Friday Bolts – 6.19.15
Darnell Mayberry: “Sam Dekker fits the Sam Presti profile. He’s long. He’s athletic. He’s versatile. There’s just one thing that could keep the Thunder general manager from selecting the former Wisconsin standout small forward with the 14th overall pick in next week’s NBA Draft. Kyle Singler. Presti and the Thunder might already feel it has its version of Dekker in Singler, who OKC is hoping to re-sign as a restricted free agent this summer. Then again, maybe the Thunder views Dekker as a potential better version of Singler, and a better value, too.”
Marc Stein dropped a bombshell column yesterday: “I saw it from close range in my role as sideline reporter through the Finals for ESPN Radio. James essentially called timeouts and made substitutions. He openly barked at Blatt after decisions he didn’t like. He huddled frequently with Lue, often looking at anyone other than Blatt. There was James, in one instance I witnessed from right behind the bench, shaking his head vociferously in protest after one play Blatt drew up in the third quarter of Game 5, amounting to the loudest nonverbal scolding you could imagine — which forced Blatt, in front of his whole team, to wipe the board clean and draw up something else.”
(Obligatory, “Oh, Kevin Durant would NEVER…”)
Sam Smith of Bulls.com with an interesting point: “The Cavs obviously got pretty close and we much overvalue the contributions of coaches because the TV broadcasters are basically all former coaches promoting the genius of coaches to enhance their own brands and because the coaches are the only ones routinely available to the media and do interviews two or three times a day whereas LeBron, who is one of the more accessible players in the NBA, might do one a day and skip some days when only the coach meets with media.”
Jordan Brenner of ESPN: “So would trading Towns for, say, Russell Westbrook be a good idea? Well, Towns’ net value over four years ($64.1M WARP value – $25.7M salary = $38.4M) is nearly equal to Westbrook’s over the two years left on his contract ($74.1M – $34.5M = $39.6M). But even that (unlikely) swap would turn the Wolves into only a 41-win team next season, according to Pelton’s roster projections, and leave the Wolves worse off in the long run.”
Kyle Wagner of Deadspin on Blatt: “David Blatt arrived stateside to a wave of fawning pieces about his tactical genius abroad, but in Cleveland, the high-ISO drive-and-kick stuff that made his Maccabi Tel Aviv teams fun never materialized, and within his first few months he had defaulted to leaning on single-use scarecrows like James Jones in crunch-time rotations rather than finding a way to turn Kevin Love—an obviously flawed but immensely talented player who operates best in space—into something other than an overqualified pick-and-pop role player. I don’t know how much this speaks to vocational ineptitude (at least a bit, you’d have to think), but it definitely speaks to a basic unfamiliarity with NBA schemes and personnel. Meanwhile, LeBron was engaged in a dogfight with Andre Iguodala based on things like How did Dre guard me on an inbounds play from this spot last year, and how’s he going to adjust to my adjustments?”
