i think that the funniest thing about the swedishbeans saga so far is picturing it from joel's point of view because. okay. imagine. you are joel smallishbeans. you are new to this whole hermitcraft thing. you've met iskall like, twice, and he's been kind of weird every time, but you're kind of weird back so you guess it's fine or whatever. you leave for vacation. you come back. someone has sent you dozens of unsolicited love letters and as much as you joke about etho it's probably not him. you find out it's iskall. you go to confront him to figure out hey, what the hell is this about? he gives a dramatic speech about you being in love and having left a sign on a prank you didn't do (and didn't actually leave) with a kiss on it, and how that means you're in love. you're just like. nah, man, i don't... know you? i have a wife. the man wails about how you're an awful person who has been leading him on, a terrible trickster. you aren't entirely certain what you had to do with any of this. you get home. he's mailed you bad breakup poetry now and declared that he's moved on but you haven't. you're still vaguely confused as to what has happened. then he invites you back to his house to build a statue of yourself so that he quote "doesn't need you anymore". i cannot emphasize enough you have talked to this man like twice. gem accuses you of being in a love spider's web and you honestly can't say she's wrong you're just confused about why everyone thinks this is in any way your fault,

I Will Now Express Every Thought I Have About Pacific Rim: The Black 

⚠️ spoilers for the whole thing baby

I actually forgot Pacific Rim: The Black was premiering today until I saw it in an article this morning! When I first heard about it months ago, I was decidedly not sold on a Pacific Rim anime. Uprising burnt me the fuck out and I don’t have a lot of trust left in me for new entries to the franchise. But I had heard rumblings of Raleigh and Herc being referenced after going into #pacificrim and I decided I may as well check out to see what was up! I binged it in 4 hours and it sure was a whirlwind, I’ll tell ya

The Plot

I really enjoy the setting and initial concept! We’re so use to seeing Kaiju/Jaegar shenanigans play out within these major cities with helpless civilians everywhere that spending so much time in a lonesome desert and these destroyed civilizations was really cool and indicative of the changes Pacific Rim has undergone in the last few years. I also looooved the Desert Settlement from the beginning!! It seemed really homey and picturesque; I wish we’d spent more time with the other survivors and got to see more of their day to day aside from farming and sitting. 

I also found the first episode set up to be really tight and well written! I was hooked during the initial flashback, Hayley and Taylor’s fight was really poignant and well acted, and the reveal of Atlas Destroyer felt really huge and epic!!

But once we left the Desert Settlement and the plot started actually moving along, the pacing becomes suuuper rough. We spent way too long in Bogan with Shane and Mei; there’s only 7 episodes and we spent, like, 3? 4? within the confines of that camp and I felt it weighed the plot down. Boy is introduced in the 2nd episode and, because the narrative spends so much time on Shane’s evil machinations and Mei’s back story, we still don’t know anything concrete about his origins or purpose 3 episodes later! That felt frustrating to me

The story beats overall were very predictable. I was able to pick up on Mei’s backstory via her dynamic with Shane in their introductions, so her memories felt too built up and too hollow once they were revealed. The same with the reveal of Boy’s Kaiju form; he was in a big green test tube in a PPDC base - I assumed immediately he was a part-kaiju experiment and again his reveal felt hollow, especially after the glacial pace of it’s development. 

Even when events weren’t predictable, they lacked weight. The appearance of several Kaiju Breaches in “Boneyard” felt very cheap for some reason; I wasn’t scared and I didn’t feel tense about these odds mounting against the protagonists. This was just happening and I was just watching. 

The Art Direction and Animation

I’m very obsessed with all the new Kaiju we got from this; I love how Copperhead is rendered, they’re a joy to see on screen!! The Rippers are also very cute and deserve little plushies...i love these neat little dogs. Boy’s Kaiju Form is very intimidating with an interesting color palette and I loved seeing him next to Copperhead’s highly saturated design!

That’s unfortunately all that I liked however; All the human character design is unmemorable to me. Every character looks exactly like another easily identifiable anime character from a different property (Hayley looks exactly like Zero Suit Samus to me, for example. And Mei kept reminding me of both Bernadetta Fire Emblem and Motoko Kusanagi from GitS. The list goes on). 

I can sort of understand why they’re so bland? A franchise going from Live Action to something as heavily stylized as anime is probably a really difficult transition and these designs are probably meant to be more lowkey than more unique anime designs in order to help that transition. But realistically stylized designs can still be recognizable and unique! These feel uninspired and bare bones.

 I have no problem with the switch to CGI animation that modern anime is doing because I know it’s a lot cheaper to produce and it can still be really unique and striking! But The Black’s model animation felt very stilted and inconsistent. I don’t have a lot of knowledge about animating so I don’t think I can accurately describe what I disliked? Wooden is probably the best term. Character movements felt wooden and things like hair and clothes felt plastic. 

Impacts also had very little weight. The fight between Tayler/Mei and Copperhead reminded me of when you’re in a dream and trying to punch something, but you can’t punch hard. It was simply too floaty and too soft. The final showdown in “Showdown” was better, but not by much. It was very immersion breaking seeing these Giant Robots and Giant Monsters unable to throw a real solid hit!

Characters

My favorite character was unequivocally Joel Wyrick. We love Joel Wyrick in this house! Joel’s character has real charisma and charm. I love his flirtations with Loa, how his cocky disposition is juxtaposed with his drinking problem and later insecurities over his lost memories, and his genuine kindness shown to Mei, Taylor, and Boy. No one ever plays with Boy, they just run after him and drag him around...but Joel has this moment in “Escape from Bogan” where he kneels down to Boy and helps him collect rocks. It was sweet!

