GOAT conversations where people refuse to actually define what they’re talking about are particularly frustrating.

Well it depends on what you mean by a “team”. Boston as a franchise had the greatest run of all time in the 60s, but are the ‘59 Celtics the same “team” as the ‘66 Celtics? They only had three players in common - Russell, KC Jones, and Sam Jones, and KC was only playing 12 mpg in ‘59, but was at 34 mpg in ‘66. (Sam…

Curry, Harden, Westbrook, Wall. Probably still CP3. Then there’s a bunch of guys Kyrie is probably better than, but I haven’t seen enough to do a fair comparison vs. somebody like Lillard. Or thought about how to measure what Kyrie does vs. what Klay does.

Kyrie’s a more spectacular finisher, but I think Steph literally has a better percentage. I agree exactly on the 5 guys you think are definitely better than Kyrie, then there’s a long list of guards I think he’s probably better than but I’m not totally certain without really breaking it down.

Few of them, but there are levels. I don’t know how you watch the last three years of basketball and think “if these two teams are at the height of their powers, maybe the Warriors are a little better but the Cavs can be right there with them.” I watch the last three years of basketball and think “if these two teams…

I admit to being a bit of a Kyrie detractor (in the sense that I’m not sure I think he’s a top 5 guard in the league, so ... not that much of a detractor?) but as Giri says, when he’s on he’s incredible to watch, but at the end of the day his elite basketball skills all lead to the same destination: he’s incredible at…

If you literally just plucked KD off the Warriors? It’s close, but I’d favor the Warriors in a long series ... pretty thin margin, though. If you assume the Warriors kept Bogut and Barnes, and hope Bogut doesn’t break his leg like he did in real life, and assume Barnes rebuilds some of his confidence, I’d pick them to…

Yeah, when Royce says stuff like this I chalk it up to protecting his beat with a team that’s already pretty hostile to the press.

I think on the broadcast they were speculating that Lue may have wanted Thompson for his superior screening ability.

The thing about being a spectacular shot maker is you believe you can make spectacular shots.

I bet he can dunk, but probably not from vertical, and not more than once or twice without bending over to grab knees or back and making those kind of hissing noises you make when it hurts, but not enough for you to cry out.

Through the season I’ve been wondering what the Cavs internally think happened in the Finals the last two years, and watching them go into last night once again determined to play super-fast, I’ve seriously started thinking that they were a little delusional.

You see the shots of LeBron gassed on the bench in Game 2? The man can’t actually play 48 minutes and still have something at the end of the game.

Yep.

For much of the second half I was thinking that Steve Kerr’s weakness is getting into weird bits of rotation management. Steph and KD sitting at the same time. Seemingly endless minutes with Zaza and McGee when they weren’t doing anything good. A three year long reluctance to ride his very best lineups (Mike Brown is…

How much worse do you think Kerr would be than JJ Redick?

Yeah, the more I think about it the harder it would be to punish the Warriors under 90s rules. I was thinking their defense would struggle, but the Warriors are the switchiest team out there, so they’re less purely reliant on the kind of rotation-hedging that would be illegal in 1996 that’s also at the core of most of…

People who cannot get the message to STOP PLAYING get what’s coming to them.

Sure, because you were putting some thought into it! I was just happy someone was like “oh yeah, the Bulls were playing before the changes in illegal defense and only 16 years after the introduction of the 3 point line”. Whenever these questions are asked, my first thought is “who’s rules?”

Yeah, putting absolutely no thought into it, I think “the team playing with the ruleset under which it was designed is probably the team that will win” is a reasonable take.