coolhandluke121

I've always criticized Kyrie because I hated how much credit he got for being a flashy scorer with so many flaws in his game. I'm glad this series is showing he's not a true superstar. To me, the issue is simple - he's a role player. Yes, the top scorer on a team can be a role player. Being the iso scorer when you need a bucket is just one of many roles you need to be a successful team. A role player is someone with a few really helpful skills but also with flaws that need to be compensated for by teammates. If that skill happens to be volume scoring, like Kyrie or Iverson or Isaiah Thomas, they are branded as superstars, but you need great defenders and rebounders and floor spacers for that to work or they're just liabilities on defense who take shots from their teammates. Iverson played with guys who didn't want to shoot much anyway, so nobody complained about his chucking ("he had to"), but with the Celtics, Kyrie is just taking his share of shots and a few of Morris's, Horford's, Brown's, and Tatum's as well (though Tatum is chucking now too so I guess working out with Kobe all summer wasn't such a good idea - go figure). Funny that the Bucks have an average margin of +4.5 in this series. Didn't someone cite Boston's +4.5 during the regular season as evidence of them being elite and a dangerous match-up for the Bucks? I never doubted them after game 1. They are the better team, period, and it's not really close.

You were right! Anybody still doubting why I say they should pick up Hill's option? He's a terrific player and worth $18m easily in this day and age.

I'm actually okay with the extra time off. You want to make sure you get the best possible effort and the stars are healthy and fresh to play lots of minutes. There's so much coasting during the regular season because there's too many games. Obviously the consequences of the playoffs are a big part of what makes them so competitive, but don't underestimate the role extra rest plays in improving the effort and intensity. I do think the playoffs go too long, but they should just start earlier and cut the regular season a little short... and maybe go back to 5 games in the first round.

Praise the lord. Before we anoint him the best hitter on the team again, let's just be grateful for the fact that he might not be terrible all year. We need him badly. I know this is an opportune time to bash his detractors, but it kind of supports what those people have been saying about his role going forward. He always seems to do much better when he's well-rested, going on a tear after a few days off (or at least non-starts) and stints on the IL.

It's been like this everywhere for Kyrie. He pounds the air out of the ball and sucks the air out of his team. Yeah, he's extremely talented, but there's always a "but". Actually, there's always a few. Defense, leadership, efficiency, ball movement... he gets his assists, but so did Marbury and Iverson. You can just feel the tension when someone else misses a shot and knows he thinks he should have gotten that shot. They got him back and are actually playing slightly worse than they played last year, even though they have otherwise been basically the exact same team all year. They lost their identity and mojo as team-oriented overachievers. I know there are other factors like Hayward's struggles and Brown's slump, but it's still just incredibly hard to believe you can add Kyrie and actually get worse. Yes, his skills are sensational, but there's no style points. His incredible handles and subsequent lay-ups aren't worth any more than a boring 15-foot bank shot from Tim Duncan... and he's a joke compared to Duncan and many others in defense and intangibles. I'd put him somewhere around 20 in the league if I'm starting a team to win this year, and that's not even considering his next contract.

Don't say piggybacking here; it doesn't go over well after all the pitching debates... And yes, they should be given the benefit of the doubt if they just want to tinker a little before they punt on this season. They've earned that. I realize there's some historical baggage here because they didn't always plan for sustainable success and we don't want to go back to that, but the problem was them thinking they could always find enough band-aids to compete every year. This is not about wanting to go back to that; this is about not wanting them to say "we can't compete at all," even though they still can.

Besides the issue of most of their trade chips being rentals of marginal value, the Brewers also don't seem to have the right window for that sort of thing. What I mean by that is they don't appear to have a great young cohort of young players who would justify taking a step backwards now in order to take two steps forward later. Burnes, Peralta, Woodruff... who knows? Yelich and Hader are obviously locks to be very valuable for a while, and Hiura is probably, but Arcia has lost a lot of his shine since skyrocketing up the prospect rankings a few years ago. Knebel lost at least a full season in his pre-arbitration prime to TJ surgery. Everyone else who's actually a decent player is a slightly above average veteran, in his prime or slightly past it, who won't really be that coveted. I think they had some great farm system rankings on the strength of their organizational depth, but they didn't have a lot of can't-miss types and we're seeing that now. The long-term core is probably Yelich, Hader, Hiura, Arcia, and the 3 young staff aces. That's rather thin. It's not the type of core that makes you say "let's give up on this year, after one of the franchise's best seasons ever, trade a few vets, and be that much better off for the next 5 years." One, because you're not getting that much value for the vets you trade anyway, and two, because the handful of young guys you would be building around are few and far between and, frankly, several of them are probably not as good as you had hoped. I just think they'd be better off trying to salvage what is still a pretty solid, deep team with a lot of veterans who are perfectly capable of making the playoffs again, even in a much tougher league.

