AboveLegit

Bledsoe showed off his athleticism and defensive prowess in the playoffs. He's all over the place offensively, shooting numbers are wretched, turnovers are high, and he really has no place in any halfcourt set, but just watching him on defensive is impressive as hell. He's only 6'1, but he can guard the majority of SG's in the league due to his relentless ball pressure, he's a very solid backup PG in the league. But I just get the sense that the Clippers have a bunch of misfits on the bench. Too many new pieces, not enough camaraderie to be effective as a unit. I'd take New York's over them. But as for the poll itself, I'm taking Boston. Their guard rotation is phenomenal, and they're 2 deep at every position.

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web04/2012/10/23/13/anigif_enhanced-buzz-4893-1351014859-0.gif Here's the video, 16:45 mark: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pEGvKVNoJ8E#! Read more A truly great piece by Ethan Strauss documenting one of the most bizarre, yet undetected moments in sports history. Pretty crazy how it all unfolded, even after reading the article, I hardly noticed the amount of players on the court because you're so focused on what Hakeem was doing. Just imagine if this all went down in today's game...

I definitely agree that he's lived off the reputation he built in the first half of his rookie year. He needs to make the transition to SF, because as you said, he's pretty slow. But I also think it's unfair to bring up his failure in guarding Ray Allen, and the difference between him and Shumpert (who's a world class defender IMO). Knicks were smart in letting him go, I think it was brilliant to bring in Ronnie Brewer who's a much better defender, and an equally impressive off ball player.

iMan nailed it. With Deandre, more often than not, he's hurting you on offense, and as the starting center, I'd at least hope he can play in the fourth quarter (he does not). His upside is high, but I really don't see him ever living up to his contract.

I agree that he's a pretty average defender, but he has quick hands, plays the lanes well, and doesn't foul much. So at least when he's on the floor, he's not hurting your team. He was top 10 in rebounding for all guards last year.

Definitely Gortat, he's a more established player, Deandre is very raw right now. Very good pick and roll player, good rebounder, and his offensive repertoire, while not great, is still light years ahead of Jordan. Deandre is a slightly better rebounder, but everything is, Gortat has him beat.

The Lowry/JV pnr has so much potential. Really excited to see those two this year.

Amare isn't a great cutter by any means, he needs the ball in his hands or running the pnr as you mentioned. But off ball movement is something completely different. He's not a good passer, he doesn't rebound the ball well, and his back to the basket game is lacking (he has been working with Olajuwon this summer, so we'll see how that works out). What I'm getting at is he doesn't give you much else on offense, he has the scorer's mentality a la Melo, and I firmly believe that's not a recipe for success in this league. One of these two need to make dramatic alterations to their game. Either Melo has to become a playmaker, or Amare has to develop a sound back to the basket game. But you can't have both of them coming off pin downs and shooting elbow jumpers all day. Kidd cannot orchestrate an offense anymore, nor can he run the pnr like he used to. I'd be shocked if he averaged more than 25mpg this year. And that's a pretty lame excuse for why Kidd didn't produce last year. If anything, Dallas needed someone to run the show last year when defenses keyed in on Dirk. They needed that second threat, but Kidd's physical deficiencies prevented him from doing much. He was pretty useless in the halfcourt last year, he surveyed the floor from the top of the key, made skip passes to spot up shooters, and hit the occasional three. That's all you're going to get from him nowadays.

Difference between Wade/LeBron and Melo/Amare is that the latter are one dimensional isolation scorers. How many duo's have won championships with those skill sets? I'd say roughly 0. And no, I'm not expecting a 10 year veteran to make dramatic alterations to his game. Could he make subtle adjustments to his game? Of course, all players do. But the nature of his game won't change. Where's this real PG talk coming from? Do the Knicks even have one? Signing a 39 year old PG, who can't defend anyone at his position at this stage of his career and who had the third lowest usage % among PG's receiving more than 15mpg last year isn't going to solve much of the Knicks offensive woes. With the way this roster is built, something ground breaking has to be done.

Moving Chandler to the bench is not an option. Never mind the fact that with him they're a top 5 defense and without him a bottom 5 defense, I've never been a fan of having two, one-dimensional isolation heavy scorers together. It simply cannot work out with those two. And if the only thing stopping you from being a better overall team is a players' psyche, that's a risk you gotta take.

