Who Will Guard LeBron?

I'm The Atlanta Hawks minus DeMarre Carroll do not look like an All-Star team anymore. He is the LeBron-stopper and without him, the King will have his way. Who's gonna stop the train now?

Paul Millsap had some degree of success guarding LBJ, but remember that before Carroll's injury, Millsap kept getting switched to LBJ and repeatedly got eaten on one-on-one ball.

Kent Bazemore scored a point per minute after Carroll's injury. He also officially replaces Carroll in our pick plans, but bumped later in the series as a last resort. UPDATE: Carroll will not play Game 2. Bazemore gets my pick!

Will Kyle Korver get more touches without Carroll? I am getting giddy about that guy. I keep on waiting for his normal game but that has not happened yet. Maybe the loss of Carroll can wake him up.

The loss of DeMarre Carroll to injury has put a damp on our pick plans in this series. I now wish Cavs sweep just to soften the loss off Carroll in DTTF.

My pick: Paul Millsap. Better on the road than at home in the playoffs. Game 1 stinker was an aberration. Hopefully he gets some of Carroll's rebounds. A cold pick at 11% owned, that hopefully should beat the 23% owning Korver. UPDATE: Bumping Millsap to Game 5 or elimination game (DTTF note: Unrestricted Free Agent this summer).

For those who still have Jeff Teague, he is the hottest pick at 27% owned but that should not derail you from picking him. You've seen him outperform Irving, and with the latter aggravating his injury, Teague should continue to perform well in Game 2.

Without Carroll, how many points will LeBron make?

UPDATE TO UPDATE: Scratch all that. Changed pick back to Millsap. Hawks tweeted Carroll starts. Thanks K and Anonymous!

Comments

  1. Golden State narrowly beat Houston @ home to take a 2-0 lead in their series vs. the Rockets. For Houston though, there is actually still hope. They didn't get destroyed in Golden State, actually they were quite competitive in both games, and they still didn't lose a home game yet. With that in mind, it seems this series might go longer than anyone expected or thought, since the Warriors, normally great at home, took everything they could put forth to beat Houston on home court. If Houston continues to play as well as they did @ Golden State, look for them to easily win one if not both home games, to everyone's despair. Golden State simply has not looked as impressive as they did vs. the Rockets in the regular season, at least not so far in this series.

    Best pick(s) of the night overall, and from losing team: Clearly James Harden (57 PRA) who put up a monster effort for the 1 percent that still had him left, and chose this night to do so. Congratulations, you are well on your way to Round #3 prizes, if you picked Harden on this night.
    Also of note Dwight Howard (37 PRA) was more than decent and Andrew Bogut rebounded for a very nice 26 PRA effort, after a miserable 4 PRA lack of effort in Game #1.

    My pick of Shaun Livingston (12 PRA) naturally failed to live up to the 27 PRA effort he had in Game #1 (Net Loss of -15 PRA). Also if I would have switched my Game #1 and Game #2 picks from this series (Iguodala and Livingston) I would have a Net Gain of +20 PRA (41 vs. 21). So another disaster by picking players in the wrong order once again.

    Horrible picks:Pretty much anyone not named James Harden, Dwight Howard, Andrew Bogut, or Draymond Green. But we'll single out Trevor Ariza (14 PRA) and Josh Smith (13 PRA), who were both way below what they have been doing, and Corey Brewer (4 PRA) who hasn't been a factor in this series at all so far.

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  2. Considering Dellavedova if Irving doesn't go.

    Please someone talk me out of it.

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    1. i'll actually talk you into it :p

      after all-stars, irving missed three games and delladova averaged 22 pra in those games. 29 18 20

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  3. For tonight, this is a must win situation for the Atlanta Hawks. Going down 0-2 at home to any team, usually spells death, and that would be no different vs. the Cleveland Cavaliers and LeBron James. If Atlanta loses tonight, a sweep becomes far more probable in this series, and even if they win, unless it is far more impressive than their showing in Game #1, a 5 game series seems most likely right now barring changes in how this could play out. The only thing for certain is Atlanta must win tonight on home court, or it is lights out, party over for the Hawks for the 2015 Playoffs.

