KeithStone53151

There it is. 4 on booker that's huge

Booker is probably one foul away from finding the bench...that should be a priority

Where's that passing from game 3? I know the suns are playing more physical but need better passing. I think a lot of people are watching when giannis gets the ball. Need more movement.

That's some junk if they don't give a clear path foul.

Suns are shooting 50 percent. Also giannis has taken 8 shots while jrue has taken 10. If jrue was shooting like game 3 that would be fine but he's not. More shots for giannis.

Bucks are 3-16 from downtown. Suns are 50 percent from the field while we're 42 percent. You'd think we'd be down a fair amount based on that but 7-2 in turnovers kept us in the game.

The suns are out-rebounding us. Considering our size advantage that's just terrible

The suns had 4 turnovers in the first 6 minutes. With that you'd think we should have been up 8-10 early but were actually down. This feels like it's going to come down to the wire unless we can get ayton in foul trouble again

They forced a couple shots, but they've had a fair number of open 3s from good spots that haven't fallen at all. Lopez had at least 2 himself. A bit unlucky offensively at this point. On D, having Ayton on the court is a complete game changer and he's looked good. They also made a point to get Booker looks early and he's made both shots. Smart by them.

This is super fair. They haven't had their Rockies/Dbacks layup wins yet whereas we've had all of ours. They certainly can start weighing offers in a wait and see mode and make decisions the last few days of the month.

Yes they'll get some serious boos if they do. I don't think it woudl make sense to only move one guy. They need to go big on either an allin or a sale this deadline. Especially with Rizzo considering a QO would not be smart for the Cubs. They could pretty fair haul trading all 3 dudes. They could even expand with Contreras and go full sell and try to set up a 3 year rebuild.

I have a hard time seeing us make a trade with the Cubs. I'm also not certain they'll sell until I see it. I wouldn't want Baez at all but Bryant/Rizzo would both fit really well. Will be interesting to see if they sell and who and all that. I also agree Rizzo would be a really great fit in Boston.

As far as long term planning, the Cubs have not been remotely smart for probably 6-7 years. I think we sparred on this in the past and I'll agree that they may have chosen the wrong targets, but I do think there is a very specific time to overpay players and it is when you have a 3-4 year window of controllable, cheap players. The Yankees seem to be OK almost always paying the luxury tax and sneaking under for a year or two. The other bigger markets are OK with it for 2-3 years. So maybe the Cubs chose wrong on some (Heyward, maybe) but the one time I am OK overspending is if you have a Rizzo, Bryant, Baez, Contreras to build around for a small $ amount. Then you can overpay and know you're going to dip into luxury tax with Lester, Heyward, Darvish, etc. In the end, the Cubs' demise was not having enough pitching come together at the right time. Hendricks was a great home-grown pitcher but that is honestly about it. Kimbrel was an overpay that somehow didn't pay off for 2 years. This is also why I laughed at the Arenado move for the Cards. They already had an aging roster where they've dealt away minors depth. They're not a team that's going to go into the luxury tax often. So they dealt for Arenado to be an 80-85 win team and not much room to grow. Then they'll deal with 4 years of crap Arenado contract on the back end. Bad timing. For the Cubs the timing was right, the players were not the best. That's fair to a degree. One thing I'll add, the Dodgers have been in a competitive window for a long time as well...yet they've made a point not to trade away guys they recognized would be elite talents. Bellinger, Lux, Smith, May, Urias, etc. The Dodgers surely recognized these players would actually be good, while also recognizing that Diaz was overhyped. Verdugo goes against that theory, but they were getting Betts so it's a bit easier to make peace with trading someone who's actually going to be good. The Cubs didn't do this with Jimenez/Cease/Torres/etc. The Dodgers admittedly are just way better at developing players than pretty much anyone else so they have more prospects to consider, but they didn't just go sell the farm for rentals every time they had a good record. The Cubs are a top 5 market and there's just no reason they couldn't operate like the Dodgers and have a 10+ year window of being reeeeeally good. Instead they traded away every top prospect they had for rentals and narrowed their window to 4-5 years. Frankly, the other top 5-10 markets should be looking at how the Dodgers operated over the last 5 years and try to copy it. They've had 90+ wins every year since 2013 aside from last year(43-17) along with 1 world series(really should be 2) and should be a 90+ win team probably for the next 4-5 years with the talent on the roster.

