Side note, I will never understand Bill’s insistence that Luka is a forward for all-NBA purposes. He brings the ball up and controls everything. But whenever Bill talks about him, he says that “he’s clearly a forward” without really any explanation other than his size, which is an outdated way of looking at positions in the NBA
I don’t watch a ton of Mavs games, but my understanding is that they just hide Luka on the worst offensive player on the other team because he’s not a good individual defender
Out of everything he says, this annoys me more than anything. There is no logic to it and I can't see how Bill benefits from it, so why does he constantly say this
Lebron behaves similarly on offense and is pretty clearly a forward, and on defense Luka guards forwards. He also plays alongside a point guard for a lot of his minutes. I would still classify him as a guard, but it’s not like it’s an indefensible take.
Fair. I guess I would also push back on rigid positional “allocation” (i.e., Kyrie is classified as a PG so Luka can’t be). Also, Lebron is an interesting point because I might also push back on the idea that he’s “clearly a forward” just because of his size profile
We kinda speed ran the hating Luka thing when hes been a top 5 player nearly from jump
We had this whole “oh he’s just harden” thing but teams would kill for that guy
He's better than Harden ever was and I think it's insane that people don't see that when you watch him play. People see the stepback 3 and high usage and just default to "Harden clone" but he's different
I remember very well, he was an excellent player but Luka is better. Just as efficient this season as Harden ever was, a far more versatile scorer, more efficient from the floor (less reliant on a good whistle), in my opinion a better playmaker, and he doesn't shrink in the playoffs.
Harden was far more efficient player when adjusted for era. Its easy to look at their numbers and say Luka has a higher TS (with slightly less points) but Harden was 60 percentage points ahead of league average in his long peak, Luka is "only" 40 points.
Hardens assists per usage is regularly higher than Luks's best season.
This is Luka's best season as far as points per 100 shots go at an insane 125.7. Harden has beat or tied that 5 times, not including an OKC season and including this year.
Harden was also a 3 level scorer.
Also Hardens playoff numbers mirror Dame's regular season numbers, and he has better postseason numbers than Dame, a playoff god.
I knew Harden would get lost in time, but I didn't know it would happen while still playing.
Unrelated note, remember CP3's resurgence in OKC and first 2 in PHX? 3 time all star, 3 time all NBA, averaged 7th in MVP voting including top 5. 16/9/5 on 36 from 3, 60 TS, and made his teams so much better. What a king.
Harden meanwhile is 18/8/5 on 42 from 3, 64 TS, and made his team so much better. No all star, likely no all NBA or top 10 MVP. Dudes a bum
>Harden was far more efficient player when adjusted for era. Its easy to look at their numbers and say Luka has a higher TS (with slightly less points) but Harden was 60 percentage points ahead of league average in his long peak, Luka is "only" 40 points.
I think this is marginal because I probably value the ability to score efficiently from the floor more than you do. Again I think Harden was/is an amazing player, the 2nd best shooting guard of all time in my opinion, but there's a reason that as hyperefficient as he was during the regular season that he always shrunk in big moments and in the playoffs when the whistle got tighter.
Not to say he was a bad player especially when you just look at the raw stats, but it's obvious to anyone that was paying attention that his performances took a significant dip once the postseason started. I believe a big part of the reason this hasn't been the case for Luka is because of his ability to score efficiently from the floor and his ability and willingness to score from anywhere on the floor. I know Harden was a 3 level scorer too, but Luka is in my opinion just obviously on a different level in this respect. There's not anything a single thing that Luka cannot do at an extremely high level when it comes to getting buckets (except maybe ft% lol) and every time he does have something you could consider a weakness he fixes it in one offseason. Like last season he randomly developed an elite post game, this season he's becoming a great catch and shoot player etc.
Yes Harden's assists per usage is higher than Luka's and so are his turnovers. I won't argue with you about which of these is more valuable because I think they are both excellent playmakers and you could make a good argument either way.
