this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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They are one of the top 4 teams alongside celtics, bucks, and nuggets. After that, there is a next tier of teams.
Id out the lakers in that tier considering their off season moves and having a year together with their core. The nuggets won by like a total of 23 points in 4 games, hard for me not to add them but have denver in it.
Lmaoooooooo
They were swept. Don't sugar coat it. 23 points smh
The Fakers starters got blown out by KD and a bunch of bench guys last night 🤣 Lebron & AD both played 22 minutes 🤣🤣🤣🤣
they didn’t win a single time that series. looking at “almost wins” is too hilarious
Point differential is pretty meaningless in high level playoff games. It’s all about who commands the games, and the nuggets clearly did. The was a full on sweep, no need to sugar coat it.
Competitive games that came down to the fourth..I dont see them a tier above the lakers even last years team. Not sure how people r so butt hurt about that. The Moral victory saga lol. I was just saying the games were competitive lakers got better the nuggets stayed the same. How can you put the nuggets, suns, bucks all a tier over the lakers? Dosent make sense to me
AD is amazing but unfortunately fragile, Lebron is only top tier in short spurts at this stage, and the rest of the team is made up of wolves rejects and average players. They’re a good team, but a step down from the top tier.
They are better than they were last year with this new team? Considering the nuggets loss players..how r they that much better? That makes zero sense really. To consider the celtics, bucks, nuggets and suns in championship contender level but the lakers taking a back seat makes no sense. Even if the teams were the same last year the nuggets and lakers. Neither were significantly better than the other to garner one a tier above the other.
Are they really that much better than they were? They added cam reddish and christian wood, who are both best known for their negative contribution to winning, and gave vincent, who is likable but if we’re being honest has only been relevant for a few weeks of his career
Stop taking moral victories on a sweep lol. The Lakers are a good team. just take the L and move on
lmao so the team that got swept is equal to the team that swept them? The Nuggets won by an average of 6 points a game, which was pretty much the exact Vegas spread for the Nuggets home games. Had the Lakers won game 4 and then Denver blew them out by 30 in game 5, that's still a worse outcome for Denver than the sweep even if the average margin would've been way up.
Oh no denver is better, but considering how close the games were and the additions they made. Its hard to put denver in a tier above them? Not entirely sure how we can do that after watching those games. The lakers are def better than they were last year. I would put the bucks, celtics, Nuggets, suns and lakers in the same tier.
Margin of victory is still a better estimator of how closely matched the two teams were on the court than game result.
If Team A sweeps Team B but every game is won by 1 point, then they beat Team C in 7 games but all 4 of their wins were by 40+ and their 3 losses were by 1, realistically which of Team B or C actually needs to improve the most to beat Team A in a series next year ?
If you want a practical example of this : the 66-win Celtics in ‘08 got taken to 7 by the 37-win Hawks, but they had a +84 point differential over the series (+12.0 ppg). Do you think if both teams had matched up again with minimal roster changes the next year that the Hawks would have that good of a chance of beating the Celtics just because it went to 7 the year before ?
You also have to account for variance in such a small sample. Per synergy the Nuggets overperformed their shot quality by +19 over the series while the Lakers underperformed theirs by -9. Keep in mind this accounts for what kind of shot is attempted and who is attempting it.
Meaning that if both teams had gotten the exact same shots they got in that series and had made them at the same %s as those players usually do, the point differential would flip by 28 points in favor of LA, which actually would result in a +4 for LA over the series.
Now these numbers aren’t perfect and there’s a rubberband effect to them so they’re usually overly flattering to the losing team, but there’s still some information there.
Lakers didn’t come close to winning the series against Denver. That doesn’t mean it’s not reasonable to expect them to have a pretty good chance of winning it should they meet again (especially since the Lakers got a bit better and the Nuggets got a bit worse).
The top tier is the nuggets, bucks, and Celtics. Subs are a level below that.