Official 2015-2016 NBA Regular Season Thread

[KevB]

I don't believe this thread has been started yet, so here you go.

Good start to the season, key guys appear to be relatively healthy. As a basketball fan, good to see the Thunder back at full strength, as a Grizzlies fan notsomuch.

The West is just so deep, hard to figure out who comes out on that side. If the Cavs stay healthy, hard to imagine they don't represent the East.

If we have a group interested in a fantasy basketball league, I'd be happy to set it up.

[chiefzilla1501]

Originally Posted by BandwagonChiefsFan

Christmas games were awesome!

I'm happy with how the cavs played. Warriors fans are claiming Cleveland was at full strength so what's their excuse... Not true. Kyrie is still playing limited minutes and playing very tentative and rusty. The cavs hit something like 20% from outside. Open shots. That won't happen next time around.

Gs gets Barnes back. Cleveland will hopefully be in sync. No doubt if these two teams meet in the finals, this will be an awesome rematch. But man, just hope both sides are healthy for it.

[RealSNR]

Andrew Wiggins is the Jeb Bush of basketball. Low energy unless some Donald Trump gets in his grill.

Really frustrating to watch him be so close to great like this, yet unable to take the next step because he settles for the unbalanced jumper instead of attacking.

[okcchief]

Originally Posted by RealSNR

Andrew Wiggins is the Jeb Bush of basketball. Low energy unless some Donald Trump gets in his grill.

Really frustrating to watch him be so close to great like this, yet unable to take the next step because he settles for the unbalanced jumper instead of attacking.

That was always the question I had with him. There is definately a lack of fire. That's what he'll need to fix to go from good to great

[BWillie]

Originally Posted by okcchief

That was always the question I had with him. There is definately a lack of fire. That's what he'll need to fix to go from good to great

It has nothing to do with lack of fire, it has everything to do with his skillset and ability.

[KC_Connection]

It's both. Part of the problem is that he was hyped up as being the best pro prospect since LeBron James (when he wasn't even the best prospect on his college team). He's never going to live up to that (or realistically anything close). What he could end up being, though, is a very good two-way NBA player who can be a #1 option for somebody. He's still very much on track for that.

[KC native]

Originally Posted by RealSNR

Andrew Wiggins is the Jeb Bush of basketball. Low energy unless some Donald Trump gets in his grill.

Really frustrating to watch him be so close to great like this, yet unable to take the next step because he settles for the unbalanced jumper instead of attacking.

Yea, he's definitely no Kawhi Leonard.

[okcchief]

Originally Posted by KC_Connection

It's both. Part of the problem is that he was hyped up as being the best pro prospect since LeBron James (when he wasn't even the best prospect on his college team). He's never going to live up to that (or realistically anything close). What he could end up being, though, is a very good two-way NBA player who can be a #1 option for somebody. He's still very much on track for that.

He was definately never a Lebron type talent. I still feel like he lacks energy and passion to win more than anything. I agree that he'll be a very good 2 way player for a long time.

[New World Order]

Lebron getting thumped.

[Al Bundy]

The Cavs are getting run out of their gym and have had some dirty plays.

[-King-]

Havent got to watch many games so far this season. But damn, the Warriors fisted the Cavs something awful. Damn!

Can't wait for the Warriors/Spurs game coming up. Knowing my luck, Pop will sit all the major players on the Spurs for that game.

[Al Bundy]

Originally Posted by -King-

Havent got to watch many games so far this season. But damn, the Warriors fisted the Cavs something awful. Damn!

Can't wait for the Warriors/Spurs game coming up. Knowing my luck, Pop will sit all the major players on the Spurs for that game.

I seriously doubt that.

[KC native]

Originally Posted by -King-

Havent got to watch many games so far this season. But damn, the Warriors fisted the Cavs something awful. Damn!

Can't wait for the Warriors/Spurs game coming up. Knowing my luck, Pop will sit all the major players on the Spurs for that game.

If it isn't part of a back to back or 4 games in 5 days, then no need to worry about that. The Spurs are much deeper this year so Pop has been able to manage minutes even better than usual.

[Quesadilla Joe]

Cleveland has fired coach David Blatt, sources tell Yahoo.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojVerticalNBA) January 22, 2016

[KC native]

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/...fs-on-its-own/

The Spurs’ Bench Could Probably Make The Playoffs On Its Own



The 2015-16 Golden State Warriors are an all-time great team — you know this, everyone knows this. But as impressive as they are, the Dubs have been outplayed by a couple of NBA units so far this season: the San Antonio Spurs’ starters — and the San Antonio Spurs’ bench.

At least, that’s the conclusion you reach if you average together the Box Plus/Minus (BPM) ratings for everybody outside the team’s five most frequent starters1 — in essence, projecting what would happen if the team’s bench played the entire game. For most teams, the idea of stretching their bench’s output over 48 minutes would be revolting. Surely, the Thunder want no part of Dion Waiters and Kyle Singler replacing Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant. But in this, as in many things, the Spurs are unique.

Every other team’s reserves rate as below-average relative to the entire league. The Warriors’ bench, for instance, ranks third with an aggregate BPM of -1.6. But the Spurs’ non-starters have an eye-popping cumulative BPM of +11.5. If we convert that number into its Elo-rating equivalent,2 the Spurs’ bench would come in at 1760 — enough talent to net between 64 and 65 wins over an 82-game season.

In other words, if the Spurs’ bench were to break off and form its own team, it would be either the second-best team in the NBA — trailing only the Spurs’ starters in terms of per-possession production this season — or the third-best, if you take a page from our Elo rating system’s book and give Golden State credit for its longer track record of greatness. Either way, the Spurs have a ridiculous advantage over the rest of the league.

Here’s a look at all of the league’s benches according to this method:


Of course, practically speaking, San Antonio devotes only 45 percent of its total minutes to reserves (just a shade over the league average of 44 percent). So if its bench were to secede and form a new squad, it would either need to increase its players’ minutes per game or find other players to fill the remaining 55 percent of available playing time.

But this new team would still be pretty formidable if we assume the Spurs’ current bench players could slide into starters’ minutes (55 percent of the new team’s total) at their existing level of production — and BPM is adjusted for a player’s minutes per game, so the increased difficulty of facing more opposing starters is already accounted for (to some degree) in each player’s numbers — while filling their bench with typical NBA reserves (averaging to a -1.5 BPM per player). The resulting squad would have a 1585 Elo, which would put them in a de facto dead heat with Toronto for sixth place in the league. As a real-world counterfactual, some of the details don’t work out exactly right, like Manu Ginóbili’s famously limited minutes. But as a broad abstraction of just how much of a whooping Manu, Boris Diaw, David West and the rest of the Spurs’ bench have been putting on the league, it does the job.

And that’s if San Antonio’s bench had to manage life on its own. When paired with the Spurs’ starters, they make for an unstoppable combination that might be the best in basketball.

[Al Bundy]

A little surprising.