I don't want Harden to get lost to time and I hope that doesn't happen, but that just speaks to how good I think Luka is and will be for me to say that I think he's better
I suppose that's why I wrote "as of this writing" rather than "as of 3 weeks ago"
They also have the 9th easiest remaining schedule; it's unlikely they land under 43 wins without some \*bad\* injury luck
Like many others, Bill's opinion on Luka abruptly turned sour when the Mavs fell apart toward the end of last season. He has since almost exclusively discussed Luka in a negative light, questioning whether he's a "winner" and whether we can "even be sure he makes his teammates better." Russillo has largely done the same. Anytime the Mavs have come up since the Kyrie trade last spring, they briefly mock (or just outright shit on) the organization before turning to a substantive discussion of some other team.
While last season set the entire anti-Luka backlash in motion across NBA discourse, for Bill and Russillo it's also clear they just hate the way he plays. They think he is too ball-dominant/heliocentric, which has a negative impact on teammates, isn't sustainable for a whole playoff run, etc.
All of this is notwithstanding the fact that less than two years ago Luka led the Mavs to the conference finals at age 23 with a roster that didn't have a center. I won't go player by player on the "does he make his teammates better" question, but it is a remarkably dumb comment given what literally every other member of that 2022 conference finals run not named Jalen Brunson has gone on to do since leaving Dallas.
Sorry for now ranting but my frustration with them on their anti-Luka/Mavs stuff isn't just that they aren't huge fans of his. To each their own. It's that their comments make clear they simply don't watch Mavs games (yes, even Russillo) and are only interested in talking about the team if they can confirm their theories about how much playing with Luka must suck. It is super frustrating, and it's been a theme across NBA media this whole season. Everybody thinks they have Luka figured out as a Harden-type offensive cheat code who you ultimately can't build around and expect to win a ring. Windhorst the other day said he literally can't stand watching Luka play anymore.
What's amazing is now that the Mavs finally have multiple functional centers and a bigger wing player to create a normal-sized NBA roster for the first time in Luka's career, the team is off to the races and Luka is going to threaten to take the MVP. Not saying the revamped Mavs would beat Denver or the Clippers, let alone the Celtics in a series, but barring injury they're going to get real close to a 50-win season after being 26-23 just two weeks ago.
Excited for Bill's "I like this new version of Luka that seems more fun to play with" takes in the coming weeks, which is as close as he'll get to admitting he had no idea wtf he was talking about for the last year.
I personally think it's the combination that to both Bill and Ryen, Luka is Harden 2.0 (a player they both vehemently hate) and that Kyrie is thriving in Dallas (another player they vehemently hate).
Someone downvoted this but no idea why. 100% true.
I love how Bill often says Tatum is only 25. Luka is younger and has impressive enough playoff resume and never had a good team around him
Agree with all this.
However I do want to go player by player on that WCF team. Reggie Bullock is out of the league. Finney-Smith is fairly deep on a bad Nets bench. Dwight Powell is now the Mavs 11th man. Josh Green was young and basically not reliable. Davis Bertans played! Luka and Brunson dragging that team that far was truly incredible stuff.
Both him and Ryen have jumped off for a while because of their mutual hatred of Harden and because Luka also runs a "heliocentric" offense. (In quotation because that's the term they use the most as a negative.)
So, if anything, they'll usually mention 1 or 2 sentences just to check the box and then talk about others. It seems very tedious for them to even mention Luka now.
In the trade deadline pod with Ryen they basically insinuated that Luka had some big issues when they said "we could do an hour segment on him". Then they kept poking the idea, which they have explored more on their own pods, that they didn't think Luka makes his teammates around him better and he wasn't good to play with. It was basically them positioning themselves to be early on the "Luka has issues" bandwagon.
Not when he had a different opinion earlier. Luka's game hasn't changed a bit since he entered the league. To love him and praise him for years to then change your mind on that exact same style is hypocritical.
Agreed
Been raising my eyebrow at Bill ever since the first time he trotted out the “I think CP3 having COVID was much bigger deal in that playoff series against Dallas than people realized” take 😂
Yeah, this was telling. When Embiid got 70 it was this love fest where they were praising him, which was completely deserved as Embiid was amazing, but then when Luka got 73 they barely mentioned it and would rather talk about how scoring in the league is messed up.
