NBA 25/26
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@ACT-Crusader said in NBA 25/26:
@nonpartizan said in NBA 25/26:
Given Lakers great start to the season I think they are gonna struggle to incorporate LeBron back in the lineup down the road.
It's the hardest thing to have these iconic players still playing when their reputation and salary doesn't match what they can do in the present day. Not always in a statistical way either, more so in the way they disrupt the team chemistry and take minutes away from younger players.
I’m no LBJ fanboy by any stretch, but he’s still a top 10 player in the league it’s a very long season and there are injuries (ala Austin right now) where they will need any one of their stars to step up.
We are yet to see LBJ with this version of fit Luka. They were showing signs late last season of what could be and that was with the unfit version.
There are plenty of minutes in a game for a big 3 to do their thing - and if JJ plays the supporting cast right, the Snowflake Lakers could make deep playoff run.
On the subject of Luka/LeBron, one thing I'm loving about this iteration of the NBA compared to the one I grew up watching is the international superstars.
Even as recently as 2007 when Dirk won MVP and went out in the first round there were still those jibes of "Euros are soft" and this belief that they were just suited to being role players, spot up shooters, hustle guys etc. Or they just couldn't do it when it mattered and things got tough. Hence why a guy like Porzingis got heavily booed when the Knicks drafted him.
Luka being THE guy in LA is another barrier being crossed. Gasol was a huge part of those last two rings that Kobe won but I never got the sense that he got the amount of credit he deserved. Before he arrived they never got out of the first round in 2006 & 07. With Luka being the first option on the Lakers and him essentially edging LeBron out of the role of top dog, European players have truly arrived.
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Yes and the Lakers having a foreign superstar who is the franchise player is an extension of that progression. Only season they had a foreign player lead the team in scoring was Divac back when they were terrible after Magic retired.
The progression has been from where drafting foreign players was done by forward thinking GMs like Jerry Krause or RC Buford when they were looking for complimentary players. Those picks were in many cases roundly criticized* and now foreign players are considered on par with Americans.
*Or at least viewed skeptically.
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Btw, slight sidebar - I always wondered to what extent Divac picking Bagley over Luka was because if Luka was a bust it would look like a homer pick. I think the fact he was Slovenian was a complicating factor for him because being a Serb it might look like he just favoured Luka for reasons of geography. It's funny because Luka is the exact type of player that would have been drafted by the Kings when Divac was playing for them.
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Spurs in a close one in Chicago, down 4, 3 mins to play.
Close out with a strong fourth quarter and win. Fox has been good since his return, am looking forward to see how they do v the Warriors in back to back games later this week.
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The stupidity of the Mavs is on full display now. Nico will be fired, it's just when.
Two 'stars' both injured, Klay now coming off the bench (and looks incredibly shit), plus Russell with -18 in thelast game (apparently) as the guy there to do some playmaking. Flagg looks lost.
As the Hoop collective sum up, this is Year 2 of the 3-4 window they envisioned when trading away Luka. How fucking dumb.
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Kidd isn’t helping the situation with how he’s playing Flagg either. PJ Washington looks disinterested too.
There are some very good pieces there, but they need better coaching too.
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The owners of the Mavs are gonna make the GM the fall guy, understandably, but they would have signed off on all his moves right?
Not like he was trading a second rd pick or for an expiring contract or some type of petty move like that. It's still inexplicable to me how anyone could have thought it was a good decision to trade a guy in the prime of his career who had just got them to the FInals. I just don't see enough upside for the obvious negative of losing your best player when your best player is Doncic.
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@nonpartizan said in NBA 25/26:
The owners of the Mavs are gonna make the GM the fall guy, understandably, but they would have signed off on all his moves right?
Not like he was trading a second rd pick or for an expiring contract or some type of petty move like that. It's still inexplicable to me how anyone could have thought it was a good decision to trade a guy in the prime of his career who had just got them to the FInals. I just don't see enough upside for the obvious negative of losing your best player when your best player is Doncic.
Mavs fire GM Harrison amid continued fan angst
The Mavericks on Tuesday fired general manager Nico Harrison, who had been under fire from fans following last season's trade of Luka Doncic to the Lakers.
The axe has reportedly fallen. I blame the owners for thinking they were smarter than everyone else and agreeing to shift Luka. Harrison has to accept much of the blame for being dumb enough to think this was a good idea in the first place
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Chicken and egg with Luka though. He clearly wasn’t changing his ways in Dallas no matter who was trying to help him - veteran players like Michael Finley couldn’t even. And it was over multiple seasons.
Whilst many will say it was a crazy move, but Luka has to share a lot of that. Yes his numbers were great but the defensive liability and overall attitude on the D end was severely exposed and that came back to his fitness and conditioning. Something had to give if he wasn’t going to change.
