ESPN Insider Request

[JT123]

Will Kobe or Westbrook hoist more shots?
http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/story...n?refresh=true

[stalkerforlife]

Say Kobe is better than Lebron and I will give it to you.

[dubeta]

Say Kobe is better than Lebron and I will give it to you.

Let me sign ur permission slip boy

[JT123]

Say Kobe is better than Lebron and I will give it to you.

Kobe is better than Lebron
[COLOR="White"]at bricking shots[/COLOR]

[nzamcdza]

Kobe

[stalkerforlife]

Kobe is better than Lebron

Agreed.

But I don't have insider.

[ArbitraryWater]

Kobe is better than Lebron
[COLOR="White"]at bricking shots[/COLOR]

[imdaman99]

Kobe is better than Lebron

Finally some honesty and non trolling out of this attention whore

[stalkerforlife]

Finally some honesty and non trolling out of this attention whore

[r15mohd]

Originally Posted by JT123
Kobe is better than Lebron
at bricking shots

#got'em

[Jlamb47]

Lmao

[dubeta]

JT with the slay

[hawksdogsbraves]

Here you go amigos

[QUOTE]The NBA season is officially here. Six teams kicked off their seasons already, and the other 24 will launch their 2014-15 campaigns Wednesday or Thursday night.

With all the storylines swirling in the air, I wanted to boil it down to five essential questions ahead of the season. This isn't meant to be a preview (go study those 30 Insider forecasts!). Rather, these are some of the geeky plots that I'm most interested in following as the season unfolds.

Without further ado, here are five burning questions entering the 2014-15 season.


Bryant

Westbrook
1. Who will gun for more shots: Russell Westbrook or Kobe Bryant?
I can't help it. This is going to be amazing. In one corner, we have a fired-up Bryant who led all players by averaging 22.7 field goal attempts per 36 minutes in the preseason despite shooting just 39.6 percent from the floor against preseason competition. To put that in perspective, Bryant missed 61 shots in 160 minutes of action, which is about as many as J.R. Smith took in 154 minutes (62). Yes, that J.R. Smith.

Who cares if it takes Bryant 30 shots to get to 25 points as long as he gets there? Well, the opponent. It will be cheering like mad for brazen inefficiency. And with Julius Randle sidelined for the foreseeable future with a broken leg, Bryant will have even fewer players demanding the ball.

In the other corner, we have Westbrook, who at this rate might not have any teammates to pass to by Thanksgiving. I did some digging into the NBA StatsCube database and found that, over the past three seasons, Westbrook has shot the ball 265 times in 356 minutes without Kevin Durant on the floor, which translates to a ludicrous rate of 26.8 shots per 36 minutes. To give you an idea how crazy high that is, Basketball-Reference tells us that no guard in NBA history has shot that frequently over a full season; only Wilt Chamberlain has topped it.

With Durant, Reggie Jackson and Jeremy Lamb out of the picture, Westbrook might never get rid of the rock. Remember, this was the same guy who held on to the ball longer than any player in the postseason.

Then again, we can always count on Kobe, right? Buckle up, folks.



2. Will the Cavs defend?

Really, there are two parts to this question. Can they do it? And does it matter if they can't?

The first one is a little tougher to tackle since we don't have much to go on. The Cavs were strong defensively in James' first stint with the team, but he is older and basically mailed it in on that end of the floor last season. Actually, he was a below average defender at regular season's end, according to real plus-minus.

Elsewhere, Kevin Love is an ultraconservative defender with a minuscule foul rate, and the Timberwolves were about average last season on defense. Anderson Varejao, if healthy, can stymie opponents with his energy and headiness, but he hasn't been a defensive anchor for a full season in about a half-decade. Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters? Well, let's just be kind and say the jury is still out.

The preseason wasn't inspiring. It's not a great sign that just four teams were worse in defensive efficiency, according to RealGM tracking. How good do the Cavs have to be on defense to contend? Recent history says top 10 is the barometer. Every championship team since the 1996-97 Chicago Bulls have ranked in the top 10 in defensive efficiency with the lone exception of the 2000-01 Lakers, who placed 15th. While the 2009-10 Lakers and 2007-08 Celtics ranked outside the top 10 on offense, none of the past 13 champs have fallen outside of the top 10 in points allowed per possession.