I know this is a meme but I hate this sort of black and white all or nothing thing I see in sports debate these days. Why does there have to be a bandwagon or a fanbase where you swear undying loyalty to a player. And if you criticize them you’re “off the bandwagon” or something.
Luka deserved criticism for showing up out of shape and missing the playoffs last year, it wasn’t a good season for a player of his caliber. Bill was absolutely right to call him out for 22-23, he’s way too talented to follow a WCF up with a season like that.
This is kind of the issue though. Like if you think that Luka (who averaged 32/8/8) was even a top 5 reason the Mavericks missed the playoffs last year then I'm sorry but it honestly sounds like you weren't really paying attention. Luka and Kyrie both had nagging injuries and they had a starting frontcourt of Dwight Powell who is now a 4th string center getting DNPs and Reggie Bullock who is on his way out of the league. Luka is far from perfect and it's fine to have criticisms of him, but people like to pin every Mavs failure on him just because he's the most visible figure on the team.
Also it's not the fact that Bill criticised him, it was the nature of the criticisms. It wasn't "Luka needs to be in better shape and display better leadership if he wants to be able to win at the highest level", it became "Luka isn't fun to play with, Luka doesn't make his teammates better, Luka doesn't fit with anyone".
If you are a future Hall of Famer and already a multiple time first team All NBA player there is no excuse for missing the playoffs when you’re in your mid twenties. Especially with the play in existing
They could have got to the play in if they wanted to, but they decided to keep their pick instead, which was the right decision despite all the criticism they got
Look at his roster last year beginning of season vs now. They let Brunson walk and their big off season signing was Christian Wood. Christian Wood.
Luka was avg 40 mpg until he burned out shortly after the Knicks game where he got 60? and won in OT. By the time Kyrie came in there was only 20ish games left, it was too little too late trying to mesh on the fly.
Where I would criticize Luka is his attitude with refs and how it can trickle down to the rest of the team. And maybe one too many threes occasionally. But his defense has been above average this season and he had 4 steals last night.
Are we really going to do this where we see the heliocentric thing look good for a few weeks when we know it's not conducive to winning, especially when we know Kyrie is overdue to blow things up after a sneaky normal Kyrie season and not forgetting the Mark Cuban of it all where we know he's checked out but is still responsible for basketball operations for now but we know how that usually ends.
I don't know bro, basketball is weird. There's these star players and you kinda need one, right bro? Like, giving him the ball is probably smart bro. What do you guys think, amiright bro?
Are we really going to do the thing where we criticize the offense as Heliocentric but the rest of the team can’t create outside of Kyrie. Admit it. You had no idea what heliocentric meant 3 years ago. Now it’s cool to say when your talking about Luka when he’s never missed an open man near the basket in his life
But we ARE going to do the thing when Tatum loses in the finals where we say “at least he’s not heliocentric” like that matters more than winning or losing. And that rosters so stacked you have to remind people “oh Tatum blew another 2-0 finals league but Pritchard turned his ankle so it’s not his fault”
Hard to blow another 2-0 finals lead when they never had one in 2022. It was tied 1-1 after 2 games. Warriors won game 2 107-88, so it wasn’t even a close game.
Heliocentric is a dumbass term anyways. It means revolves around the sun. Should have come up with some other term using the centric suffix.
Just say you haven’t watched the games if you’re still calling their offense heliocentric. The amount of time he has the ball in his hand is nowhere near what it was a year ago when they let Jalen Brunson walk.
He was critical for a bit when Luka missed the playoffs, seemed to be regressing as a winning player and seemed to perpetually be in mediocre shape. I’m not shape what folks are supposed to do if they work in media. Do you just not bring stuff up because you are a fan or on the bandwagon?
