Semi OT: Who's the real MVP (of team USA)

Davis is the best player on the team right now.

My head hurts when people talk about Davis and how he runs on offense. I watched almost every game. Davis ran a ton of pick and rolls and was spread out a lot. His jumped isnt completely consistent but has come a long way and is going to be very good. When his shot was right, he was unguardable. No Big can stay with him. He has to be the best big man to run the court. He runs end to end and can dish it. He has to get stronger but that comes with body maturity. The dude is only 21. His defense is great. He makes some of the most athletic blocks. He is so long and so athletic that he just can dominate on that end. The dude is just nasty and he has another what 4 years to his prime. Barring injury, he will be a top 5 player in this league for a long time. Also, he will be playing the 4 this year which will help him tremendously not having to bang around with the C's. Asik and Davis for the Pels is going to bring some D next year.

Kyrie to start again tonight against Puerto Rico, I think we will continue to see that for a while, Kyrie/Currie with Rose off the bench.

im thinking Rose is gonna drop out since hes not starting

Raskolnikov said:

Then why does he have to sit on the bench every other game. Look....Rose is the man...but right now today if the coaches could only bring one to the FIBA contests they would bring Kyrie!! yes or no? Rose is rusty and still recovering....its a clown question.

I think Kyrie is even going to be the starter. Kyrie, Paul, Rose, Lilliard is a hell of a PG situation, but you could interchange all 4 and be ok.....Davis is the lynch pin holding U.S. basketball together right now. If they lost him your starters are like Monroe and Cousins and you might get shot out of the building if a team gets hot and minimizes the importance of rebounding in the game.

Click to expand...

Chris Paul and Greg Monroe are not on the team. Rose on his worst day outplays Irving. Rose does everything better except 3-point shooting.

Raskolnikov said:

Kyrie to start again tonight against Puerto Rico, I think we will continue to see that for a while, Kyrie/Currie with Rose off the bench.

Click to expand...

Rose should be the starter. He to me, has outplayed Kyrie, especially on the defensive end. He started that Brazil game for a reason.

So Lillard and Parsons got canned while Cousins and DeRozan make the team, anyone else with me that thats bullshit?

Raskolnikov said:

So Lillard and Parsons got canned while Cousins and DeRozan make the team, anyone else with me that thats bullshit?

Click to expand...

I'm shocked that DeRozan made the team. Cousins I can understand because they want another big guy, but then they also took Drummond and Plumlee. I would've taken Parsons over either of those. Possibly even Lillard over Kyrie, but I can see why they did that.

yeah....Plumlee is just smart and somebody that doesn't make mistakes and the head coach trusts not to make mistakes and take care of the job of the big man. I thought Plumlee was making plays whereas Cousins looked out of his league a little bit and outmatched by a mish mash aging Puerto Rico. Aldridge is the best big man after Davis in the NBA imo, but all these guys are too much size for Noah to handle defensively, which is why I find it odd he won defensive player of the year....obviously that award will now go to Davis and Fareed for the forseeable future, next 5 years or so. Noah snuck one in just in time, and as a cumulative body of work it was deserved for the effort he puts in and Bulls teams he has battled for through injuries other players on his team would have sat for.

Man people are sleeping on Anthony Davis. When LeBron begins his inevitable decline I won't be surprised at all if AD is the consensus "best player in the game" even ahead of KD. He's much farther ahead on offense than people thought he would be. Hopefully when he becomes a UFA he will decide to come home ray:

Houheffna: LeBron

there is no center on Slovenia and that is the best you get from Cousins? God damn it, I don't understand the politics of that pick over Parsons who looks taylor made along with Thompson and Curry to bring home a FIBA championship when your PG's are Rose/Irving and you have Davis/Fareed.

I thought Parsons looked like one of our best weapons in the international game.

RoseMVP1 said:

Man people are sleeping on Anthony Davis. When LeBron begins his inevitable decline I won't be surprised at all if AD is the consensus "best player in the game" even ahead of KD. He's much farther ahead on offense than people thought he would be. Hopefully when he becomes a UFA he will decide to come home ray:

Click to expand...

http://www.cbssports.com/nba/eye-on...talented-anthony-davis-to-help-them-find-wins

ony Davis is an astounding basketball talent.

As an individual, it's hard to fathom just how good he's become after only 131 career games. In 2013-14, the New Orleans Pelicans' franchise player became just the sixth player in NBA history to average at least 20 points, 10 rebounds, and 2.8 blocks in his second season of play. The other players on that list? David Robinson, Bob McAdoo, Alonzo Mourning, Shaquille O'Neal, and Hakeem Olajuwon. That's a historic list of players to be on for any reason. Four of those guys are in the Basketball Hall of Fame and Shaq will be once he's eligible.

What does that mean for Davis heading into his third season, and more importantly, what will it mean for the Pelicans?

Try as he did last season, The Brow just couldn't find a way to get his team to win. The Pelicans were riddled with injuries throughout the season. Eric Gordon missed his customary 18 games. Ryan Anderson had a scary moment in a collision with Gerald Wallace that helped limit him to just 22 games. Jrue Holiday was only able to give them 34 games after trading Nerlens Noel and the 2014 first round pick to the 76ers for him. Davis, himself, missed 15 games.

