The Official NBA Season Thread: Las Vegas Summer League | USA vs Germany at 3 ET on Fox

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Interesting split. MoMo and McMenamins votes are also biased and worthless. The basketball intelligentsia loves the Nuggets in this series
 
Brain says Nuggets in six, but heart says Lakers in seven. I will be a homer and go with my heart.
 
lawdog1 said:
Jokic is not going to score like he did against Phoenix in this series - let’s just get that out of the way. The Lakers are just way better defensively as a team than the Suns. Doesn’t mean necessarily he’s getting locked up though.

Part of what makes Jokic so good is that he can be selective about his own offense and dominate a game through facilitating. Think he’s too smart to try to win a one-on-one battle against AD.
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Def won’t get strapped but the lakers will be able to put a hella stop to the majority of his scoring
 
Posted in the laker thread but I might as well post here too:

THOUGHTS:

Game 1 lineup predictions:

AD on Jokic
Bron on AG
Vando/Rui on Porter
Dlo on KCP
AR on Murray

The lakers will start with Vando. The question is where they use him on defense to start. If they put him on Murray (I doubt it because they’ll just run him through a bunch of screens), put Dlo on Porter and AR on KCP. If they put him on Jokic (really really doubt it), you put AD on AG and let him roam on defense. In this scenario, Lebron would take Porter, Dlo on KCP & AR on Murray.

Denver will hide Jokic on Vando and have Jokic sit in the paint and double Ad/Bron. Vando will have to make corner 3s, otherwise Rui will be subbed in quickly and will probably start for the rest of the series.

I feel like our best lineup is AD/Bron/Austin/Dlo/Dennis. 4 ball handlers and elite big AD. Lebron can screen or roll. This lineup should be able to attack Jokic and score at will. Just about how many stops they can get.

Jokic is ****ing good. He passes like a HOF point… when he gets the ball in the paint, he doesn’t hesitate, he moves with a purpose and scores. If you double, he sees it coming and makes a pinpoint pass. He can do it all. This guy is absolutely ridiculous. This guy won 2/3 MVPs and I personally feel like he’s still underrated.

*in my SAS voice* HOWEVER, everything Jokic is offensively, AD is that defensively. He’s not going to stop Jokic; nobody can. But AD has the size and length to make Jokic work. This is a battle for the best big man in the world. AD and Jokic are both currently playing at their highest level, the height of their powers. It’s going to be fun.

With that said I’m doubling this man everytime he touches the ball. Get the ball out his hands and make everyone else beat you. I could even see them putting AD on AG like I said earlier. This would allow AD to roam and hang out in the paint, preventing a lot of the cutting and easy buckets the nuggets get off jokic doubles. This would also deter Jokic from wanting to drive if he knows AD is there waiting to help.

This nuggets team kinda reminds me of the warriors. They have way better role players around Jokic tho. The lakers had a winning strategy against the warriors. We forced them to abandon their motion offense with our top locking & AD defending the rim. After that we just wore Curry down because you can’t pick & roll for an entire series. It’s a similar strategy here. Attack Jokic everytime. Make him work on offense. No easy buckets. We need doubles and different looks throughout each game. Test his conditioning. Make him earn it basically.

The main difference between the nuggets and warriors for me is the lakers had a winning formula to go against their motion offense. You could see it during their regular season games. Denver is different, idk our strategy for them. When we last played em, AD went down and we KILLED them with Bron at the 5. Bron was locking Jokic down on one end and we were scoring every time on the other side. This was Lebron before the foot injury though. The Lebron at 5 minutes will be key this series. I don’t think Ham will be eager to give TT, Bamba or Wenyen minutes.

If there’s one player we need to attack and get in early foul trouble, it’s AG. If he goes to the bench, they have nobody for Lebron.

We have Lebron James. He’s 8 games away from his 5th ring. I do not think Lebron will let Mike Malone and Aaron Gordon stop him. Bum foot or not.

Lakers in 6.
 
Zo gif said:
interesting to see how Denver handles lakers putting jokic in PNRs.
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Think Jokic tires out because of this and commanding the offense. Murray is gonna have to ball out like crazy and a role player will have to excel.
 
tay1 said:
Think Jokic tires out because of this and commanding the offense. Murray is gonna have to ball out like crazy and a role player will have to excel.
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Aaron Gordon is gonna have to have a huge series on offense and defense. He is a great cutter off Jokic but if I’m the Lakers I try to force him into jumpers
 
It's funny the media made the last series to be about Bron-Steph when it was a AD series all along.

This series, we are getting a lot of AD-Jokic talk (deservingly so). I think they more or less cancel each other out. So the swing factors to me will be the Laker guards and Jamal Murray.
 
murray needs to step up and play well in a handful of the gms, which i think he is capable of. i am expecting a couple stinkers on the road from him. nuggets need to defend home court and not fall behind. role players usually ball out at home.

i wonder if malone will try and pull AD out on the perimeter like what the warriors did using steph.

nuggs hit a good pct of threes and they will be tough
 
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Eh I dont see Denver winning this. Im going Lakers in 6.

Lakers
Denver
Lakers
Denver
Lakers
Lakers


Bout to have my corgi do the ball thing for yall.
 
Leaning Nuggets in 7. Feel like winning a game as a road team in Denver is a tall ask. They have a legit advantage with altitude + crowd. Nuggets have won their home playoff games by an average of 12.5 points.
 
sohi 23 said:
With that said I’m doubling this man everytime he touches the ball. Get the ball out his hands and make everyone else beat you. I could even see them putting AD on AG like I said earlier. This would allow AD to roam and hang out in the paint, preventing a lot of the cutting and easy buckets the nuggets get off jokic doubles. This would also deter Jokic from wanting to drive if he knows AD is there waiting to help.
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Bron is guarding AD in this scenario and you’re doubling with Rui/vando/ leaving one of their 3 shooters open?
 
James_O said:
Ppl think Jokic is abt to dominate AD in the post. Yeah no

Only reason the nugs were so successful against the suns, us cause one KD washed a hell and two cause they don’t have a dominate big man. AD will have at least 25 tonight :pimp:
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What bigs has AD played against so far in the playoffs ? :lol:
 
pmatic said:
It's funny the media made the last series to be about Bron-Steph when it was a AD series all along.

This series, we are getting a lot of AD-Jokic talk (deservingly so). I think they more or less cancel each other out. So the swing factors to me will be the Laker guards and Jamal Murray.
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Skipping ahead a bit here, but do you think the media would award AD finals mvp over bron?
 
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