON stat, imo. which is still vulnerable to schematic stuff, just less so.

 

Sometimes I wonder if you should throw out all defensive metrics and just look at which players an opposing offense chooses to attack and also how the defense chooses to use there players on defense.

For example Lebron is in his heyday was a freak of nature on defense. I think it's insane he never won a DPOY in Miami as he was one of the most switchable defensive players I've seen. A guy who went from shutting down a league MVP ultra quick PG in Derrick Rose in the playoffs to shutting down a young Al Horford in the post.

nowadays Lakers are not putting him on the toughest wings which indicates he's not the same caliber of defender but also interestingly no team ever goes at Lebron. They don't try to put him in PnR's, iso him, nothing.

OTOH I love AR but man do teams go at him trying to isolate him - it feel relentless at times how many times a team may go after him.

SGA tore up McDaniles but OTOH OKC/Indiana appeared to play a lot in the chess match of trying to get easy matchups for SGA away from Nembhard

 

meant you know they say when they over the hill they wise. Wise.

 

Lebron had one of the best defensive games moments when Miami beat San Antonio in 2013 He takes the headband off and is now playing Center against Tim Duncan. That’s when I saw Lebron go on another level.