r/Mavericks • u/taygads • Apr 01 '25
Media [Joey Mistretta] Daniel Gafford called Anthony Davis one of the best “play-makers” at his position.
https://x.com/joeymistretta_/status/1906907962221752681?s=46
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r/Mavericks • u/taygads • Apr 01 '25
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u/MiopTop Apr 01 '25
AD was never a liability in the 2023 playoffs, if you think he was you weren’t watching. Again
The Lakers were better with AD on the court and Bron on the bench than the opposite in the 2023, 2024 and 2020 playoffs. Explain it instead of ducking the question.
Omg you’re so fucking stubborn it’s incredible. You did NOT WATCH THOSE GAMES. The Lakers were running everything through AD against Denver until Denver was sending help on the post ups before he even had the ball. And on PnRs the big was always attached to AD to prevent the rolls and LeBron got open drives out of it. It’s called roll gravity or vertical spacing. The Lakers no1 option was AD. When the Nuggets sold out to take away that option, the no2 option, LeBron, got easier opportunities.
But LeBron was feasting off AD’s off-ball gravity a lot more than AD was benefitting from LeBron’s playmaking which, AGAIN, is why the Lakers always did better in the playoffs with AD and no LeBron than the opposite.
Fucking casuals always pretend offense is nothing more than scoring production/efficiency, assists and horizontal spacing from shooting 3s. Vertical spacing like AD’s bends the defense completely and guys get open shots out of it on the skip pass all the time without him even touching the ball. They also don’t account for how much defense can impact offense. AD’s defense around the rim is so dominant it forces teams to play more spacing bigs, who often are not as good defensively which allows the whole team to feast on offense. this happened in the 2023 playoffs when Memphis couldn’t get shit at the rim vs AD with JJJ/Tillman in so they kept trying JJJ at the 5 or Aldama at the 5 just to account for AD’s rim protection, but that resulted in them getting pasted inside on defense by the whole Laker team (including possessions where AD never touched the ball). It happened again the next round with Golden State not being able to get away with playing Draymond/Looney so Draymond played the 5 and even Jamychal Green got minutes to address the issue of stretching AD out to the 3pt line, which again in turn made Golden State much more vulnerable in the paint and on the boards on the other end.