So do the Warriors.
ummmmm
The Warriors lead the league in assists.
We were at the Thunder Warrior game last night (our Valentine’s, anniversary, and birthday presents to ourselves). What a great game and fun night. Disappointed my Thunder didn’t pull off the win of course, but you have to admire Curry. He is amazing. My ears are still ringing from the roar of disappointment the crowd let out when he hit that final 3!
That’s so cool you were at the game. One of the best games ever!
It was great! I was a bit worried cause I bought the tickets a few weeks back when the Thunder were playing really well and then they seemed to hit a bit of a wall after the all-star break. Was just hoping and hoping it wouldn’t be a beat down. I told my husband that for what the tickets cost (you can pretty much only get season ticket resales for Thunder games) we were going to sit it out even if it was a beat down. Turned out to be an amazing game & the atmosphere was extraordinary. We really lucked out (despite the whole losing thing!)
Looks like 3 point shots are the minority of attempts this year, at least among “good” teams:
35% Warriors
34% Cavaliers
28% Raptors
26% Thunder
22% Spurs
In terms of ball movement, here are the assists / field goals made:
68% Warriors
61% Spurs
58% Cavaliers
55% Thunder
51% Raptors
My son was watching the Warriors-Thunder game last night in NY and turned off the TV with 14 seconds left. This morning he read that the Warriors won. He felt sick that he turned the TV off. Fortunately, we did not turn our TV off. 32 footer !!
lmao
I don’t get why the assists are relevant…you get an assist for lobbing the ball to a guy who throws in a 3 pointer. And the % of shots that are 3 pointers can be misleading. If you watch the game, most teams plod down the court, make a couple perfunctory passes, then somebody throws up a three. If it doesn’t go in, and somebody gets an offensive rebound, they might take a shot or two that’s inside the paint. None of which disproves my point that the 3-pointer is the centerpiece of most offenses, as opposed to a last resort. It’s not just in the NBA…on the radio yesterday they were talking about a guy on the Oakland University team (Div. 1 school near Detroit) who hasn’t taken one shot this season INSIDE the 3-point line. The radio host was talking about how he has a young son who plays on a team, and if left alone at the practices, all the kids do is throw up 3-pointers, even though they aren’t even strong enough to get the ball to the basket from out there. As bad as the game is not, it’s going to get worse in the future.
Only about a quarter of rebounds are gotten by the offense, so a team following the game plan described above would have the great majority of attempts be 3-point shots, rather than 35% or less.
Well, the thing is, the NBA game today is uninteresting to many basketball purists and even a lot of casual fans. The lack of decent passing on most teams, the incessant individual isolation plays and the general lack of basketball fundamentals makes the mens’ pro game dull. True some teams, notably the Spurs and the Warriors, don’t have these flaws and they routinely play great and exciting basketball.
There’s another side to the decline of the NBA; the general public’s annoyance with being dissed and dismissed by the league and its owners. The sting of the Seattle SuperSonics affair still resonates in NBA arenas other than in Seattle. Sacramento citizens were ready to tell the Kings and their selfish owners to take a hike. The owners of the Pelicans were run out of town in Charlotte. You could fire a canon in the Atlanta Hawks arena and hit nary a soul. And frankly, the taxpayer is tired of team owners and league officials feeding the public “fuzzy math” about the true costs and liabilities of publicly-financed arenas.
My individual peeve is that I refuse to pay 80 bucks for a seat to see a group of no-talent 20-year olds at an NBA game. Try sitting in the stands at a women’s game; even the small college women’s teams offer a lot of excitement.
I love high school and college basketball but have a hard time liking the pros for many of the same reasons posted above. Being from Chicago I have very fond memories of our Bulls teams in the 90’s and I do very much enjoy watching Curry play now- but that’s about it. Derrick Rose of the Bulls has not had a very healthy pro career but he was a fantastic high school player to watch.
