While i do think this is true, i think Victor, very similarly to Embiid in the past, likes playing in the perimeter more and taking those jumpers, which compounds the problem even more. Even in France, where he was the MVP of the whole league and averaged 22 and 10, he was constantly in the perimeter and a third of his shots were 3s, that’s just how he likes to play.

The physical limitations are there and the PG play is abysmal, but there needs to be a slight shift in his mentality aswell, he is going way too much into the weakest area of his game out of preference, something that really hurts his efficiency.

and (some) people really try to spin in like the Warriors were not the favorites heading into 2017 if they didn’t land KD.

They wouldn’t have. The perception at the time was that LeBron was in their heads and that they had nothing for him, Kyrie had also just badly outplayed Steph in the NBA Finals and the Cavs looked like the tougher and more resilient team.

They would have been massive favorites. They were already way better than the Cavs, I say this as a cavs fan.

No, they weren’t. It took them injuries to Kevin Love and Kyrie to beat the Cavs in 6 the year before and they lost in 2016. You also are completely ignoring the psychological edge the Cavs had after that win and the fact that the Warriors almost didn’t even make it that far, needing a historical chokejob by the Thunder to get to the Finals.

They had won 140 games in 2 seasons, and were 1 game away from having the most dominant 2 year stretch in NBA history

Also no. The Bulls won 141 games games in 2 seasons, regardless if the Warriors had won it or not, Chicago still had the most dominant 2 year stretch in NBA history. Chicago also obliterated the '96 and '97 playoffs, losing 7 games TOTAL in those 2 postseasons, the Warriors lost 7 games in the 2016 WCF and NBA Finals alone.

This is some blatant revisionist history, there was not a soul on EARTH in 2016 that thought the Warriors were the favourites before they got Durant, everyone thought that LeBron was about to spank them for years to come.

Maybe in the NBA, but in the Bruins and the Patriots case it was simply a chokejob. In the NBA, the playoffs are really long and going all out for a meaningless record like the Warriors did can cost you at the end, in the NFL, the playoffs are kinda short and you also get to rest an extra week as the No. 1 seed, so it isn’t that big a deal.

Honestly they probably used Donaghy as the fall guy and let the others involved with him get out unscathed to try to keep any form of integrity in the game, kinda like saying “Oh it was just one bad apple, everything is fine!”. The issue is that by doing that, they were never able to get rid of the other refs that probably did shady shit, due to fear of them going out publicly saying that the NBA let them keep their jobs in the past despite knowing that they were doing shady stuff.

Unfortunately, we will have to wait for people like Scott Foster to retire for him to be out of the game at this point.

I swear he has never had a consistent form too, if you look at his Cleveland form, it was different from his Miami one, that was different from LA.

Remember when people were confused that the Suns gave Ayton away for a box of cookies? Yeah, it lasted less than a month of the season. He’s a skilled player, that is bad, it’s hard to explain, but it’s just who he is.

Ayton is not close to being a winning player nor he ever will be, the fact that Phoenix chose the corpse of Jusuf Nurkic over him shows that. There’s something so wrong with how he approaches the game that despite being gifted, he is such a negative that you’d rather have a washed player over him.

This is what Lou is saying, not the Clippers as a whole. PG has often said things that go completely opposed to this and Kawhi… Well, he never speaks.

There’s alot of things that one can say about the bubble title being easier, like the absence of crowds, which would benefit players that often underperform in the playoffs compared to their regular season self or the 5-month layoff that grossly benefitted older and more experienced teams. Lou’s point is just dumb though, especially considering how he played and what he did.