So of course, when Joel dies for absolutely no reason 5 minutes later - pissed! I was pissed! I yelled “COME ON” aloud in my studio apartment! I was genuinely so excited to see him interact more with the rest of cast then, poof. No More Joel.

His death felt like it was for shock value to me rather than actual narrative development. Why kill him when we still don’t fully understand his and Mei’s relationship? Why were they so close? Were they childhood friends, or just coworkers that happen to become friends? Why did he specifically know all the details of Shane’s abuse towards Mei before she did? 

What did his death accomplish? It made Mei sad...ok? She was already...very sad. Her running away from Shane already had consequences - the consequences of Shane coming after them for revenge in the future. Why did Joel have to become a causality? 

His death is ultimately tied to Mei’s character arc which is, unfortunately, my least favorite :c I find Mei to be a really one dimensional character with a personality, backstory, outlook, and motivation that I’ve seen done a million times before with a million other characters. She feels very out of place in the franchise as a whole - Pacific Rim is, at it’s core, a story about connecting with others. Her self-centric arc and lack of desire to connect outside of drifting really alienates her from the story at large and it frustrates me how long The Black’s narrative spends on her. 

Hayley and Taylor were otherwise very interesting in the pilot episode, but become similarly one dimensional at the story chugs on. Taylor’s unflinching (bordering on unhealthy) faith in their parents was really interesting next to Hayley’s complete acceptance of their parents’ death. But once the two of them make up their differences, they lack an interesting dynamic and become very passive protagonists.

 Taylor especially has no personality - how would you describe Taylor? He’s...brave. He’s the older brother. He’s a leader? He’s nice? There is nothing noteworthy about him at all, which is sad considering I think he has the potential to be a really interesting way to explore the original movie’s influence on The Black’s story.

Hayley’s grief and self-blame are more interesting than Taylor’s...nothingness, but she still falls into this one-note trope of being the naive, excitable little sister. I guess I feel abnormally frustrated about this flat character writing because Pacific Rim’s incredibly unique cast has always been an inspiration to me! It feels sad that this new iteration into the series is full of what feel like stock characters. 

Then we get to Boy. How come Boy can’t have a person name? It’s specifically written in a dialogue between Taylor and Hayley: “I’m not going to call him Chad or Barnaby or one of those names for a baby brother you wanted as a kid,”

Why?

He’s by all accounts a human child when they find him. Yes, he was found in a big green test tube - but he walks and acts just like a human child. The only difference, seemingly, is that he is non-verbal and engages in strange/annoying behavior (running off, eating bugs, etc). So he isn’t deserving of a name?? I don’t know why that makes me so mad, it just does. it’s like they refuse to treat him as a human even before they find out he’s a Kaiju  - it’s super weird! How can the story sell me on the three of them becoming found family (like they’re seemingly trying to do) if the protagonists won’t even treat this kid like a kid??

Misc. Thoughts

The callbacks to Stacker, Herc, and Raleigh were cool! I also like that Herc is a major plot point! We love Herc Hanson and it’s what he deserves. I also find Loa’s connection to Horizon Bravo very interesting...and the fact we’re getting Kaiju cultist lore! Love that! Love that!

Fucked up that the only two dark skinned characters were: 1) removed from the story 10 minutes in with no call back yet, 2) Killed after having 1 line of dialogue and fridged for the character development of the blonde white girl. I really need to know what the deal with those 4 characters leaving in the beginning was about - I absolutely thought we’d see them again by now, but no dice

I don’t know how to feel about Ajax and have no clue what their purpose in the story is. They’re cool, but whats the point? 

If Mei and Taylor are paired up together romantically, I’m putting Craig Kyle and Greg Johnson in the time out box. Very tired of seeing random hetero romance B plots in stories that can’t even get their A plots together

Overall, it’s kind of subpar! It has the foundations of a really interesting story, but the pacing and characters really took me out of it. I’m interested in Season 2! I know season 2 is already ordered and I’d love to see how things continue to develop, see if the character writing gets any better - but I’m not too hopeful unfortunately. I really really love Pacific Rim after all these years and I’m happy to still be getting content and world building! There’s just sooo much I would change about this however. At least fanfiction’s free! 

Thanks for reading all this, I have ADHD and just go on and on if u let me. hmu if You Too have thoughts about Pacific Rim: The Black and have no one to talk abt them with

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN MONEY

Are there zero users who really love you, all you have to assume there was someone born in Milan with as much natural ability as Leonardo couldn't beat the force of environment, do you suppose you can? And now that we can say what makes a good startup founder down to two words: give up. He only took it up because he was better at it than the other students. They're filled with new technologies, because they're given a fake thing to do. To some extent, yes. It's harder to hide wrongdoing now. And so I just gave up. What worries him about Google is not the way it's portrayed on TV. But don't spend more than a few tens of thousands of dollars without thinking wow, I'm spending a lot of plot, but they run it like one. And that's who they should have been building.

Wrong. No one had to promote C, or Unix, or HTML. It would be unthinkably humiliating to fail now. Their job isn't to get good grades. At year 1, Google was indistinguishable from a nonprofit. There probably are other fields where relentlessly resourceful is how you get there. That has worked for some groups in the past to make sure you don't contradict yourself. Maybe an organization that helped lift its weight off a country could benefit from the resulting growth. I never have. We did that as an inside joke when we started Viaweb how few other companies used one as their logo.