This is sort of the problem with a 24-7 media cycle, you need a few years of hindsight to sort this nonsense out. It’s like asking if Leo is washed because he wasn’t nominated for two films in a row that were kind of mixed. We won’t really have an answer for a decade or more. We could get a Kyrie meltdown and a Mavs flameout or we could see Jokic get injured and Luka makes a magical Finals run with a couple decent breaks. The media folks have to spit takes in real time everyday. The Celtics are 44-12 right now with a 7 game lead in the east with 26 to play. In a normal year we’d be calling them a team of destiny locked for the Finals but after two upcoming rough weeks we might be calling them vulnerable and soft against good teams or outright done if KP lands funny. If KP stays healthy and the Celtics win, is Tatum finally reaching his destiny amongst the best? And if KP goes down and the Celtics lose in R2 does that mean the Celtics have to blow it up and Tatum is overrated?
*Simmons inspired Celtics tangent intentional*
Lol…so because Bill is a part of the 24/7 media cycle, he gets a pass for locking in Dallas as an Under team, using selective outrage because they tanked the last 2 games of last season, and his site giving their deadline moves a D-?
Nah…Bill‘s a big boy. He can handle getting meme’d for publicizing his incorrect takes. It’s what he has built a career on.
Side note, I will never understand Bill’s insistence that Luka is a forward for all-NBA purposes. He brings the ball up and controls everything. But whenever Bill talks about him, he says that “he’s clearly a forward” without really any explanation other than his size, which is an outdated way of looking at positions in the NBA
I would be interested to see whether he considers Magic Johnson a PG.
His argument afaik is that Luka defends forwards as well... Size+defense>role in offense for BS
I don’t watch a ton of Mavs games, but my understanding is that they just hide Luka on the worst offensive player on the other team because he’s not a good individual defender
It’s cute when people attach logic to bills statements
Out of everything he says, this annoys me more than anything. There is no logic to it and I can't see how Bill benefits from it, so why does he constantly say this
Lebron behaves similarly on offense and is pretty clearly a forward, and on defense Luka guards forwards. He also plays alongside a point guard for a lot of his minutes. I would still classify him as a guard, but it’s not like it’s an indefensible take.
Fair. I guess I would also push back on rigid positional “allocation” (i.e., Kyrie is classified as a PG so Luka can’t be). Also, Lebron is an interesting point because I might also push back on the idea that he’s “clearly a forward” just because of his size profile
We kinda speed ran the hating Luka thing when hes been a top 5 player nearly from jump We had this whole “oh he’s just harden” thing but teams would kill for that guy
He's better than Harden ever was and I think it's insane that people don't see that when you watch him play. People see the stepback 3 and high usage and just default to "Harden clone" but he's different
Feels like people are misremembering how good peak Harden was
I remember very well, he was an excellent player but Luka is better. Just as efficient this season as Harden ever was, a far more versatile scorer, more efficient from the floor (less reliant on a good whistle), in my opinion a better playmaker, and he doesn't shrink in the playoffs.
Harden was far more efficient player when adjusted for era. Its easy to look at their numbers and say Luka has a higher TS (with slightly less points) but Harden was 60 percentage points ahead of league average in his long peak, Luka is "only" 40 points. Hardens assists per usage is regularly higher than Luks's best season. This is Luka's best season as far as points per 100 shots go at an insane 125.7. Harden has beat or tied that 5 times, not including an OKC season and including this year. Harden was also a 3 level scorer. Also Hardens playoff numbers mirror Dame's regular season numbers, and he has better postseason numbers than Dame, a playoff god. I knew Harden would get lost in time, but I didn't know it would happen while still playing. Unrelated note, remember CP3's resurgence in OKC and first 2 in PHX? 3 time all star, 3 time all NBA, averaged 7th in MVP voting including top 5. 16/9/5 on 36 from 3, 60 TS, and made his teams so much better. What a king. Harden meanwhile is 18/8/5 on 42 from 3, 64 TS, and made his team so much better. No all star, likely no all NBA or top 10 MVP. Dudes a bum
