12-13-2021, 08:41 PM
(12-13-2021, 07:26 PM)mavsluvr Wrote: hakeem, I have always admired you and enjoyed your posts, and have never meant to try to tear you down. I am genuinely sorry that you think I would even want to do that, if you do.
My position is that Luka should attend to his conditioning. Another of my positions, which I think is consistent with the first, is that I am not sure Luka attending to his conditioning is going to change much of anything with respect to the Mavs' disappointment of a season. Maybe it will. But I wouldn't bet the farm on it. Of course, he should do it, anyway -- it's the right thing to do for a multitude of reasons.
I believe that there is another widely held point of view that Luka's teammates are performing worse than expected, at least partly because of Luka's conditioning. That is the reason for addressing the subjects together. It is my hypothesis that Luka's teammates may not be stepping up as well as we would like, primarily because they have reached their ceilings, and not primarily because Luka is overweight. But I could be wrong, and only time will tell.
At any rate, I think I am getting my points across much more poorly than I intended, if you think I was trying to belittle you. I feel like maybe I should just give this topic a rest for a while. There was surely no offense intended, and I hope to engage in further discussions with you in the future. Carry on!
I think your takes over the last couple of days have been a little too negative. One of the biggest problems the Mavs have had this year, perhaps, overall, the biggest is that they've played very few games with both Luka and KP not injured. Most of the games they have had both on the court one or the other (or both) have been banged up to an appreciable extent. That, I think, makes it hard to judge how far off the Mavs really are/what the extent of the necessary changes is.
Now, arguing for the devil, most of Luka's injury problem stem from this left knee/ankle thing that happened when he twisted his leg at the end of a game chasing a ball going out of bounds. Obviously, players can be in great shape and still pick up injuries. However, it is to some extent reasonable to imagine that this particular injury might not have happened if Luka had been in better overall shape, less tired at the end of the game, with better balance and so on.