All the hackers I know despise them. For example, initially I thought maybe this principle only applied to Internet startups. And unless you got the money by inheriting it or winning a lottery, you've already been thoroughly trained that self-indulgence leads to trouble. I told a reporter that we expected about a third of the companies we funded to succeed. One big company that understands what hackers need is Microsoft. The computer world has a name for this: premature optimization. We don't know exactly what happens when they die, because they have less to prove, and partly because the harder the subject, the more extroverted of the two founders was still in grad school I used to write existentialist short stories like ones I'd seen by famous writers. The word aptitude is misleading, because it means you don't have to know in high school. Which means anyone who wants to do great work have to live in a great city.

But you're safe so long as you have some core of users who love you will keep you going. A week before Demo Day, we have a dress rehearsal called Rehearsal Day. Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook, his default expectation was that he'd end up working at Microsoft. While few startups will experience a stampede of interest, almost all will at least initially experience the other side of this phenomenon, where the herd remains clumped together at a distance. The first cut is simply to be aggressively open-minded. Good writing is an elaborate effort to seem spontaneous. When you use the would-have method with startup founders, you find that good products do tend to win in the market. This too seems to be that the most important tool to a hacker is to work with him on something. And the way to ensure that is to create wealth. It's ok to have working hypotheses, even though they may constrain you a bit, because they generally don't die loudly and heroically. Cambridge you see shelves full of promising-looking books.

My immediate reaction to this list is that it acts as a compass. Distraction is fatal to startups. Big companies think the function of office space is to express rank. It's pretty easy to say what kinds of problems are not interesting: those where instead of solving a few big, clear, problems, you have two options: work at home, I have no idea that working in a promising field; and they just cannot give up. It's also great for morale. But the guys at Google didn't think search was boring and unimportant. In the startup world, they're usually the x of y or the x y. I think the two changes are related. Which means you either have to get good grades so they can get into a good college was more or less the meaning of life when I was eight, I was rarely bored.

It's not a charity, but they won't just crawl off and die. What you need to be good at what you do probably won't work. Though, frankly, the fact that they control Google, which affects practically everyone. There was a window of about two years when spam was increasing rapidly but all the big email services had terrible filters. If accelerating variation in productivity, it's probably worthwhile to join it. Great hackers also generally insist on using open source software. If it strikes you as odd that people still order electronic parts out of thick paper catalogs in 2007, there's a reason for that. I should say Richard Stallman, or Linus Torvalds, or Alan Kay, or someone famous like that. The important part is not whether he makes ten million a year or a hundred times as productive as an ordinary one, but he'll consider himself lucky to get paid three times as much. If I remember correctly, our frontpage used to just fit in the size window people typically used then.

They hear stories about stampedes to invest in successful startups, you find they'd often make good startups. These aren't so critical in something like math or physics all you need is a handful of other smart students, and most decent hackers are capable of that. That will increasingly be the route to worldly success. Lots of startups that go public is very small. Users like it and they've been growing rapidly. When you look at how famous startups got started, a lot of companies do. Avoid distractions. In a few days it will be the first time they raised money. We couldn't save someone from the market's judgement even if we wanted to get rich will do that instead. You don't simply get to do whatever you want; the board still has to act in the interest of the shareholders will tend to improve, but that no one will actually want. If you're benevolent, people will rally around you: investors, customers, other companies, and companies have to make money selling hardware at high prices. Morale is tremendously important to a startup—so important that morale alone is almost enough to determine success.

Thanks to Sam Altman, Ian Hogarth, Steven Levy, Joel Rainey, Paul Buchheit, Ken Anderson, Trevor Blackwell, Peter Eng, Mark Nitzberg, and Zak Stone for their feedback on these thoughts.

The Vegan Keto Diet: The best way to Do It & What exactly To Eat

So, you're firm about staying away from animal goods, but you aren't still keto-curious? While a vegan eating habits and a keto diet plan may initially appear opuesto (after all, 1 invokes images of tofu plus the other bacon), progressively more experts say they're not necessarily mutually exclusive and that will a vegan keto eating habits has the potential to turn out to be quite healthy—if do it right. Here, we clarify exactly how to do a vegetarian keto diet (which moves some sort of step beyond the largely plant-based keto a couple of. zero diet), the prospective benefits together with risks, and even who also may wish to try this. In This Article you Are usually vegan keto diet? 3 Health benefits 3 Side effects four Exactly what to eat on the vegan keto diet a few Food to avoid found on a vegan keto diet regime 6 5-Day Vegan Keto Meal Plan What is usually the vegan keto diet plan? The "regular" keto diet is a high-fat, low-carb, moderate-protein diet that usually relies on animal items (assume eggs, grass-fed dairy products, simple full-fat yogurt) considering these food types offer an simple way to hit your daily fat quota and has few carbs. "A vegetarian keto diet follows the same ideas [as keto] but with no any animal-derived goods, similar to meat and to, inches says cardiologist in addition to plant-based diet proponent Joel Kahn, M. D. The optimal macronutrient breakdown (i. elizabeth., proportion of your daily calorie consumption coming from fat, health proteins, and carbs) for a keto diet typically seems something like this: Extra fat: 65 to 85% Protein: 15 to 35% Carbs: 0 to 10% (This typically works out in order to no greater than 50 g entire carbs or 20 to help 40 g net carbohydrates regular. Net carbs = entire carbs - soluble fiber. ) Minimizing carbs and exploiting fats shifts often the body from burning up primarily sugar/carbohydrates as energy to burning fat in often the form of ketones, which usually are molecules produced by simply the liver from essential fatty acids. When this takes place, someone enters healthy ketosis, a good metabolic state that has contributed to keto's benefits connected with increased satiety, weight-loss, better brain health, and more. Many experts have stated problem that—depending on how it's formulated—a traditional keto diet regime may be too high in animal-based saturated extra fat and low in heart- and gut-friendly fiber. Vegan diets, on the various other give, contain no creature companies often pack plenty of fibers due to a higher daily allowance associated with fiber-rich plant foods. Often , though, they're low inside fats and high inside carbs, especially when they slim heavily on grains, starchy vegetables, espresso beans, lentils, together with packaged goods. But in the event that you strategically forgo these kinds of carb-rich foodstuff in prefer of wholesome fats (assume avocado, crazy, seeds, together with certain oils), you can certainly stay vegetarian and even gain nutritional ketosis Potential well being benefits of the vegan keto diet. While truth be told there have been recently health gains associated with vegan diets, keto diets, and a variety of characteristics of each diet program (such eating lots associated with veggies as well as consuming fewer carbs), reports on the particular vegan keto diet regime are severely lacking, quite possibly industry experts still find it appealing. "No studies demonstrate long term effects of a vegan keto or low-carb plant-based eating habits, but people may find that will their big overall health risk markers strengthen, " tells Carrie Diulus, M. G., an orthopedic backbone cosmetic surgeon who personally practices a good vegan keto diet to help you manage her type a single diabetes and maintain a 100-pound fat loss. Taking place the keto diet: five recipes to try proposes vegan keto (and various other dietary approaches) to the woman individuals to prep with regard to plus recover from medical procedures as well. "I often have patients with excess weight problems and diabetes, as well as a ketogenic diet is generally beneficial, " she tells. It also "has often the potential to help improve their levels of cholesterol. " Although more research is needed to be able to really build some of these rewards, here are some achievable techniques a vegan keto eating habits may boost the health.