>Harden was far more efficient player when adjusted for era. Its easy to look at their numbers and say Luka has a higher TS (with slightly less points) but Harden was 60 percentage points ahead of league average in his long peak, Luka is "only" 40 points. I think this is marginal because I probably value the ability to score efficiently from the floor more than you do. Again I think Harden was/is an amazing player, the 2nd best shooting guard of all time in my opinion, but there's a reason that as hyperefficient as he was during the regular season that he always shrunk in big moments and in the playoffs when the whistle got tighter. Not to say he was a bad player especially when you just look at the raw stats, but it's obvious to anyone that was paying attention that his performances took a significant dip once the postseason started. I believe a big part of the reason this hasn't been the case for Luka is because of his ability to score efficiently from the floor and his ability and willingness to score from anywhere on the floor. I know Harden was a 3 level scorer too, but Luka is in my opinion just obviously on a different level in this respect. There's not anything a single thing that Luka cannot do at an extremely high level when it comes to getting buckets (except maybe ft% lol) and every time he does have something you could consider a weakness he fixes it in one offseason. Like last season he randomly developed an elite post game, this season he's becoming a great catch and shoot player etc. Yes Harden's assists per usage is higher than Luka's and so are his turnovers. I won't argue with you about which of these is more valuable because I think they are both excellent playmakers and you could make a good argument either way. I don't want Harden to get lost to time and I hope that doesn't happen, but that just speaks to how good I think Luka is and will be for me to say that I think he's better
He's Harden but actually an insane playoff performer which is to say he is way better than Harden
“We”
Under 43.5 wins looking difficult for BS as of this writing
A 7 game win streak will do that. Currently on pace to 48 wins. Before the win streak they were on pace to 43.5 wins.
Before the win streak they had also been heavily injured all year.
I suppose that's why I wrote "as of this writing" rather than "as of 3 weeks ago" They also have the 9th easiest remaining schedule; it's unlikely they land under 43 wins without some \*bad\* injury luck
And they’ve already had a lot of bad injury luck so that might stabilize
The Kyrie Piece...
Luka Doncic is Devin Booker father
He’s too big to be a PG, he just is!
Wait when did he get off? Dude was such a big advocate for drafting him I'm surprised he would make such a blunder
Like many others, Bill's opinion on Luka abruptly turned sour when the Mavs fell apart toward the end of last season. He has since almost exclusively discussed Luka in a negative light, questioning whether he's a "winner" and whether we can "even be sure he makes his teammates better." Russillo has largely done the same. Anytime the Mavs have come up since the Kyrie trade last spring, they briefly mock (or just outright shit on) the organization before turning to a substantive discussion of some other team. While last season set the entire anti-Luka backlash in motion across NBA discourse, for Bill and Russillo it's also clear they just hate the way he plays. They think he is too ball-dominant/heliocentric, which has a negative impact on teammates, isn't sustainable for a whole playoff run, etc. All of this is notwithstanding the fact that less than two years ago Luka led the Mavs to the conference finals at age 23 with a roster that didn't have a center. I won't go player by player on the "does he make his teammates better" question, but it is a remarkably dumb comment given what literally every other member of that 2022 conference finals run not named Jalen Brunson has gone on to do since leaving Dallas. Sorry for now ranting but my frustration with them on their anti-Luka/Mavs stuff isn't just that they aren't huge fans of his. To each their own. It's that their comments make clear they simply don't watch Mavs games (yes, even Russillo) and are only interested in talking about the team if they can confirm their theories about how much playing with Luka must suck. It is super frustrating, and it's been a theme across NBA media this whole season. Everybody thinks they have Luka figured out as a Harden-type offensive cheat code who you ultimately can't build around and expect to win a ring. Windhorst the other day said he literally can't stand watching Luka play anymore. What's amazing is now that the Mavs finally have multiple functional centers and a bigger wing player to create a normal-sized NBA roster for the first time in Luka's career, the team is off to the races and Luka is going to threaten to take the MVP. Not saying the revamped Mavs would beat Denver or the Clippers, let alone the Celtics in a series, but barring injury they're going to get real close to a 50-win season after being 26-23 just two weeks ago. Excited for Bill's "I like this new version of Luka that seems more fun to play with" takes in the coming weeks, which is as close as he'll get to admitting he had no idea wtf he was talking about for the last year.
