The NBA 2014-15 Regular Season Thread
 

It's the first day of the season. I am very excited for the season.

Me too. First time with League Pass, I'll see if it was worth the investment.

Bummed that Oladipo is out for the first month.

I'm glad the Wizards are fielding a competitive team these days

My regular season predictions:

WESTERN CONFERENCE
1. LA Clippers
2. Oklahoma City
3. San Antonio
4. Golden State
5. Houston
6. Dallas
7. Portland
8. New Orleans

EASTERN CONFERENCE
1. Chicago
2. Cleveland
3. Washington
4. Atlanta
5. Charlotte
6. Toronto
7. Miami
8. Detroit

Actually excited to watch this Celtics team. Reminds me of the Pierce, Jefferson, Perk, TA days. Young talent that will be competitive most nights, but are ultimately a bottom 10 team.

All eyes on Derrick. If he's pre-injuries Derrick, I think the Bulls win the East. If he's anything less, Cleveland is the easy front runner.

Argh, the "do I, don't I" struggle of checking box scores today at work, or waiting until I get home to watch a game or two on League Pass.

I have the same problem now too! My compromise is to look at box scores in the morning on days the Bulls don't play. Then do the league pass thing at home after work. By the way how long are condensed games and are they worth watching

Yeah, I'm looking forward to watching him play more off the ball, because I don't think he was ever going to be a PG. I still think they were nuts for drafting Aaron Gordon over Noah Vonleh.

Condensed games cut out a LOT of action - it seems to be a semi-random collection of made shots, awkwardly edited at times - that may be because most of the ones I watched last season were bad (Cavs) games.

Watching replays of normal games cuts out all the breaks (once they've made the edits after the game has finished - sometimes takes a few hours).

Overall, League Pass is pretty damn awesome. It just sucks that I can't watch it on my TV due to stupid regional licensing issues.

I agree. I'll be most interested to see how good they can be defensively while not having any semblance of rim protection and playing Olynyk at Center.

Try chromecast? I use chromecast with NFL Rewind and it works really well on the tv. Haven't tried it yet with the nba but that is my plan.

Hmmmm going to research this now.

edit: sounds like mixed results:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Chromecast/c...a_league_pass/

I might just hook my PC up to my TV via HDMI.

I didn't appreciate how shallow that Pelicans bench was until just now. Pretty scary given their injury history.

Laker are obviously a hot mess right now. But opening night tickets were going for 110 for cheap seats. The Clippers had $25 tickets available for their game vs the Thunder later this week.

Ballmer has some work to do

Entertaining Dallas-SA game right now

Looks like Randle tore his achilles.

Randle broke his leg. :(

http://gfycat.com/ElegantPossibleArabianhorse

Not graphic.

Brutal.

The only reason I had to want to watch the Lakers this season is already gone.

I'm considering getting NBA League Pass for the sole reason of watching Anthony Davis play every day.

Lakers shot chart last night:




Byron Scott should be out of a job by Christmas. How, in this day and age, is this acceptable thought?

Yeah, that would be a very good reason to

I dunno, as stupid as it is, you get some outlier where Ned Yost wins a world series so everyone can make fun of the basement dwellers who crunch numbers. But the fact is that if you're hitting 33% of your 3's it's worth doing. Most importantly though, no long 2's

Well, in the end there is not much he can do about it even if he wanted to, not when Bryant and Boozer both pretty much can´t get their points other than on long 2s anymore.

That frontcourt rotation of Davis/Asik/Anderson looked very good on both ends for the Pelicans last night. (despite Vucevic putting up a hell of an effort for the Magic)

But yeah, after Anderson this team gets super thin in terms of depth. (although i think both Ajinca and Withey are decent players, but since they really are not going to play much behind the aforementioned FC rotation, maybe they can trade 1 for a somewhat decent 2/3 or a backup PG)

This. I get the criticism and I am not saying that Scott is even an average coach. The roster as currently constructed is not set up to shoot 33% on 20+ attempts a game. There is a part of me that would love to see the likes of Jeremy Lin and Nick Young coming down court and jacking 3's while Kobe claps for the ball.