    Unfortunately for the Hawks things don't look too good right now. DeMarre Carroll is injured, and is questionable to play. He seems far more unlikely to play than Dwight Howard was yesterday. Most reports have him walking around gingerly in warm-ups. Even if he started, which seems unlikely, how long would he even last?

    So obviously with that in mind, DeMarre Carroll's situation opens up opportunities for other players, and other possible picks. Carroll's replacement Kent Bazemore put up 14 PRA in 15 minutes in Game #1 vs. the Cavs. So to try and take advantage of another potential pick becoming available here, I will pick Kent Bazemore of the Atlanta Hawks tonight playing at home, hoping Bazemore can at least put up 20+ PRA in DeMarre Carroll's absence.

    *If anything changes to the plan, I'll revise this by picking another Hawks player.

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    1. Daytona, Carroll actually missed games in regular season, and in those games Bazemore fared well. lowest is 8 pra. highest is 27 pra.

      Carroll won't be coming back soon, i'll take a look how Bazemore gets used in G2 and then use him later if his performance is satisfactory

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    2. That's surely a safer approach, waiting until the player proves his worth. Unfortunately with many of these players you seem to get only one bite at the apple.

      Shaun Livingston for example: Game #1 the hero with 27 PRA; Game #2 back to reality with 12 PRA. And this happens a lot with many of these players. When is the right day to pick them? How do you know when they are going to fire off their best game. Obviously it won't be the day I pick them.

      So since I am picking him today, barring any late news, everyone else should pick someone else. Save yourselves.

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  4. I am not sure how and when it happened, but I think I acee006 passed the torch to me. This third round gets worse and worse for me game by game.

    My original plan for the west series was to pick four players from the home teams. In Golden State it was two of the trio Barnes, Bogut, Iguodala. Barnes kind of was not so good for me (1 rebound, 1 assist), then Carroll was an absolute no-show in game 1 of the other series, so I did not pick from Bogut-Iguodala but rather switched to one of the big 3 of the Warriors. I hoped for a good game from Klay Thomspon, and he gets outscored by Andrew Bogut??? Just great.

    The last two games I had Carroll (Hawks-topscorer so far) and Thompson (one of the splash brothers), my buddy had Schröder and Terry. He gained two points on me in the process. Ridiculous if you think about it.

    Tonight? Go big? Millsap? He might get the James task from Carroll, that will probably make him perform him below his average. Teague? After a great game 1 he might be the focus of the Cavs defense. Korver? Due to a good game?

    All I know is, whoever I am going to pick, he will probably underperform. This round, I can't make a decent pick to save my life.

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  5. Game time decisions:

    I wish these teams would just make a freaking decision on who will start and who will not play with at least some time to make changes prior to the game start time.

    You must have some freaking clue as to the fitness level of players. I don't think anyone is going to be miraculously cured of their ailments an hour or two (or less) prior to game time.

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    1. coz opponents monitor lineups too

      usually it's too late for dttf before lineups get submitted to the table

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    2. you know what? let me jump into the fire with you and take Bazemore.

      i'll take his 18ish pra.

      done :)

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  6. Caroll is starting - better change your pick fast.

    https://twitter.com/ATLHawks/status/601903094574796800/

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  7. I suggest changing your pick, Hawks twitter just confirmed that he will play.

    https://twitter.com/ATLHawks/status/601903094574796800

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  8. Let's do this. Good luck!

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  9. haha crazy day! in the midst of preparing son for saturday school.

    changed pick back to millsap.

    thanks everybody!

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  10. Haha, change Bazemore pick back to Korver.

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    1. Korver 14 pra at half. Are we seeing his touch coming back? I hope so. Need to see that so I can comfortably pick him next.

