AROUND the NBA: Pat Bev Suspended 4 Games Next Season| PHX Fires Vogel

[KillerLeft]

I guess it depends on the starting point you select.  In early January we spent the better part of two weeks in 3rd in the west.  Prior to the trade, we were 0-7 in games Luka missed.  After the trade, we were 5-3 (excluding the tank game to end the season).  Luka is going to miss some games, so that is a significant development.

Irving replaced Dinwiddie from that 3rd place team.

GWill replaced DFS from that 3rd place team.

One of those is a massive upgrade and the other is TBD.  We also moved on from negative on/court players like Wood, Reggie and Bertans (not to mention the 1,450 minutes played by McGee, Wright, Pinson, Holiday and Kemba). 

A positive on/court player like Green will get a bigger role, but after that it is just supposition to say we know what Curry, DJJ, Exum, Hardy, the Rookies and Holmes will give us.  We hope Powell and THJ don't backslide and that Maxi returns to his historic form.   One can make whatever positive or negative case they want, but the truth is we just don't know. 

BUT, and this is important, all of those unknowns don't have to be great.  They just have to contribute more to winning than Wood, Reggie, Bertans and the 1,450 minutes of end-of-roster trash from last season.  It is a SUPER LOW bar to achieve.

Agree with all of this, and I'd like to pile on some more context. 

I just rewatched the entire playoff run from the year before last, and REALLY, what we should be talking about here is: can Irving reach the level with this team that Brunson attained, both on the court and (my confident speculation) in the locker room? I promise that if anyone takes the time to rewatch those games, they'll come away realizing they'd minimized Brunson's contributions a least a little in time and memory. I'm one of his biggest fans here, and I was SHOCKED at how great he looked back then. He literally outplayed the other teams' best players on a semi-regular basis during that run. 

So, can Kyrie Irving have that type of impact here? I don't think we know yet, but there is definitely reason to hope so. If he can, I can see them reaching a similar level to that playoff team at some point this season, and I can see it seeming in hindsight like we should've known they'd be a top-4 team all along. They basically messed up the Brunson situation and had to take a mulligan on an entire season trying to fix that mistake. If they were successful, we might be in for a treat. 

Luka's conditioning and general outlook on the season will play a huge part, too. I know he put up huge numbers last season, but when you look at his efficiency in the clutch portions of all those close games they lost (which were mostly wins the prior season) I think it's pretty clear last year was sort of a delayed "sophomore wall" from him.