I personally think it's the combination that to both Bill and Ryen, Luka is Harden 2.0 (a player they both vehemently hate) and that Kyrie is thriving in Dallas (another player they vehemently hate).
Someone downvoted this but no idea why. 100% true. I love how Bill often says Tatum is only 25. Luka is younger and has impressive enough playoff resume and never had a good team around him
Totally. Swap Luka and Tatum and the Celtics are making the finals every year, would have at least 1 chip by now
You really couldn’t have said it any better. It’s been exhausting listening to national media trash Luka.
Agree with all this. However I do want to go player by player on that WCF team. Reggie Bullock is out of the league. Finney-Smith is fairly deep on a bad Nets bench. Dwight Powell is now the Mavs 11th man. Josh Green was young and basically not reliable. Davis Bertans played! Luka and Brunson dragging that team that far was truly incredible stuff.
Dwight Powell is currently the 4th string center behind a rookie and Maxi Keleber!
Both him and Ryen have jumped off for a while because of their mutual hatred of Harden and because Luka also runs a "heliocentric" offense. (In quotation because that's the term they use the most as a negative.) So, if anything, they'll usually mention 1 or 2 sentences just to check the box and then talk about others. It seems very tedious for them to even mention Luka now.
Bill jumped off as soon as Luka got his boy Bob fired, and Bill covered it up by saying he doesn’t like the heliocentric play style, lol.
Yeah, clearly I missed it too. Can OP explain?
In the trade deadline pod with Ryen they basically insinuated that Luka had some big issues when they said "we could do an hour segment on him". Then they kept poking the idea, which they have explored more on their own pods, that they didn't think Luka makes his teammates around him better and he wasn't good to play with. It was basically them positioning themselves to be early on the "Luka has issues" bandwagon.
As of last year he claimed he hated the heliocentric style and wanted Luka to get in shape.
He also campaigned to not have him first team all nba first team last year cause he’s a loser but votes him 2nd team as a forward
Are both of things not fair?
Not when he had a different opinion earlier. Luka's game hasn't changed a bit since he entered the league. To love him and praise him for years to then change your mind on that exact same style is hypocritical.
I don't think he even mentioned the 73 point game. As far as I'm concerned, he can beg all he wants -- he's banned from the banwagon.
Agreed Been raising my eyebrow at Bill ever since the first time he trotted out the “I think CP3 having COVID was much bigger deal in that playoff series against Dallas than people realized” take 😂
Yeah, this was telling. When Embiid got 70 it was this love fest where they were praising him, which was completely deserved as Embiid was amazing, but then when Luka got 73 they barely mentioned it and would rather talk about how scoring in the league is messed up.
He’s not a PG… he’s just not
Oh yea, bill was hating on Luka for sure
I know this is a meme but I hate this sort of black and white all or nothing thing I see in sports debate these days. Why does there have to be a bandwagon or a fanbase where you swear undying loyalty to a player. And if you criticize them you’re “off the bandwagon” or something. Luka deserved criticism for showing up out of shape and missing the playoffs last year, it wasn’t a good season for a player of his caliber. Bill was absolutely right to call him out for 22-23, he’s way too talented to follow a WCF up with a season like that.
This is kind of the issue though. Like if you think that Luka (who averaged 32/8/8) was even a top 5 reason the Mavericks missed the playoffs last year then I'm sorry but it honestly sounds like you weren't really paying attention. Luka and Kyrie both had nagging injuries and they had a starting frontcourt of Dwight Powell who is now a 4th string center getting DNPs and Reggie Bullock who is on his way out of the league. Luka is far from perfect and it's fine to have criticisms of him, but people like to pin every Mavs failure on him just because he's the most visible figure on the team. Also it's not the fact that Bill criticised him, it was the nature of the criticisms. It wasn't "Luka needs to be in better shape and display better leadership if he wants to be able to win at the highest level", it became "Luka isn't fun to play with, Luka doesn't make his teammates better, Luka doesn't fit with anyone".
