HALLELUKA: Luka Clinches All-NBA 1st team. 4th in 5 years

[mavsluvr]

I feel like I am taking crazy pills. We should be able to look at Luka honestly and his culpability in regard to the team's performance. 

I am NOT suggesting everything is Luka's problem or that he is bad or that we should trade him (that is all straw-man garbage that refuses to engage with the data in front of us). But to ignore that he is DEAD LAST in on/off +/- at -24.4 (next worst is KP at -16.1) is like potentially ignoring a tumor in my lung and saying I just have a "whole body health issue" and I don't need to do anything about that tumor.

Kamm, I don't want to keep getting into it with you, but I do feel compelled to speak up a bit in defense of some of the posters who are trying to converse with you on this discussion board. 

We do agree on one thing. It does kind of feel like you are taking crazy pills, sometimes, tbh.

"You are 100% wrong on this."

This is an incredibly abrasive way to respond to someone trying to have a discussion. That would be true even if you were right, but even more so when there are two sides. These guys are not saying at all that we shouldn't examine Luka and his faults. That's your own straw man. 


"On/off +/- would CLEARLY reveal how terrible you are at basketball. Because as soon as you sat and a better player took your place the overall team play would improve."

Again, you are responding as if this guy said something remarkably stupid, when your own proposition is far from being some sort of axiomatic truth. On/off +/- is a very noisy stat. Overall team performance, in fact, does not always unfailingly improve the moment one guy sits and a better player comes in. A team's performance is affected by many things, and it's rarely as simple as that. 

"I am NOT suggesting everything is Luka's problem or that he is bad or that we should trade him (that is all straw-man garbage that refuses to engage with the data in front of us). But to ignore that he is DEAD LAST in on/off +/- at -24.4 (next worst is KP at -16.1) is like potentially ignoring a tumor in my lung and saying I just have a "whole body health issue" and I don't need to do anything about that tumor."

Again, what is the aim of labelling these comments "straw-man garbage"? Besides being very rude, it misses the point. These guys are not saying that Luka's performance shouldn't be evaluated. They might be suggesting that you could be overreacting. And that is at least an arguable point. I might think an equally or more apt medical analogy is like getting a small bruise and rushing to the hospital claiming a whole body health issue and going into dire-emergency mode. 

Kamm, you know that my comments are not a personal attack, even though you keep pretending that they are. I am sure that you are a good person, and I am not at all saying that you are wrong to address Luka's performance in this season's handful of games. But it has occurred to me that your points might get a better reception if you approached them a little more diplomatically and less dogmatically. 

I reluctantly make this posting, because it makes me uncomfortable to see this degree of incivility on the board, when it doesn't appear to be warranted. It might even deter some people from posting. Or, maybe I'm the one overreacting, I don't know.  If you don't see any merit in these comments, keep firing away. I'll probably keep reading, either way.