From the standpoint of offensive juggernauts, the "Seven Seconds or Less" Suns are probably the closest comparison to this edition of the Cavs, and they famously never reached the Finals. That doesn't mean the Cavaliers can't pull it off, but champions have typically played elite ball on both ends. Luckily for the Cavs, there's plenty of time to get it together.



3. How will the league try to copy the Spurs?

If we're operating under the premise that the NBA is a copycat league, then get ready for a bunch of "DNP (rest)" lines this season (or a fake injury diagnosis).

We saw how the Miami Heat helped popularize the concept of floor spacing after they surrounded James with 3-point shooters en route to two championships. But it will be fascinating to see how the 2013-14 Spurs will impact the league going forward.

Given how dominant the Spurs were with an aging core in the Finals, the team's unique rest patterns -- none of the 104 players who averaged more than 30 minutes per game last season played for the Spurs -- could gain traction around the league. For those who were reticent to cut back on stars' minutes, winning a title might have been the ultimate clincher.

But don't expect every coach to follow the Gregg Popovich program. For one, not every team has three future Hall of Famers (Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili) and a 22-year-old Finals MVP (Kawhi Leonard). One GM was skeptical that the Spurs' rest tactics would catch hold, calling it "very, very hard to pull off," simply because coaches don't have the clout or job security that Popovich has. "Pop has five rings."


Davis
4. Will Anthony Davis put it all together?

Our annual #NBArank poll named Davis as the third-best player in the league this season. Reps from all 30 teams tended to agree. And Tuesday's box-score line -- 26 points, 17 rebounds, nine blocks and three steals -- demonstrates how dominant he can be. He stuffs the stat sheet like few can.

So here's the big question: Why does ESPN's RPM metric hate Davis? OK, maybe hate isn't the right word. But it listed Davis as the 98th-best player last season on a per-possession basis. Why the disconnect? Davis wasn't big on the little things that affect the scoreboard, which is what RPM tries to capture. He was often out of position defensively, which is partially coach Monty Williams' fault, and he rated as a mediocre pick-and-roll defender, according to Synergy Sports tracking. These things aren't picked up in the box score.

Davis is not a complete basketball player yet, and that's totally fine at his age. You know who experienced a similar box-score vs. plus-minus dichotomy ahead of Year 3? Some guy named Kevin Durant. While he put up otherworldly stats in his first two seasons, RAPM (a similar metric from RPM guru Jeremias Engelmann) viewed Durant as a below-average player, registering a minus-3.5 RAPM in his rookie season and a minus-1.5 in his sophomore season. Then, in his third season, as Scott Brooks took over full time, Durant took off in his new role and became a top player both in the box score and on the scoreboard (6.2 RAPM). If the FIBA World Cup and Tuesday night's game were any indication, Davis already is making the Year 3 leap. Scary.



5. Who are this season's Phoenix Suns?

I'm tempted to put the Utah Jazz here, because I've been high on them for two Octobers in a row. I feel like this is their season. But I just can't bring myself to do it.

Why? The real answer is that no one is going to be this season's Suns. I know. How lame is that? But it's the same thing we did with Jeremy Lin (guilty!). Lin and the Suns were such remarkable stories because they almost never happen. If we saw a team overachieve to that extent every season, then it wouldn't be worth talking about.

Last season, our Fall Forecast pegged the Suns at 19 wins, SCHOENE projected them at 17, and Vegas had them at 21. The Suns won 48. According to SCHOENE architect Kevin Pelton, the 31-win surplus is the most of any team over the past five seasons; the next-biggest overachiever was the 2012-13 Warriors, who finished with 17 more wins than expected. And the Suns won thirty-one more than expected. To reiterate: The 2013-14 Suns were rare. And that's what makes them a great tale. But still, get on the Jazz bandwagon, y'all.

News and notes

[Im Still Ballin]

Kobe is better than Lebron
[COLOR="White"]at bricking shots[/COLOR]