Not gonna defend Scott, but some people definitely do go overboard. 3's and drives are better in general, but you can build an offense that has a high number of long 2's with the right personnel. Dallas comes to mind (largely thanks to Dirk), and Boston had a stretch where they shot a lot of long 2's, primarily with Garnett and Bass (and Pierce, but he could shoot 3's too) when they were a contender. It's all about opening up space, and if teams keep contesting the 3-pt line even more heavily then mid-range, less contested 2's become the better shot.

Dude, there is overdoing it and then there is severely going against the nature of what works in the league. They shot 10 threes, right around where Scott would like it, but please read the following:

Lakers looked ugly, but Ed Davis confirmed his status as a steal at the price they got him for. Kobe, man, with all the time he's missed I somehow forgot about all those bad, contested long 2s he loves to jack up.

Really sucks about Julius Randle too. Hell of a rookie season.

No one should be surprised by Byron Scott's ineptitude as a head coach by this point of his career.

According to Basketball Reference, the opening night roster has three players that shot over 35 percent last season: Jeremy Lin, Wesley Johnson and Xavier Henry. The other three point shooters would be Nick Young, Wayne Ellington, Steve Nash and Ryan Kelly all who are injured last night. Now I won't put it past Scott to try to convince Ellington to go to the basket instead of being camped out on the arc. I do wonder how this is going to work with a Howard or Gasol in the post. Maybe they put Kobe on the block to get those open three point shots for the shooters.

Hey hey hey, leave The Dunce out of this discussion.

Celtics probably aren't going to shoot 56% every night, but they did look like they were playing at a much faster pace tonight.

It's one game (and against an underwhelming Lopez-less Nets), but might give the Celtics some pause re: trading Rondo.

Enjoy New York Carmelo!

Comical shot chart from Lakers again last night, but you guys can keep telling me they are playing within their team:

Who said that? I just think that some people in the internet community are going overboard and mocking the very idea that anyone would ever take a mid-long 2 point shot, when in reality it's context dependent. With the right player an open 18 footer is better than a contested 3 or layup attempt.

Ah, the signs that basketball season has started in Minnesota.

If you're available for an open 18 footer, take a step back and take the open 3, is the point. It's simple efficiency.

Really enjoyed the condensed game feature of League Pass. Got through 3 games today while at work (shh). I can see it being a nice alternative to keep up on secondary teams.

Open long 2s are one thing, but when nearly 50% of your offense is long 2s (on a poor %) that's a sign that your offense is not generating the shots you are trying to get - or should be, anyway - which is 3s or points closer to the basket. I would be interested to see how many of those long 2s came near the end of the shotclock.

It is going to be a long one...

Kenneth Faried thinks Josh Smith shot Pistons out of the game - Detroit Bad Boys

A) unless you're in a corner, it's more than one step back from 18 feet, and B) in a real game situation, someone will close you down if you have the ball in your hands as you take those steps back. Just as NBA offenses have evolved to take more 3's, NBA defenses have responded by adjusting their shape and closing down the 3-pt line more. As that happens, the soft spot in the defense can be a mid-range 2.

Is Byron Scott right? Heck no. But is the answer an offense composed strictly of shots at the rim and 3's? Of course not. Implying that it's "simple efficiency" and there is never a place for an open 18 footer is just as dumb as anything Scott has said.

Travis Wear...hahaha

Bad performance by the Cavs. Knicks shot the ball well, but Cleveland defended poorly and LeBron just looked tentative and never really asserted himself.

#witness

Not really sure what the gameplan was offensively either... a lot of isolation, and LeBron casually dribbling into the trap they threw at him any time he got inside the 3pt line.

Imagine how bad it could have been if Cleveland had played a decent team!

Knicks played fairly decent offense for most of the game (they were helped by Cleveland's D to be fair), and the commentators joked about it a lot, but I really did not see a great deal of triangle being played overall. Here and there, yes.