[NBA] #77 - Wie gaan er naar de Playoffs en wie wordt MVP?

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Op vrijdag 13 maart 2015 08:43 schreef Principia het volgende:

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Bovendien 7-7 3PT(!) en ook nog maar 22. Als Leonard gewoon 1 FT maakt is het natuurlijk wel gespeeld.

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Op vrijdag 13 maart 2015 09:05 schreef TheGOAT het volgende:
Woow wat een game! Zag gister toevallig nog een Inside the NBA waarin gediscussierd werd over de 38 schoten van Westbrook tegen Phoenix 3 weken geleden. Hij was 12-38. Kyrie; 20-32. Toch een ander verhaal

En Gobert inderdaad, wat een beest. Wist wel dat die gast kon ballen, maar zoals hij doet sinds Kanter weg is? En de Jazz 9-2, knap hoor.

Verassend de Jazz nu, ook Indy had het beste record in februari dacht ik, iets van 9-3. Kan aan de schedule liggen, maar toch haal je zulke records niet door goede teams te verslaan. Jazz zullen de PO's niet meer halen natuurlijk maar benieuwd of het momentum meekomt naar volgend seizoen.

En ik wil March Madness gaan volgen, wat zijn de teams (en spelers) om op te letten? Heb Duke vs. NCS gedownload (want ik dacht, Duke is altijd goed ) van gister, maar heb echt 0 idee qua college.

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Op vrijdag 13 maart 2015 18:40 schreef Salina het volgende:

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En Virginia en Villanova. Beetje saaiere, maar oerdegelijke, defensief sterke teams. (Virginia vorig jaar ook al zo sterk en taai).

Ik hoop dat Wisconsin het Kentucky moeilijk kan maken.

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NBA Trade Value Sneak Peek:

No. 10. Kyrie Irving
For Grantland’s Trade Value TV special that ran on ESPN on February 8, I ranked Kyrie 26th overall and sent Cleveland fans into a rancorous frenzy. You would have thought I mistakenly said the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was in Cincinnati or something. You couldn’t blame them for being salty. They had just watched the semi-floundering Cavs play .500 ball through the first 40 games as they inadvertently filmed their own 30 for 30 documentary. What if I told you that you could go home again … and that maybe you wouldn’t want to? Their chemistry looked almost as shaky as the Real World: Skeletons cast. LeBron didn’t look quite like LeBron. Kevin Love had the permanent “Mike Myers standing next to an unraveling Kanye” face going. And David Blatt looked like he was headed for a 20-year coaching career in the Patriot League or the NESCAC.
Trade Value Through the Years
To read all of Bill Simmons’s NBA Trade Value columns since 2001, click here.

In January, everything started to flip: Cleveland made two shake-it-up trades, came together defensively and ripped off a 12-game winning streak that included Kyrie’s 55-point game against Portland. Cavs fans started feeling themselves a little. Kyrie … 26th??? He’s only 22! If he played for Boston, you’d have him ranked in the top 10!!!! CHOKE ON YOUR OWN #%@%@, YOU #&#$%!%!%!

My defense: I didn’t feel right about rewarding a shooting guard trapped in a point guard’s body, someone ill equipped to execute the traditional “make teammates better and take over when it matters” recipe. I call those players “0-guards.” In some cases (a.k.a. Russell Westbrook), they’re so good that it doesn’t matter. In other cases (Tyreke Evans, Steve Francis), it does matter. Kyrie’s five-year, $90 million extension wasn’t helping his cause, nor was the fact that his NBA teams had never succeeded for even four straight weeks. And also, I freaking hate Cleveland. I really do. (Just kidding.)

But I couldn’t shake the fear that I had screwed up. I spent the next two weeks watching Cleveland more closely, ultimately bumping Kyrie’s ranking before Part 2 of the written column was posted on February 25. LeBron’s miraculous return to form (thanks to two weeks of R&R in Miami) had overshadowed a more compelling subplot: Finally, we saw all the ways Kyrie could affect a winning team. Ridiculous first step. Excellent shooting. Semi-freakociousness on fast breaks. A world-class ability to finish in traffic from any and every angle. It’s all there. When you project him as a Wealthy Man’s Tony Parker, Kyrie’s basketball ceiling makes more sense: He’s a ridiculously efficient scorer who needs another creator (or a fluidly brilliant offensive system) to get everyone else involved.

Could LeBron be that creator for him? No question. It’s already happening. Even if Kyrie will never have the Conley Clock in his head (see Part 2), it doesn’t matter if he’s playing with the right guys. I was dead wrong about Kyrie’s potential. But hey — at least I got to the right place with it. Just took awhile.

