nate, if you had to pick one plumlee brother to get you a bucket in crunch time , who would you choose?
- Welcome on everyone! As always, thanks for being a subscriber. I think it would clearly have to be Miles. He had that rolling hook shot across the lane that was pretty good, and I think was the best FT shooter of the 3 as well.
What are some of the most overrated player archetypes?
- "Pure point guard" would have to be at the top of this list for sure. So, a point guard who needs the ball all the time until the very moment he passes the ball to someone else who scores immediately, who doesn't shoot well from the outside and doesn't score well? So, Rajon Rondo basically, who I would say is one of the most overrated players of the last 10 years. Another one would be the pure scoring forward, maybe Tobias Harris is the example there. The big, slow rim protecting center, but those don't really exist anymore at this point other than maybe Brook Lopez, but he's valuable because he can shoot on the other end.
What is the more likely outcome for the picks that Portland should have in this draft (assume #7 and #10 for this exercise) - they draft two players, they package both to move up in the draft, or they package one or both to acquire another complimentary player to Dame?
- I think they draft one and trade the other, the traded pick being the lower one. There's so much smoke around the Jerami Grant thing at this point that it seems like it's going to happen and that will be the price.
WATFO that Mike D'antoni is the head coach of the 76ers next season?
- I'll put it on 15%. If he were "in his prime" so to speak, then maybe it'd be even higher, but he might just be too old at this point to get a 3-year contract. We really haven't seen any coaches go much beyond 70, and he turns 71 in May. Also, I do think that when the Sixers lose this year it's not going to be Doc's fault as the primary reason. Harden struggling and the lack of any kind of 3 and D options on the roster will be the bigger issue, so in fairness they might want to let Doc coach a team that actually has a chance. For perspective, I put it at a 25% chance that someone other than Doc is the Sixers' coach next year at the time of the trade in our WATFO, and Danny put it at 40%. I'd still stick about with that estimate, and obviously there's a chance it's someone other than D'Antoni if they were to make a move.
Nate, trade value deathmatch time (based on league wide value + your eval): Miles Bridges vs. Mikal Bridges
- Mikal over Miles by a HAIR. Good teams would prefer Mikal, bad teams would prefer the upside and youth of Miles. Wiseman over Okoro--Okoro has proven that he's not great, whereas there's still hope for Wiseman. Plus with a great physical profile a big can do so much, and Wiseman has one of the best in NBA history. That to me makes up for Okoro playing the more valuable position. But I'm not sure Okoro has the size to really guard the best guys on defense, the Cavs are kind of seeing him as more of a 2. Plus we know about the skill limitations.
Nate, trade value deathmatch time (based on league wide value + your eval): LaMelo Ball vs. Cade Cunningham
- LaMelo vs Cade, I'd rather have Cade and I think he'd have the higher value. A lot of that comes down to position and defense. Cade just seems like more of a winning player. But it's close, and I think most GMs would see it that way as well. Mitchell vs Garland, still gotta be Donovan Mitchell. Just another level of player at this point, even with the contractual situation being more favorable to Garland. But don't forget Garland will be on a max soon enough too.
Hey!! I got a question. Watching this raps / minny bout and Minnesota just seems to never work towns into the offense. Sometimes he's handing it off..never gets it back. What would be an explanation for this as it's been a thing I've observed in many twolves games this year. They need to get their superstar more looks. Is it a coaching thing? KAT not being assertive enough?? It's really bad.
- I didn't see that Raps game, but I'm guessing they were doing a lot of switching which makes it harder for Towns vs conventional coverages where he can get the ball in space or against weaker defenders, of which the Raps have few. But in general, yes I'd love for him to have an Embiid-like usage rate. He's talked about generally being more of a team player and trying to find it in the flow, but the combo of that and Edwards/Russell/Beasley having a......different mentality means he probably doesn't get as many shots as he should. That said, Embiid is one of the few bigs in NBA history to get his usage significantly over 30, particularly in the last 20 years, so maybe it's easier said than done.
Hey Nate, appreciate you and Danny taking my question in Greenroom yesterday about the Suns. The question was inspired by a discussion in the Discord earlier yesterday and this chart that @John C | Hawks pulled together.
