05-25-2024, 03:13 PM
(05-25-2024, 02:55 PM)Knutsen Wrote: I‘ll feel bad for them as soon as they are out. They are a wounded animal right now, but they came back after losing 3 straight to the defending champions, so there‘s still a whole lot of life and fight in them.
Concerning your discussions about Edwards: I do think this series is defining for him, not in the sense that it shows if he‘s a great or just a very good player, but in the sense that it will be fascinating to see what he’ll learn and take away from it. Hopefully not as quickly as in this series, but over the summer when he gets back to improving and working on his toolbox. Will he be able to add an inbetween game - and an inbetween pace, to keep defenses guessing and making them a half step slower to give him the advantage like Luka does masterfully? Now that he has seen and felt very early in his career what it takes to win on the biggest stage? Which is a great advantage for him by the way, compared to other guys his age. Same with Lively, in comparison to Wemby for example.
The jury on Edwards will be out for 5 or even 10 years, if he‘ll become the next Kobe Bryant or the next Tracy McGrady - who was my favorite player at the time, because physically and skillwise he had absolutely everything and was probably even more talented than Kobe. But he could never transform that into winning on the biggest stage when the going gets tough for various reasons.
I think the biggest thing with ANT is that he's a star level player that bit off more than he could chew. I don't see him on the same level as Luka. He's a star for sure. But, a true superstar/franchise player has the same dog in him when they are down by 18 as well as when they are up. It's easy to talk and look like a dog when you are winning. People keep saying he's tired mentally or physically. That may be. Everyone is right now. But, a dog like an MJ has an extra place they go to like Luka has been doing in these playoffs. ANT has plenty of future ahead of him so we'll see how he continues to develop.
Luka showed last night playing injured and down by 18 what a real dog does. I've gotten on him at times for the complaining but he's showing signs of moving past that. Likely due to Kyrie and Kidd working with him.
Like Killer, I wanted Minny instead of Denver. Much better matchup.
This Mavs team is a gritty defensive minded team. And they are young with a ton of future ahead of them. Just a blast to watch.
Find me at Lakersball.com. I'm done with the Nico and the Mavs.