Which brings me to Tangent No. 1 …

When Jalen Rose and I taped The Grantland Basketball Hour with Kobe last month, we were killing time during one of the commercial breaks and I asked Kobe if he had any “new” favorite players. You know how great chefs always identify the other up-and-coming great chefs? Kobe fancies himself as that guy for the NBA alpha dog/badass/overcompetitive mf’er corner. Knows it when he sees it. Even brags about being able to see it. He sniffed it out early with Westbrook (his favorite current star) in 2012 and — to my surprise — he’s sniffing it with Kyrie now and said as much. He loves Kyrie. So that was a game changer for me. When Chef Kobe blessed Chef Kyrie, I knew it was time to wipe my Kyrie Opinion Hard Drive and start over.

You know who loved hearing Kobe praise Kyrie? Jalen. We had been arguing about Kyrie’s potential for months. Now Jalen was smiling like someone had just served him a 7-pound lobster. And he added a crucial point: Jalen loved the fact that, even after LeBron had arrived, Kyrie never changed how he played and who he was. Didn’t kowtow to LeBron. Didn’t start doing an awkward John Stockton impersonation. Just kept attacking and getting buckets. For Jalen, that mattered. That told him, unequivocally, that Kyrie was here to stay.

Which brings me to Tangent No. 2 …

One of the coolest things about my job as it has evolved these past few years: getting access to so many memorable basketball players and basketball minds. Bill Walton and Larry Bird changed my too-harsh opinion of Kobe’s style; shit, the epilogue of my NBA book told the story about Walton and I arguing about “The Secret” or “The Choice.” I spent a year watching basketball games in a tiny conference room with Magic, and then a second year with Doug Collins. I talked shop with Kobe, off the record, a number of times. I spent a whole day with the great Bill Russell. I got to know Steve Nash and Steve Kerr. I spent multiple days with Charles Barkley. I spent three hours with Durant and Harden once. I’ve picked the brains of dozens of famous NBA people on my podcast. I’ve spent the past three years talking for hundreds and hundreds of hours with Jalen. I spent an afternoon in Vegas with Isiah Thomas that became the second chapter of my book. And I’ve talked basketball with dozens of ex-players and ex-coaches who passed through the league — everyone from Kiki Vandeweghe to Danny Ainge to Doc Rivers to Elgin Baylor to Jeff Van Gundy to Hubie Brown.

Once you learn how to discount personal agendas (they are endless), personal relationships (there are many), and just plain stubbornness (like Barkley’s recent ill-advised on-air rant about advanced metrics), fundamentally, you realize that those old-school lifers see things that you and I can’t see. Hoop junkies bang out League Pass games, study those advanced metrics, read as much as possible, do everything we can to catch up. And many times, it works — like when we thought Memphis might be better off without Rudy Gay while the old-school guys were astonished that Rudy got traded. So that’s our trump card: just outworking the old-school lifers and learning as much as possible.

Their trump card: They can play or coach against someone like Westbrook or Kyrie — even if it’s one time — and pick out something in his DNA that we could never pick out. And again, you need to sift through the noise/agendas/biases/stubbornness to get there. That community doesn’t trust advanced numbers; they don’t care about PER, SportVU, shot charts or real plus-minus. And as the TNT guys recently showed after Kyle Korver made the All-Star team, it’s unclear whether many of them are willing to accept where basketball is going as a sport (pace and space, baby). That community wants basketball to be more black-and-white. It’s just more familiar for them. It’s what they grew up with.

Are you talented? Are you competitive? Would you have won my respect on a basketball court? Can you put up numbers? Can you do anything that I couldn’t do? Could I have won a ring with you? Could I have gone to war with you?

For them, it’s about heading into basketball battle. That’s also why someone like Blake Griffin drives the old-school dudes crazy. He bitches at referees too much, bitches about getting hit too much, forgets to rebound, misses too many free throws and cares a little too much about making an impact off the court. They don’t totally know if they’d want to go into basketball battle with him. They can’t tell. Westbrook is the flip side — they’d put up with his erratic shot selection because he’s a warrior and a crazy competitor and a force of nature and everything else those guys love.

And over the years, I have learned HOW to listen to that community. Just put it through its own little filter. For instance, Jalen enjoys Jamal Crawford’s work for a variety of reasons, but mainly for those three times a month when Crawford activates heat-check mode and starts draining shots that nobody else in the NBA can make. The potential of that happening is why Jalen respects Crawford so much. He’s willing to jettison every negative in the Jamal package (poor defense, no rebounding, the occasional 5-for-18 stinker) and drifts toward those heat-check games and Crawford’s unwavering confidence. And why? He understands the degree of difficulty in what Crawford does. Just like I understand the degree of difficulty in, say, someone writing an especially good deadline column. So we agree to respectfully disagree on Crawford; even if Jalen overrates his impact (in my opinion, anyway), I understand why.

At the same time, Jalen has raved about Kyrie’s ceiling for three years and learned to discount MY unenthusiastic opinion; Jalen knew that I wasn’t totally seeing what he saw. I wanted Kyrie to be something that he could never be: basically, late-’80s Isiah or Right Now Chris Paul, the point guard who spends 42 minutes making everyone better before taking over in the final six minutes. Jalen maintained that Kyrie wasn’t that guy. I maintained that, until anyone proved they could win with him, I was out on him. We were in no-man’s-land.

