Kyrie has an option for one more year, but he’d be insane to take it, since that be $21 million for one year, vs the contract he’s eligible for, which is something like $35 million per year. The Celtics can offer him more years and somewhat more money than anyone else can, but even if he goes to another team, he’d…

Oh, I imagine Rozier will get an offer from somewhere and leave, yes. I like Jaylen and would be happy to have him on the team as well. Leaving him off was an oversight, not an intentional slight.

I could see 44, especially in the East, which is still the weaker conference (even if Durant goes to NY). Horford matters more in the postseason, and Stevens is still an excellent X’s and O’s coach, so I think they’d be a solid regular-season team that gets stomped in round one of the playoffs.

No, I don’t particularly want most of those things. However, I’d rather have those things than “those things plus Kyrie Irving for the next five years.”

Speaking as a loathsome Boston fan, I’ll be fine if they end up with Rozier/Smart/Hayward/Tatum/Horford next year, plus the seventeen thousand picks they have in this year’s draft. That’s fine. That’d be a fun team of young guys (and Al Horford) to root for. Just please for God’s sake do not sign Irving to a five year…

Pierce is following in Simmons’s footsteps as “guy from Boston who’s just not a very good broadcaster”

The thing is there’s like a zillion teams with cap space this offseason, and they can’t all get Durant. That almost inevitably leads to bad GMs throwing dumb money at mediocre players. It won’t take a full max for Boston not to match an offer on Rozier.

I read that and did find it interesting. And I do think Irving is a bit overrated and Ellis was a bit underrated at his peak. That said, when Irving’s feeling it, there’s no one better in the NBA right now at getting to the hoop and making weird, impossible layups. That’s where he hits “sublime” ... but that’s not…

I don’t think Rozier is a starting PG on a championship team. He’s too shot-happy (and the shots are often really bad). What Boston could use—and they’re not really getting this from Kyrie either, at least not consistently and definitely not in the last three playoff games they played—is someone who’s genuinely good…

I guess if it means getting and keeping AD I could live with Boston signing Kyrie to the huge supermax he’s eligible for, but I don’t think Davis will be anything more than a short-term rental, if they get him at all, and I would way rather see Kyrie earning too much money in New York than in Boston. He’s a sublime…

I’d rather have Vogel than anyone else on that list (including Williams and Lue), which doesn’t say great things about the list.

I lived there for a while and there are tons of people there who are not jerks. They have some jackass fans, but so does every city.

We’re going to end up with a Bucks/Raptors ECF, which is probably the right matchup anyway given the two teams’ respective seasons, but it did really feel for a couple of games like Philly was the better team (or at least that they were just too athletic for Toronto). Maybe if Embiid fully recovers between now and…

I was watching the Raptors feed instead of TNT for this game, and on that Monroe possession, the play-by-play guy was just like “They’re letting him have this. He’s holding it. Holding it. They’re not going to defend that shot. He’s ... there’s the shot. And it’s an airball.” while the color guy just chuckled through…

Those are both tremendous moves by tremendous players. Durant is probably overall still a better player than Antetokounmpo, simply due to his shooting range. You could make that argument for Harden, too, though I’d personally rather have Giannis.

That team appeared to actually like each other which, as you mention in your other comment, doesn’t seem to be the case this year. Chemistry matters a lot in the NBA.

FUCKING SHIT I’D FORGOTTEN ALL ABOUT THOSE

Shaq was another one I was thinking of who absolutely led the league in undefendable shots in his prime. This is a very solid list in general. Steph’s threes from a million miles out, when they’re hitting (and Dame Lillard’s, too) are obviously on there as well.

If Boston hits 31% of their threes, they win that game. Boston’s players aren’t spectacular from deep, but all of them except two guys on the deep bench shoot in the mid-30s from three. Kyrie’s over 40%, and several other guys are in the 36-37% range. As a team they shot .365 from three this year, which ranked 7th in…

Giannis has a higher average “number of times per game where I go ‘well ... ok ... I don’t even know how you’re supposed to defend that.’” rate than any other player currently in the league.