Even if he was 100% healthy just nothing to gain by playing him. Best case scenario he looks good for 6 games, they win the play in and get crushed by the suns.
https://twitter.com/chrisforsberg_/status/1506097013670268930?s=21
Because he shuts down The Joker
https://twitter.com/brasilcoast2/status/1505712000189485061?s=21
Embiid and Harden sit. Butler plays. Sixers beat Heat. Go figure.
Canāt imagine the Brooklyn docs missed a herniated disc. The plot thickens.
Giannis on his injury during the Eastern Conference finals last season:
What basically happened is that if my leg had hyperextended one more timeā¦
I was done. Thereās nothing to cut that was in there. It was torn already. It was out ā (the piece that) protected me from an MCL or ACL (tear). Thereās a thing (in your leg) that protects you when you hyperextend (your knee) that doesnāt let you go all the way back. So that thing was torn. So if I had gone all the way back again, thatād be it for me.
I donāt know if youāve seen where people wear a big brace on your knee, like Goran Dragic wears ā a big brace. They told me, āGiannis, Tim Duncan wore this (so) wear this.ā I said, āHeeeell naw.ā They said, āGiannis, you need to wear this.ā And they had made one specifically for me. I said, āHell. No. Iām not wearing that ****.ā
So apparently he played with a torn PCL.
the no Curry GS team is terrible, well they probably wonāt be in the playin but itās not impossible.
Curry the real MVP. Sixers beat the heat without Joel & Harden and GSW without Steph probably wins 10 games lol
Will be interesting to see how things go if theyāre all healthy. Early in the year with a healthy Dray and Steph they looked liked one of the top 2 teams. But there are bigger problems than Steph coming back. Wiggins is playing horrible, Klay came back and is messing up everyones rhythm and is chucking bad shots with bad efficiency.
I think even if Curry comes back and plays MVP level I have a hard time seeing them win a chip. Maybe if Klay finds his rhythm and starts being a 40% 3P shooter again and stops chucking contested fade away 2 pointers. Also stops making bone headed plays.
Steph barely at an all star level since Dec.
Team will find it tough to beat Minn or Dallas.
GSW without Curry are over the cap and still a strong roster. Take Jokic off Denver or Luka off of Dal and see their teams. The second best players on these teams are Jalen Brunson and Aaron Gordon. Golden State has like, 6 dudes better than each.
The Warriors have by far the biggest salary in the NBA. Theyāre over 50% over the cap! They spend 80 million more than Memphis.
Turns out the measure of best player in the league isnāt based on who has the shittiest team around them. Thatās just an awful media narrative. Despite that narrative, in reality the Mavs are 7-9 without Luka this year. So maybe we need to consider that Luka isnāt very good at maximizing the play of those around him?
By every advanced metric, Giannis and Jokic are having two of the greatest individual seasons in NBA history. The fact that anyone outside of those two is being discussed for MVP is ridiculous.
What about gumption?
With that sample size maybe the Mavs were beating bad teams without Luka and losing vs decent ones though. You canāt actually look at that roster and think āthis is a good team without Luka.ā They donāt look good on paper with Luka.
Iām not saying Luka should be MVP, just that the team is playing very well relative their talent.
Just checked. Mavs wins without Luka:
OKC
Por
Sac
Sac
HOU
Min
Cha
The win against Minnesota was from a while back when they were still under .500. They havenāt beat a single team with a winning record without Luka.
Dallas this season has been better with Luka off the court. They are +3.7/100 when he sits, so the roster canāt be that bad. It looks like their offense suffers a bit when he sits, but they improve on D by more.
Luka had Porzingis for a good chunk of the season too. I understand Luka-stans like to pretend heās not a good player, but again every advanced metric says theyāre really wrong on that topic.
But the main point wasnāt that the Mavs roster is good (theyāre not as terrible as people say though). The main point is the best player in the league isnāt determined by which star player has the shittiest roster around them.
Iāve never been in favor of these stats. Being in Canada I mostly watch Raptors games as theyāre 100% televised. If you remember those 2010 Raps teams, DDR looked terrible for these stats and a Lowry+bench lineup always crushed. But, Toronto always had really good depth while Lowry/DDR werenāt all NBA type guys. Now, Luka is obviously better, but Iād imagine the Mavs bench is better relative to their opponents while the starters are not more than it being a Luka thing.
I donāt think it can all be explained by benches in this case though. Luka has missed quite a bit of time, so a lot of the minutes when he sits are vs. starters.
Looking at it a bit more and think itās a Luka/Brunson thing. Mavs are better with Brunson playing than Luka this season. Advanced stats also have them pretty close.
This isnāt to say that Luka is bad, just that I donāt see how heās in the same tier as Jokic/Giannis. I think Nuggets roster far worse than Mavs and stats seem to support that - when Jokic sits they are terrible, and when he plays they are elite.
No.
Signed,
Epsteinās mom.
And they have played really well against top tier teams w luka.