(12-14-2021, 10:21 PM)KillerLeft Wrote: There's some truth to this, and I'm as guilty as anyone. But, two things:
1) I still think they're a lot closer than you do. I'm nowhere remotely close to a "blow it up" frame of mind, unless you consider ending the hellish Porzingis experiment a blow up. So, if I'm in their shoes I'm still trying to make this team work, and that calls for pickiness in terms of fit, I think.
2) Irving is an extreme case. Ben Simmons has had problems with his team just as newsworthy as Irving's but, idk...I feel like I understand where he's coming from, even if I don't agree with how he's handling himself. Kyrie Irving is so batshit insane that it scares me. I don't blame others for looking past those things, because hey, they might be right to do so. The dude is a top 10 player in the NBA, imo. But for me, it's all just too scary.
As far as #1 is concerned, I hope we see this team without Luka a few more games, particularly against better defenses. The Lakers are what I'd consider equal footing to the Mavs (full strength vs full strength) but Luka would have to miss the next five to see the likes of the Bucks and Jazz. It's hard to read anything definitive from playing the Thunder (tanking) or the Hornets (worst or 2nd worst defense in the league and missing their best player) but the performance against the Hornets is a little worrying from a big picture standpoint. The rag tag components seemed to function better without Luka running the offense and KP was great. Some of KP's greatest games as a Mav have come with Luka hurt. I'm just starting to think KP needs to be Batman or is completely the wrong Robin for Luka. I think they've co-existed better this year, but it just feels like neither can be at their best when playing with one another. That's not a knock on Luka and that's not a knock on KP, it just is what it is. The knock on Luka and a Luka run offense would be the performance of everyone else. The ball just moved better against the hornets than what we typically see. To be fair, I do think we've seen that type of ball movement from Luka in one of our earlier wins this season but it seems to be more the exception than the rule. I'd definitely like to see a larger sample size.
I'm still out on KP. Injuries aside, I think he's played really well this year and there are a lot of things about his game that I just don't like. For his size he just plays really small a lot of the time. Watching him try to gain ground while backing smaller defenders, he'll often play small around the rim and get easily contested by much smaller defenders, playing with a bit too much finesse in the paint instead of just attempting a dunk, inability to create quality looks for himself late in the shot clock, the quick trigger from deep in 3PT land...it's just all too much. Even more frustrating when you see him do the exact opposite and wonder why he doesn't do those things consistently.
As far as Kyrie is concerned I don't think you could get him for our bits and pieces (I also doubt you could get him for KP) but if you could and if you really think the roster is close, he'd elevate the potential of the team if he played. We might need to be in the extreme case mode to improve the roster, cupboard is pretty bare.