Week 7

 

Week 7 NBA Thoughts

 ·         Watched the Suns and Warriors game. My takeaways:

o   Chris Paul is Mr. Clutch. Mid range master

o   Mikal Bridges will get some votes for DPOY. The job he did on Curry was spectacular. As the commentators said – that might have been the best 2 point game ever. Mikal had 4 steals and a block

o   I love Gary Payton II. Energy. Defense. Dunks. Great role player

o   Ayton continues to get better. He must be pissed he didn’t get that contract extension so now he’s ballin’

·    How much longer can the Kings go on like this? They just lost to the Lakers by 20+ points. Years ago that would be expected – but this is the 21/22 Lakers – the shitty version, with no LeBron. They’ve fired Walton and they are still getting destroyed OK, no Harrison Barnes last night but still. A trade has to be coming. Fire up the De’Aaron Fox for Ben Simmons rumours again. The hold up is probably due to the Kings insisting on the other team taking Marvin Bagley in the deal and the other teams saying ‘no way’.

·    The Blazers are 11-11. Dame is missing time. They clearly aren’t a title contender – so is he in the trade mix for Simmons again? Nurkic is a free agent. Some big decisions need to be made in PDX.

·    There was a lot of talk about the players who signed this offseason and cannot be traded until December 15^th. If the 76ers are waiting on this group of players – Morey is losing his mind. https://www.hoopsrumors.com/2021/09/players-who-cant-be-traded-until-december-15-5.html

·   The Clippers have 6 players averaging between 9.6 and 9.8 points per game. Weird.

·   Golden State is #2 in offense (113.1 ppg) and 1^st in defense (100.5ppg)

·   Phoenix is #4 in offense (112.2) and 7^th in defense (104.6)

·   Charlotte is #1 in offense (114.4) and last (30^th) in defense (114.9)

·   OKC is last in offense (98.5)

 

Week 7 JBL Observations:

 

We’re at the ¼ poll of the season. 25% of the year completed and we’re starting to see some separation between the contenders and the likely pretenders. Of course, injuries, JBL trades and NBA trades will still play a major part of the remaining 75% of the JBL season.

 

Maui continues to lead the way and this week he was able to get Embiid and Mobley back in this lineup. To be over 1100 points while missing 2 weeks from your #1 fantasy guy is quite impressive. The Ball brothers are fantasy dynamos. Add in guys like FVV, DeMar, Draymond, Lowry, Gordon, Bane and the list goes on. Maui is top 3 in five categories; 5^th in points and 8^th in FG%. Amazing start to the season. Maui is like the Cubs were….all those years in the league with no title. Could this be the year?

 

I was looking for some blocks on the waiver wire. Tough to find. But then I noticed something. Look at these block totals for the ENTIRE season.  

o   Drew Eubanks 17

o   Alex Len 15

o   Taj Gibson 14

o   Charles Bassey 7

o   Bam Adebayo 6

 

I know Bam isn’t on the FA wire and I’m not attempting to trade for him – but WHAT THE HECK? How does he only have 6 blocks? He’s played 592 minutes and has 6 blocks? Bassey has played 81 minutes and has 7 blocks. And I know that Charles Bassey isn’t a household name. But come on Bam!! I’m sure Brussels wants more. And now the news that Bam could be out for 4-6 weeks. The year of Bam just isn’t happening.

 

Bangkok continues to climb. At the time of this post he’s over 1000 points with a firm grip on 2^nd.  Strong in all categories except for blocks but with Capela’s arrival I see he could easily gain 3-4 spots in that category. I’d have to go with Dejounte Murray as his 25% MVP. He’s at 19-8-8 with 38 steals in 19 games. And his ATO is 3.477. And have you seen the steals this team is cranking out?? Dejounte, Edwards, Haliburton, Barnes, Mitchell…..I’ve seen them go 20+ steals in a single night (multiple times already). This is a dangerous Kok team. Kok’s best finish ever was a 2^nd place back in 2010 and he also had a 4^th place finish in 2017. I think this team can be a money team. Does he have enough to win the JBL title? That remains to be seen. He does have assets he could leverage to make additional improvements to the roster.  Would he really part with Edwards or Barnes to grab a bigger fish?

 

The Wack is in 3^rd and hanging around. Besides dealing with floods they are also dealing with no Ja Morant and no Harrison Barnes right now. I saw Morant on the sidelines of their game last night and he was moving around pretty good. Initially everyone thought it could be a torn ACL and now it looks like a fairly minor and short-term injury. The Wack is thankful.  Wack is 13^th in ATO and 10^th in blocks so there is room for improvement.