And then … the Cavs started winning … and Chef Kobe blessed Chef Kyrie’s overcompetitiveness/alpha/badass side … and I happily waved the white flag. There IS something special here, as we witnessed during his epic destruction of San Antonio last night. I always thought Kevin Johnson had the best first step of any point guard I’d ever seen; he had a downhill dribble, if that makes sense. Opponents were petrified of him. They would start backpedaling even before he made a move. That’s how the poor Spurs looked last night. They were just moving backward, almost like a defensive line getting pounded. Throw in his crazy finishes and his Curry-like 3s, and … I mean, JESUS. Has anyone ever eviscerated the Duncan-Pop Spurs quite like that? He threw up 57 and it felt like 75.

If Kyrie keeps blossoming over these next two months, then it will start to feel like Miami in 2005 — Shaq’s first year, when Dwyane Wade made a massive in-season leap and suddenly they looked like Kobe-and-Shaq reincarnated. The biggest difference: 2015 LeBron is better than 2005 Shaq. The second-biggest difference: Kyrie is two months younger than Wade was in 2005. Sticking him 10th might not be high enough. Regardless, I’m glad I came around on Kyrie. Better late than never.

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Op zaterdag 14 maart 2015 10:02 schreef Fukjoeman het volgende:
Install de extension Hola

Klik als de extensie geinstalleerd is op het icoontje van Hola (rechts naast je adresbalk) en selecteer het land van waaruit je wilt browsen. Vervolgens ga je gewoon naar de leagueapass site.

Net even gecheckt, met een proxy uit bv India kost leaguepass voor playoffs + rest of the regular season omgerekend ongeveer 60 euro. En dan kun je volgens mij ook nog promocode LPSAVE20 gebruiken voor 20% discount. Weet niet in welk land het het goedkoopst is, maar browsen gaat via zon proxy vaak erg traag, dus duurt even om dat uit te zoeken .

Ik wacht nog even met kopen tot een week voor de playoffs, dan komt meestal nog een speciale playoffs deal.

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Op zaterdag 14 maart 2015 10:04 schreef TheGOAT het volgende:

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Thnx! Ik heb het via hidemyass gedaan en toen argentinie handmatig ingesteld, maar de league pass site laadt hij niet idd.

Ik wil hem nu kopen, laatste maand RS is vaak erg spannend, mooie wedstrijden, soort pre-playoffs altijd En scriptie is bijna ingeleverd dus weer meer tijd

Maar wat ik overal lees is dat je die andere proxy dus alleen moet gebruiken voor het kopen van de LP. Vervolgens kun je hem weer naar je eigen terug zetten, omdat je dan nog steeds in het buitenland bent. En dat werkt. Correct?

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Op zaterdag 14 maart 2015 10:11 schreef Fukjoeman het volgende:

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Yes, je kunt dan gewoon weer inloggen zonder Hola. Ik heb het al een jaar of 5 zo gedaan.

twitter:

royceyoung twitterde op zaterdag 14-03-2015 om 03:22:10 Westbrook just looked over at OKC's official scorekeepers and said, "Tip? Tip?" As in he tipped that last rebound. Wants the trip-dub. reageer retweet

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Op zaterdag 14 maart 2015 10:13 schreef TheGOAT het volgende:

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Thnx again! En als ik het via m'n credit card betaal krijg ik niet opeens hogere rekeningen en shit omdat het via zo'n server gebeurt?

Betaal jij ook altijd via je credit card?

En ik kan alleen via Afghanistan naar het registratieformulier, als ik via Romenie of Kameroen ga dan zegt hij dat in mijn 'area' dat niet kan, of geeft hij een wit scherm met de letters 'proxy fout'.

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Op zondag 15 maart 2015 11:08 schreef onlinespeurtocht het volgende:

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Waarom downloaden jullie de wedstrijden niet gewoon?
Dat is helemaal gratis

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Op zondag 15 maart 2015 11:35 schreef TheGOAT het volgende:

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Waar download jij je wedstrijden? Sites die ik heb staan ze vaak 's middags of 's avonds pas op, en soms wil ik gelijk 's ochtends kijken

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Op zaterdag 14 maart 2015 18:45 schreef TheGOAT het volgende:
Oh en Okafor ziet eruit als een iets zwaardere, net iets minder snelle versie van Anthony Davis. Correct? Hij heeft eeb biiiiig body. Goede verdediger. Ik zie wat post-moves, en waar ik vooral onder de indruk van ben is z'n composure, hoe hij double teams handlet.

AD is wel een ander niveau, Okafor ziet er uit alsof hij nog een vleugje Greg Oden heeft. Zoveel fysiek, maar iets minder skills. Ook z'n schot is niet indrukwekkend vind ik. Zijn er kenners die mij meer info kunnen geven?

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Op zondag 15 maart 2015 16:31 schreef Smoofie het volgende:
Dus , wat is jullie mening? Celtics moeten gaan voor PO of hogere draftpick?