Still not sure it is enough to knock off the Cavs but they are set up well for 19 when Lebron flees again

Looks like Hayward to the Celtics

Twitter running wild with it, but Hayward's agent told Woj that they haven't made a decision yet.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">FWIW: According to source, Gordon Hayward has made no decision and all reports are &quot;erroneous.&quot;</p>&mdash; Anthony Chiang (@Anthony_Chiang) <a href="https://twitter.com/Anthony_Chiang/status/882310525450940417">July 4, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

God damn it. Tons of guards for the Kings. Wish Mason would have got drafted by another team

Yep Woj said no decision is made. I'm tired of Fake News. Woj is the only perosn I trust. However Ricky Rubio already made the :( emoji

:spock:

Somebody better get the message out to Gordon Hayward that if he goes to the enormous power vacuum that is the Eastern Conference, where the road to the NBA finals is MUCH easier, that it's an act of cowardice, and the only honorable thing is to stay with Utah and get ****ed by all the competition and knocked out early from the playoffs, possibly even by a non-Warriors team.

It isn't. And yes, they would be set up quite well to be destroyed by Golden State.

Hill at 3/57 seems like a nice deal if he can stay healthy enough.

I don't understand why everyone thinks the warriors are all world beaters. It's just because no other team has as much talent as them. The Celtics and heat teams from a few years ago would destroy that soft team

Lol sure they would.
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I can't believe FA is literally stopped for Gordon Hayward's decision like he's going to tip the scales in the West or East. Like he's a good player but it literally does no matter where he goes, He's not beating the Warriors or Lebron so just get it over with like every other player has done.

Like cool if he wants to sign with the Celtics so Lebron can sweep him and fake Iverson and soft Horford in 4 games so be it, who cares.

Celtics did beat the Lebron led Cavs last year without Thomas

Lebron also has a lot of miles and the wheels will start to come off shortly. He was reduced to being a 1 way player in the finals this year.

If Kyrie didn't show up they would of got swept by the Warriors

cool 1 game. Hayward isn't tipping the scales where they can win 4 games in a 7 game series against Lebron and whoever Lebron has on his team.

It could be Lebron, Brian Scalabrine, Scott Pollard, Smush Parker and Adam Morrison and he could still beat a Gordon Hayward led Celtics team.

I think the Spurs team that ran through the Heat by 20 a game would be comparable.

no.

The Jordan led Bulls didn't have enough talent to beat that Golden State team. Who on that team could stop Durant? Luc longley???

https://twitter.com/alexkennedynba/s...21428888125441


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Woj says the Hayward decision is between Celtics and Jazz

Haywards joining the Celtics, Players Tribune piece just posted

Holdup was clearly the ghostwriter at the Players Tribune couldnt publish fast enough.

Smart move by Hayward. Just too much talent in the West

The 96 Bulls I think would have beat them. Their defense was better than most.

Don't let KC_Connection fool you. The Warriors are not that good. They went against weak competition that made them look a lot better than they actually are this year. Lots of injuries, Cavs had a bad season (they were sh*t on defense all year) and Westbrook had basically no help. The Spurs were putting on whooping on them before Kawhi got hurt. Kawhi was absolutely dominating that game, imagine what MJ would do.

Durant is a great player but he had 0-championships and was a known choke artist before he came to GS. Although he will never admit it that's one of the reasons I think he went there. Not many pressure situations when you are up by 15-pts almost every gm and have all that talent around you. Curry isn't the best when pressure is on either. I feel like if a team can keep it close with them, they've got a chance. You couldn't tell this year because almost all their wins were blowouts.

People seriously think the warriors are unbeatable lol

08 celtics defense is all time worthy

:deevee:

I'm pretty sure this guy walked in on Durant pissing on his mom's face or something.

I knew Durant really loves his mom, but that's taking it a little far, don't you think?

Hayward isn't enough to beat the Cavs. With Hayward coming aboard they have renounced Kelly Olynyk which means he becomes a UFA.

There looking to trade Crowder or smart as well

Celts have a nice roster now.

Cavs/Celts series will be a good one.

What do the Jazz do now? They had a pretty nice lineup in the playoffs, but have now lost some important pieces.

Celts might try and trade for Marc Gasol

Draft well and try to figure out why their best players are leaving.

Losing Hayward hurts a lot.

It's Salt Lake City, that's why they leave.

