here's a very ordinary possession of nba basketball between the cleveland cavaliers and the golden state warriors:
start of the 2nd quarter, warriors playing man-to-man, kevin love gets a high post touch and scores. normal stuff.
the next possession, after a made basket, golden state goes into a 1-2-2 zone.
rajon rondo brings the ball up and sees it immediately.
he takes a few seconds to scan the floor, directs evan mobley to root himself in the middle of the zone and dylan windler to come around, then immediately swings the ball to the side where love just scored from.
the warriors slide over and load up, the ball swings back to rajon, who whips it immediately over to windler.
the warriors in the middle - gary payton ii and andre iguodala - need to account for mobley in the middle, nemanja bjelica can't recover from one side to the other quickly enough, and dylan hits an open 3:
so simple yet so beautiful.
random thoughts:
i've always had the feeling that miles bridges scores more with his right hand than his left but never had the data to back it up. they showed the stats during the charlotte hornets game the other day and it was staggering - something like 65% of his 2-point field goals are made with his right hand.
it's pretty overwhelming how much talent there is in the league at the moment. literally every single team other than the los angeles lakers is enjoyable to watch. so much skill and athleticism everywhere.
it goes without saying at this point, but lebron james is still unbelievable. the man is 37 years old and averaging 29/8/6 a game, playing as a point center. an efficient, meaningful, putting-the-team-on-his-back-every-single-night 29/8/6.
the dallas mavericks are almost unrecognizable now; they actually play defense, and their offense doesn't depend solely on luka doncic pick-and-rolls. both of those things should help tremendously when they get to the playoffs. coach jason kidd has been great.
evan mobley is a generational defensive player. the last rookie this good on that end was probably tim duncan. evan has all the tools on offense as well; he definitely has a chance to be an all-timer. people always say his comp is chris bosh, and i disagree - he's the gen-z version of kevin garnett.
i'll just leave this video featuring joel embiid, kobe bryant, and michael jordan here...
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