I stopped watching it for a number of reasons, first of all with the freak show that is the Knicks, there hasn’t been much to watch, and the Jimmy Dolan show grew tired. More importantly as a local talk show host pointed out (sports), the NBA is now entertainment first and competition second. The regular season seems to come down to ‘the stories’, for a while it was hating Lebron James in the Miami era (and then rehabbing his image by going to cleveland). Most games center around 7 foot players dunking the ball, and most of the game is around accelerated scoring, teams that are defense oriented are considered “boring” or “weak”. The other thing is, with the NBA playoff system, the regular season doesn’t mean much. Worse, even in the playoffs, you have situations where thanks to the seeding and how they do the playoffs, you often end up with the really good teams (like San Antonio) getting eliminated while crappy teams can progress, or end up with a weak eastern team making the final, while good teams are eliminated (not all that different than football, where a 7-9 team can make the playoffs,while 10-6 or 11-5 stay home). The other factor is live games, I used to love to go to NBA games, these days, even with a crappy team, Knicks tickets are ridiculous, why people go I don’t know.I’ll generally watch the playoffs, if there is a team I actually like, like San Antonio, who really play basketball, or someone like the warriors.
Curry is interesting, he in some ways is a throwback to an earlier era before we had the power forwards and power centers basically driving down court to dunk the ball, and where defense is often cast as being ‘boring’. Curry is an all around player and is like some of the old time players, he is an excellent point guard who is willing the pass the ball around, yet he also can shoot, and he also actually plays defense, yet he is modern as well, given that he can hit the three pointers accurately. Some gripe and say that the Warriors are a good team without him, which is true, and a lot of what he can do is because he has a good team around him, but that is sour grapes, Curry is a great player who also makes those around him better, he passes the ball around and other players shoot, which frees him up (compare him to Carmelo Anthony on the Knicks, who gets most of the shots, and teams know they can double team him and not worry, do that to curry, and someone else will kill you). Greg Popovich reputedly had a great remark, when asked to stop Steph Curry, he said you don’t, unless you tie him to a pole and shoot him…)
http://espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/teamstats/_/sort/defensiveEff/order/false indicates that the top 12 teams by defensive efficiency have won more games than they lost, so they are hardly “weak”.
Last playoff season, the only lower seeds out of 15 playoff matchups that won were:
5 Washington beat #4 Toronto (East first round)
5 Memphis beat #4 Portland (West first round) (#5 had a better regular season record than #4)
2 Cleveland beat #1 Atlanta (East finals)
San Antonio was #6 seed (third in their division behind #2 Houston and #5 Memphis) and lost to #3 seed Los Angeles Clippers.
People who liked basketball and are no longer watching are missing out. Steph Curry is incredible! I probably said that already. 
I spent 62 years without being a pro or amateur ball fan of any variety. Last May, I became a Warriors fan. Who would have guessed I’d be competing with my husband for the sports section of the paper? But watching a Cavs v. Bulls game showed me I’m a Warriors fan and not a basketball fan. I have to learn to breathe while watching games, however. Last Saturday was quite something! Will have to see if Curry plays tonight, but I’m also a #23 Draymond Green fan. Love his mom, too. A friend’s young nephew and his best friend hide in the bushes in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Andre Igoudala taking out his garbage before trash pick-up day.
I didn’t say I thought they were weak, I am saying popular perception, that favors offensive teams, that’s all,that the only way to win is to have the razzle dazzle offense.
In terms of regular season, far too many teams make it, and more importantly, what your analysis left out is that with basketball, with the way the divisions are, where the East for example is currently relatively weak, and a final that had San Antonio and Golden state would be a lot more interesting than Golden State versus most of the teams in the East (even Cleveland isn’t that great). Obviously, that is the NBA division structure, so there isn’t much they can do about it, but still. Having so many teams make the playoffs benefits the teams, but also is a long, drawn out process, too.
I have to laugh, my dad (who would be 93 if alive today), had a basketball scholarship to St. John’s University here in NYC, all 5’ 8 of him…very different world!
I am a huge fan of one team and watch only their games and no other sport, period, except for the Olympics. I am not Curry’s fan because he is not on my team.
For those who think the current NBA is good basketball:
http://www.complex.com/sports/2016/03/charles-barkley-not-watching-full-nba-games