I can see Jokic riding it out in Denver. He is obviously competitive but I don’t think the legacy stuff matters as much to him as most players. Might even retire early to go back to his home country at some point. Plus, when healthy he does have a pretty good team around him that’s probably only missing 1-2 pieces to be legit contenders.
Luka I could see asking his way out if things don’t get better soon or at least leaving at the end of his current contract. Although who knows how well Luka ages. He doesn’t seem to take the best care of his body, so if he gets older the weight won’t come off as easily. He’s also already pretty slow for his position, which seems to work out fine on offense for now, but if his speed continues to decline he will be a traffic cone on defense. His prime might end a lot sooner than most bball players.
I am hoping luka will learn to take his off season conditioning seriously after his struggles the first two months of this year.
I think with a new gm and coaching luka can’t be too upset with his situation now. They need to get him help though, and perhaps resign Brunson. They are easily a top ten team this year, which is a big improvement from the past couple years.
I think European players might traditionally have a greater sense of commitment to their team. Will be interesting to see where this all goes. At one time people thought the same for Giannis, but I think he is a buck for life.
Even I don’t believe this. Nick is crazy. Phoenix has a tight roster and they are disciplined. Going to be hard to steal a game or two. But I could see luka averaging 35 plus a game.
This is the Celtics team I expected to see. Excellent coaching and adjustments. Going to be a hell of a series.
I think the bucks would be easier for the warriors. Dray and Kerr would figure out a way defensively and our outside shooting would make bucks paint defense much less important.
That said I just really like the Celtics and a finals would be an all timer
Bucks only being down 15 despite Giannis being 1-10 and the Celtics shooting 70% from 3 is actually a good sign for them. This should be a 30 point blow out.
I expect it to much closer at the end of the game after Giannis gets his shit together. For sure Celtics defense is giving a hard time but he shouldn’t be this bad
Is there a team with better personnel for trying to stop Giannis? Do we enjoy this series if it ends up being seven games that aren’t very close? Will we end up looking at this series as the de facto NBA finals?
I wouldn’t say that beyond records at all. The West had a lot less talent this year, especially with Zion, Kawhi, Murray not playing. They got to beat up on some bad teams. Toronto has more talent than Dallas. We’ve seen the flaws of Memphis.
If you want to say Phoenix/Gsw are better than the best east teams, maybe? But that’s hard to prove right now.
A lot of records this season were just based on the health of certain teams.