you don’t perform all comparisons on a logarithmic scale?

he’s only 88 TDs behind the all-time leader (Westbrook) right now, which is about 3 seasons worth at his current pace. He’ll probably become the all-time leader well before he retires.

He’s 14 playoff TDs behind Magic for #1, which … last season he had 10, but I don’t think we can count on that pace. Still, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Jokic also takes the all-time lead on that stat in about 3 years. (LeBron is only 2 behind Magic and could plausibly take the lead this postseason, but I don’t expect him to put together so many that Jokic would have a hard time catching him.)

Beasley, Vando, Bolmaro, and Kessler were all included in that trade. Bolmaro was a bust, but Beasley/Vando were traded for another pick, and Kessler looks really good. That trade also included Pat Bev, who Utah flipped for another young player in THT. So Minnesota gave up 4 FRP + a swap, plus guys who were traded for another FRP, plus a good young player in Kessler, plus a piece that got flipped for another young player in THT.

That’s the kind of haul I expect for a consensus top 10 kind of player, not a mere All Star talent. I don’t think Utah was getting comparable offers from any other team. I like Tim Connelly (I had several in-person conversations with him over the years in Denver and he’s a good dude) and I understand his general team-building philosophy, but I don’t think any other team was offering even 2 FRP+swap+young guys for Gobert, so it’s an overpay. It might still end up being a championship move, but even if so, it’s a move they could have probably had a couple more picks left over after, which would be valuable pieces for shoring up depth at the deadline or next offseason.

The TWolves have 2 playoff series wins in their entire history. If the Gobert trade gets them even to the WCF, it’s a franchise high water mark.

But it’s still an overpay in the sense that they almost certainly could have gotten Gobert for less. They were bidding against themselves.

The Nuggets couldn’t have played championship-level defense without a coaching staff that built the right defensive scheme for the personnel, and got buyin from everybody. It took years of coaching to get MPJ to develop the right awareness to be able to tag the roller as quickly as he needs to, and still be ready to close out on a corner shooter.

Coaching is what puts talented players in position to succeed.

I’m taking Jokic
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s brothers.

I’m a Nuggets fan, and I had Orlando on my short list of teams that could go from bad to homecourt.

mom: “we have the Jokic/Murray 2-man game at home”

Ever since Paul Millsap stepped to the entire Clippers team, the Nuggets have owned them. Doesn’t matter who’s playing. Doesn’t matter who’s not playing. The Nuggets could suit up Ryan Bowen and somehow he’d come up with a clutch bucket down the stretch and Paul George would send a game-winning 3 point attempt off the side of the shot clock and it’d get rebounded by some guy on a 10-day contract to seal the game.

Big Baller Biology

The best comparison for Nikola Jokic is Jupiter.

The best comparison to Nikola Jokic is the planet Saturn.

home opener last season, Nuggets arena announcer Kyle Speller announced the Nuggets player as “DeAndre Ayton” and then corrected himself.

I would add: if there wasn’t a thread like this, there would be a constant battle of deleting new threads and comments in all of the other threads. This thread at least functions like a “Giddey speculation and rumors quarantine thread” and keeps it from running rampant everywhere else.

IMO they spent too long not being bad enough to get great picks, and didn’t get good value out of the draft. Here’s their main picks from 2010:

2010 #7 - Greg Monroe. Had a good career, but 2 of the next 3 picks were Hayward and PG13.
2011 #8 - Brandon Knight. Sucked. Kemba, Klay, Kawhi, Vuc all drafted shortly after.
2012 #9 - Andre Drummond. Actually a good pick. The rest of this draft was pretty bad.
2013 #8 - KCP. Good player. Multi-time champ. But missed Giannis, McCollum, Steven Adams.
2014 - got Dinwiddie in the second round, so credit for that.
2015 #8 - Stanley Johnson. This was a pretty bad draft, but they did miss on Booker and a couple other OK players.
2016 #18 - Henry Ellenson. Missed Beasley and LeVert.
2017 #12 - Luke Kennard. Right before Donovan Mitchell and Bam Adebayo.
2018 - got Bruce Brown in the second round, so again credit for that.
2019 #15 - Sekou Doumbouya. More than half of the remaining players drafted in the first round turned out better.
2020 #7 - Killian Hayes. Ouch. Over Hali and Vassell.
2021 #1 - Cade. Could turn it around, but man, that hurts for that to be your #1 pick.
2022 #5 - Ivey. Ehhh, let’s call that pick “incomplete”.
2023 #5 - Ausar. OK, this dude is ballin.

That’s a #1 pick, 8 more picks in the top 10, and 3 more mid-firsts (and 2 years without a FRP due to trades.) I’d expect a team to have put together a pretty good core from that many lotto picks, but they really didn’t. Other teams with middling picks in that time period hit on Giannis, Kawhi, PG13, Bam, Haliburton all in the same part of the draft (not to mention Jokic going in the second round.) They got some good role players but didn’t find any stars. And not enough good role players, and the ones that left, they didn’t get a lot back by orchestrating trades or anything.

For a team that’s not a big FA destination and hasn’t pulled off a successful star trade (Blake couldn’t stay healthy), drafting poorly on top of it is not a recipe for success.

taking a page out of Joker’s book with the Sombor Double

Nuggets opponent: Tim Duncan. Eliminated us a bunch of times in the playoffs. But I just respect his game so much.

Nuggets player: Will Barton. Lots of fans think he was an inefficient chucker who never played within the team concept, locker room cancer, etc. but I think for the most part he was effective when healthy and his teammates consistently spoke highly of him even after the fact, and it’s just his last season where he was playing on a bad wheel for a team with multiple key injuries (Murray + MPJ were out) that he was a negative.

reading the NBA rulebook, 13 II e at https://official.nba.com/rule-no-13-instant-replay/ seems to be where the answer lies, specifically parts 4 and 5:

> 4. For a called foul that is committed on or by a player in the act of shooting:
whether the foul occurred prior to the expiration of actual time; or
whether the shooter released the ball prior to the expiration of actual time if the foul occurred after the expiration of actual time.
> 5. If the shot was timely, whether the successful field goal was scored correctly as a 2-point or 3-point field goal or, in the case of a shooting foul, whether the shooter fouled was attempting a 2-point or 3-point field goal.

What this seems to imply is that, in order to get continuation, the shot still has to be out of the shooter’s hand before 0:00. If they’re fouled before that but don’t get the shot up, it’s not a “timely shot” – it’s a foul before time expired, and would be a 2 shot foul, but not a make. (I am not an actual rules expert, I’m just trying to make sense of what I’m reading, and I *think* this is the correct take.)

“they’re gonna clown us anyways, so we may as well deserve to be clowned”

Probably the most fun thing is that we’ve had a series of different champs. Raptors, Lakers (with Bron and AD), Bucks (Giannis), Warriors (Steph, Klay, Dray), and Nuggets (who picked up Aaron Gordon in a trade to go with Jokic, Murray, and MPJ). Yes, really, the Nuggets, and in dominant fashion (16-4 in the playoffs, with Jokic blowing away Wilt’s single-postseason triple double record.)

Recent MVPs have been Giannis twice, Jokic twice, and Embiid last year.

Major superstar destinations have been the Suns (KD and Beal, along with Nurkic replacing Ayton) and the Clippers (Kawhi, PG, Westbrook, and Harden as of today.) The Nets superteam was completely dismantled, with Kyrie, their third star, going to Dallas to join Luka.

The Spurs drafted a freak of nature in Wemby at #1 overall. 7’4" tall, good shooter, good handle, could be a generational player.