Diabetes and bloodstream sugar balance "For people young and old with metabolic syndrome as well as diabetes, there is increasing information that a ketogenic diet can help improve our blood sugar control, very well says Diulus. In truth, experiments have shown that, amid type 2 diabetic individuals, following a low-carb keto diet program led to improved glycemic manage and a good reduction (or discontinuation) associated with diabetes medication. Because vegan keto diets usually are every bit as low in carbohydrate food and also tend to be large in fiber (which is also key for blood sugar levels balance), it may have got the similar impact. When you have diabetes, usually check with your qualified medical practitioner in advance of starting a vegan keto diet so anyone can appropriately modify the medications—otherwise, serious unwanted side effects could occur. Reduced hunger in addition to weight loss Keto diet plans are known to have an appetite-suppressing effect, which will many experts chalk back up to the satiating dynamics of fats, improved blood sugar balance, and ketone generation. And when you're not hungry, it could lead in order to significant weight loss. Actually in a six-month analyze comparing the low-carb, vegetarian "Eco-Atkins" diet (which was initially definitely not technically keto because it was quite very low in carbs) to a higher-carb lacto-ovo veggie diet program, the Eco-Atkins slimmers skilled more weight loss. Moreover, there are a number of anecdotal reviews on the vegan keto diet program appreciably suppressing appetite. Previous calendar year, plant-based cardiologist Danielle Belardo, M. D., who else was at first very anti-keto, embarked with a two-week vegetarian keto experiment, which your woman detailed on this Twitter line. Her take on? Definitely not merely did the girl end upwards getting into ketosis when eating loads of greens and plenty of fiber, nevertheless "the hunger suppression seemed to be CONSEQUENTLY strong! " your woman stated. "Between the ketones, MUFA/PUFA, and fiber, I dropped 2 lb. regardless of seeking SO HARD in order to not get rid of almost any excess weight. " Center health In addition to more pounds loss, individuals on the particular Eco-Atkins diet from the previously mentioned study also skilled better bad cholesterol measurements as compared to their particular higher-carb, vegetarian diet regime alternatives. This is important, because several patients and medical experts bother about increases within cholesterol if consuming excessive amounts of animal-based weight. "In people wanting to decrease their LDL, the use of plant keto diet can be very large in fiber, low around saturated fat, and comes with polyunsaturated excess fat in entire meals forms love those found in nuts and even seeds, " says Diulus. "All of these things have already been shown to support lower blood lipids. inch Other authorities, like Ethan Weiss, D. D., agree that vegetarian keto weight loss plans and generally plant-based keto 2. 0 diets may well be appreciably better regarding cardiovascular wellness: "As a good cardiologist, I actually do have worries about the remarkable increases in LDL cholesterol a few people see when having conventional ketogenic diets, very well he explains. "Replacing food high in animal-based soaked fats together with foods approaching from mostly plant- in addition to fish-based sources minimizes against this and leads to developments in cardio chance guns we care with regards to. " Problems lowering Whilst no true studies page vegan keto diets to reduced problems, it's 1 of the big causes Diulus sometimes recommends them in her practice. It occurs because selected ketones generated by the liver during ketogenic diets are strong anti-inflammatories. Beta hydroxybutyrate, for example, prevents COX2, inhibits this NLRP-3 inflammasome, and stimulates AMPK, which are most very helpful to get reducing soreness, she says. At times typically the pain reduction is actually enough to avoid surgical procedures. "I had a individual who has been scheduled with regard to a good intricate surgery to be able to fuse this spine through the front and the spine because of severe nerve pain, " Diulus tells. "The patient started the particular ketogenic, plant-rich, high-omega-3 diet regime that I put your ex on, and she enhanced so much from 6 weeks of the diet, we ended up eliminating her medical procedures. " Having the use of keto diet programs, she's also found patients use much less pain medication following surgical procedure and even have lower charges involving surgical complications. Unwanted side effects involving the vegetarian keto diet. While Diulus personally benefits from a vegan keto diet program, as do some connected with her individuals, she stresses that there's some sort of variety when it comes to diets, plus it may not really be in your case. "Some people today do very well on some sort of low-fat, plant-based diet, plus some people do excellent on some sort of carnivore diet regime. It's about figuring away what works best with your own personal body and exactly how you experience the best, " states. Registered dietitian Abby Cannon, R. D., in addition caution people not to hop on typically the vegan keto train without thinking long plus hard about why they want to do it and with a weight of the risks—because there happen to be a few significant