NBA Regular Season 14/15

malistheman wrote: »

Lol the Pistons just waived Josh Smith, love that move. Other teams would have tried to trade that contract, Stan Van was clearly done trying with him!

What a mess SVG has taken over there. Possibly the 2 biggest left handed gunners in the league playing on the same team was always doomed to failure, but I never saw him getting waived. Ballsy move.

Was just reading about possible destinations for Smith on si.com and found this insightful stat on him:

When the Pistons waived him Monday, he was on pace to become the first NBA player to shoot less than 40 percent from the field and 50 percent from the free-throw line while taking at least 12 shots per game.
:rolleyes::rolleyes::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

padraig_f wrote: »

Funny thing was, when I was watching it, I didn't think it was anything crazy. Bit of a sign of how improved the Bulls offense is this year. 93 points-per-game last year (32nd), 103 points-per-game this year (8th). A lot of it was free throws (43-47), but still pretty impressive.

Bit of an odd game, the Raptors outplayed the Bulls in the first half. Valanciunas was killing us inside (he looked awesome, what is it about European players, they often look better in their fundamentals?). But then for some unknown reason they went away from him in the 2nd half, started shooting jumpers with their guards, which allowed the Bulls back into it.

Mirotic had reduced minutes with Taj back, but still had a nice contribution. One cool moment...outside the 3-point line straight on, pump-fakes, dribbles past his man towards the basket, sees the lane closing up, fires a pass to Hinrich in the corner for a wide-open 3-point attempt, Hinrich misses, Mirotic grabs the offensive rebound and puts it back in

I posted a really long post on this a couple of years back. So here's the short version now.

Correct fundamentals (as opposed to just fundamentals) of the game have long been the hallmark of European players, and not just those who played in the NBA. The basic reason for this? European players tend to be less athletic (relatively) than the almost freakish nature of a lot of American players. The game in Europe is slower and is predominantly played under the rim - as such to succeed in that type of environment your basics and fundamentals have to be in a word, outstanding. American players from a very young age spend a lot of time working on the physical elements of their physique and game. I'm not saying they ignore the fundamentals (they don't); they simply spend less time on them than European players. European coaches emphasise fundamentals and US coaches don't put as much emphasis on them as the superior athletic ability of their players mask a lot of those flaws.

Think of it like this - remember that one kid who could dunk or nearly dunk when you were in school? Bet he spent way too much time trying to perfect that over other things, right?

I saw the US under 17 team play in the flesh a couple of years ago - they spent the whole warm ups dunking. All of them could dunk easily, and all of them had outstanding parts to their games, but none of them were completely rounded like say for example, some of the other countries' players. Now I'm not saying some of the other countries players were better players overall than the US players, but none of them could do everything on the court. So you might have had a PG who could pass and dribble, but not shoot etc. whereas again, a lot of the european players would have a high degree of skill in a lot more facets of the game.

I likened European basketball to chess and US basketball to pinball at the time, maybe that analogy is off but you can still see the point.

And that's the short version! Lol.

padraig_f wrote: »

Nice one. Never really watched European basketball, maybe I should check it out. Seem to get a kick out of the European players that come over.

It's VERY different. It's much much slower with a huge emphasis on defense. Scoring typically is in the 70s-80s. As I said it's like chess compared to the US game, more strategic etc. Some people like it, some don't.

The one thing I will definitely say though is if you ever get a chance to go to a top club game in Europe, do. You simply will not believe the atmosphere, it's insane.