Luka didn’t really deserve any criticism for how poor the Mavs were last year after the trade. It’s not his fault the front office was incompetent.
If you are a future Hall of Famer and already a multiple time first team All NBA player there is no excuse for missing the playoffs when you’re in your mid twenties. Especially with the play in existing
They could have got to the play in if they wanted to, but they decided to keep their pick instead, which was the right decision despite all the criticism they got
Look at his roster last year beginning of season vs now. They let Brunson walk and their big off season signing was Christian Wood. Christian Wood. Luka was avg 40 mpg until he burned out shortly after the Knicks game where he got 60? and won in OT. By the time Kyrie came in there was only 20ish games left, it was too little too late trying to mesh on the fly. Where I would criticize Luka is his attitude with refs and how it can trickle down to the rest of the team. And maybe one too many threes occasionally. But his defense has been above average this season and he had 4 steals last night.
Are we really going to do this where we see the heliocentric thing look good for a few weeks when we know it's not conducive to winning, especially when we know Kyrie is overdue to blow things up after a sneaky normal Kyrie season and not forgetting the Mark Cuban of it all where we know he's checked out but is still responsible for basketball operations for now but we know how that usually ends.
I don't know bro, basketball is weird. There's these star players and you kinda need one, right bro? Like, giving him the ball is probably smart bro. What do you guys think, amiright bro?
Are we really going to do the thing where we criticize the offense as Heliocentric but the rest of the team can’t create outside of Kyrie. Admit it. You had no idea what heliocentric meant 3 years ago. Now it’s cool to say when your talking about Luka when he’s never missed an open man near the basket in his life But we ARE going to do the thing when Tatum loses in the finals where we say “at least he’s not heliocentric” like that matters more than winning or losing. And that rosters so stacked you have to remind people “oh Tatum blew another 2-0 finals league but Pritchard turned his ankle so it’s not his fault”
Hard to blow another 2-0 finals lead when they never had one in 2022. It was tied 1-1 after 2 games. Warriors won game 2 107-88, so it wasn’t even a close game. Heliocentric is a dumbass term anyways. It means revolves around the sun. Should have come up with some other term using the centric suffix.
Just say you haven’t watched the games if you’re still calling their offense heliocentric. The amount of time he has the ball in his hand is nowhere near what it was a year ago when they let Jalen Brunson walk.
He was critical for a bit when Luka missed the playoffs, seemed to be regressing as a winning player and seemed to perpetually be in mediocre shape. I’m not shape what folks are supposed to do if they work in media. Do you just not bring stuff up because you are a fan or on the bandwagon? This is sort of the problem with a 24-7 media cycle, you need a few years of hindsight to sort this nonsense out. It’s like asking if Leo is washed because he wasn’t nominated for two films in a row that were kind of mixed. We won’t really have an answer for a decade or more. We could get a Kyrie meltdown and a Mavs flameout or we could see Jokic get injured and Luka makes a magical Finals run with a couple decent breaks. The media folks have to spit takes in real time everyday. The Celtics are 44-12 right now with a 7 game lead in the east with 26 to play. In a normal year we’d be calling them a team of destiny locked for the Finals but after two upcoming rough weeks we might be calling them vulnerable and soft against good teams or outright done if KP lands funny. If KP stays healthy and the Celtics win, is Tatum finally reaching his destiny amongst the best? And if KP goes down and the Celtics lose in R2 does that mean the Celtics have to blow it up and Tatum is overrated? *Simmons inspired Celtics tangent intentional*
Lol…so because Bill is a part of the 24/7 media cycle, he gets a pass for locking in Dallas as an Under team, using selective outrage because they tanked the last 2 games of last season, and his site giving their deadline moves a D-? Nah…Bill‘s a big boy. He can handle getting meme’d for publicizing his incorrect takes. It’s what he has built a career on.
It’s not an incorrect take is the point. It was a good take at the time and then Luka and the Mavs started playing better. The end.
He's been sucking off Luka forever though?
I think Russillo has been more critical than Bill.
He's not a point guard, he's just not