NBA ReDraft Playoffs 1st Round: 3) Valencia vs. 6) Las Vegas

[phlp_bj]

Welcome to the 2012 NBA ReDraft voting process. The redraft is exactly how it sounds. The rosters of every NBA team are cleared and then drafted again from scratch. Posters from the site draft full rosters under a salary cap and then there is a voting process to make the playoffs. We are now in the playoffs and the head to head matchups have begun. Please remember to vote for the roster and write-up you believe would win a 7 game series. Also remember that every player is considered as healthy for these playoffs. Thank you and enjoy the playoffs!

Valencia:
PG: Chris Paul | Jannero Pargo
SG: Nick Young | Michael Redd | Keith Bogans
SF: Danillo Gallinari | Chris Singleton
PF: Taj Gibson | Kenyon Martin
C: Brook Lopez | Greg Stiemsma | Hamed Haddadi

Las Vegas:
PG: Jrue Holiday | Delonte West
SG: Avery Bradley | Anthony Morrow | Jeremy Lamb
SF: Caron Butler | Francisco Garcia
PF: Kevin Love | Brandan Wright | Tyrus Thomas
C: Nene | Kurt Thomas

Valencia Writeup

Congratulations to Las Vegas and their GMs: sportfan, greg, and their legion of assistants for making the playoffs. They did an outstanding job building a playoff caliber team despite trading out of the first round to begin with, and we wish them luck in this series.

Vegas is a team reliant on its stout perimeter defense and proficient frontcourt offense. Unfortunately for them, Chris Paul has found success against the most stout interior defenses in basketball over the course of his career. He's also found ways to produce against some of the league's best perimeter defenders (Tony Allen, Jrue Holiday, LeBron James) in the process. In short, the most seasoned superstars get theirs even against the stiffest competition and we'll gladly concede that Vegas has one of the grittiest perimeter defenses this ReDraft has to offer.

Should Vegas unleash its most aggressive tactics by using both Jrue Holiday and Avery Bradley to hound our superstar and force the ball out of his hands, we could easily turn to our secondary ball handler in Danilo Gallinari, for whom Vegas has no counter, to ease the pressure on Paul. Gallo has proven his salt as a facilitator and more than capable handler in this league. He was among the elite initiating a pick and roll offense last year, contributing 1.01 points per possession which led to a score an astounding 52% of the time. He was also a highly proficient spot up shooter last season, scoring on 41% of his attempts (ranking in the league's top 100). Coincidentally Caron Butler, the most likely candidate for Vegas to stick to Gallo, was among the laziest defenders of spot up shooters in the NBA last season as he surrendered an appalling 1.08 points per possession and a 42% scoring rate to spot up shots.

To summarize, Gallinari is more than capable of breaking down a defense and with a finisher of Lopez's caliber inside and shooters like Nick Young (38% from deep in '11-'12) patrolling the wings, Vegas will find no success in their attempts to neutralize Paul.

On the interior, Taj Gibson and Brook Lopez will be pitted against the playoff newcomer Kevin Love and the oft-injured, grossly inconsistent Nene. As proficient an offensive player as Love may be, we are armed with perhaps the perfect defensive counter for him in Gibson.

Taj is not only physical and fundamentally refined enough to body with Love in the paint, but he's also among the longest, mobile, athletic power forwards in basketball. He has all the physical tools (not to mention the metrics to support his defensive acumen) to follow Love out to the perimeter and limit his productivity from long and short range. In the last three head-to-head meetings (we won't use statistics from the seasons prior as they precede the emergence of both players), Love has posted an admirable line of 19 points and 12 rebounds but on 43% shooting from the field with eight turnovers in those three contests.

In the '11-'12 season, Gibson yielded one of the league's lowest scoring rates (35.8%) and points per possession (.77) as a defender. He was particularly effective defending PnR screeners (.95 PPP - 44% yielded scoring rate), spot up shooters (.84 PPP - 37% yielded scoring rate), and isolation plays (.62 PPP - 28% yielded scoring rate). A healthy percentage of Love's offensive output comes from plays like these. To have an answer as reliable as Gibson, as well as two physical interior defenders in Kenyon Martin and Greg Stiemsma off the bench, gives us a huge bonus in this series.