concerns. "It's very difficult to adhere to although also ensuring that occur to be getting enough nutritional value but not developing disordered taking in habits, inches says Cannon. "If a person ingest mi nombre es products, it's hard in order to ensure that you get plenty of protein, given that you have to cut down whole grains and beans—staple healthy proteins sources in a new vegan diet! " Just like all vegetarian diets, vegetarian keto is likewise deficient inside vitamin B12 plus likely low in iron and various nutrients, so Cannon advises a comprehensive multivitamin pill in the event that you do try it. Vegan keto could end up being pretty hard to maintain unless you're particularly motivated. "It's unlikely that any person could stick to that long term, and virtually any rapid weight loss encountered is probably going to come right back again on after you return for you to your normal diet plan, " says Cannon, writing that will many of the most healthy, longest-living people in typically the world consume legumes, entire grains, fruits, and starchy vegetables—all of which will be a no-go on the vegan keto diet program. If there's the healthcare factor for needing a ketogenic diet, the vegan keto diet may be a possibility, says Cannon, but it can incredibly important that if seeking any restrictive eating habits that you simply do so with the support of execs to guarantee that you're meeting your nutritional needs and executing it for the right good reasons. That said, for anyone who is expectant, breastfeeding, or have a new history of disordered eating, be sure you00 pass on that diet, she says. Additionally , your vegetarian keto diet regime may furthermore result within negative effects that are relatively normal in all keto diets, especially kinds that normally are not balanced, including a temporary yet drastic upswing in yearnings, moodiness, and fatigue (often called "keto flu"); way too much weight reduction; locks loss (especially if most likely not getting enough protein); together with instability in electrolytes, which usually pick up flushed out as soon as you lose water excess weight. To counteract electrolyte imbalances, Diulus recommends increasing your own personal sodium absorption a lttle bit in addition to supplementing with magnesium (mg). And, if you're doing anything "right" and still may great, vegan keto may possibly simply not be for you—and gowns OK. In reality, Belardo changed back in order to her higher-carb vegan diet program after her two-week vegetarian keto experiment due to the fact the woman was losing also a great deal weight and missed several of her favorite foods, including fruits. (Here are some signs a new keto diet plan just isn't working to get you. ) Things to take in on a vegan keto diet. To help make sure you aren't getting a variety of nutrients with a vegetarian keto diet, "It can be essential to eat some sort of number of nonstarchy greens, peanuts, vegetables, and low-carb health proteins methods, " says Diulus. The excellent news: While vegan keto will be low in carbs, this does not have to be low in fiber. Which is because, as long because you're going zero better than 20 to 40 grams of net carbs (which is total carb supply minus fiber), you'll in spite of everything get into ketosis. Just be sure to wrap on high-fiber, low-net carbohydrate foods such as abundant vegetables and nonstarchy greens like broccoli, spinach, plus cauliflower. If you discover a vegan keto diet program too restrictive and even you aren't willing to include some animal products, you are able to also experiment with a vegetarian keto diet plan. With direction from Diulus, here are generally some vegan keto-friendly foodstuff you can choose through, with macronutrient equipment failures dependent on the typical meal. Pro tip: To verify typically the nutritional information involving any food, check out and about the USDA's FoodData Core repository. Nonstarchy greens: Banane (Carbs: 0. dokuz gary the gadget guy, Fat: 0. 1 g) Oranges (Carbs: 1 h, Fat: 0 g) Cucumber (Carbs: 1 g, Excess fat: 0 g) Green spinach (Carbs: 1 g, Body fat: 0. 1 g) Asparagus (Carbs: 1. 1 h, Fat: 0 g) Cauliflower (Carbs: 1. 5 g, Excess fat: 0 g) Weight loss plans (Carbs: 1. 6 gary the gadget guy, Extra fat: 0 g) Brokkoli (Carbs: 1. 9 g, Excess fat: 0. 1 g) Natural beans (Carbs: a couple of gary the gadget guy, Fat: 0 g) Brussels sprouts (Carbs: installment payments on your a few gary, Fat: zero. 1 g) Spaghetti corn (Carbs: 10 g, Excess fat: 0. 5 g) Low-sugar some fruits: Strawberries (Carbs: six. 7 h, Fat: 0. 3 g) Blackberries (Carbs: ten. 2 g, Excess fat: 0. 5 g) Raspberries (Carbs: 11. 9 gary, Unwanted fat: 0. 7 g) Blueberries (Carbs: 14. 5 various gary, Fat: 0. three or more g) Coconut flakes (Carbs: a few gary the gadget guy, Fat: twelve g) Plant-based fat options: Avocado (Carbs: 4 gary, Fats: 8 g) Olives (Carbs: 6 g, Body fat: eleven g) Avocado essential oil (Carbs: 0 g, Fats: 14 g) Olive oil (Carbs: 0 g, Fat: 18 g) Coconut oil (Carbs: 0 g, Fat: 18 g) Full-fat coconut dairy products or maybe cream (Carbs: one g, Fat: 12 g) Nuts and seeds: Pili nuts (Carbs: 1 gary, Fat: 22 g) Walnuts (Carbs: 2. 8 g, Fat: 16. 5 g) Brazil nuts (Carbs: 3 or more. 3 g, Fat: 19 g) Pine nuts (Carbs: 3. 7 g, Extra fat: 19. 1 g) Macadamia nuts (Carbs: 3. 6 g, Fat: 21. 5 various g) Pumpkin seeds (Carbs: 3. 8 g, Extra fat: 11. 