I like him as a sleeper choice. But defensively, he struggled quite a bit due to his excessive foul rate, I really don't understand how he got the reputation of being a premier defender already. He plays the passing lanes well, but everything else is a work in progress. PG just established a role on offense last year, after looking completely lost at times in his rookie year. His ball handle is still very poor right now, which limits him on offense. He can't create off the dribble, that takes away from that supreme athleticism he possesses. This is a huge year for him because of the way this Pacers team is constructed. You look at all their top players, West being a pick and pop threat, Granger being the catch and shoot guy, and Hibbert being the anchor, none of them are able to go one on one and consistently attack a defense. If George makes that leap like you think he will, not only will he be the face of the franchise like he's expected to be, he could easily fill up the stat sheet. But if this is another average year for him, questions will emanate.

And just as we discuss this, Zach Lowe writes up another masterpiece, I'll highlight some of his points. On his offense... On his lazy defense and poor rotations... On Amare coming off the bench... http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/40438/can-carmelo-anthony-really-play-power-forward-and-should-he

Time will tell with Melo, I personally just think that's where he needs to be in order to keep this offense efficient. He's gone on record saying there are options at the 4 other than himself (Sheed? Kurt Thomas? Yikes), which is a disaster waiting to happen. I'm not sure how Chandler fits into the offense, but that's really not a huge deal to begin with. He was featured so much last year because Woodson really couldn't establish a system with his stars constantly being in and out of the lineup. He rolled with a lot of high pick and rolls with Chandler, which was effective due to Lin's ability to get in the lane. The current crop of PG's in NY doesn't inspire much confidence to be blunt, so it's going to be interesting just how much they use Melo the first month of the season.

Melo actually took more jumpers from 16-23 feet when playing the 4, but also managed to increase his TS% nearly 8 percentage points due to his ability to take 4's off the dribble and get to the rim. He's really a different player at that position, but like BFT said, his reluctance has more to do with the beating his body takes against those stronger defenders. Consider where he likes the ball, at the elbows and the wings, and his dynamite first step, and it shows why he was so good late last year. He's such a strong finisher at the basket, with one less big man on the floor, it allows Woodson the freedom to bring in those plethora of shooters when the defense collapses.

Elite Manning. I'll take a TD anytime under 2 minutes, but I knew with 96 secs left on the clock, we were doomed. This defense is garbage. Pretty incredible that we've lost every game under 7 points. All credit goes to RG3 there.

Blessing in disguise, gives Woodson more time to establish Melo at the 4.

Impressive stuff. Make sure you add the NBA finals format to the Wizards schedule.

The poll shows the top players that are in the last year of their contract. Who will have the best season that leads to a new, larger deal? I intentionally left out James Harden because he'd be the clear favorite and is a lock for a max contract (Houston and Dallas already went on record saying they'd offer it). I also left out Ty Lawson because there have been numerous reports saying he's working on an extension right now with the Nuggets.

Yeah, however, I'm not sure how Dwight and LeBron would feel about Kobe being in town then. I know with the Lakers anything is possible, I really didn't think they'd get Dwight, or even have a shot at Nash, but it happened. However, I don't even know how Dwight would take this, because sooner or later, he wants to be the man. There's a long ways to go before the 2013 offseason when Dwight resigns, but if it becomes more pronounced that the Lakers have intentions of going after Bron, I think there's a chance he takes a stronger look at other teams (namely Atlanta). Chris Paul is also tied to this as well, because LBJ is his best friend, and I know how much Bron pushed Dan Gilbert to trade up for him back in 2005. If he goes elsewhere, things will get interesting.

This is under the assumption that Kobe retires by then.

You're out of your mind if you don't want LeBron. And he'd be 29, the max goes for 6 years, which gives you at the very least, 4 great years out of him.

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/8518360/nba-los-angeles-lakers-eying-lebron-james-2014 A lot of this is common sense really, of course if you have a shot at LeBron, you do whatever it takes to get in position to at least throw an offer at him. Besides, this is the Lakers after all, this is what they do. Still, it's an interesting topic, what are the odds that Kupchak and the Buss family pull this off?

