OFFICIAL AROUND THE NBA: JANUARY 2024

Toradol joke in 3....2....1....

 

Poor guy. But good news for the lotto pick.

 

Cronin overpaid Payton. The Warriors took in Gary's contract just to shed Wiseman. Now Detroit has the world's most hopeless team.

 

shooter's touch
30 foot "floater"

 

Golden State continues to force this guy to play injured... so reckless.

 

Warriors ‘also’ had a depth issue and wanted a piece of their championship back.

 

the Nets have had abysmal shooting last couple games. Brooklyn might be ping pong pioneers by the end of this month.

 

Jayson Tatum gets fouled by air.
Thunder held on for the W
ball don't lie

 

Damn OKC is so good

 

I don't think the Thunder need to go all-in, but I think it would make a ton of sense for them to attach at least one of their 2024 picks to Bertans. They will likely have two first round picks this season and I think they have plenty of development guys in their system already.

And they'd still have a 2nd rounder if they want to bring another player in on a non-guaranteed deal.

 

I just looked...7 of the top-9 players in their rotation are shooting over 40% on three's; that's right, 7 of 9. And of those 7, five are shooting over 42%, and 3 of those are shooting over 43%.....yeeeeeesh! They lead the NBA in 3pt% and are 5th in 2pt%. Also, #1 in FT%. And, 1st in blocks; 4th in steals + 1st in opponent turnovers; 4th in their own turnovers. 5th in offensive rating while 6th in defensive rating. And they've done all that while have the 6th most difficult strength of schedule (Portland is 28th...lol)....yeeeeeesh squared

now, I seriously doubt all that is sustainable. But they have definitely climbed the ladder into darkhorse contender status. They have done well on their lottery picks: Holmgren 2nd pick; Giddey 6th; Jalen Williams 12th; jury in deliberation about Cason Wallace, 10th pick last season; but they traded the rights to Dereck Lively to get Wallace and I'd say the big man combo of Holmgren and Lively would have made OKC a true contender on the rise

the good news for Portland is that they will almost certainly have lots of chances in the lottery over the next few years so the Blazers might have a shot at matching OKC's success in the draft, just as long as the Blazers abandon their fetish for undersized guards...fingers crossed on that. The bad news is that their opportunities of trading for a player like SGA seem gone. They'll have to grow their own superstar and that ain't easy. It was 28 years between Portland landing Drexler and Portland adding Dame. 28 years....yikes!

 

Portland has some roster decisions to make soon.

Moses Brown's contract becomes fully guaranteed on 1/10/24. I don't think he's done enough to be kept around.... I think (hope) Portland decides to move on from him.
It would make logical sense to sign Reath to a standard NBA contract filling the 15th roster spot. But I could see Portland holding off until after the trade deadline to create roster flexibility with possible trades (ie- 2 for 1 type deals).

Are any of these G-League players interesting to bring in if/when Reath gets his standard NBA contract?
https://www.spotrac.com/news/10-day-and-two-way-candidates-to-know-2108/
Hurt sounds interesting.
Bazley could be interesting, but I didn't love his game when he was in the NBA.
Everyone else sounds really meh.

 

We already have 2 superstars in Scoot and Shaedon. Scoot’s only played about 25 games and he’s already getting nominated for Western Conference Player of the Week.

 

Watching NBA today. They are talking quite a bit about the Thunder. That team is playing well and has 6 first round draft picks in the next two years and 12 FRP’s in the next 6 years.
I believe it’s time to assume they will be good for a while.

 

Fun game in Utah. Pistons down 3, Bojan ties it, then Lauri hits a 3, then Burks hits a 3 at the buzzer. All in 30 seconds. Overtime!

 

This game is going into the 150s

 

Brooklyn has lost 5 in a row and they’re still the 9 seed. They have 20 losses.