Celtics have to trade 2 of 3 between Smart, Bradley and Crowder

That's basically two elite guard defenders that made up for IT being a terrible defensive liability.

It will be interesting to see if the Celtics actually get better, they might take a huge step back on defense next year.

They had to let Olynyk walk too, who is even going to be a big for them when Horford misses his usual 5 to 10 games during the season. No Olynyk, No Johnson.

Olynyk was huge for them last year, way underrated. He did all their dirty work, and literally beat the Wizards in the playoffs himself. I hate the guy but his college rah rah play style was a part of why they got as far as they did with that squad. I guess Gordon Hayward is going to be that good? IT-Hayward-Horford is that really any better than Teague-Millsap-Horford on the 60 win Hawks a few years ago?

I think Isaiah is way overrated by NBA fans. Dude's approaching 30 and is going to command 30+ million do you honestly invest in that and give your team zero flexibility on a guy who's game might not age well into his 30s?

Perhaps the Jazz should have done a sign and trade to pick up some of those pieces.

They just did that for the last SEVEN YEARS and their star player still left.

They literally rebuilt the right way like the NBA wants and it still backfired in their face.

But yet the NBA will get mad at the way the Sixers did it. Well the conventional way clearly doesn't work for smaller markets and it's been proven time and time again. Warriors being the complete outlier.

Smaller markets are basically farm teams for the larger markets. When a guy hits 27/28 in his NBA prime he just goes to whatever large market he wants and it's basically thanks for nothing to the smaller market team that drafted him and had his rights for 5-6 years.

I can't wait for Anthony Davis to do it and cause a real shakeup to the NBA landscape and create a new super team that might challenge the Warriors.

Gordon should of stayed with the Jazz. Just think the Jazz only had 2 less wins than the Celtics and they played in the Western conference. Get another player and a team of Hayward, Ingles, Gonert, and Rubio is pretty damn good

Yeah smaller market teams are definitely at a disadvantage. I don't see the big deal with living in Utah. Seems like a nice place to raise kids. If you want to party do it in the offseason these guys got the money to travel.

I know most Packer players don't live in GB.

So do people have any bright ideas of how to fix the talent disparity between conferences besides overall playoff seeding (which isn't going to fix the talent issue).

The East only has 4 of the top 20 NBA players. In the ENTIRE CONFERENCE. There are a lot of decent/goodish players in the conference, but they're all spaced and spread out mostly evenly among the teams. The West has most of the league's best players, and they're all concentrated on the rosters of about 6-8 teams. When West teams play each other more often than they play the East, the worse teams rack up more losses, and that grants them more lottery picks, too. It's so difficult to feed new NBA talent to the East when that happens.

Is it going to take Lebron leaving/retiring for things to right itself? Because I'm just not all that sure that it can. There are ZERO East teams looking to compete with super teams. They're all choosing to wait things out until things get less crazy and they don't get punked by Lebron every playoff run.

It's just getting stupid. We've seen multiple East teams play the tanking game and lose, with only Milwaukee and Philly (maybe) seeming like they have a chance at pulling free. Meanwhile in the last 15 years or so, Portland, Seattle/OKC, Memphis, Clippers, and now presumably Minnesota have won at tanking.

Theoretically a conference can be bad enough such that the power vacuum dramatically sucks up talent and balances the league out, but we're getting pretty shitty now and nothing has happened.

Just wait until LeBron goes to the Lakers and brings a few guys with him. It may be the biggest talent disparity we've ever seen between two conferences in recent sports history.

That will require Adam Silver to intervene.

What TV networks would want to broadcast Eastern conference games? Especially in the playoffs when half the lineup is East teams.

If the NBA is a business like any other sports league, then by letting things continue, they are seriously jeopardizing their profit margin.

they need to do it like baseball and football

some west and east coast teams are in the same conference problem solved.

The East and West bullshit is what is cause this mess. Just put a division of East, Central, Western teams in one conference and division of the same in another.

Like the Southeast division next year is going to be absolutely terrible. Washington who isn't even that good (and paying into the luxury tax for it) is the best of Miami, Atlanta, Charlotte, Orlando.

Charlotte will be better but goodness Orlando, Atlanta and Miami are going to be horrible. Miami just got a bunch of cap space and there is literally nobody good left to sway the needle.

The league completely lacks actual talent. It's a small percentage of superstars then stars (getting way overpaid) and good to average guys (also getting way overpaid) then filler.

