This is going to be a long, miserable season!!!!!!
-Kyrie's gone
-No Conley
-No Capela
-No AD
Where basically stuck with the same team as last year, but without Kyrie.
Wow....where did it all go so wrong?
Don't forget that team last year without Kyrie went to the ECF. Add a healthy Hayward...Who knows it might surprise you. I loved the grit of that team.
Here we go again.....the Eastern Conference sucked that year, that's why the Celts made it so far. Had nothing to do with grit.
That said, Toronto could easily lose Kawhi and Philly could just as easily lose Butler, both to the Western Conference. Khris Middleton also doesn’t seem to be a lock to remain in Milwaukee (although I expect he will). So next year’s Eastern Conference could be similarly weak.
Also, in this back-and-forth we have going here about player value, does no one remember how absolutely terrible Kyrie was on an individual level vs. Milwaukee? He flat out stunk in a way that really couldn’t be blamed on relationships with teammates, coaching, or anything else. We were up 1-0 on Milwaukee, then Kyrie got into a really bad place that he couldn’t get out of, and ultimately took the team with him. He couldn’t make a shot, and his response was to shoot more, and more, and more.
I’ll take my shot with the 2018 team having learned some lessons in the last 13 months (coaches and management included), and with Kyrie elsewhere. They’re still young, all in all, and hopefully they can find that joy of playing basketball with and for each other. There was no joy last year, and it showed.