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Game Thread Jan 18, 2024 07:00PM MT: Jazz vs. Thunder

Added to Calendar: 01-18-24

Right, you'd use it strategically. What matters is that it gives the opponent an advantage, and small advantages add up over time.

Take the difference between an elite rim protector and an average one. If your opponent makes 48% of their shots against you at the rim, that's elite rim protection. If they make 58%, that's average. What does that 10% difference translate to in real games? Let's say an opponent takes 10 shots against said defender in a game. That's only a 2 point difference between an average and an elite rim protector. Is rim protection useless then? No. Every advantage matters.
And some games it won't be an advantage at all or even factor into to the game as the opponent won't be in the penalty or they will be in the penalty during a time that they can't employ the strategy.
This is all stuff that Hardy is probably aware of and will make adjustments for if needed. But I will repeat, in around 120 games this strategy has been employed exactly once.
Also the context of this being discussed right now is a poster acting like it was the biggest reason we lost the game last night which is extremely silly.

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And some games it won't be an advantage at all or even factor into to the game as the opponent won't be in the penalty or they will be in the penalty during a time that they can't employ the strategy.
This is all stuff that Hardy is probably aware of and will make adjustments for if needed. But I will repeat, in around 120 games this strategy has been employed exactly once.
Also the context of this being discussed right now is a poster acting like it was the biggest reason we lost the game last night which is extremely silly.

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Cy is a known Kessler hater, while TU is just a general hater lol. Can't take em too seriously.

But yeah, obviously Kessler was great last night. Which is why he was the one playing in closing minutes. He just needs to bump his FT% another 10%.
 
Cy is a known Kessler hater, while TU is just a general hater lol. Can't take em too seriously.

But yeah, obviously Kessler was great last night. Which is why he was the one playing in closing minutes. He just needs to bump his FT% another 10%.
If it was easy to "bump" your FT% another 10, he'd have done it a long time ago. It takes a ton of work and perseverance.

I'm just not sure if Kessler has that type of drive. He sometimes seems like he's just happy to be here.
 
If it was easy to "bump" your FT% another 10, he'd have done it a long time ago. It takes a ton of work and perseverance.

I'm just not sure if Kessler has that type of drive. He sometimes seems like he's just happy to be here.

If he doesn't, he'd still be a good player with a major flaw. Can't have it all.
 
Last night with 2:23 left in the 4th, right before the intentional foul on Kessler that absolutely destroyed us, OKC win probability was 88%.
After Kessler went 1 of 2 from the line OKC win probability jumped all the way up to 88.9%! Lol.

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1 point per possession is bad. Any team would take that if they could foul all game. Teams on average score 1.15 points per possession. This is specially the case if Kessler has the ball under the basket, where he would average well above 1pt/pos.
That's including transition and putbacks. So far this season, teams are averaging a hair less than 1 point per halfcourt possession. As mentioned by others, the impact of the fouls themselves also has to be considered.

Sure, situationally, Kessler's free throw shooting is a problem, but the current alternative of playing John Collins has also been a problem in the vast majority of situations.

Of course, Kessler needs to work on his free throw shooting, but the problem is being grossly overstated by a few posters in this thread.
 
This is a joke post right? Mailman led the nba in free throw attempts many many years and went to the finals twice and shot like 80% from the line.

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Just saw this. Yeah Mailman was fine and decent under pressure.
 
P.S. Dissing Keyonte doesn't make me a hater cause he sucks.

I changed my mind, I DO have energy to complain about George.


LOL. Keyonte's defense in this game was an affront to basketball. I'm not mad at a rookie making inevitable rookie mistakes, but I can't stand low effort in a game like this. Standing around. Not putting a hand up when SGA is taking a shot 3 feet from you. Not running back.

IMO he earned himself a one game DNP-CD.

I'm going to wait for you to either admit you were wrong or come up with some actual proof that Key's defense was an "affront to basketball". Ball's in your court bro. Are you man enough to admit you're wrong or are you going to keep talking out your ***? Because if you're going to claim he deserves to be benched you should at least be able to give some examples of his D negatively impacting us last night and not just claim he was slow to get back and stood around, which are not the case either.
 
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I'm going to wait for you to either admit you were wrong or come up with some actual proof that Key's defense was an "affront to basketball". Ball's in your court bro. Are you man enough to admit you're wrong or are you going to keep talking out your ***? Because if you're going to claim he deserves to be benched you should at least be able to give some examples of his D negatively impacting us last night and not just claim he was slow to get back and stood around, which are not the case either.

I'm way too lazy to go through the game's footage and analyze individual plays, sorry. I know what I saw though, and I wish we just played Dunn or even THT instead. He is often the worst player in the rotation though, by far and wide, so I'm not sure why it's so hard to believe he was bad last night.
 
I'm way too lazy to go through the game's footage and analyze individual plays, sorry. I know what I saw though, and I wish we just played Dunn or even THT instead. He is often the worst player in the rotation though, by far and wide, so I'm not sure why it's so hard to believe he was bad last night.

I like you Fosto, but if someone is going to claim he was terrible they should probably be able to back it up when called on it. I was interested in finding out since my first instinct was that his game was subpar but part of that was people dissing him in this thread. So I took the time to watch every second of his game and even broke it down by possession. He gave up one bucket all night. He had several stops. He can basically only control his assignment, right? Again if someone wants to come up with something more concrete than their gut feeling I'm all ears.
 
If it was easy to "bump" your FT% another 10, he'd have done it a long time ago. It takes a ton of work and perseverance.

I'm just not sure if Kessler has that type of drive. He sometimes seems like he's just happy to be here.
It is a lot easier to get to get the 10% when you start at 50%. Honestly, the biggest thing he could do is take more of them in game situations to get better. All these guys can shoot in an empty gym, it is mostly a mental thing.
 
I like you Fosto, but if someone is going to claim he was terrible they should probably be able to back it up when called on it. I was interested in finding out since my first instinct was that his game was subpar but part of that was people dissing him in this thread. So I took the time to watch every second of his game and even broke it down by possession. He gave up one bucket all night. He had several stops. He can basically only control his assignment, right? Again if someone wants to come up with something more concrete than their gut feeling I'm all ears.

Even disregarding his defense, he scored 3 points on 5 shots, turned the ball over twice (versus two assists), and exited the game with -9 +/- in 14 minutes.
 
Even disregarding his defense, he scored 3 points on 5 shots, turned the ball over twice (versus two assists), and exited the game with -9 +/- in 14 minutes.

He didn't have a great game offensively for sure. But he did make several nice wide-open setups for teammates who missed their shots. Looking at his +/- as a indicator of his play isn't really fair since the rest of the team were getting scored on quite a bit while he was out there. He had some nice stops on D and he got scored on once all night by his man, a SGA mid range jumper. He did have two turnovers but he also contributed to two OKC turnovers.
 
Yeah, at that point a 3 or an and-one would have made a big difference in the comeback. The Hack-a-Kessler removed that opportunity.

People are really ready to die on the "Walker's FT shooting isn't hurting us" hill?

Wow.
No one has said his FT shooting doesn't hurt us. What we're saying is that having a single-point possession at that point is a bit less catastrophic than you make it out to be.

Kessler was a huge reason we were on a comeback run in the first place.
 
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