corrections wrote:
Jess wrote:
BULLSHIT! ibaka blocks ginobili on the backboard, no call, and then harden hits another lucky off balance three and gets the foul called. six point swing. stupid.
Ibaka has gotten away with a ton of goaltends in this series. I've been generally unimpressed with the pro-OKC slant of the officiating. OKC should be drawing more fouls but not by this much.
glad i'm not the only one who's wondering how parker can get mugged with no foul or where all of the phantom offensive fouls are while harden or durant can be lightly brushed and draw the foul. like game 1 when they entered the bonus with 9 left in the fourth. ugh. game 4 was just straight up lucky for the thunder. it's not every day someone goes 11/11 and perfect from the line (who's normally no more than an average shooter--it's not steve nash going off) on top of durant entering can't-miss-god-mode in the fourth quarter--scoring 16 straight points without a miss i think. that kind of productivity is just really rare and came at an incredibly convenient time. last night was just annoying. the ibaka goal tend and subsequent bullshit 4 point play (i think he missed the free throw? but still shouldn't've had the shot in the first place) killed a run that would've cut into the lead with plenty of time left but instead extended it from potentially -2 to +3.
oh well. okc has been my second favorite team because of KD--watching him play at UT was amazing--and a heat-thunder final will be awesome. i'll still be excited. spurs-heat would also be awesome and old school vs new school, but seeing the two most star-stacked teams in the league face off with lebron and KD both trying to win their first is probably the start of an awesome rivalry for the next decade. i can't imagine anyone beating the thunder after this season in the west (durant, westbrook, harden, sefolosha, and ibaka are all under 25 i think) and haven't peaked. i hope the heat can start to gel and build a strong, deep rotation like the spurs or chicago, because then i can't see anyone beating them in the east.
this may be an unrealistic scenario but my ideal move for the heat in the offseason is to:
trade bosh to phoenix for nash who takes a smaller contract seeing as how he's 38 and wants a ring (and deserves one) and have money left over for a few role players, ideally a strong defensive power forward with long arms and made hops or a center. phoenix probably wants to rebuild around someone younger anyways. i don't know if bosh is a worthy centerpiece, but surely they'll see more value in a young bosh than an old nash. and just imagine lebron and wade with nash. that would be awesome.
That's a truly terrible idea I think. They'd have exactly zero skilled big men (excepting the times when Lebron plays the 4) and that's not a recipe for success. On top of that you would then have three players who need the ball in their hand to be at their greatest effectiveness blunting three talents. Then you add the fact that Nash would have no shooters to pass to (a huge part of his game), that he's a defensive liability, and that strong defensive power forwards with arms and hops don't grow on trees. And they aren't getting any center of quality either (they've already scraped the barrel looking for cheap centers). I think this is a legitimately terrible marriage and use of talent.
They're going to have far less cap flexibility than you think to help themselves. Next year they're slated to have 78.5 million in salary on the books. The cap is projected to be somewhere around 60-61 million. Even if they got Nash at half of his 11 million figure (which is pretty damn unlikely) with Bosh's 17.5 million gone they'd only save 12 million getting them to 66 million still about 5-6 million over the cap. They could amnesty Miller or Haslem but that wouldn't get them under the cap and would leave more rotational holes. I'm not sure what the Luxury tax line will be (probably around 70 million or so like this year) so dumping Bosh would get them under the tax line giving them 5 million in mid-level exception money rather than the 3 million that tax-payors get. Other than that the only move flexibility they would have is signing minimum salary veteran flotsam. Don't see how they get two real front court players (about what they would need) to help themselves.
Addtionally, I'll point out that Phoenix isn't trading Nash for a guy who is viewed as a second tier star by many in the league. They don't want a riot and Bosh really isn't all that much to build around on his own. Phoenix needs to hit bottom.
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