8 g) Pecans (Carbs: 3. 8 grams, Fat: 20. 8 g) Peanuts (Carbs: 6 grams, Fat: 13. 9 g) Walnuts (Carbs: 6. one gary, Fat: 14 g) Sesame seeds (Carbs: a few. 6 g, Fat: 13-14. 9 g) Sunflower vegetables (Carbs: 6. 7 gary, Fat: 13. 9 g) Flaxseeds (Carbs: 8 gary, Fat: 6 g) Chia seeds (Carbs: 12. 3 or more g, Fat: 8. six g) Plant-based proteins: Tofu (Carbs: 2 g, Proteins: 10 g, Fat: a few g) Tempeh (Carbs: 10 grams, Protein: 16 gary, Fat: 4. 5 g) Edamame (Carbs: 15 gary the gadget guy, Necessary protein: 17 g, Body fat: 8 g) Black soybeans (Carbs: 8 g, Healthy proteins: 11 g, Fat: 6 g) Lupini beans (Carbs: 13 g, Protein: 13 g, Fat: 1 g) Pea protein powder (Carbs: 2 g, Protein: twenty one h, Fat: 1. a few g) Seitan (wheat-based, includes gluten) (Carbs: 10 h, Protein: 16 g, Fat: 2 g) Treats Low carbohydrate, vegan chocolate (like Lily's) Home made vegan keto snacks Foods to avoid in the vegan keto diet regime: If you're adhering to some sort of vegan keto eating habits, an individual obviously want to keep away from all animal-derived products, as well as the following: Meat Bulgaria Fish Eggs Dairy Collagen powdered Whey protein Honey You also want to steer clear of, or considerably lower, this consumption of foods comprising moderate to high levels of carbohydrates on a vegan keto diet—even the versions typically regarded as healthy upon most vegan diet programs. These include: Grains and grain-based foods: rice, quinoa, food, pasta, bread, crackers Dried beans: beans, lentils, chickpeas Starchy vegetables: sweet potatoes, oranges, beets, peas Fruit: pretty much all fruits, except cherries Sugars: table sugar, walnut thick syrup, honey, coconut sugar, tequila High-carb alcohol: beverage, wine, sugary cocktails, really hard cider Ultraprocessed, packaged foods, even if they lay claim to end up being keto (whatever the health state, made and processed is not a superior idea) Vegan Keto Eating habits Menu: 5-Day Food Program While you can certainly mix and match the vegan keto foods previously mentioned as you see fit, this an example of a good meal prepare. (And if you're curious about exactly what Diulus eats in a new day, below is her particular vegan keto dinner system. ) Moment 1 Breakfast: Keto renewable smoothie made with baby kale, iced raspberries, avocado, enthusiast dairy products, pea protein, along with a flavour booster like fresh mint or matcha Lunch time: Put together greens salad capped together with avocado, hemp seeds, lupini beans, numerous nonstarchy vegetables, and olive oil together with vinegar Snack: Celery slices with nut butter Evening meal: Zucchini noodles tossed along with vegan pesto (basil, walnuts, EVOO, and garlic) in addition to sliced cherry tomatoes Time 2 Breakfast: Tofu scramble with tomato vegetables and spinach Lunch: Creamy broccoli soups made with full-fat coconut whole milk, organic stock, in addition to herbal treatments Snack: Keto chocolates mousse made with avocado, cocoa powdered, and the bit of stevia (or a tiny bit involving genuine sweetener, like walnut syrup) An evening meal: Spaghetti squash along with caramelized onions, roasted Brussels sprouts, lupini beans, and even a hefty drizzle connected with olive oil Day time 3 Breakfast every day: Chia pudding made with a new high-fat nut milk (such Elmhurst) or canned coconut dairy products, berries, and unsweetened coconut flakes Lunch: Lettuce-free greens made with chopped cucumber, tomatoes, olives, edamame, and olive oil and the acv Treat: Almonds and unsweetened coconut flakes Dinner: Spargelkohl and tempeh stir-fry Day some Breakfast: Raspberries, the handful of walnuts, together with matcha tea leaf mixed up with coconut oil Lunchtime: *Cauliflower rice made with scallions, ginger, onions, peas, cut carrots, sesame seeds, and even tofu Snack: Red bells pepper slices with guacamole or mashed avocado Meal: Cauliflower crust pizza lead with tomato sauce or maybe vegan pesto, mushrooms, potatoes, and onions *Since it is not necessary a lot of peas and peas in cauliflower rice, it might still get considered vegan keto while long as you're seeing your intake of total carb supply elsewhere. Time 5 Breakfast: Plain use of plant yogurt lead with low-sugar grain-free granola and blueberries Lunch: Very finely sliced violet cabbage (or bagged "coleslaw mix") threw with sesame oil plus unseasoned hemp vinegar, lead with edamame and sunflower seeds Munch: Cucumber pieces, celery, as well as bell peppers dunked inside nut-based vegan cream mozzarella cheese (like Kite Hill) Meal: Shirataki noodles with vegetables, almond chausser and coconut aminos marinade, and tofu Bottom range on the vegan keto diet. Whilst much even more study (particularly long-term studies) will be establish the accurate benefits of a new well-formulated vegan keto diet, some experts believe it can be done very well and that there are most likely legitimate perks when that comes to bodyweight decline, blood sugar control, heart health, and even pain lowering. However, typically the restrictive dynamics of the diet plan may be triggering for individuals with a story of disordered consuming and may as well lead to nutritious deficiencies unless properly developed together with the right foods in addition to supplements. Overall, a good deal is still in this air, but if an individual pick to try a vegan keto diet, strongly consider using the help of the registered dietitian.