All true, but I'm convinced that Giannis just isn't comfortable scoring off the ball. He would be great on quick hand-offs and cutting action, but he likes to have the ball and size his guy up. And he's so good at it that it would be hard to get him used to doing stuff that he's not as comfortable doing, even if it would pay off in the long run. The Bucks also don't have the type of passers who are great at setting guys up on the move. They have drive and kick passers. Remember how Nash would set up Marion and Amare at the rim? Giannis could feast on that with half as much effort as he's putting out now, at least in stretches, but they just haven't figured that out as a team for whatever reason. And as much as I disliked Jabari's overall game, he was very good at cutting into open lanes off the ball to get easy dunks. Giannis could learn from that.

It's because my uncle is a scout and says he's going to be great and the Brewers have him as their #1 untouchable prospect, or something. I don't completely blame the Brewers for this, honestly. I don't think any reasonable person would expect Peralta, Burnes, and Chacin to be this bad. I'm not sure where they go from here, but they're a lot better at this than I am, and I look forward to seeing how they respond.

Yeah, I see the point. In this hypothetical scenario, if they're not winning, how many good players could they really have? That's why I mentioned Cain, but more importantly, it's why I would be more inclined to trade a few prospects for immediate help. I don't think it would take much to really transform the bullpen. There's also the issue of some regression to the mean for several of the trade candidates, like Moustakas, Thames, and Grandal. And while I don't overly value Moustakas, Shaw, Aguilar, Thames, Chacin, Chase, Jeffress, Grandal, Davies, or Pina, I do think it's pretty hard to put together a team with this many slightly above average players when you're in a small market and I want the team to build on this opportunity. Even though most of these guys aren't even close to being premium talent as individuals, they are still a pretty talented team.

Wouldn't rule it out. There are too many good teams in the NL to get away with being mediocre. The downside of so much parity is that there are so many teams you have to leapfrog in the standings. There's a huge difference between being, say, 4 games behind one team for the last wild card and 4 games behind four different wild card chasers. I like this team and would be more inclined to trade a prospect or two as long as you get meaningful help and don't give up too much surplus value but yeah, selling should be an option if this keeps up. And I wouldn't exclude Cain from any trade proposals if it comes time to sell. How much longer is he going to be an acceptable value on his contract? Legging out infield singles has saved his OBP from crashing pretty hard the last two years and that's not a formula for being good in your mid-30's.

A bigger data set should arguably be the last thing we want right now.

I definitely think Giannis is ahead of Durant. He's a much more valuable defender, and Durant has it easy playing with those Warriors. Giannis is the guy who makes it easy for everyone else, making the Bucks the #3 offense in the league, but with GSW it's a two-way street. You won't see Durant triple-teamed in the paint the way teams regularly do to Giannis. I have Giannis at the top with Curry, Harden, Durant, Davis, Kawhi, George, Lebron, Lillard, Embiid, and Jokic all in the mix. I can't make a case for Kyrie. He's not consistently as efficient as the best offensive players, doesn't set guys up as well, and is terrible on defense, even compared to some of the low standards the offensive wizards like Curry, Harden, and Lillard have set. To be clear, I still think Lopez is a good player. Usually you want to force opposing bigs like Horford, Morris, and Baynes to shoot pick-and-pop shots. It's just that Boston is unusual in that this plays into their hands because it's one of their best options besides Kyrie iso's (which by the way are good plays in a vacuum but I feel Boston lost some of their egalitarian mojo and identity by going that route so often).

I don't understand what the harm would be. How much does anyone really think this could stunt his development? That seems like a fabricated concern. Yes, it could delay his readiness for the rotation for roughly the same amount of time he's in the pen, but logically it shouldn't compromise it. And I don't see how you can argue that you should compromise the present by keeping him in the rotation, where he's trash, or in AAA, which contributes to the bullpen being trash. He's proven to have some ability to be a valuable reliever right now, albeit perhaps with above average volatility, and you desperately need help in the pen. It would foolish to basically punt on this year for something that's probably not a significant long-term gain anyway (again, this doesn't compromise his ability to be a good starter eventually). I mean, how important is it to invest in getting him ready for the rotation if it's not even clear that he has the stuff to be a good starter? What's wrong with a rich man's Tyler Thornburg? Short-sighted* would be trading him for short-term help in the pen. This is an obvious move to me. *And to be honest, you could make a strong case for trading one or two prospects to stay in contention this year, as long as you're not giving away too much surplus value. I don't normally support that kind of trade, but it doesn't take much to solidify a bullpen, where wild swings based on few players are the norm.