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@ACT-Crusader said in NBA 25/26:
Chicken and egg with Luka though. He clearly wasn’t changing his ways in Dallas no matter who was trying to help him - veteran players like Michael Finley couldn’t even. And it was over multiple seasons.
Whilst many will say it was a crazy move, but Luka has to share a lot of that. Yes his numbers were great but the defensive liability and overall attitude on the D end was severely exposed and that came back to his fitness and conditioning. Something had to give if he wasn’t going to change.
I would have thought he would have listened to Dirk. But management had marginalised him
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Then choose the fucking chicken @ACT-Crusader
See, this is the issue, none of you fluffybunnies knows what it is like to be a Mavs fan.
During the last 20 years, with a star player who the local fans warm to in a football /baseball (ice hockey for a bit) city the Mavs were able to build a strong fan base off Dirk, then we had Luka land in our laps.
Looking at the past, and all the shit that was said about Dirk, we still got a ring with him.
Luka was on the same timeline and needed the organization to just keep building around him. No one cared that we wouldn’t be the best team - but they were able to be a second round playoff team perennially and have thr chance to steal one.
Trade that away from two injury prone guys on a 3 year timeline, then what?
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yeah, look i get that maybe, if you sit back and look, you can see a reason to trade Luka away from a purely basketball perspective. You cannot forgive how it went down, and what they got in return. An absolutely horrible trade and thats before you take into consideration the fact you just traded away the peoples champion.
What's shit is AD is probably the person you get to pair up with Luka to improve that team.
Also the whole sequence of events that sees the Lakers get another generational talent, and the Mavs rewarded with the #1 pick in the Flagg draft is enough to make you believe in conspiracy theories.
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They had to get rid so they can focus on a rebuild.
They’ve got a roster still half built to play with Luka - Klay is more shit that he should be simply because he was recruited to feed off Luka.
I’m so scarred from the 90s. I was relentlessly bullied by fair weather (bulls) fans for the decade I played intermediate/college basketball. I think the two expansion teams were technically worse than us, but off the established teams, the Mavs were a fucking Jolie in the 1990s. Fans carry that shit and the organization has fucked up by not recognizing it.
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@gt12 they had some pretty good pieces around him. The Kyrie acquisition, the Washington trades which they won big time, getting Lively in the draft (a perfect fit). Luka just had to be the superstar.
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And he is.
See, the counter argument can be made that he would turn the corner at the Mavs.
Everyone knew he had this capability, its an organization error that they couldn’t get him to his absolute peak.
You’re old enough and ugly enough to remember the shit they used to say about Dirk too, btw.
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And he is.
See, the counter argument can be made that he would turn the corner at the Mavs.
Everyone knew he had this capability, its an organization error that they couldn’t get him to his absolute peak.
You’re old enough and ugly enough to remember the shit they used to say about Dirk too, btw.
I do and and I’ve always liked the Mavs even dating back to the Rolando Blackman days, but Dirk had that work ethic in him and whilst this generation are wired a bit differently, Luka and Dirk personality wise are very different.
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I agree with that but go in the opposite direction, because Luka, whilst problematic is still better player than Dirk. The job is easier (talent) and harder (ethic).
I reckon the Mavs are the last team to win the Championship when their best player would not have easily been chosen as one of the three best players in the league.
Maybe Boston a couple of years ago but most people would have picked Tatum as one of the best players going around.
Shay, Tatum (not finals MVP), Joker, Curry, Freak, LBJ, Leonard, Curry x 2 (finals MVP Durant x 2), LBJ, Curry (finals MVP Iguodala), Leonard, LBJ, Dirk.
My point here is that even the basketball argument is flawed. Neither Kyrie nor AD are at that level. It would be a huge thing for a team like that to get over the hump anyway, given their age and the relative quality of players in the league. Luka belongs on that list above though.
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@ACT-Crusader said in NBA 25/26:
And he is.
See, the counter argument can be made that he would turn the corner at the Mavs.
Everyone knew he had this capability, its an organization error that they couldn’t get him to his absolute peak.
You’re old enough and ugly enough to remember the shit they used to say about Dirk too, btw.
I do and and I’ve always liked the Mavs even dating back to the Rolando Blackman days, but Dirk had that work ethic in him and whilst this generation are wired a bit differently, Luka and Dirk personality wise are very different.
I think winning a championship changed the perception of him because I recall in the late 00s people calling him out for not being committed to basketball.
As far as I recall Dirk was big into back packing at that time and didn't pick up a basketball much in the off season and people viewed that as a reason why he didn't win a ring. Of course it's all overly simplified media driven narratives anyway but they tend to change when a player wins a championship.