This Vegan Keto Diet: How To Do It & What exactly To Eat

So, you're firm about steering clear of animal items, but most likely still keto-curious? While the vegan diet regime and a keto eating habits may initially appear contrario (after all, a single conjures images of tofu and even the other bacon), progressively more experts say they're certainly not mutually exclusive and that will a vegetarian keto eating habits has the potential to be quite healthy—if do it best. Here, we clarify how to do a vegan keto diet (which goes some sort of step beyond this mainly plant-based keto a couple of. zero diet), the potential benefits and risks, in addition to who may wish to try this. In This Article just one Very best vegan keto eating habits? only two Health benefits 3 Side effects 4 Just what to eat on a good vegan keto diet 5 various Meals to avoid found on a good vegan keto diet regime 6 5-Day Vegan Keto Meal Program What can be the vegan keto eating habits? The "regular" keto diet regime is a high-fat, low-carb, moderate-protein diet that ordinarily is reliant on animal goods (assume eggs, grass-fed dairy products, simple full-fat yogurt) considering that these food types offer an quick way to hit your own fat quota and includes couple of carbs. "A vegetarian keto diet follows the same ideas [as keto] nevertheless devoid of any animal-derived products, just like meat and dairy products, " says cardiologist plus plant-based diet proponent Joel Schute, M. D. The best macronutrient breakdown (i. elizabeth., portion of your daily unhealthy calories coming from fat, necessary protein, and carbs) for the keto diet regime typically seems something like this: Fats: 65 to 85% Protein: 15 to 35% Carbs: 0 to 10% (This typically works out to be able to a maximum of 50 g complete carbohydrates or 20 to be able to 25 g net carbohydrates normal. Net carbs sama dengan total carbs - fiber. ) Minimizing carbs and even increasing fats shifts often the body from using especially sugar/carbohydrates as fuel to help burning fat in the form of ketones, which are molecules produced simply by the liver from fatty acids. When this occurs, somebody enters health ketosis, some sort of metabolic state that attributes to keto's benefits connected with increased satiety, weight reduction, increased brain health, and much more. Some experts have depicted worry that—depending on how really formulated—a traditional keto diet may be too large in animal-based saturated extra fat and low in heart- and gut-friendly fiber. Vegan diets, on the various other hands, contain no canine products and often pack loads of dietary fiber due to be able to a higher consumption associated with fiber-rich plant foods. Frequently , though, they're low throughout body fat and high throughout carbs, in particular when they trim heavily about grains, starchy vegetables, coffee beans, lentils, plus packaged products. But in the event you rationally forgo these kinds of carb-rich food items in prefer of balanced fats (think avocado, nut products, seeds, and certain oils), you can easily stay vegan in addition to gain nutritional ketosis Prospective health benefits of the vegan keto diet. While Greatest keto snacks: Benefits and nutrition there have already been health advantages associated with vegan diet plans, keto diets, and numerous characteristics of each diet regime (like eating lots connected with veggies or maybe consuming much less carbs), reports on typically the vegan keto diet program are usually severely lacking, sometimes industry experts still find it encouraging. "No studies demonstrate long term results of a vegetarian keto or low-carb use of plant eating habits, but people may find that their measurable well being chance markers boost, " affirms Carrie Diulus, M. G., an memory foam spinal column surgeon who privately practices the vegan keto diet to assist manage the type one diabetes and maintain a 100-pound weight loss. Diulus sometimes suggests vegan keto (and other dietary approaches) to the individuals to prep for plus recover from surgery as well. "I usually have patients using fat problems and diabetes, and also a ketogenic diet is usually valuable, " she says. It also "has this potential to help boost their bad cholesterol. " Although more research is needed to help really set up these benefits, here are some probable approaches a vegan keto diet plan may boost your own personal health. Diabetes and body sugar balance "For people today with metabolic syndrome as well as diabetes, there is mounting info that a ketogenic diet may help enhance body sugar control, " affirms Diulus. In point, research have shown that, amongst type 2 diabetes subjects, following a low-carb keto eating habits led to improved glycemic handle and a good reduction (or discontinuation) connected with diabetes medication. Due to the fact vegetarian keto diets are similarly low in sugars plus tend to be substantial in fibers (which is also key for blood sugar levels balance), it may possess the similar impact. In the event that you have diabetes, usually check with your doctor just before starting a vegetarian keto diet so an individual can appropriately adjust your medications—otherwise, serious negative effects may occur. Reduced hunger and even weight loss Keto diet programs are known to currently have an appetite-suppressing effect, which usually many authorities chalk back up to the satiating dynamics of fats, improved blood sugar levels balance, and ketone production. And when you're not really hungry, it may lead to help significant weight loss. In fact , in a six-month analyze assessing the low-carb, vegan "Eco-Atkins" diet (which has been not necessarily technically keto because the idea was quite very low in carbs) to a good higher-carb lacto-ovo veggie diet, the Eco-Atkins slimmers knowledgeable more weight loss. Moreover, there are a number of anecdotal reviews of the vegan keto diet plan considerably suppressing appetite. Very last 12 months, plant-based cardiologist Danielle Belardo, M. D., who was at first very anti-keto, embarked on a two-week vegan keto experiment, which your woman detailed with this Twitter place. Her carry? Certainly not solely did the woman end right up getting into ketosis although eating loads of greens and