No, I'm penalizing Deron Williams for not playing like the Deron Williams we're all used to seeing. And let's stop kidding ourselves, we can't use the cliche "he has a bad team" phrase to cover up his lapses. He just didn't play efficient basketball last year, and while we can give the occasional "he has bad teammates" excuse every once and a while, let's not make a habit of it. He turned the ball over a lot (as did Westbrook, mind you), he took a lot of bad shots, didn't drive to the basket nearly enough, displayed terrible body language, etc, he simply didn't perform up to his standards, and for that, I'll penalize him. What I think most are failing to realize here is that this is mostly based off last year. ESPN does this every year, hence why they show the arrows symbolizing who ascended or descended since the previous season. Now, if you're talking strictly ability here, sure guys like Deron, Dirk, and Kobe would be higher, but since they had off years (to their standards), they should prolapse a bit. Name me another PG other than CP3 who had a better year than Russ last year. You can't. Can't hold his jock right now? If we dive into statistics, Westbrook beats him out in almost every offensive category. Kobe doesn't even come close to him on defense, and hell, even the clutch stats favor Westbrook. Kobe simply had a bad year last season. There's no other way to put it. Westbrook played lights out. And you don't think that's at all going to effect Durant's game? So if we eliminate that, Durant's production falls because he has no one slashing to the hoop, no one to set those off ball screens, and no one to kick the ball out to him for easy buckets. The argument goes both ways, Durant needs Westbrook, maybe not as much, but still enough for him not to be considered the 2nd best player in the league. So are you arguing the same for Durant? Because of the offense he's under, should we place Kobe ahead of him? One on one is Kobe's bread and butter, that's simply not the case for Russ or Durant. So because of his role on the team (a role which he's subjected to by the way because he has the 2nd best player in the world by his side), you ignore the production advantage he has over the likes of Kobe, Rose, and Williams? Despite how inefficient Kobe and Williams were last year, you refuse to place Westbrook over them? Let's not forget how much better a defender Russ is than the aforementioned players... Love being a big man shouldn't excuse his inefficiency because he doesn't play a prototypical big man game. And he had a much, much better year than Dirk, he shot the ball at a better clip, his efficiency was higher, as was his PER... and this was all happening with a bad supporting cast. Struggled without Rubio? That's hardly the case. He still managed to average roughly 26PPG (including a 51 and 40 pt game), which is right at his season average. What he had trouble with was the pick and roll game, which naturally became an issue once Rubio went down. His defense is an obvious concern, I can't cover that up, but his production on the floor trumps Kobe's greatly, which is the reasoning behind why he's ranked higher.

Why does his role matter so much in rankings like this? All that really has to be mentioned is that Westbrook significantly outplayed Williams last year, and for the majority of the season, played like the best PG in the game. I had this discussion with iMan on twitter a few days ago, I'd probably slot Melo right at 20, and move Aldridge slightly ahead of Bosh. ESPN rank is largely based off last year (not entirely, but a good amount), so with that in mind, I'll post my list: 1. LeBron 2. Kevin Durant 3. CP3 4. Dwight 5. Wade 6. Love 7. Westbrook 8. Kobe 9. Derrick Rose 10. Rondo 11. Bynum 12. Blake 13. Tony Parker 14. Dirk 15. Deron Williams 16. Gasol 17. Aldridge 18. Chris Bosh 19. Steve Nash 20. Melo I'm not overly impressed with Kobe, I think he had a down year last season, so I really can't bump his ranking up from 1 year ago when he was ranked #7. I know you can attribute his struggles to the wretched offense ran last year, but no matter how you slice it, I don't see how you can put him over guys like Westbrook or Love who had career years. Same goes for Deron Williams who somehow managed to fall only 1 slot since last years' ranking. Rondo clearly had the better year, as did Blake (no matter how much people think he's overrated, his production was still up), Bynum, and Tony Parker (who for much of the season was playing like an MVP candidate). I understand situations are different for every player, Deron had an awful supporting cast and had to shoulder the load, but there's no excuse for his TS% to drop that much and still be given the benefit of the doubt. Obviously if healthy, the list changes some (i.e. Dwight goes to #2), but overall I feel pretty comfortable posting this list.

Need to see another angle, but the FG should have at least been reviewed.