I agree with a good amount of this and don't specifically disagree with anything. It's so obvious but bud should be ready for an adjustment of some kind. They'd be stupid to roll the exact same game plan tomorrow. Changing how they defend giannis is super logical as well but it's hard to know exactly what they'll do. They also will try to adjust offensively as well and probably try to do something to avoid ayton getting into foul trouble. It's still a mismatch when he's on the court, but the suns generally defend giannis better when ayton is there. Also, I noticed when ayton was out is when we primarily used giannis at the 5 and ran smaller. This allowed us to generally defend better while having a hefty size advantage over their 6'6 and under lineup. End point being, ayton staying out of foul trouble is a pretty big deal for the suns and should be a focus of theirs. I also could see them trying to take better advantage of the pick game. We've been mostly switching, but often enough that's resulted in easy pass/dunks to ayton(yes again, ayton is critical for the suns). They should at this point know how we'll approach those and be able to find where we've made mistakes and try to exploit.

My biggest issue with jrue is him taking so many bad tough shots the first two games, and plenty of other games. Game 5 and 6 of the last series and game 3 this series he was incredible, and most of his scoring comes off clean looks. The only guy who should be taking contested shots from beyond 10 feet on this team is Middleton and it still be considered a good look.

As far as long term planning, the Cubs have not been remotely smart for probably 6-7 years.

I thought Yusniel Diaz rated in the 20-30 range at the time. I could be wrong. But the others as noted were B level prospects. Also coming from the Dodgers system should mean more to a team than coming from most systems. They seem to develop talent better than other teams.

The point is the Cubs will get a very nice package in return for Bryant. Former MVPs still in their prime especially with Bryant’s versatility simply don’t become available often. For what it’s worth I don’t expect the Brewers to trade any of their top minor leaguers at the deadline (they haven’t done it yet under the current FO). More likely than not, they’ll focus on 2nd tier players they can acquire for low level minor leaguers or in quantity for quality type trades. I think looking at the Machado return is probably about what you can expect Bryant to fetch.

This series is kinda big. Peralta/Burnes will probably only pitch an inning at most in the allstar game. That's not overly relevant and I would think either guy could be available on Saturday to pitch...maybe even Friday. I think considering the gravity of the series, you go best here. Woodruff Friday, Burnes/Peralta Saturday/Sunday in some order. You can then also easily line up all 3 guys to pitch in the big White Sox series with 2 extra days of rest each considering Monday and Thursday off days. Then you just hope Houser/Lauer/Anderson can have successful outings in the supposedly easier 2 games against the Royals in between.

While I generally agree, my primary concern is giving these guys enough rest or potentially extra rest if possible to keep them as fresh as possible in September and hopefully beyond. If the rest is ample, I don't care if these guys go 250 innings if they pitch to the world series. For me the primary thing is getting full rest and the occasional extra day or two when possible. I would also probably stop doing the extra rest thing starting in late August if a team closes in on us. If we're 8-10 game lead...yeah go ahead and skip a start or go 6 man rotation.

Looks like they just pulled him. Agreed nice to get him some rest

That was such a textbook charge. Especially against an airborne shooter. I'll be shocked if this isn't overturned on challenge

I'm really glad they FINALLY called that bs offensive shove that Booker has been doing all series

Ayton has 3 fouls, that should be a focus on the 2nd half. The further in foul trouble he gets, the more we can abuse this team with size

I'm so impressed with the bucks passing tonight.