Hill and Bledsoe have been great defenders all year. Absolutely great. And Kyrie is a little overrated. Makes some sensational shots, but you can't count on regular efficiency from him and he's a liability on defense. For all the talk about Giannis's struggles, he's still clearly way ahead of Kyrie in the star pecking order.

Sometimes it is though. Lopez clearly can't defend Boston's bigs on the perimeter and it was a huge problem until they gave Ersan a lot of his minutes. Then their defense locked them down. You can't just say +/- always tells a story, but you can't say it never tells a story either. Lopez is a huge liability against them. There's a reason bigs like him have regularly been played off the floor in the playoffs for years, and it's only getting worse. He works against some teams, but not this one. There was nothing at all random about him having a -12 (don't know where I saw -17) in a game the Bucks lead by about 25 when they benched the starters.

We were -44 with him and Horford on the floor during the Bucks/Celts matchup's this year. He's not a good matchup for them. I think he'd be a better matchup in a potential series with Toronto(I can't see Philly winning that series with Embid looking so out of shape). Yeah, his +2 Sunday was just random good fortune from being on the floor on the rare occasions the Bucks were hitting some shots. It wasn't a credit to him at all. He's been a great defensive piece in the right match-ups this year because he protects the paint intelligently without fouling, but Boston was something like 27th in the entire NBA in points in the paint this year so he's of no use against them. Playing Lopez plays right into their hands because they love wide open outside shots for their bigs. Morris, Baynes, and Horford are 11 for 19 on 3's and 27 for 44 overall, and it's almost all wide open jumpers because Lopez can't even come close to contesting them. They have 6 fta's between them because they're living on perimeter shots. The game was looking dangerously like a replay of Sunday at times in the first half, but Ersan will stay within 5 feet of them and they won't have so many wide open attempts, as we saw in the 2nd half yesterday. That was the biggest change besides the Bucks actually hitting their open shots.

These Bucks are incredibly good. Just have to play like they know it and let the laws of averages do their thing.

Lopez with a -17 supports my belief that he's not a good match-up for them. Sometimes even a single game +/- is representative of a player's actual impact. Nothing against him but this isn't the series for him when Ersan and Niko are both 100%. He has help defense in the paint, but they need better perimeter defense. And most of Boston's drivers are too quick for his help defense anyway.

Brown and Pat C kind of suck. I'm sorry, I know they are active and visible, but Pat C can't stay in front of a chair and Brown gets completely lost/clueless. Is Snell healthy? He's no better, but you kind of know what you're getting, and he has developed excellent timing with Giannis on hand-off's for wide open 3's over the years. He only hits wide open ones, but the way Boston is defending, he will get plenty of those. That could help them a lot.

I think what bothers me most about Braun was that if he was on another team in 2016 and the Brewers had a chance to acquire him, there's no way they would do it. Age, injury, contract, Brewers rebuilding at the time... just no way. They're not that stupid. And yet they apparently couldn't evaluate him objectively because he had been a lifelong Brewer.

Lopez might be borderline unplayable in this series. Just don't see him keeping pace. Has to be like 4 for 7 on three's or he's worthless. Hill continues to quietly be really, really good. Doing the little things and big things they need. I almost have more confidence in him than anyone else on the team, although I acknowledge that even when Giannis is playing terrible by his standards, the indirect benefits of the attention he draws are still critical to the team.

Giannis isn't the first young superstar to shrink in the playoffs, but damn it's still annoying. Khris has been great but his playoff reputation was really bad before last year. Lebron, Dirk, and Harden, among others, had reputations for being much worse in the playoffs for years before they finally broke through. Boston is plenty flawed too, but Giannis has to be better.

Moose plays a solid 3B and is even playing 2B now, so a replacement argument is valid in valuing him over Thames. He's also not so all-or-nothing. But yeah, if anyone is talking about cutting Thames and moving Moose to 1B, that can be summarily dismissed for the time being.

I think you have to keep Peralta stretched out in case of injuries. Whether that means having him in the rotation or in AAA, you can't just start using him in the bullpen as typically 1-2 inning guy in my opinion. He's unproven there and has been too volatile. If you want to move a young guy to the pen, make it Burnes or Woodruff. I could see Peralta in some kind of piggy-backing role, but it's a little early in the season to start that now unless you have a complicated plan to acquire even more guys with options and use constant shuttle service (which I'm not ruling out). Not sure whose spot he gets. The depth of starters, combined with the lack of guys who are clearly head and shoulders above other starter options, does support the notion of putting some starters in long relief and blurring the lines between starters and relievers a little more.