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Official 2018 NBA Offseason Thread: the preseason cometh

Melo could be a Robert Horry type for great teams if he's willing.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
Melo's usage history is mostly due to him being the only scoring threat on bad teams. His play on the Olympic team shows that he's a good teammate on talented teams, for example Melo was top 5 in usage the 3 seasons before Kristaps, and since he has fallen out of the top 10
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Who is the best teammate Melo ever had?
 
JuiceCrewAllStar said:
Who is the best teammate Melo ever had?
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He played with Iverson for a couple of years. If I'm not mistaken, he played with Chauncey for a couple more. Kmart was no star, but he played with Melo and those guys for about five years.

Melo is about Melo. always has been.
 
how much of their depth will the rockets have to trade for melo? i imagine it's some combo of eric gordon, trevor ariza, ryan anderson... is it all 3? i like the deal way more if it doesn't include ariza.
 
Anderson and Ariza would be enough money. The wouldn't need to include Gordon

It gets dicier without Anderson. They would need to find another $5-7M if it were Ariza and Gordon.

Ariza would be redundant with Melo and PJ Tucker.
 
i think the best possible starting 5 would be CP - Harden - Ariza - Melo - Capela.

Melo needs to be at the 4 now, better fit defensively, and you need Ariza as your main wing defender. I see Gordon as more redundant now with CP and Harden, one of which will be on the court at all times. PJ Tucker is a great fit as a bench wing defender, but I'd rather keep him on the bench.
 
you don't have to have a scorer on the bench when Chris Paul and/or James Harden are on the court for 100% of the minutes.
 
Fuck Your Couch said:
you don't have to have a scorer on the bench when Chris Paul and/or James Harden are on the court for 100% of the minutes.
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You still want the option to rest one of them on occasion and account for injuries. Having Gordon off the bench is huge in that respect. And even if CP and Harden stay health, Gordon gives them a high level backcourt on the floor for 48 minutes instead of pairing Harden or CP with some scrub.
 
ESPN invokes Robert Merton to attempt to figure out 20 years of Western Conference dominance over the East.

[h=3]West is best, but stars hold the keys to the future[/h]It naturally follows that an outsized share of the league's best teams play in the Western Conference. The West has beaten the East head-to-head in 16 of the past 17 seasons. In adjusted net rating, which weights a team's overall efficiency for strength of opponent, the top five teams in the league last season all reside in the West. Of the top five teams in adjusted net rating over each of the past five seasons, only four of those 25 hail from the Eastern Conference. For all the dominance the West has displayed over the East, it's most pronounced at the very top.
...

Call it the Soft Drudgery of Low Expectations or even the Broken Conference Theory, whereby a conference that falls into disrepair is more likely to continue its slide into oblivion. In an environment in which a sub-.500 record could net a team two home playoff dates, and a 45-win season practically pencils a team into the conference semis, it's not surprising to see a whole bunch of teams behave like the regular season is a pass-fail course. This effect leads the East to function as a warehouse store for treadmills of mediocrity, where a .500 record buys you a bargain.
Perhaps there's an evolutionary component to this idea. College coaches routinely point to scheduling challenging out-of-conference games as a means to strengthen their teams for postseason play. For Western Conference squads that can hardly go a week without seeing a Warriors, Spurs, Rockets or another .600 West foe on the docket, their merciless schedule demands constant playoff-quality execution. All the while, Eastern Conference teams get to scheme against the confederation of the middling.

...


"Today, for players where the money is equal between destinations, 'Which superstar am I playing with?' are Nos. 1, 2 and 3 in selection criteria," Morey says. "Only after that comes owners, management, coach and city."
If the brightest stars are magnets that attract other superstars, then the more talented conference will effectively compound its advantage. Kevin Durant joins Steph Curry in Oakland, while Chris Paul partners with James Harden in Houston. Paul George might not stay in Oklahoma City, but the presence of Russell Westbrook means that, if things work out this season, both guys can re-up for top deals and assure they'll be playing with a fellow superstar.
Try as the league might to declare the terms for competition, superstars are now running the show -- and they want to play in tandems and trios.
 
probably the #1 perk of the CP Harden pairing is staggering them and having them in the entire game. i'd say that advantage allows you to upgrade the starting line up by having ariza over tucker and that's better than bench scoring when you aren't even really worried about scoring. d'antoni's system is like steroids anyway, eric gordon isn't really that great, they need defense more than scoring.
 
like a common theme for the clippers and the rockets for their entire runs with CP and Harden were huge net rating dropoffs during their rests. eliminating that is such an advantage.
 
Fuck Your Couch said:
you don't have to have a scorer on the bench when Chris Paul and/or James Harden are on the court for 100% of the minutes.
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This is 2010s. If you play a guy 38mpg, it's considered cruelty. 45-48mpg could be a capital offense.
 
I mean it's super easy to give them their normal rests and play them the whole game.
 
RJKarl said:
This is 2010s. If you play a guy 38mpg, it's considered cruelty. 45-48mpg could be a capital offense.
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They could both play 32 mpg and have one of them on the court at all times - 16 minutes both, 16 minutes Paul, 16 minutes Harden.
 
MNHammer said:
They could both play 32 mpg and have one of them on the court at all times - 16 minutes both, 16 minutes Paul, 16 minutes Harden.
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You still need someone off the bench who can put the ball in the basket.

How many NBA champs or even Finals teams didn't have a guy who could score coming off the bench in the past twenty years?
 
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