While I agree that a team like the Nets with KD+Kyrie can more effectively get good midrange looks in isolation than the Suns I was wondering if Ayton's improvement this year as a midrange shooter (50% on short mid range last year -> 60% this year while increasing proportion of his shots from 28% to 44%) be a bit of a skeleton key?
Is a switching scheme still effective against a P&R where both the ball handler and the roll man are prolific midrange shooters because if you are switching your big man onto Booker/CP3 to take their midrange away isn't that still going to consistently leave Ayton with a good look over a smaller guard on him?
- Yeah, I'm very interested to see if Ayton can truly be a switch-buster as a big. Part of why he's so effective is that he can get a lot of those still relatively close to the basket, but his touch on his hook shot even from a little further out than a lot of guys is truly fantastic. Paul in particular goes a great job setting him up about 6-8 feet from the basket ducking in off PnR. Against truly great defenses like the peak Bucks, peak Warriors, Heat, or Celtics, who have enough versatile guys to guard him, I'm not sure that's as effective or something that they'll emphasize throughout the game as much. But I'd love to see it play out. I definitely think the conventional PnR defense teams are pretty much dead against the Suns unless they can outscore them though.
When teams are tanking at the end of the year, how big of a risk do you think putting intentionally poor and ill-fitting lineups out is for younger or longshot players development? A specific example for this year would be the trail blazers, who seem to be putting out such undermanned lineups that it would be hard to really assess how any of these guys can really showcase their ability, or prove their fit on next years roster in the roles they'd be playing with dame+simons+???. Obviously all things equal you'd prefer higher lottery odds to lower, however I'm curious how much value an increase in odds of 3-8% or so gives you as opposed to actual in-game development and assessment.
- Well, one solution is to tank so hard that you don't even put your good young players out there. In that Blazers/Thunder game on Monday, who was the best prospect? Keon Johnson? Aaron Wiggins? Isaiah Roby? Brandon Williams? When you're talking about that level of guy in the hierarchy, I'd consider the draft pick much more important.
Offseason trade idea that I wanted to run past y'all. Lakers/76ers have big, underwater contracts. Spurs have a number of expendable rotation/non-guaranteed players. What would you think of something like Westbrook or Harris + picks for Richardson, McDermott, Collins, and Langford? I haven't really worked out the specifics, but at first glance the money is close enough that I think you could figure out how to make it work.
Do you think the Lakers or 76ers would be willing to give enough pick compensation to make it worthwhile for the Spurs? Or would this just be a non-starter because it doesn't change their upside enough to give enough for the Spurs to do it?
- I still remain in the dark about the Spurs' actual plan. If they're still looking to get to the 10th seed, then Harris could actually help them and they could pick up the picks. I think the cost to get off Harris would be 2 firsts/significant assets. Or they could try the OKC route of trading for Harris, then rehabbing him and trading him for even worse contracts later. I'm not sure Richardson and McDermott are high enough level to entice the Sixers though. For the Lakers, is one first enough to move off Russ for anyone other than other toxic contracts? The Spurs don't really have anyone like that, so I'd probably be wanting 27 and 29 firsts in that scenario. And I'd HOPE the Lakers could do better than McD (not a playoff player) and Richardson and Collins for that.
Hey Nate, I’m kind of the resident discord tables and charts guy. I made this table of team’s net ratings when the are playing solely five players we would expect in their playoff rotation. My goal was to eliminate times when teams were playing non-NBA players (during COVID or weird injury games) from the numbers. In theory, this gives us a bit of a look at how good teams are when they are trying to be.
I’m not sure this really works for a Q&A, though you may have some immediate thoughts from looking at it and I’d be interested to hear them if you did. Either way, thought you and Danny might find it interesting. We have.
- This is extremely useful stuff and I think it has a lot of predictive power. Ben Taylor has focused on a similar concept of "healthy" performance. A famous example of this working to predict upsets was the performance of healthy OKC during the regular year in 2016. This I think takes it a step further because I believe he looked only at performance in games when everyone was healthy not just net rating of units involving only the healthy players. And so, I think it's got a lot of predictive power--if of course the teams actually have their playoff rotation playing and playing well.
Lot of Mitchell / Gobert passive aggressiveness in the media all season that has only gotten louder as the season has been winding down.
