Philaflava.com ::

an-also wrote:I feel waay more stressed out than happy. WTF. Why did that game just happen like that...

Req wrote:

naturalborn103 wrote:I remember when req was hating on lowry halfway through season.

No. I said he was a good player playing well for a great contract and that he wasn't a star that you should tie your future to. I stand by that comment.

Tell me how much it hurts to see shitlicking Garnett and Pierce get their asses handed to them. It must be like watching your old ass uncle get the crap beat out of him by a younger dude.

Drake >>>> Jay-Z

Hayzoos wrote:If you swap Robin Lopez for Roy Hibbert, do the Pacers become a better team? I think so

naturalborn103 wrote:Im not invested in this series at all, but I will continue to run in here with my vagina showing any time Pierce or Garnett get dissed

naturalborn103 wrote:I would much rather have that ring then meaningless first round win over aarp ex-Cs anyway. I guess you got to take whatever you can get when you're a Raptors fan.

Req wrote:

naturalborn103 wrote:Im not invested in this series at all, but I will continue to run in here with my vagina showing any time Pierce or Garnett get dissed

naturalborn103 wrote:I would much rather have that ring then meaningless first round win over aarp ex-Cs anyway. I guess you got to take whatever you can get when you're a Raptors fan.

lolwat

naturalborn103 wrote:Lowry was the most deserving in the East of the people who got robbed.

Req wrote:fuck that, he was trash until Gay got traded and he figured he was next, so he started window dressing.

I would not be surprised if he returns to his old antics after the trade deadline.

naturalborn103 wrote:This has to be the best Howard has looked since the back injury right? He has been GREAT this series.

Is Russell Westbrook to blame?
Thunder guard averaging 8.7 seconds of possession between passes

Let's do a little exercise. I want you to count nine Mississippis.

One Mississippi.
Two Mississippi.
Three Mississippi.
Four Mississippi.
Five Mississippi.
Six Mississippi.
Seven Mississippi.
Eight Mississippi.
Nine Mississippi.

Whew! Seems long, right? Next step: Do the same thing, but this time while you're counting to nine, I want you to imagine Russell Westbrook dribbling the ball.

I'll wait right here.

Done?

Longest time between possessions
*Average in 2014 NBA Playoffs

Player Seconds
Russell Westbrook 8.7
Jeff Teague 7.5
Tony Parker 7.5
Stephen Curry 7.4
Deron Williams 7.3
So that felt unbearably long, huh? There's a reason we did that. That is the average length of time that Westbrook has possessed the ball in between passes this postseason. Actually, it's 8.7 seconds, to be exact. Sometimes it's longer than that, sometimes a bit shorter. Almost nine seconds on average.

This is what we've learned from SportVU's 3D cameras that have tracked every possession of every game this season. Westbrook pounds the ball more than anybody in the NBA. In the regular season, Westbrook received a HabersTrophy in the ball-hogging category by averaging 7.8 seconds of possession between passes, the highest such rate in the NBA during the regular season.

You thought that was sticky? The ball has been sticking like glue this postseason. Westbrook's NBA-high ball-hogging rate has now crept up in the postseason, and he's shooting 34 percent from the floor and 18 percent from downtown. His average time of possession is by far the highest of any point guard this postseason.

And now the Oklahoma City Thunder are one loss away from a first-round exit.


Scott Brooks isn't known for drawing up masterpieces on the whiteboard. But in Tuesday's heart-wrenching Game 5 loss, there were times when it seemed he didn't even bother to use the whiteboard at all.

In what's become a growing theme in this series, the OKC offense looked tortuously stagnant once again as Westbrook missed 21 of his 31 shots from the floor, a barrage of them coming just seconds into the shot clock as Kevin Durant looked on from the periphery. Other times, Westbrook would pound the ball and pound the ball until there was nothing left for him to do but force a pass to Durant. At the 6:30 mark of the fourth quarter, he dribbled 14 times trying to find penetration before eventually fumbling the ball to Memphis in the lane trying to hand off to Durant.

Memphis knows every one of Oklahoma City's play calls, but that's like being impressed someone knows his own phone number. The Thunder run simple stuff. Often they punt after the first action doesn't work out to their liking, and the offense then devolves into awkward isolations from Westbrook. He ended up with 13 assists, but most of those seemed by accident than by design.