The guys in that 2nd tier are getting all the money. The Lowrys, Mike Conleys, Bradley Beal and Gordon Haywards. These guys aren't good enough to win you anything but you have to pay them 25+ million.

Don't get me started on the Otto Porter's of the world either. What a joke.

There is 1 guy in the NFL making 25+ million and there is about 20 in the NBA. And of those 20 probably 5 of them move the needle.

So your answer is a franchise tag?

Because what's causing these super-teams is the salary cap. The Warriors couldn't afford Durant and Curry if a cap wasn't in place. Oh sure, Kevin Durant will pass on $9 million to stay in GS, but he wouldn't have passed on $50 million. And some team would've given him the Jordan treatment and paid him as much as some small market teams spend on their total payroll.

But the problem is that it wouldn't have been a small market in all likelihood. And ultimately, there's little that can be done about day to day presence in Salt Lake City (as opposed to a sunny locale or NY).

Apart from a straight up franchise tag, what can you do to keep stars in small markets? And the only way that franchise tag will even begin to get traction is if it offers to pay someone under the tag something like a 20% premium over the 'max' that any other team can give in addition to being a year longer. Something like Bird Rights on steriods. Maybe then you'd convince the players association to agree with it.

The only thing I take issue with here is the idea of competing with "Super Teams", which have seemingly been defined (not necessarily by you) as built through free agency and/or lop-sided trades. Boston was a super team. Miami was a super team. GS clearly is not, as they (did it the right way, IMO, and) drafted their star nucleus and only replaced a max-level guy with a max-level-like guy. San Antonio isn't a super team either, even though they signed Aldridge. I wouldn't consider Cleveland a super team, as they used their high picks to get players and as trade chips to bring in others.

The super team model hasn't beaten out the draft and develop strategy for a few years, IMO.

Why fix it? The talent disparity is going to put Embiid in the playoffs and everybody wins with Embiid in the playoffs.

I think Bird Rights on steroids is an outstanding idea. I've always thought resigning one's own players should circumvent the cap a bit more than it currently does.

The distinction between Bird Rights and that suggestion is that Bird Rights are a 'carrot' approach. The NFL franchise tag is a 'stick'. If you gave the Bird Rights the super high premium salary AND made it compulsory, you'd have the carrot and the stick in a single approach.

The players get the massive money that's so much more that they can make on the market that it might be more palatable for them to consider. The small-market teams can keep their stars. But you'd probably need a lockout to get it to happen. Can you imagine a lockout the year after a billion dollar television deal kicked in?

In the NBA, fans are likely to side with players anyway. With that kind of timing, you've all but assured it. I just don't know that there's a way to effectuate it.

By super teams I mean teams with 2-3-4 superstars, regardless of how those players wound up on that team.

I'm probably misusing the conventional understanding of that term. Whatever. What I mean are really really really good teams. The West has them all. The East has one. Maybe two with Boston, but Boston still has no chance at winning a title in the next years as they're currently assembled.

I simply think it's great that teams are still building through the draft. As I previously noted, it's not been that long ago that teams were dumping top 10 picks for cash, so that they could sign free agents. Free agency is still huge, but teams are built through the draft.

The Bay Area is the 6th largest TV market in the US. They're not a small market team.

Also, they move across the Bay to San Fran in 2019.

Who wouldn't choose Boston over SLC?

Top 4 coach, Top 4 roster, Top 4 GM. They won the East last year and only flamed out due to Isiah's injury. They added Tatum, who's going to be a stud, and still have a Lottery pick in 2018.

Plus, Hayward's playing for his college coach.

I think it would suck if SLC had the "power" to force him to stay, especially after 7 years.

Boston is not a top 4 roster

That has to be followed by a "yes, but..." though

Golden State was mediocre/bad 10 years ago. They had a neat little resurgence when Don Nelson took over, but like most Don Nelson teams, they faltered when the shooting dried up and the defenses got tougher. They never really "tanked" though. They have some kind of insane-o John Dorsey-type front office guy finding NBA talent, because they got all those players without ever picking all that high in the draft.

Golden State is the exception. There simply aren't a whole lot of great teams like Golden State these days. The Spurs are the other exception. And we all know another huge component to the Spurs' success beyond their ability to find talent in the bottom parts of the draft...

If you're not going to tank, it's just really hard to assemble a complete team primarily through the draft. That's why basketball is so damn frustrating sometimes. Baseball teams can draft guys based on potential, and if the players come up short of that potential but still are decent players, that's considered a win. Same with football. And in both football and baseball, ANY team can find studs far more easily due to the enormous variance of positions and roster size.