He played most of his minutes with Gordon on the floor, despite the injuries to both players. The teammate he played the second-most minutes with was Al-Farouq Aminu. The teammate he played the third-most minutes alongside was Brian Roberts. The players brought in to help Davis learn how to win and fight for a playoff spot simply weren't there next to him. And the Pelicans were left fighting their way to 34 wins, which is admirable but ultimately meaningless in the Western Conference.

The Pelicans were a half point better per 100 possessions on defense when Davis was on the floor. The league's leading shot blocker couldn't even impact the defense significantly, and yet it's hard to deny his defensive wizardry is significant. The addition of Omer Asik, acquired in your annual Houston Rockets' salary dump, should help Davis shore up the Pelicans' defense. Asik's presence protecting the basket will allow Davis to play free safety around the rest of the floor. Letting him freelance on that end will likely lead to more weak side blocks and turnovers forced with his length.

Holiday's presence on the defensive end of the floor will be a significant upgrade over what Roberts gave last season when he offered up the same resistance as the finish line tape at the end of a marathon race. That help right there should allow the impact of Davis' defense to finally come through after two seasons of looking good but producing few positive results. But that only comes through if he can remain healthy after missing 33 games in his first two seasons.

Offensively, Davis has been very good but has so much room for improvement. The beauty of how he scores his points is how spread out it is in different aspects of the game. Pick-and-rolls make up 18.5 percent of his offensive possessions that end in him taking a shot, a free throw, or turning the ball over. Post-ups (14 percent), spot-ups (13.4 percent), put backs (12.8 percent), isolation (10.5 percent), cutting to the hoop (10.3 percent), and transition (9 percent) are the other main ways in which he scores his points. He's not a one-trick pony; he's a fluid adaptation of what the offensive set brings.

He's not great in all of those things either. He was good in many of them but below average as a spot-up shooter. Early indications from his play for USA Basketball show that the spot-up jumper on pick-and-pops is something he's trying to establish as another weapon. He made just 38.7 percent of his spot-up shots last season and was a 38.1 percent shooter on catch-and-shoot attempts. He was so odd with his jumper in those scenarios that he actually shot better on guarded jumpers (38.4 percent) than unguarded jumpers (37.6 percent) on catch-and-shoots. It could have been a rhythm thing with him because was in the 88th percentile for jumpers off the dribble (43.4 percent).

Davis was fine in the post and he was good cutting to the basket. But even his success shows so much room for improvement. He also made 79.1 percent of his free throws, showing he's not just some big man who can be hacked and tremble at the line. A counter move or more comfort with both hands on the low block will make him a threat you have to double. When that happens, a passing game could flourish even though he hasn't shown to be much of a creator for others.

However, that's the excitement in watching Davis' game grow from year-to-year, even after just two seasons. His unending wingspan and his adaptation to the situation shows the possibility of adding whatever his team needs him to add. But adding skills to the repertoire and making those skills translate into bringing the team more wins can be a tricky thing.

For Davis, entering his third season means he's running out of time for being judged as a remarkable basketball entity who could turn into one of the best players in the league in a very short time and moving toward the eventual criticism of whether or not his skills produce enough wins. It's an unfair distinction to throw at such a young player, but the results in this league always matter more than the results of the individual's stat line. With the competition in the West continuing to grow stronger by the offseason, it means the Pelicans' margin for error or games missed is minimal at best.

That will ultimately be the tricky part of evaluating what Anthony Davis means for his team. The obvious answer is "everything" but that's never enough if the process and talent surrounding him can't help him get to the results people crave -- wins and playoff berths. There is no denying his talent and impact, even if the impact doesn't come through right away in injury-plagued seasons for this organization.

If Davis averages 20 points, 10 rebounds, and 2.8 blocks for the second straight season, he'll be the third player (next to Olajuwon and Robinson) to put up those numbers in their third season in the league. The individual acuity of Davis' game puts him in a basketball realm few players have ever ventured. Eventually those kinds of performances on a nightly basis should lead to victories and enough victories to satiate the 24/7 sports conversation of constant comparisons.

Being a great player is one thing but being a great player who can find ways to lead their team to success is a standard in which all players are held to. We can see Davis has it in him to do that; we're just waiting to see it.

The rim protecting we have is like 3 Ibaka's, or 1 Ibaka 3 years ago, and its tops in the world. Davis/Fareed/Harden won't get bullied by anyone except a sluggish Spain.

This whole thread is pretty funny now that the FIBA tourney is over and Kryie Irving was the tournament MVP. I'd still take Rose every day during the upcoming regular season, but all of the discussion of Irving not belonging as a starter, etc., in here is pretty funny in retrospect.

Outlaw_Wales said:

This whole thread is pretty funny now that the FIBA tourney is over and Kryie Irving was the tournament MVP. I'd still take Rose every day during the upcoming regular season, but all of the discussion of Irving not belonging as a starter, etc., in here is pretty funny in retrospect.

Click to expand...

I'll be honest, I didn't think Kyrie would ever have played as well as he did, especially at the start of training camp where it looked like it would be the DRose show at PG. Once he sat out that exhibition game, it was relatively downhill for them.

I wouldn't have been surprised if Faried got MVP after seeing him play in the tournament. His rebounding was pretty huge for the team. That said, Kyrie went nuts in the gold medal game so it's not surprising to see him with the MVP. He was definitely better than Rose...which sucks to say, but what happened happened.

I would have chosen Davis. I thought he was a bigger difference maker all tournament long. After that Irving or Faried would get my vote.