After a string of Westbrook isolations in the fourth quarter, Durant -- whether due to fatigue or apathy or a combination of both -- put his hands on his knees in the middle of the play as Reggie Jackson dribbled into a corner. For several minutes of action, the prohibitive favorite for MVP stood still idly in the corner, just like that. The offense has looked completely lost down the stretch. In the four overtimes in this series, Durant is 7-for-14 with 22 points while Westbrook is 0-for-14 with one measly point.

The result is that after five games, OKC is one of just three teams scoring less than a point per possession here in the playoffs. And that's including the bizarre string of lucky four-point plays. They employ two of the top scorers in the game, but they can't find any openings in this gritty Memphis defense, which scrambles everything they try to run.

But if you thought the Thunder's offense was isolation-heavy on tape, you might want to check out the following numbers. So far in this series, the Grizzlies have tallied almost 500 more passes than the Thunder. According to SportVU cameras, the Grizzlies have 1,717 passes, compared with the Thunder's total of just 1,239. And it's not getting better. Tuesday marked the widest gap of the series as Memphis moved the ball 393 times while the Thunder registered just 253 -- a difference of 140 passes.

The Thunder average the fewest number of passes of any playoff team once we adjust for overtimes. According to SportVU tracking, they've registered just 228.9 passes per 48 minutes, which is more than 50 passes below average and about 13 passes fewer than the next-lowest team, the Warriors at 242.2 passes.

Is this a season-long trend? During the regular season, the Thunder averaged 263.9 passes per game with Westbrook in uniform. So Tuesday's performance -- in an overtime period no less -- checked in below normal. The Thunder averaged 10 more passes (273.9) in their 36 non-Westbrook outings in the regular season. This, by itself, isn't necessarily an indictment on Brooks, but it's worth noting that Tuesday's iso-fest with Westbrook running the show wasn't just a one-game blip.

It's also worth mentioning that passing a lot isn't necessarily an indication of a healthy offense. According to a study by the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective, the Spurs have the highest passing score in the NBA, but plenty of teams dish the ball a ton without much success. For instance, of the seven worst offenses in the league, four of them rank in the top 10 in the study's pass score. Charlotte has averaged a playoff-high 331.3 passes per game, but they've gone fishing. So the recipe for OKC shouldn't be to pass just for the sake of passing.

But they have to do better than this. And that burden falls squarely on Brooks' shoulders. This isn't to say that Durant is faultless. After all, he did miss the free throw in the closing seconds of overtime (pardon Joey Crawford's interruption). And Durant did shoot just 10-for-24 on Tuesday to drag his postseason field goal percentage to 40 percent. Tony Allen deserves credit for much of those miscues and Durant's fatigue late in the game.

Fatigue is a significant factor. Durant has played 47.8 of a possible 52 minutes per game this series, which seems a bit excessive. Remember, he played 2,000 more minutes than anybody not named LeBron James over the past four seasons.

The Thunder are at their best when Durant and Westbrook aren't forced to do everything and they're finding open shooters, as a study by ESPN's Dean Oliver and Alok Pattani found. It's just that they were hell-bent on forcing Durant and Westbrook actions that they became predictable. To that end, their third-leading scorer, Serge Ibaka, had zero field goal attempts in the fourth quarter, and in crunch time, played more like Kendrick Perkins than a guy who averaged 15 points per game this season.

Durant needs help. And Westbrook does, too. For Brooks, time is running out.

Gregg Popabitch wrote:tweak only comes in here to toot his own horn.

a lot of people on this board think that lowry is above average or an upper echelon defender.

congrats.

WASHINGTON -- The Wizards say the NBA has investigated a person with a dicknose who made threats to the team on Twitter during its first-round series against the Chicago Bulls.

Center Marcin Gortat said Thursday after practice that there was "one gentleman who really threatened us, actually made some terrorist threats to us."

Gortat, who is from Poland, said that "he was saying there was a bomb on the plane and stuff, that my country's going to get bombed and all my family's going to die, just stuff like that."

The tweets came after the Wizards' Game 2 win in Chicago last week.

Wizards spokesman Scott Hall said the matter was turned over to the league. Added Gortat: "Some people already visited him."

The NBA said it doesn't comment on security matters.

unclebengi wrote:Isiah Thomas is so good on NBATV and so bad on any of his other basketball ventures since his playing days, hopefully he stays put. I can definitely see why he got jobs though, his charisma's through the roof.

Req wrote:I said he wasn't a star that you should tie your future to.

naturalborn103 wrote:For the record here is Lowry's new biggest fan

naturalborn103 wrote:Second round playoff exit in a terrible Eastern conference excites you this much?

VideoKilledThe wrote:For all the Westbrook hate he is one of the best players in the game.