As for Nene, a middle-of-pack big man as far his defensive impact, the worst he could do to us is neutralize the offensive production of Brook Lopez. We'll concede it's unlikely that Lopez slow him down, though a Greg Stiemsma off the bench would have a shot, but Nene or Love would be just as unlikely to hinder Brook's production.

In the 22-25 games Lopez played with Deron Williams following his arrival in New Jersey in 2011, he enjoyed the most productive offensive stretch of his career (2011, March to April: 23 PPG on 53% shooting). If the presence of Williams could create such a positive influence on Lopez's game, the magic that is Chris Paul would surely accentuate his strengths that much more.

Against an average interior defender (Nene/Love), with the creme de la creme of playmakers feeding him, Lopez is sure to have a productive series.

In conclusion (condensed version for anti-writeup people):

While it may appear that Vegas has the personnel to slow down Paul, they do not have what it takes (or even close) to neutralize both Paul and Gallinari on the perimeter. Holiday/Bradley alone won't be able to limit Paul, and using both would cost them valuable open looks for Gallinari and Young. Even if they were to slow them down, they don't have enough offensive production outside to counter the points we'll put up.

We're willing to give Love the benefit of the doubt as at least an adequate postseason performer (since that's all we have to go on), but between Gibson, Martin, and Stiemsma, we have the defensive personnel in the frontcourt necessary to hinder his production in what would be his first ever playoff series.

Most painful for Las Vegas in this series is their lack of offensive balance, which is not so different from the perennial lottery team Love is stuck with in real life. Their premier perimeter scorer is Jrue Holiday. We could probably rest our case there, but for the record this is the same Jrue Holiday who finished last season with a sub-.500 TS%, sub-100 Ortg, and averaged a mere 13.5 points to go with a 2:1 assist-to-turnover ratio.

Offensively, Vegas will find virtually no production from guys like Avery Bradley and Caron Butler. In fact the argument could be made that Butler does more harm than good for his team's offense these days. They may find some support from Anthony Morrow's shooting off the bench, but it's offensive creativity they lack and they won't get enough of it from Holiday or Delonte West, who is about as consistent as a corrupted politician.

Against a team with as much offensive balance as ours (Paul/Gallo and shooters outside, Lopez and Gibson inside), their frontloaded team will suffer its share of consequences.

Overall, a couple of critical mismatches, a notably superior offense, stronger balance, defense, and homecourt advantage swing the edge in our favor.

Las Vegas Writeup

***Congrats on PK & Catfish for making a very successf…
WAIT WAIT WAIT! Ima let you finish and all, but Greg and Sporty had THE BEST TEAM EVER ASSEMBLED IN REDRAFT HISTORY!!!!!!!!! #LovEra #TeamVegas #SinCityLegends #MamaNene #YooooAvery #Jrue>>You #ButlerBooties #CP3PPG #GallOnlyinitaly #NickAllidoisshoot #BrookNoboards #WinitforSK #SEAN-MAYNE-EFFECT #THEMAYNEATTRACTIONS

***The Las Vegas Squad is ready for war. Led by Greg Mayne and Sporty 6197 chicks on ma d, we're bringing our secrets weapons in for this one! JordanBulls, starvingknick, and DoMeFavors are out for blood! We got the real dream team right here! We're ready to pull off this upset! DMF has the secrets to disable Brook Lopez, so we got this game on lock. WE GOT GOD HIMSELF SEAN MAYNE REPPIN US! NUFF SAID. HOW DARE THEY DISRESPECT US WITH THE 6TH SEED! #SeanMayneEffect #UpsetCity***

PG: #Jrue>You (w/ special guest appearance Yoooo Avery) vs. #CP3PPG
Ok Mr. Paul is the best point guard in the league and wins this matchup, no ****ing **** Sherlock. But Jrue will not back down! Jrue’s part of Team #DopeDefense and he will be a thorn to Paul all game! He’s got a .54 PPP on off screen plays which is 5th best in the league so if they want to do that to get Gallo open, Jrue will be right there to eat it up! Jrue can also defend the P&R well, ranked in the top 30 in that as well. Avery is mentioned here because if you read above he will help out Jrue in defending CP3PPG Offensively Jrue is known to be a nice shooter from outside at 38%, but he can do more than that offensively. On iso plays, he had a .86 PPP. He didn’t get many chances in Philly playing one on one with Iggy being the prime ball handler, but he will get more chances in this offense. So Paul better be ready to get that lockdown D on cause Jrue is realtalk! Jrue isn’t the greatest playmakers sure, but in 2011 he did have about 7 APG. He keeps his turnovers down as well, only 2 this year in 36 minutes. Also consider the fact that he didn’t really have many options around him in Philly, with Brand/Hawes upgraded to Love/Nene expect his assist numbers to go up as well. Paul is easily the winner here but Jrue and Avery will make him work real hard and will limit Paul’s offense while producing some on offense.

