loquacius posted:

Thanks to this random Twitter user for embedding this article in a tweet so I could post it

https://twitter.com/sun_collins/status/1623087128249872386?t=OKv9JtEvRi9VpE-OStRDTg&s=19

lol gently caress off Kyrie

quote:

I did it because I care about my family and I have Jewish members of my family who care for me deeply.

fart simpson posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unFpcaPme1I

a new study bible! posted:

Minnesota will beat Denver in the playoffs.

Yossarian-22 posted:

in hindsight i was pretty dumb for predicting the wolves to be a 5-6 seed too but i feel like choosing violence today

a new study bible! posted:

Minnesota will beat Denver in the playoffs.

Azathoth posted:

The amount of parity is interesting, I expected a lot more teams would outright tank for Wembanyama

Dreylad posted:

i wouldn't want to try to out tank the rockets

euphronius posted:

I wouldn’t be surprised at any playoff result in the west. why couldn’t the wolves beat anyone

euphronius posted:

in the playoffs ? doubtful

we will see

Yossarian-22 posted:

"For any group of guys" https://twitter.com/WorldWideWob/status/1623199736336642049

euphronius posted:

hmmm. what is your evidence for that

kingcobweb posted:

quote:

While their offense is the best in NBA history, their defense is 14th in the NBA. Average.

Vox Nihili posted:

You can slice and dice the numbers a bunch of ways, but this is their big issue. Defense is more important in the playoffs because everyone is going at 110% and the true contenders almost always field elite defensive units. It's not clear to me if a team can make it through the NBA playoffs without top-end defensive talent. You also have to play elite defense the entire game, not just in the clutch, otherwise the game could be effectively decided by halftime.

So personally I'm a bit skeptical of the postseason Nuggets since their roster doesn't read as a complete, two-way team to me.

Vox Nihili posted:

Some of those guys are decent defensive roleplayers, but none of them are elite defensive stoppers. The Nuggets just don't have that kind of guy on their roster.

Adding Bruce Brown probably helped a bit, but ultimately their defensive talent is a collection of average-to-good defenders. There is no one there to stop a LeBron or a Giannis or a KD. No RWIII or Draymond or Kawhi or Bam or JJJ type stopper. Aaron Gordon has the athleticism but he's never shown even a flash of being that guy.

Maybe it won't matter and they'll just score a billion points in the playoffs, but it definitely looks like a weakness to me.

indigi posted:

with AD back I figured the Lakers might put together a decent run but I haven't been following that closely, are they that dead?

indigi posted:

with AD back I figured the Lakers might put together a decent run but I haven't been following that closely, are they that dead?

kingcobweb posted:

you’re underrating KCP. I didn’t know how good he was before this year either. one of the best screen navigators in the league, I’ve never seen someone draw as many screening fouls.

Giannis and KD are in the east, LeBron isn’t making the playoffs. they found ways to stop Kawhi and PG with wayyyyy worse players than they have now. I’m not going to pretend AG and KCP will STOP Luka, but they can hold him and kyrie to being worse than jokic and Jamal.

kingcobweb posted:

Fair question. I'll put some effort into this.

1. Jokic in the playoffs

Year after year, Jokic performs better in the playoffs than he did in the regular season. Let's start by looking at some basic stats, such as comparing his true shooting from the regular season to the playoffs:


True Shooting
Year __ RS_____ Playoffs
2018-19 .589 -> .596
2019-20 .605 -> .614
2020-21 .647 -> .591
2021-22 .661 -> .643
2022-23 .706 -> ???

Doesn't look too great, right? What's going on? In the first two years, he's more efficient per shot in the playoffs, then the last two years it's gotten worse. Let's look at the usage per year for more context:


Usage %
Year __ RS______ Playoffs
2018-19 27.4% -> 26.5%
2019-20 26.6% -> 28.9%
2020-21 29.6% -> 34.8%
2021-22 31.9% -> 36.8%
2022-23 27.2% -> ???

So to summarize:

2019: usage goes down slightly, efficiency goes up slightly.
2020: usage goes up noticeably, efficiency goes up slightly.
2021: usage goes up past 2017 James Harden, efficiency goes down.
2022: usage goes up past 2021 Luka Doncic (who led the league in usage), efficiency goes down slightly.

This relationship between higher usage and lower efficiency is expected, especially in the playoffs; defenses are tighter, and stars are expected to take (and make) nearly impossible shots with the game on the line. What's notable, though, is even when Jokic is forced into staggeringly high usage rates, his efficiency is still great. At his efficiency nadir in 2021, with a .591 true shooting, he's slightly more efficient than Steph Curry's 2018 playoff run (.590), when the Warriors 4-0'd the Cavs.

Moving away from pure stats and into Eye Test/I've Watched The Games, what's going on is that when Jokic is serious about the team needing a bucket, he stops clowning around and demands the ball, either in the post or in Jokic-Murray two-man game. It's why the Nuggets are an elite team (including on defense) in the clutch this year. In the playoffs, Jokic takes over more possessions; fewer are spent on bullshit like Aaron Gordon or Jeff Green isos.

"Okay," you might say, "all you've proved is he uses the ball more in the playoffs, but in two of those years he got less efficient. Justify that if you're saying he's better in the playoffs."

He didn't have Jamal Murray those two years.

2. Jamal Murray in the playoffs

I probably don't need to elaborate on this one too much, but let's look at true shooting and usage comparisons again.


True Shooting
Year __ RS_____ Playoffs
2018-19 .538 -> .534
2019-20 .559 -> .626
2020-21 .592 -> injury
2021-22 .... -> ....
2022-23 .575 -> ???


