2023-2024 NBA Thread

[StillMcfuu]

Kanter is like an anti-euro player. Normally euro guys have solid defense, but he is just awful. He's like "i can't stand in the key anymore, how am I to defend the rim" "well you just move over when someone drives" "what's move mean?"

[xskarma]

Kanter is like an anti-euro player. Normally euro guys have solid defense, but he is just awful. He's like "i can't stand in the key anymore, how am I to defend the rim" "well you just move over when someone drives" "what's move mean?"

It's weird cause he seems to know how to move okay-ish on the offense, but defenseively he looks like he's wearing concrete shoes.



In more optimistic news. Celtics had their first Summer League game tonight, and won. More importantly, they had several players either just flat out look good, or show flashes of what they can do with more development.

Not saying the Celtics 2 rookie 2nd rounders from the past 2 years will ever be All Stars, but both showed flashes of being legit NBA players. That's already a win as far as I'm concerned. With Euro draft-and-stash players it's always a huge gamble. But Begarin has NBA size and fluidity, hit twice from 3 (even though that's not his strength) and had the steal that secured the win. Madar had less play time but was impactful, sparking the team when he first subbed in when they were down 0-10, with defensive plays and hussle and some nice assists and set ups.

Pretty sure Madar got less play time cause he had 2 vets in front of him at G in Pritchard and Carsen Edwards. Also pretty sure that he will get more opportunity in following games cause I doubt Pritchard plays much from here on out. He looked a step ahead of everybody else on the floor, and carried the team in the 4th.

So, going to be a fun 2 weeks of Summer league, hope to see more from these Rookies.

[xskarma]

Second Summer League game: Blow out win, with 2 of our most important young players having GAMES, (Pritchard and Nesmith) and the 3rd important one contributing too (Langford).

I'm going to guess that these guys are not going to see full playing time as the Summer League goes on.

[xskarma]

Summer Celtics are blowing teams out left and right. It's comical at this point. Coach also left in his starters in the 4th quarter, so he either doesn't trust his bench or he's hunting for that Finals spot. xD

Honestly, the Celtics are probably trying to get the young guys as much good tape as they can get to move some of them on again and for others to get their tradevalue up, so they are more attractive in trades the Celtics might want to make in the next season + next off season.

[xskarma]

Another Summer League game, another blow out. This time without Payton Pritchard, who rightly got excused to be there any longer.

Should mean Celtics in the title game on Tuesday. Should be fun for the guys on the team.

[xskarma]

Marcus Smart is signing a 4 year extension with the Celtics. 4 years no options to either side, but he gets a trade kicker to protect him a little in case Celtics try to move him next summer in some kind of blockbuster deal.

Now there's absolutely no further question that Mahcus Smaht is the PG this season. Love it. Shröder can come off the bench and like it or he can get his ass traded at the deadline.



In other news, Celtics against the Kings tomorrow in the Finals for the Summer League. Hopefully a fun one. (I also hereby detract any disparaging remarks I have made in the past about Summer League playoffs and championships. CLEARLY they matter. )

Nah, but it;s fun to see for these guys. Payton Pritchard even tweeted that he was coming back to Vegas to play in the game, but the Team quickly put out word that that was not a surte thing and that he wasn;t in Vegas yet.

Going to assume they don't actually want him to start or play, cause they want to increase the value of Carsen Edwards and perhaps Romeo Langford by having those guys play point. We'll see though. If they want to win they should play Payton Pritchard without question. He was the best player on the team (and I'd argue he was the best player in the tournament, if you look at actual play and not potential.)

Late start tomorrow though, so I hope I'm awake.

[StillMcfuu]

Marcus Smart is signing a 4 year extension with the Celtics. 4 years no options to either side, but he gets a trade kicker to protect him a little in case Celtics try to move him next summer in some kind of blockbuster deal.

Now there's absolutely no further question that Mahcus Smaht is the PG this season. Love it. Shröder can come off the bench and like it or he can get his ass traded at the deadline.



In other news, Celtics against the Kings tomorrow in the Finals for the Summer League. Hopefully a fun one. (I also hereby detract any disparaging remarks I have made in the past about Summer League playoffs and championships. CLEARLY they matter. )

Nah, but it;s fun to see for these guys. Payton Pritchard even tweeted that he was coming back to Vegas to play in the game, but the Team quickly put out word that that was not a surte thing and that he wasn;t in Vegas yet.