What do you think the best option is for the jazz in handling this star fued? And if it came down to trading one of them, would you rather trade Rudy or Donovan considering all factors (trade value, team importance, etc)
- I'd probably rather trade Rudy just because he's older and his contract will get ugly on the back end, which won't be the case for Mitchell. And there's some hope of keeping Mitchell on another contract as well. I think if they can get healthy for this year's playoffs, I'd try to see whether it's realistic to contend with this group with some tweaks. If not, then I'd put everything on the table other than trading Mitchell, but also be ok with bringing both Mitchell and Gobert back if there weren't an offer that really moved the ball forward. And I'd ultimately expect that not to be the case, what is the Gobert trade that makes you better next year? It's nearly impossible to trade present for present in that way. The Jazz already have a great offense when healthy, and you don't trade the defensive player of the year and get better on defense. Maybe you'd say they grab some future assets for Gobert if they clearly aren't contenders, but I'm skeptical those assets could get you back into contention within the next 2 years when Mitchell will be making a decision on whether to re-up.
Congrats on becoming a father. My daughter was born last year on the morning the playoffs started, maybe the same thing will happen to you! It’s an amazing, life/perspective changing journey.
- Appreciate it! Definitely looking forward to the journey.
Hi Nate, I was wondering what some of your favorite nonfiction books (non-nba category) are? Open to any topic, would love some recommendations. And it doesn't count if you just consumed the Blinkist version !
- A lot of these are history books, I'll probably spare you those unless anyone wants to hear them. I don't read a ton of non-fiction books that aren't history-related though. I feel like I kind of get my non-fiction by reading about current event topics I'm interested in. I will say Expecting Better by Emily Oster has been extremely useful of late, that's for sure. I found the Signal and the Noise and the Data Detective to be good statistically focused books. Calling Bullshit by Carl Bergstrom who was a guest on the COVID pod, the Biggest Bluff, the Great Influenza (I read that at the start of COVID like everyone else). sorry for slow response on that one, was going back thru my archives for a sec
Nate, you've been critical of the NBA's relationship with China but I've never heard you criticize the NBA's partnership with the US military as part of its Hoops for Troops program. The US military is currently aiding Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy with a horrible human rights record, in its war on Yemen, which the UN has identified as the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world (https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/riyadh-gets-us-military-help-washington-seeks-better-ties-2022-03-22/). The Saudi-led coalition, with US support and arms, is responsible for thousands of civilian deaths and a blockade that has seen millions face famine. Have you considered calling out the NBA's silence on this issue?
- I'm no fan of the Saudis at all. Getting into whether we should work with them given the challenges in the region is probably beyond our scope here and something I'm not an expert on. But it's not an issue I've been focused on. I'd consider that issue far more attenuated to my raison d'etre as an journalist than NBA/China. That's really more overall US government policy than the US military making a decision--they do what the civilian government tells them to do. Even accepting your position that the US is complicit in Yemen, which I don't know enough to rebut, I don't put that on the US military specifically. Overall though, I certainly don't consider the US military an evil organization that the NBA shouldn't partner with. Meanwhile, the NBA/China thing was the biggest NBA story at the time. So I wouldn't consider those comparable at least as far as my personal coverage is concerned.
Are there any plans to do hot mics/casts of playoff games? I personally enjoy y’all’s casting at the end of games and lineup/play choices
- TBD this year given that I'll have a newborn. I'd like to do it if I can but I may be more forced to watch games on Synergy for greater efficiency at least in these early days.
This last stretch of games have confirmed my worst fears about D'Angelo Russell. He gets picked on defensively and he struggles to create his own shot vs good teams.
Would you trade Russell in the summer or let him walk in 2023? And can you think of which PGs are realistically available for the Wolves in the next 2 offseasons?
My somewhat unrealistic dream is Dejounte Murray
- I think I'd rather go with Edwards and Towns with more 3 and D type players as the core going forward, assuming they get Towns to re-up this offseason. I'm not sure DLo is much in demand. We ranked him in the 20s in our PG rankings, and I think the league has finally decided to see him that way also. So maybe he could be a salary vehicle to get other players in when combined with draft picks, but I don't think anybody really would be seeing him as a huge upgrade at the point guard position at this point. These basketball answers go a lot faster than the political answers!