Usage %
Year __ RS_____ Playoffs
2018-19 24.9 -> 26.4
2019-20 25.2 -> 27.6
2020-21 24.8 -> injury
2021-22 .... -> ....
2022-23 26.2 -> ???

So, before his injury, he was both taking more shots, and making them at a higher rate, as the years went on. What you'd hope for from a guy who's now 25. Those 2022-23 stats don't look good overall, but watching him, he was awful to start the year, and he's steadily been getting better. Usually I don't put too much credence into "last N games" kinda stuff because it can just be cherry-picking streaks of data, but it makes sense for a guy recovering from an injury and a year and a half off the court. Last 15 games (as far back as the nba.com stats table lets me search), he's at .625 true shooting on 27.6% usage. Elite. This is also, as you can see from the table above, .001 lower than his bubble efficiency at exactly the same usage. (I actually didn't know this before I started researching this post. Cool stat.)

With this info, the question becomes not, "can Jamal Murray get back to where he was in the bubble," but "now that Jamal Murray is playing as well as he was in the bubble during the regular season, where can he go from here?"

3. Starting lineup

I learned a hard lesson from the 2013 Denver Nuggets. They won 57 games, and I truly believed that a team that shared the ball rather than having a superstar, with a deep bench, could compete in the playoffs. This is, of course, total bullshit.

Teams need a superstar to make playoff runs. This isn't just for sports talk radio-esque "They Need A Guy" reasons, but for the logical reason that when the games matter most, you play your best guys as much as you can. Rotations get shortened from ten to twelve to eight or nine. Superstars go from 32-35 minutes a game to 36-44 minutes a game. So, instead of looking at teams overall, let's narrow that down to just 5-man lineups. To avoid small sample size bullshit, let's set minutes played to 300 or more this season. The best five lineups in the league by net rating:



You see two contenders (Philly and Denver), two teams that have great starting lineups and horrible benches (Golden State and, surprisingly, Atlanta) and... Denver again. Because MPJ missed enough time that they slotted Bruce Brown over him, and still played good basketball.

Okay, but playoffs aren't all about just playing exactly five guys. That's probably not even the majority of the game. Let's look at core units of three guys instead, because you're gonna move a couple good bench pieces in, right? And let's up the threshold to 500 minutes, because 3-man units will play together more than 5-man ones.



Well then.

4. Home court advantage

As euph loves to point out, Denver (and Utah) have natural advantages playing on homecourt: the altitude. While I'm a personal believer in the "ref bias" hypothesis to explain most of home court advantage, there's been enough evidence that Denver and Utah's altitude really do make a difference. The Nuggets have a +12 net rating at home this season (by far the best in the league), while their away net rating is -4.5, 23rd in the league. I'd add the caveat that this includes a couple scheduled losses on back-to-backs where the Nuggets rested four starters and lost each game by 30, but it's still pretty fuckin bad.

How has this affected them in the playoffs in the Jokic era?

2019:
Win vs Spurs in 7 with HCA
Loss vs Blazers in 7 with HCA (heartbreaking loss at home, up double digits in the 4th, CJ went nuclear)

2020:
Bubble- no playoff games in Denver

2021:
Win vs Blazers in 6 with HCA
Loss vs Suns in 4 without HCA

2022:
Loss vs Warriors in 5 without HCA

So they haven't had a loss in a series with HCA since 2019, when they were a vastly different team: only Murray and Jokic remain, both of whom are far better now than they were.

Being the one seed is a huuuuuge advantage in the playoffs for Denver. A game seven in the Finals, if the playoffs follow chalk and they play Boston, really could come down to whether Denver gets the overall best record.

5. Defense

While their offense is the best in NBA history, their defense is 14th in the NBA. Average. But let's go deeper. (Note: here I'll use nba.com's stats, because they're easier to sift through for splits and the like; the numbers don't quite match up with basketball-reference. For example, b-r has their offense/defense ratings at 118.4 and 114.0, while nba.com has 117.8 and 113.3. Doesn't affect their rankings against others, but could be confusing if compared from one site to another.)

Now, this could be bullshit, but Denver's defense has recovered from a truly disastrous start to the season. Their defense was 26th in the month of October, 19th in November, but over the last 15 games, is 9th.

A lot of this is, I'm sure, due to the above home/away splits. On the road their defense is 25th, at home it's 6th.

I think the real reason is a hybrid of two: they're better at home, but they've also genuinely improved as the season went on defensively.

But there's something else to dive into: the C L U T C H. I mentioned this briefly above, but Denver is shockingly good in the clutch. Like, really really good. Their defense is the best in the league in the clutch.

If you haven't watched them, this seems impossible. They have Jokic!! He big slow!! But if you watch these clutch possessions, a few things are clear:

• Jokic defends differently. In the earlier parts of the game, his main objective is to disrupt PNR but foul as absolutely little as possible. With the game on the line, he contests rim attempts much more aggressively. Which is helpful, because...
  
• Refs call the game differently. They're going to let Jokic get "blocks" that, yeah, those are probably fouls.
  
• The Nuggets have their best defenders on the court. Those starting lineup (and 3-man unit) stats showed that they're actually pretty good defensively.
  
• Everyone just cares a lot more. There's a lot of possessions where the Nuggets (even their best units) are up 15 in the first quarter and just get lazy. It's one of their worst attributes as a team.
  

~conclusion~

They have a star player who's better in the playoffs, a player who's becoming a star, role players who complement those stars, the best offense in history, defense that's the best in the league when it matters most, and a possibly slightly unfair advantage in that they play in Denver, relevant when they're a top seed. Which they are, and never have been before.