Players to lead team in points, rebounds, assists in the finals and win the title:
1987 - Magic
2003 - Duncan
2012 - LeBron
2013 - LeBron (2)
2016 - LeBron (3)
2020 - LeBron (4)
2024 - Tatum
Hell no.
Jaylen deserved it for defending Luka very well.
Luka still averaged 29, but 29 is a bad night for Luka.
And Jaylen picked his pocket bad a few times, that almost never happens.
I actually liked what Jrue & Horford did for the series, more than what Tatum did.
Tatum is “the better player” than all those dudes, but to me, he’s...
I imagine Al will hang it up after winning it all, so you'll need to replace a big that can shoot, defend the perimeter, and be able to make some moves in the paint. Idk who falls under that criteria at this point, but I put my faith in Brad to find that player.
It's just goofy to say Kyrie was only great next to Lebron. He had playoff series next to Durant with identical production. But broke his ankle. Had nothing to do with fit.
He was a FIBA MVP on a squad of fellow superstars, and just ran through a brutal Western conference with Luka on the way to the championship round.
And the biggest...
Yea and Jrue had 26 on 80% shooting in game 2 while locking Kyrie up to one of his worst playoffs games ever in what was a close game...... could've easily been 1-1 and a long 6 or 7 game series if not for that performance.
I was thinking similar at first but if you look at the scoring gap between brown and jrue, also factor in efficiency (jrue was a lot more efficient)….their raw production is a lot closer. Also a lot of the games were blowouts where Jrue didn’t really need to score much after a few quarters. And we know Jrue isn’t a guy who’s gonna pad it. He has...
Kidd really ****ed up doubling him so hard to start the series. Basically allowed Jrue and White and Hauser and Zingis and Horford etc. to go nuts. He should've let Tatum get his own and stay home on those other guys. That was a stupid strategy. He was treating Tatum like he was MJ.
Jaylen also orchestrated the biggest stretch of the series for Boston at the end of game 3 when Dallas came back. If they lose that game then who knows what happens.
Imo Brown was the most deserving choice, he was far from great offensively but was much better than Tatum before the epic stat padding last night, and he played good defense on Luka too, who still put up big numbers, but really had to work work for them, and did so on much worse efficiency.
After Brown, Jrue would've been my next choice, he...
Yup.
My biggest beef was Holiday didn't even get 1 vote.
And I'm a Kyrie fan so that wasn't easy to watch. Gotta shoŵ respect where it's earned though.
I didn’t watch game 4 because I thought it was gonna be a blowout sweep and even if dallas won it still wasn’t a series
That being said it felt like it’s been Brown’s to lose pretty much the whole way. Jrue had hell of a series though, it’s close to a toss up. I believe I wouldn’t have objected if Jrue got it.
Guarding Luka and Kyrie are both brutal tasks. Kyrie just got done icing Conley and the Antman in the WCFs who are considered top defensive guards. And Jrue had him in a straight jacket. And then to top it off he shot on sniper efficiency himself.
Eye test wise?
Brown guarded Luka straight up and did as good a job as anyone has ever done in the playoffs. Whatever credit you want to give Jrue for his defense on Kyrie you must give the same credit to Brown.
Brown was the one dunking on the Mavericks in traffic, looking very explosive, hitting momentum swinging shots or straight up...
Luka is always going to produce. He averaged 29, which is 5-6 lower than RS and most other series he's played in. And it was a grueling 29. He had to work so hard for it and you could visibly see it throughout the series as games progressed. Dude was gassed and Brown making him work was a big part of that.
He also had almost as many turnovers...