Talk Radio Paradise

BessLineberger · Extra super member Geregistreerd op: 18 Nov 2020 Berichten: 65

The Boston Celtics (and 3 other teams) are having a bad start to free agency
"There’s been plenty of good and bad so far in NBA free agency, but the Boston Celtics and three other teams are off to terrible starts.
It’s the happiest time of the year in the NBA, and that fact is compounded with the combination of the draft and free agency in the same week. Of course, if it’s not a happy time, it’s the absolute worst time, and for a handful of teams (led by the Boston Celtics), it’s been downright awful.

Let’s take a look at just why the Celtics have had a terrible time so far, and then we’ll go on to a few other teams having just as bad of a time.

Why the Boston Celtics are having a miserable free agency
The Boston Celtics always seem to be on the verge of making a big deal for a star, only to decide they’re fine without a blockbuster trade and come up just short in the end. Over the last couple of seasons, it’s even worse than that. Not only have the Celtics been unable to swing a big deal for a star or two, they’ve been losing their own.

Last season they lost Kyrie Irving in free agency, receiving nothing in return. While considering how poorly the relationship was by the end of Irving’s time in Boston, it’s fair to say that getting him out of the locker room was a win by itself, but it’s still a poor result for a max-level player.

This time around, they lost Gordon Hayward also for nothing. He opted out of his $34 million 2020-21 salary, and while he and the team were apparently working to find a sign-and-trade in order to maximize him as an asset, he ended up departing to the Charlotte Hornets and signing a gigantic four-year, $120 million deal.

That contract is certainly an overpay and not something the Celtics should have tried to match, but losing top-end players and replacing them with nothing so far isn’t the best way to get back to the Eastern Conference Finals.

Maybe the Celtics will turn it around, but so far they’re one of our headlining teams for Bad Times During Free Agency."

Five biggest losers of the 2020 bubble’s NBA playoffs
"The NBA playoffs were a positive experience for some. Plenty of others left earlier than they’d hoped with a dejected spirit weighing them down.
Having previously broken down the winners of the most unique undertaking in NBA history, it’s now time to move to the loser’s bracket of the 2020 NBA playoffs.

Only one true winner exists in any NBA season. That’s the team left with the Larry O’Brien trophy. While silver linings do still exist in the form of breakout performances or unexpected runs, they come in short supply. By season’s end, more are disappointed in their efforts than not.

The premise certainly applies to the results of these playoffs, maybe more so this season than ever before. The bubble’s neutral setting closed the advantage gap between matchups, creating even greater opportunities for upsets, of which we saw several, including the fall of two of the four best records in the NBA.

The disappointments that appear in the following slides come in varying forms. Championship expectations fell short. Bright futures became a touch darker.

Given the sacrifices these players, coaches and teams made by leaving their families to sequester on Disney’s campus, it’d be nice if they could all leave on a higher note than what many did. That didn’t happen and the future ramifications could be costly."

"Almost one calendar year after the 2019-20 NBA season began, the NBA Finals are about to begin between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat. It’s been a long, grinding, tumultuous season with the deaths of Kobe Bryant and former commissioner David Stern, and an all-time footnote in the form of a four-and-a-half month hiatus brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.

The NBA had to get creative to even consider resuming its season, and it did indeed think outside the box in order to do so. As we know now, the league created a bubble environment in Walt Disney World’s Wide World of Sports, and thanks to vigorous testing and quarantining had a perfect record with no positive tests on campus.

The league pulled off something that seemed impossible back in the middle of March when they suspended the season, and along the way provided some incredible basketball. The Phoenix Suns were the seeding game champions with a perfect 8-0 record but were eliminated from playoff contention in the final game of the round.

Performances by Jamal Murray and Donovan Mitchell in a seven-game first-round battle between the Denver Nuggets and the Utah Jazz were nothing short of spectacular, and the Miami Heat’s stifling zone defense clamped down on the Milwaukee Bucks and the Boston Celtics en route to the Finals, while Anthony Davis had a fantastic scoring run for the Lakers.

Not to be left unmentioned, LeBron James had a vintage Game 5 against the Denver Nuggets to clinch things, reminding us that there’s still nobody like LeBron when he has a team on the ropes in the NBA playoffs.

The Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat are not the matchup we expected when the season began, or even when the seeding games or the playoffs began. The Lakers were never worse than the second-most likely team from the Western Conference to get here, but the Heat astonished everybody to get to the Finals."Boston Celtics Face Masks

"The Milwaukee Bucks have revolutionized the way defense is played in the NBA. They take away the rim and force opponents to get the bulk of their offense from the mid-range and behind the 3-point line. They had the NBA’s best defense in the regular season, but surrendered a massive number of 3s along the way to the tune of 37.1 per 100 possessions. As it happens, their second-round matchup in the NBA playoffs, the Miami Heat, might be the best-crafted team to derail their quest to the Finals.

The Heat were just seventh in 3-point attempts, putting up just 35.4 per 100 possessions, but they were prolific in efficiency. They shot 37.9 percent from behind the arc, behind only the Utah Jazz and their 38.0 percent.

In the NBA, scheme matters, but personnel still gets the job done. For the Miami Heat, they’ve definitely got the personnel, and as Hassan Whiteside would say, they’ve got shooters.

The Heat have four players shooting over 40.0 percent from 3-point range, led by Duncan Robinson at 44.6 percent (on an incredible 8.3 attempts per game), Jae Crowder at 44.5 percent (since coming over at the trade deadline from the Memphis Grizzlies), Meyers Leonard at 41.4 percent and Kelly Olynyk at 40.6 percent.

Just outside this most elite of classes are Tyler Herro at 38.9 percent and Goran Dragic at 36.7 percent, and streaky scoring rookie Kendrick Nunn who can fill it up with a volume approach at 35.0 percent."Los Angeles Lakers Face Masks

Grading all four Charlotte Hornets picks in the 2020 NBA draft
"The Charlotte Hornets took a leap forward with the picks in the 2020 NBA draft. Let’s grade their four picks.
Since the Charlotte Hornets traded Kemba Walker to the Boston Celtics they have been lacking star power. They have not had a player who can take over the game and drag the team to a win the way Walker could since he left.

It is not as though general manager Mike Kupchak made any significant deals on draft night. All he did was select players in the order that was allotted to him, with the exception of trading for the 42nd pick by giving up a 2024 second-round draft pick.

The Hornets ended up with four picks in the 2020 draft. Their first was pick No. 3. They then had two second-round picks before trading for the third. They have several holes in their roster, some of which were addressed with this draft.

Some of the areas the Charlotte Hornets needed to address with the draft.
While the Hornets guard play last season was dynamic with Terry Rozier and DeVonte’ Graham, they are undersized with both players standing only 6’1″. The Toronto Raptors have a similar-sized backcourt but both their players play above their size, the Hornets pair do not.

The next area the Hornets needed to address was their issues at center. While Cody Zeller is a solid worker, they need a rim protector as they gave up the highest field goal percentage in the NBA last season.

They also needed to address the fact that they were the lowest-scoring team in the league, averaging just 102.9 points per game. Despite all of these weaknesses the Hornets still managed to finish ninth in the East last season. Let’s now grade these picks."Golden State Warriors Face Masks