SG: #YoooooAvery! vs. #NickDoesntevendeserveahashtag
Ewwww it’s Nick Young! Yayyy it’s Avery Bradley. Nick Young is an interesting player, he defitantly has talent but has not been able to put it together yet, and I can’t assume he gets his act together by this series. Young has been known to have been a ball stopping chucker. He’s been an apart of those cancerous Wizards team and even when he went to play with CP3PPG, his play has not increased. With the clippers he shot 39% from the field and had a PER under 10. 0.04 win shares per 48, very mediocre for sure. Averaged twice as many turnovers as he did assists. He’s considered one of the worst passing guards in the league and this is a team looking to pass. On top of that, Avery will sometimes be defending him and will be giving him a damn hard time on there. Young is streaky, so if we start out with Avery shutting him down and killing his confidence we can focus more on CP3PPG. Avery on the other hand is a fundamentally sound player who knows his role and does it, while Young goes for hero ball. Bradley became a great shooter the 2nd half of the season, shooting over 50% from 3 point all star break. He can also score cutting to the hoop and in transition with his insane athleticism.

SF: #ToughJuiceButler vs. #PrettyBoyGalo
Galo is the better player of course, but we like the hard nosed vet in Tough Juice. He had a down year, but still can be a decent scorer and defender. Despite that last season he had, he was still able to average 12.0 ppg. He'll most likely be our 4th or 5th option anyways, so not really a big deal. Galo also had a meh year shooting the ball. Only shooting about 40% from the field and 31% from 3. Do you really want that from your 2nd best player??? We don't really see how Galo fits in with CP3 anyways, since he needs the ball to be effective. Paul and that hog Nick Young will have it the entire shot clock! Tough Juice will be physical with the pretty boy all game long. He'll get in his face and mess his hair up! Butler when on his game can outproduce Gallinari. The problem here is that Butler's numbers don't do him justice here as he was on a more complete team that had two stars in place in CP3 and Griffin, so his numbers are not as good as they would be if he was on a team like Denver. #CButtz got this.

PF: #LovEra #LoveTron vs. #BenchPlayer #Love>>>Taj
Gibson is a decent player, but you gotta come wayyyy harder if you have any shot at stopping the Love train. One of the best players in the league, Love kills Gibson in pretty much anything. Taj is a good defender, I'll give him that, but Love can just hurt you in so many ways. He'll got the size advantage to post him up, will hit the midrange jumper, and bury 3's in his eye. Taj pretty much does nothing on offense other than maybe putbacks, but #LoveTron will be grabbing all the boards anyways!! And you may think he's bad defensively, but Love put up some great synergy numbers. Now he’s arguably the best offensive big man in the NBA, one of the best rebounders in the NBA, and hell a plus defender! This man has it all!!! Did you know Kevin Love’s defensive PPP was .79, which is good for top 90 in the league? That’s ahead of guys like Tyson Chandler, Serge Ibaka, and Josh Smith who are considered to be defensive manimals! Manimals! That’s KEVIN LOVE! In the post he has a .69 PPP, which is top 30 in the league. His iso is top 40 so he can go one on one with you too. To put things into easier perspective, players shoot 35% against Love on Iso plays, and 38% when trying to post up! THIS MOTHER****ER IS AN UNSTOPPABLE FORCE, and TAJ and Brook better get their lovin on, cause their about to feel the wrath of the Love Machine!

