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

[michaeltex]

But this is ALSO a Luka problem and citing the team's on/off seems to gloss over his culpability. 



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.

One more time: I do not think Luka is the whole problem by any means and I think he is the most talented and important player on the team (and he is my favorite player on the team on top of it all!). But it is very concerning that the team is performing so incredibly poorly when he plays while performing quite well when he sits. This could change very rapidly over the next series of games (and I hope it does!). In fact he led the team in +/- last game at +10. I pray it is a new trend moving forward. We need Luka at his best (as a team player) for this team to really go places.

Let me start by saying I respect your postings as much as anyone's here. If you are participating, it usually indicates a meaningful discussion.

As noted, my trade comments were meant as sarcasm, but the +/- numbers were meant to show that Luka is not alone with minus values in the top players, outside of Brunson. But to me, this is a multi-variate analysis where only one outcome is given significance. We can all agree that we would like to see Luka improve by these measures, but I think the consensus is that everyone has to improve collectively for the negative values to moderate and turn positive. 

However, this measure is impacted by how others perform offensively (i.e., do they hit the looks Luka provides) which is also sub par so far this season, and defensively, which, while improving, is a work in progress. To cite this measure and say "there's the problem" seems to ignore all the other factors that go into a successful team effort. As I've had to remind myself over the years, correlation is not causation. 

I, too, was encouraged by Luka's performance against BOS. It felt more like what we have come to expect from Luka. Maybe we're just spoiled, but everyone wants to feel the Luka Magic™