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    2. Korver was looking good in the first half. But the 3rd quarter, was where he got injured. Very unfortunate he could have got at least 20+ PAR.

      This round is not going well. Barnes(16), Millsap(23), Klay(18) and Korver(14).

      Now is time to focused on Rockets roster. With G3 I want to Josh Smith. He should have a bounceback game. My concerned is if struggles, the coach might bench him and played Terrance Jones more often.

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    3. one thing i observed about josh smith the past two games is that they are feeding him a lot early in the first quarter. and then when he misses a lot, he doesn't play much in 2nd half.

      i think it has more to do with analytics from on of their assistant coaches. they really put guys in the sexond half whose +/- in the first half is good.

      josh smith had two straight awful +/- in the 1st halves.

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  11. Well, on the bright side, everybody on Atlanta did poorly tonight, so it's not like any of us did well. Horford was looking prepared to drop a 30, and then he got hurt and was never the same again. I'll take the 20, considering how bad the Hawks did as a whole. Load up your best Hawks, this one won't last much longer. I've got Jeff Teague in Game 3, and then a decision for Game 4 in either Carroll, Korver, or ..... perhaps go Tristan Thompson, considering how much he's dominating the Hawks? I'll think about that one while watching Teague hopefully light it up.

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  12. Damn, 2 straight days of disastrous picks for me. Brewer and Millsap combined for 15PRA. Sigh, so much for a good start this season

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  13. I seem to almost always be the last post, most recently last night as not 1 new post came after mine.
    Tonight, I looked like a Genius (well not really with 23%) after the 1st quarter, I chose right this was Korver's wake up game as he got 11 PAR in the opening frame.... I came back expecting to see 25+ (certainly beat the 19 from G1) and to my horror he didn't even reach 15, that's right I thought I had it bad with Klay three nights ago when he got 5 PAR in the entire 2nd half, speaking of three that's how much par I got out of Korver in the final 3 quarters, THREE MEASLEY PAR (2 pointer, 1 assist), THREE PAR in the FINAL THREE quarters in other words 1 PAR/Quarter. He played 32 minutes so that is at least 20 minutes on the floor that he decided to disappear, I figure he must have found out after the 1st quarter that I was one of his pickers. Since Klay had 16 in West G1, I have gotten a combined 47 PAR in the last 3½ games (14 quarters) what a DISGRACE!
    If that isn't bad enough I aren't even looking forward to tomorrow's pick as I am not confident I'll be getting 20+ PAR from the Rocket I pick (most likely Terrence Jones despite 26%).

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    1. Korver was having a great first half. Until he got injured near the end of the 3rd quarter which killed our night's. I wished Teague would be a little more unselfish and pass the ball to open guys their forcing the issue. Thats why the Hawks big are not having a subpar game.

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  14. This is ridiculous. Okay, that was a blowout, no one of the Hawks was any good to beginn with, but 11 from Millsap? That is like getting a 20 from James. Which, by the way, will probably happen when I pick him in the Finals. For the sake of all the others playing in DTTF I should talk to aceee06, then we both pick him in a game, get his dud out of the way, so everyone else can go on picking him.

    Again, if my picks in recent hadn't been so bad I probably would have picked Kyle Korver who was hot in the first quarter and even though he didn't do much afterward I much rather have a 14 from Korver (who averages about 12 in the last games) than a 11 from Millsap (who averaged exactly 29.0 in the 8 games before last night). I also briefly considered Schröder who was the topscorer for the Hawks.

    Fair warning: I will pick Teague in game 4, Schröder in game 3. So everyone still not sure should go and pick Teague in game 3 before he disappears along with everyone else but Schröder in the elimination game blowout that's sure to follow.

    While I am at it: If you still have Ariza, take care, he is my pick for tonight. Right now, I picked the JET for game 4, but that my change. I picked him just for old time's sake (MFUDR).

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    1. By the way, MFUDR means: Mavs Fan until Dirk retires :)

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    2. haha i actually googled that and found nothing :D

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