Going to assume they don't actually want him to start or play, cause they want to increase the value of Carsen Edwards and perhaps Romeo Langford by having those guys play point. We'll see though. If they want to win they should play Payton Pritchard without question. He was the best player on the team (and I'd argue he was the best player in the tournament, if you look at actual play and not potential.)

Late start tomorrow though, so I hope I'm awake.

Honestly having Schroder as a trade asset is huge, his current contract undervalues him and a team at the salary cap could trade for him, gain a really strong piece for not much value, and make up for it in future picks and cash.
Or the Celtics could find a team that wants to dump salary, ie trade Schroder for a player worth 10-15m and the Celtics would get that really strong player, while the other team would dump cap, but also not look like they dumped cap to fans.

[xskarma]

Summer Celtics were not ready for the buzzsaw that was the Summer Kings.

Celtics had something like 30 turnovers. 30! But it wasn;t all just having a bad day and being young and sloppy, it was also overwhelming size of the Kings.

Carsen Edwards/ Payton Pritchard back court is not NBA viable and probably hasn't been since like the 70s or something, but it had worked so far in Summer League. Not against the Kings though. They bullied both guys out of their spots, and out of the intended plays and into late clock contested shots.

Didn't really help that Celtics had no viable Big after Fernando, and he's comparitively small too, so any intended screening and P&R action was muffled too.

All in all just not a great game, but credit to the Kings for creating that situation tonight.



Back in a month for training camp. Probably see some of these Celtics on a different team by then.

[Rennadrel]

Scottie Barnes looking like a solid draft pick in summer league. Give it a couple years, the Raptors are gonna be good again.

[xskarma]

NBA schedules are out.

Just from looking at them, Celtics on the road a lot first few days and weeks of the season, and have a crammed January, but mostly at home. Few games in Feb (cause All Star Break), but only 4 home games all month. LOT of rest in March.

Start with Knicks on Oct 20th. End with Grizzlies on April 10th.

All in all, could be worse schedule.

[xskarma]

Brad Stevens extended Marcus Smart: Cool, longest tenured Celtic on a deal that likely looks like a bargain in a year or 2

Brad Stevens extended Robert Williams: Eh, okay, he's one of the more likely ways the Celtics exceed expectation, and it's a reasonable boom or bust contract for both sides

Brad Stevens extended Josh Richardson: Ehrm, Brad? You can stop extending people now, we are good. Let's see the fit on the court first? Thanks.

[xskarma]

Celtics continue to remake the roster. Trade G Kriss Dunn (recently aquired) and G Carsen Edwards to Memphis for F/C Juancho Hernangomez and a 2nd round pick swap.

GREAT trade for Celtics, moving on from 2 players they had zero interest in and getting a player at a position where they were thin. Even if the player quality swap is basically even the fact C's get to add to thin coverage on roster is big.

Juancho would soak up benchminutes at the traditional 4 for us and allow us to potentially play him with Jayson Tatum at the traditional 3 and Jaylen Brown at the traditional 2. Would suddenly let us play a whole lot bigger on average.

The fact we are sending 2 players out also means we are freeing up roster spots to potentially add more role players to the bench.

Really happy with this trade even if it doesn;t really move the needle on playoff hopes. It just means the regular season minutes look better balanced, which in turn might mean less wear and tear on the starters.

[xskarma]

Kyrie really out there saying he wants to keep it private whether or not he’ll get vaccinated. Dumb as shit. You can’t keep it private when we all see you having to zoom in to media day. We know your status. We know your conspiracy theories. Just sack up and answer the fucking questions.

We'll see pretty soon who the holdouts are with these shenanigans. We already know Kyrie and Wiggins and Isaac aren't vaccinated, and Bradley Beal made comments today that make it pretty clear that he probably isn;t either.

According to that Rolling Stone article there's "multiple" Celtics players not vaxxed either. Not sure who that might be, but I know Jayson Tatum is vaccinated at least and so is Marcus Smart. Jaylen Brown said it was a personal decision for everyone, which can be taken either way.

I just hope that whoever has not taken the shot yet does so soon so we have a full team ready for when the season starts in earnest in a few weeks.

[xskarma]

I know Media Day and early Training camp are used to hype up the fan base and that EVERYONE looks great, but man, can't help but get excited for the upcoming season.

Leaguewide no one seems to really count on the Celtics for anything, and that's absolutely perfect, cuase that's usually when the Celtics overperform and play well.