 

Golden is back in 4^th (at time of writing) but I wanted to mention just how bad my 3PT% has been recently.  Using my good friend Doug Stats I looked at the last 10 games for some of my jackers. Look at these results:

o   Miles Bridges 16/54 = 29.6%

o   Gordon Hayward 12/39 = 30.8%

o   Josh Giddey 10/40 = 25%

o   SGA 14/55 = 25.5%

o   Darius Garland 25/94 = 29.8%

o   Alex Caruso 10/32 = 31.2%

o   Brandon Ingram 12/41 = 29.3%

Those are just hideous results and it’s pretty much like a bad rash. It’s infecting the whole team. And because it’s everyone, it’s almost a category that I cannot recover.

 

5^th place French is currently 10^th in 3PT% and steals and 11^th in scoring. Missing games from Jaylen Brown and now LeBron is starting to add up. That said, I will never count this team out. Too much talent. Too much history. I’ll say it again, 1^st or 2^nd place in the JBL for 7 years in a row!!!

 

Seoul is now in 6^th. Just 3 weeks ago they were bottom-feeders. 10^th in scoring and 12^th in 3PT%. They’ve recently added Zach LaVine and Ayton and it looks like Zion will be back in December – so they should rise in scoring. The bargain pick here was Will Barton. What a year he’s having with Murray and MPJ out of the equation.

 

Arctic and Juan are still hanging around. 7^th and 8^th respectively at the moment. Arctic is doing far better than I projected while Juan has been hit hard by the injury bug. Juan lost Sexton and MPJ which is 40ppg combined really. I thought Juan did really well to snag Alec Burks and he’s been hot as of late. And Bobby Portis has been huge for the Bucks. Arctic could use some rebounds. If we turned back the clock about 3-4 years you wouldn’t think a team with KAT, Aldridge, Love, and Anthony Davis would be hurting for rebounds. Imagine if Arctic’s bench all came back healthy and to form – John Wall, Kyrie Irving, TJ Warren and Jalen Green.

 

Is anyone else enjoying the nightly flip-flopping of Idaho and Brussels? The defending champs are rising from the ashes (despite missing their highest priced player) while the gritty Idaho squad has taken the ‘Stars and Scrubs’ approach to new levels. Brussels could use some rebounds, steals and ATO (uhhhh, hello, Ben Simmons) while Idaho has 5 potential All-Stars and then maybe 4-5 guys who could be waiver wire fodder – or they could be impactful role players on any given night. We’ve seen Jeremiah Robinson-Earl have back-to-back double doubles and then go for 2 and 7. Isaac Okoro plays loads of minutes but is the 5^th option in Cleveland when he’s on the floor. Marvin Bagley, who the Kings can’t give away, could probably put up 14 and 7 if he was given 30 minutes somewhere. I’m not really a Bagley fan but why doesn’t OKC see if they can pry him away for a late 1^st round heavily protected pick and see if they can revive his drowning career. He has to be better than Darius Bazley doesn’t he?  

 

Speaking of our good friend Mr. Bazley. Let’s just take a quick look at some numbers in a 10 game sample size:

 

Player     PPG   REB    FG%  3PT%   ATO  STL   BLK

A             6.6      6.6     28.1% 25.7%  1.857     4      14

B             8.7      5.1     70.4%   --        3.600     4      10

C             5.0      6.9     47.7%   --        1.750     6       8

D             8.6      5.1     44.6% 39.5%  1.250     9       2

 

So, one of those players is Darius Bazley over his last 10 games and the other 3 are current Free Agents. (hint: Bazley is player A). 

I feel I can rag on Bazley because I watch him a lot. I had him on my team last year. I watch OKC games because I have SGA and Giddey. He’s not a good fantasy player. I’m not sure he’s even a good basketball player.  If Idaho dropped him – would someone else pick him up?  Now, based on JBL law, the moment I post this – he will go for 20 and 10 tonight vs. the Rockets. Book it. Tuna, you're welcome. These comments can sometimes light a fire under players. So enjoy Mr. Bazley!

 

The Jizzlies are experiencing the Cade Cunningham awakening. The shooting still isn’t great but he’s starting to assert himself on a nightly basis and produce some good box scores. If there was any chance of trading for him, the window may have just closed. 

 

Bellingham got Kawhi Leonard in a trade. He can be protected for $7 dollars. Bellingham has his cornerstone for next season. Unless things improve with the Birch Bay franchise they might be looking at just 1 keeper spot. And that's Kawhi. 

 

And a quick look at the good Doctor in Norfolk. Things are, well, how do we say….not good. Looking at the last 3 weeks they’ve been 13^th, 4^th, and 10^th. So it’s clearly up and down. If the season ended today there would be no keepers in Norfolk. Now, that said, as the season winds on, Norfolk does have assets that contending teams would be interested in I’m sure.

 

OK, that’s it for another week. Stay safe and dry!