Basketball just doesn't have that luxury. You either need the super stars or you need a HOF transcendent coach like Popovich to win.

No, free agency isn't the only solution. You still have to figure out how to draft good players. But it has to be a big part of the team-building strategy in the NBA.

Gimme a break

Jerry West.

The architect of the Lakers Showtime and traded for Kobe, signed Shaq and hired Phil Jackson.

He was hired by Peter Guber and Joe Lacob in 2011.

Earlier this year, he left for the Clippers, which is going to be very interesting.

Lebron and 4 scabs can beat them on Cleveland
Houston can definitely beat them
Warriors can crush them by 30 every game
Thunder would absolutely handle them


plus they are losing two of Smart, Bradley, Crowder before the season even starts. As it stands right now they will probably have no bench and be relying on Tatum and Jaylen Brown to give solid minutes that gets you nowhere in the playoffs.

They also have no bigs currently to back up Horford baring a trade or signing of some scrub.

Warriors signed Nick young.
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NBA is getting their best team vs best player in the Finals. Not more you can ask for than that.

The tanking model would work better if the NBA had an age limit that was higher IMO. The trouble with draft picks is 19 year old is not really ready for the NBA. There are always a few expectations to the rule, that's the biggest problem. Let them come in at 21 and you would see rebuild jobs go quicker. Most players don't hit their prime until 27/28. That's the age you win championships. Go down the list of all time NBA greats and when they win the first one and look at their age.

If they trade Smart, I will become a full fledged Boston fan.

I'm not sure Minnesota or Milwaukee "tanked" either. They were bad, but I don't think they were intentionally bad. They also hit on some picks (including a second rounder in Mil) and made good trades (Love to the Cavs).

Philly openly tanked and it has, now, paid off. However, for a while, their direction didn't make much sense at all. I mean, how many centers/pfs do you need on one team?

Insert Nancy Kerrigan "why!?!" gif.

No one is forcing NBA teams to draft younger players. If teams want to draft them, why wouldn't you let them and let the players earn their money?

Why not? He can be a good role player in their system. They made McGee a great role player.
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only three players last season shot 43% or better on 4.5+ catch and shoot three pointers per game

1. Steph
2. Klay
3. Swaggy

Warriors replaced Ian Clark and Matt Barnes with Swaggy P and Omri Casspi. Actual shooters. They are going to be even better next season, they have a bomb squad on their second unit now.

After the Wolves traded Garnett, they tried winning the honest way. It didn't work. They were just bad. Not bad on purpose. Just bad.

After years of being bad and getting shit on by the NBA lottery in 2011 when they should have had the #1 and Kyrie Irving, I think their moves lined up perfectly with the tanking strategy. They traded their only good player (Love) for all young guys. They threw the dice on supremely talented yet ultra raw college players like Lavine and Muhammad. They even traded a half decent veteran and like the 2nd best player on the team at the time for an overpriced Kevin Garnett, clearing the way for more losses. Sportscasters openly complained about them tanking all the time for the past couple years.

Just because you're already bad to begin with doesn't mean you're not tanking.

The Celtics didn't flame out because of IT's injury. They lost 2 games by +30 and were pretty much dominated the whole series. I am a Celtics fan and if they have to get rid of 2 out of the 3 of Crowder, Smart or Bradley along with Olynk now being gone they won't be very good. Sure they will make the playoffs but that is because the East sucks.

Yup, Warriors brought in more guys who can shoot from 3 better than what they had last year on their bench.

Spurs signed Rudy Gay to 2-years, $17.2 Mill. Nice signing, if he can stay healthy this should give us some more firepower to keep up with the Warriors.

Avery Bradley for Marcus Morris

Going to be fun to see if the Celtics can hide ITs lack of defense without Bradley on the perimeter.

Every team he's left has got better.

He's got a lot of bad habits. He doesn't seem like a good fit but he has to know that being on the Spurs means sacrifice and a lot of passing so I think he will adjust and do fine.

Man I love this video.

I've always thought Rudy Gay would work very well as a role player on a contender. Has all the tools necessary to be a great one. Time to see if that's true.

How does Tim Hardaway Jr get 4 years, 72 million and Tyreke Evans only gets 1-yr 3 million. Tyreke Evans is waaaay more valuable of a player.

And you thought Phil Jackson was the problem in NY hahaha nope