Can't wait

[xskarma]

Word is they got their own Kyrie contingent. Hopefully that doesn’t hurt them.

Not quite. We do have reportedly more than 1 player not vaxxed (from a Rolling Stone article) but it's not Jayson Tatum, it's not Jaylen Brown, it's not Marcus Smart, it's not Al Horford. So basically none of our supposed core starters/leaders.

Which means it's some of the other roster guys, which honestly is not much of a concern to the team. Wouldn;t surprise me if they got released or traded if they were that adamant.

I'm also fairly sure they'll fall in line beforelong, cause there's pretty severe restrictions on not being vaxxed and they'll get sick of it soon enough (pun intended).

[PhaelixWW]

I'm just excited to see the splash brothers back in action together again this year. It's been too damn long.

[xskarma]

Celtics looked great tonight against the Raps in pre-season. They are still getting used to new line ups and more passing emphasis and turning the ball over too much, but with some time to gel, this team is going places.

The only thing that bemuses me is how the Celtics for some reason seem to never have everyone play well at the same time, and really peak. Wrong time for it right now obviously, but it;s still clear that some players are really locked in and playing well already while others are still very much in pre-season/off-season mode.

This was especially clear with Jayson Tatum who was just not quite there yet for most of these pre-season games until he made a string of baskets and set the tone in the 3rd. He was promptly benched for the rest of the game, so it migth have been deliberate to "turn it on" for his last burst and then rest the rest of the game.

Coach Udoka has said that he'll rest some starters for one of the games, so it will be interesting which game he picks for that.

[StillMcfuu]

I don't know if you guys have been checking out the Bulls pre-season, but they are a big problem. They are playing beautiful effortless basketball and they've only been together for 2 months.

[xskarma]

This Miami Heat team is extremely hateable. Kyle Lowey is a flopping pest. Tyler Herro has a punchable face and delusions of grandeur. Jimmy Butler is just an asshole, and not the lovable kind.

Butler had had some run ins with Dennis Schröder during the game and then decided to first lock his arm up so Schröder couldn't change position, then when Schröder wriggled free and stayed in the area, Butler stepped back on Schröders foot, and just kept standing there, for like 5 or 6 seconds, before the play moved on and Butler pushed off on that foot and moved away.

Schröder vaguely tried to trip him when he moved away and got Schröder a flagrant, and he definitely shouldn;t have, but that Butler action was just ridiculous and I cannot believe the refs let him get away with it and put everything on Schröder.

I had to sports hate Miami anyway, but stuff like this make me just regular hate them.

- - - Updated - - -

Celtics lost by 20 to Miami, but don;t let the score fool you, this game was close for 3 quarters, until Miami finally went on a little run in the end of the 3rd and extended in the 4th. But Celtics were playing without 4 of their Top 6 players while Miami was and played at full strength. HUGE win for the Celtics back ups and their struggle to get minutes during the regular season.

Especially our 2 young wings, Langford and Nesmith have looked good defensively, but have been surprisingly good as offensive players too. Not just the 3s while standing still and waiting for Tatum to pass out, but creating their own shots and going at the rim, against NBA starters and early bench players. If these 2 can continue this in the regular season, the Celtics migth have a luxury problem of too many good wings for the available playing time.

But that's it for the pre-season for the Celtics. Bring on the regular season and the Knicks!

[StillMcfuu]

Man... there is some ugliness going on with The Suns right now and I almost can't blame them;
Suns refused to extend Ayton, which sounds terrible on paper but...
I think we need a little context here. Max for Ayton is 173m for 5years, and if he gets the All-Star game, that jumps to 200ish for 5. That's more than D Book is making. As great as Ayton is and could be, he isn't better than Book and will never be more valuable... I'm big on Ayton, I've been championing his skill set for a few years now BUT.... In the Sun's defense not extending him makes him a Restricted Free Agent, the max a team could offer him at that point is 4 years 127m which is significantly less than the max extension on the table.
I don't want to say it's good business, but it sort of is. He's an RFA, Suns can retain him for less than a full extension coming from them. So the Suns have him for this season and basically next season, and if another team offer him 2-4 years, they can match that and will keep him for another 3 to 5 seasons, all for less than a rookie max extension. But it sounds shitty, because I like Ayton and I think the Suns should keep him with Book, but then you look at the Kyrie or Simmons, or any other player that's been forcing their way out of teams and well... I get it, both sides are shitty to each other right now.