OFFICIAL AROUND THE NBA: DECEMBER 2024

Denver won when they were 15th in defense. The Warriors won when they were 11th one year. Cleveland won when they were 11th. Teams have won with a top-10 offense as much as they have with a top-10 defense. What matters is have a good balance of both. Milwaukee won the championship when they were healthy and had the top defense and 6th best offense and 10th best defense. They were a 1st round exit when they had the 4th best defense and the 12th best offense

 

I can agree with this statement but still believe Jrue is the superior player.

The goal of constructing an NBA team is to eventually win a title. At least I consider that the main goal, maybe your different. Pair Jrue with another star and they can contend. Pair Dame with a star and most likely they are my turn your turn DameCJ duo.

If you want to build a playoff loser then yeah Dame could probably drag a team further as the main option better than Jrue.

If you want to win a title - Jrue is superior.

 

Now there might be a few star duos that Dame would pair better than Jrue. But I stand with my earlier statement that 90%+ of contending rosters would be better served with Jrue. That's why every contender was interested in acquiring him and we traded him in a few days - while Dame took over 3 months to find a deal even with a public trade demand.

 

Indy waived Moses Brown today...the guy has played for 8 teams in his 5 years in the league...just can't stick

 

Glad he's not on our roster - I prefer Duop.

Only end of the bench guy I want back is Watford. Never made sense to give him up. I swear he'd be better for us right now than Grant most nights. I wonder if the rumor of him sleeping with Dame ex is true.

 

Watford is doing alright in BKN

 

Teams rarely win when they build around small, defense challenged guards who need the ball in their hands. The exception to the rule is gsw where steph is the best shooter ever and can play both on and off the ball.

With that in mind, building a championship roster is easier when your PG is an all-nba defensive player who is not a detriment to the offense. You can spend your NBA money on bigger, dominant offensive players.

Given that, history has shown that having someone like jrue next to a dominant bigger offensive player (Giannis, jt) is a good champion recipe.

You simply need more next to a guy like Dame to do the same, it is basically a super dominant defensive team like GSW which also can move the Dame like player (steph) to play off the ball, so it is much harder to shut down.

As good as Dame is, Steph is simply better, because he is so effective just running off screens as he is with the ball.

 

Carmelo too. I agree Jrue is better than Dame in terms of playoff success. I mean we have it on tape. Jrue swept Dame. It wasn’t close. Yes, Jrue had Davis but Jrue is the reason they won the series and Dame has a 3rd seed roster.

As for Giannis, Middleton, Lopez, Tatum, and Brown: none of them have won a title without Jrue. And they had many chances.

 

Um, the Blazers were swept 4 games to zero. It looks like proof of something to me. That they couldn't even win one game in the first round, at least that particular season.

Big difference between being swept and losing in 7 games.

 

Again, the Blazers only beat the Pelicans when Davis was injured during the regular season. If Davis played all of those games Portland would have likely been swept by the Pelicans in the regular season as well.

 

And that would have changed their win/loss record and possibly even changed the matchup altogether?

 

Regular season doesn't mean much. Teams often lose that and win the series or vice versa.

The Pelicans won a single playoff game in Anthony Davis career outside that Blazers sweep - they were a bad playoff team and most often a lottery team. It made perfect sense that the Blazers were a favorite in that series. Also makes sense the Blazers lost, they werent a great team either. It was very surprising the Blazers got swept though.

 

Yep. Davis had injury problems and that prevented the Pelicans from getting a good seed year after year. The difference was Davis was healthy vs the Blazers that series. Without Davis and Cousins the Blazers could outscore them. So picking the Blazers to win was picking Davis to miss 4 of the 7 games.

With Davis the teams weren't close that season. The Blazers were woefully outclassed talent wise. Without Davis the Pelicans didn't have enough offense to keep up with Portland and they didn't have enough defense to shut down both Dame and CJ consistently.

Even with Davis the Pelicans didn't have enough offense to keep up with Golden State, who had more All Stars and better defense.

Davis was healthy enough for the Pelicans to make the playoffs twice in his time there, and both times they were easily run out of the playoffs by Golden State (like most other teams Golden State faced during this time). They just got a lucky draw against a team they were more talented than when they dropped to 6 and were gifted Portland at 3.

Portland's only chance in that series was the Pelicans having devastating injury problems. Which wasn't unlikely. But it has very little to do with Dame or coaching. Portland simply didn't have the horses to compete with a healthy Pelicans team that season.

 

Also if you go back the Blazers were not healthy. Lillard, Nurk and Chief were all dealing with injuries.

 

True, that was before Dame had his surgery.

 

First the Pelicans weren't healthy - Cousins had a torn Achilles.

Second your overall point is not consistent with betting odds, experts picks, or any other projections at the time. The Blazers were favored in that series and had HCA. Maybe you had a hot take and expected the Pelicans to easily win that series - should have put a bunch of money on it. The people that were projecting that professionally did not project something your stating is so obvious in hindsight.