C: #MamaNene vs. #BrooksNObuckets #BrookNOboards
This is a good matchup for Nene as he matches up real well. Nene's biggest deficiency is his rebounding but he's matching up against one of the worst rebounding centers in the league. In their 6 matchups nene out rebounded brook by a whole rebound despite playing less minutes. Nene is VERY efficient offensively. He started slow this year but his time on the wizards and on the nuggets before this season Nene has had a TS% in the mid 60's. brook is a mediocre defender and Taj will be way too busy with Love to help out. Nene has averaged 20/9 against Brook per 36 in his career on an impressive 58% FG on 11 shots. In Denver, Nene was always 3rd/4th option behind Melo Billups Lawson Gallo etc despite being so efficient offensively. Here Nene will be our prime 2nd option and playing next to Kevin Love who will draw a lot of attention while also having a mediocre post defender on him I expect Nene's efficiency to remain just as good and really break out with a 20 Ppg series.
Defensively we have already talked about how underrated Nene is. Brook will look better with Paul most probably but Nene's defense is a HUGE step up from Brook. Brook will have a lot tougher time scoring than Nene and Nene has the rebounding advantage as well. Nene has a great matchup here and will be the big X factor in this series IMO.

BENCH: #Lebron'sDad #BangedBronsMom #SniperMode #LatinFlava #TheWrightStuff #OldMayneMagic vs. #Meh
We got the gunslinger in Morrow. He'll light it up all game. D-West gives the swag and some nice combo guard skills. Plus he took some of Bron Bron's talent when he banged his mom. Then ya got the Latin Ice Franky G. B-Wright put up some seriously nice advanced numbers this year. He gives that nice defense and energy. Then the legend that is Kurt Thomas! His old mayne strength is just too much to handle for the other team's scrubs. Don't forget about #J-LamborghiniMurcielago and #TyTy! We got this upset on lock!

OVERALL: We feel that we just match up really well with them and can pull this upset off. We got two elite defenders to contain the best player, Young should not be a starter , Galo is not a great fit with Paul, and our PF/C combo will go HAM against Taj and Brook. We also got the bench advantage! Let's make this upset happen!!! Thanks for reading.

[xxplayerxx23]

Close series, just looking at Vegas Write up makes me want to vote PKs, but Im going to finish reading and then Ill decide.

[PocketKings]

Close series, just looking at Vegas Write up makes me want to vote Catfish's, but Im going to finish reading and then Ill decide.

Edited.

[xxplayerxx23]

CF is so Quiet I forgot, My bad, Pk and Catfish's team, Im leaning towards you guys, I like the defenders on there superstars. Jrue vs Paul and Taj vs Love. Hmm I really like Gallo for a big series. So tough but Im going to say Valencia in 6

[PocketKings]

CF is so Quiet I forgot, My bad, Pk and Catfish's team, Im leaning towards you guys, I like the defenders on there superstars. Jrue vs Paul and Taj vs Love. Hmm I really like Gallo for a big series. So tough but Im going to say Valencia in 6

No worries. I just wanted to make sure people remember that CF was a critical role in this GM partnership!

[Catfish1314]

I did everything but the write-ups. I am a superhero. I also want to give Catfish some cake.

Fixed.

[StarvingKnick22]

The Las Vegas Maynes win it.

[Catfish1314]

I don't usually say anything about the opposition's write-up because I know it's their job to make themselves look good and us look bad, but I'll respond to one part of their write-up which disturbed me.

Only shooting about 40% from the field and 31% from 3. Do you really want that from your 2nd best player???

FG% is a hollow stat and one that doesn't tell the whole story (you know that). Gallo finished last season with a TS% of 56.3 and an eFG% of 47.9. Your second best player and go-to perimeter scoring option, Jrue, was painfully inefficient last year. Sub-.500 TS%, sub-100 Ortg, and he had some really ugly games in the playoffs.

[Mr. Baller]

Starvingknicks vote does not count as he was a GM of Vegas.

[JNoel]

Valencia.

[Corey]

I'm more torn than I thought I would be, but leaning Valencia

[Ebbs]

Honestly one of the toughest matchups for Valencia period. It's close I'll think a bit

[dhopisthename]

lol starving knick voting for his own team

[Raidaz4Life]

I really want to vote against Vegas purely for their obnoxious write up. But they did include their bench... where as Valencia did not. Why can't you guys just make it easy for me?

[Catfish1314]

I really want to vote against Vegas purely for their obnoxious write up. But they did include their bench... where as Valencia did not. Why can't you guys just make it easy for me?

I didn't break it up into its own section but I did include the bench. Bench players from both teams are mentioned throughout the write-up.

And technically they really didn't "include" their bench. They talked about Delonte banging LeBron's mom. Do they really get more credit for that than we do for not having an individual bench section?