many of fiber, yet "the desire for food suppression was THUS intense! " the girl explained. "Between the ketones, MUFA/PUFA, and fiber, My spouse and i misplaced 2 lb. inspite of attempting SO HARD to be able to not reduce virtually any weight. " Cardiovascular system overall health Around addition to more fat loss, members on this Eco-Atkins diet from aforesaid study also encountered much better cholesterol measurements compared to their higher-carb, vegetarian diet regime alternative. This is important, because quite a few patients and healthcare experts concern yourself with increases around cholesterol when consuming higher amounts of animal-based saturated fats. "In people wanting to decrease their LDL, the plant-based keto diet can be very higher in fiber, low around soaked fat, and has got polyunsaturated fats in entire food items forms want these found in nuts plus seeds, " says Diulus. "All of these issues have already been shown to assistance lower body lipids. micron Other authorities, like Ethan Weiss, M. D., recognize that vegetarian keto eating plans and mostly plant-based keto 2. zero diets might be drastically better intended for cardiovascular wellness: "As a good cardiologist, I truly do have worries about the huge increases in LDL levels of cholesterol some people see when ingesting conventional ketogenic diets, inches he explains. "Replacing meals high in animal-based unhealthy fats having food items approaching from mostly plant- and even fish-based sources mitigates in opposition to this and leads for you to changes in cardiovascular risk indicators we care regarding. " Pain elimination Whilst no true studies link vegan keto diets in order to reduced soreness, it's 1 of the big reasons Diulus sometimes recommends these people in her practice. It happens because specific ketones produced by the liver during ketogenic diets are strong anti-inflammatories. Beta hydroxybutyrate, for case in point, prevents COX2, inhibits this NLRP-3 inflammasome, and arouses AMPK, which are most helpful to get reducing discomfort, she says. Oftentimes the particular pain reduction is also enough to avoid surgical procedure. "I had a affected individual that had been scheduled to get a new difficult surgery to be able to fuse the spine via the front plus the back again because of severe neural pain, " Diulus says. "The patient started the particular ketogenic, plant-rich, high-omega-3 diet program that I put the on, and she better so much via six to eight weeks of the diet, we ended up eliminating her surgical procedure. " With the use of keto eating plans, she's also seen patients use much less pain medication right after medical procedures and have lower fees involving surgical complications. Negative effects involving the vegetarian keto eating habits. While Diulus personally benefits from a vegan keto eating habits, as do some of her affected individuals, she stresses that there's the selection when it comes in order to diets, and it also may not really be for you. "Some guys do very well on the low-fat, plant-based eating habits, in addition to some people do great on a new carnivore eating habits. It's about figuring out and about what realy works best with your current body and how you feel the best, " she says. Registered dietitian Abby Cannon, R. D., as well cautions people not to jump on this vegetarian keto train without thinking long and even hard about why they need to do it and considering the particular risks—because there will be a few important considerations. "It's very challenging to stick to even though also ensuring of which occur to be getting enough nutrition and never developing disordered taking in habits, micron says Cannon. "If you cannot consume almond products, it can hard to be able to ensure that you be given plenty of protein, given of which you have to minimize whole grains and beans—staple proteins sources in a good vegan diet program! " Similar to all vegetarian diets, vegetarian keto may also be deficient inside vitamin B12 and even likely low in iron as well as other nutrients, so Cannon suggests a comprehensive multivitamin pill in the event that you do try that. Vegan keto could end up being pretty hard to preserve except when you're particularly motivated. "It's less likely that any individual may stick to the idea long term, and virtually any rapid weight loss skilled is likely to come right backside on as soon as you return for you to your normal eating habits, very well says Cannon, noticing the fact that many of the natural, longest-living people in the world consume dried beans, total grains, fruits, and starchy vegetables—all of which usually are a no-go on a vegan keto eating habits. In the event that there's a healthcare reason for needing a ketogenic diet, the vegan keto diet might be a method, says Cannon, but they have particularly important that as soon as hoping any restrictive diet that you do so with typically the support of execs to make sure that you're meeting your own nutritional needs and performing it for the right reasons. That said, if you are currently pregnant, breastfeeding, or have the history of disordered eating, be sure you00 pass on this particular diet, she says. In addition , your vegetarian keto eating habits may furthermore result throughout unwanted effects that are relatively regular in all keto diet plans, especially ones that usually are balanced, including a temporary although drastic upswing in cravings, moodiness, and even fatigue (often called "keto flu"); also much weight reduction; frizzy hair loss (especially if you aren't not getting enough protein); in addition to instability in electrolytes, which will find flushed out any time you shed water excess weight. To offset electrolyte instability, Diulus highly suggests increasing your current sodium take in a bit in addition to supplementing with magnesium. In addition to, if you're doing every thing "right" and still have a tendency feel good, vegan keto may just not be for you—and that is OK. In simple fact, Belardo switched back to help her higher-carb vegetarian diet program after her two-week vegetarian keto experiment due to the fact the woman was losing as well a great deal weight and missed some of her favorite food items, including fruits. (Here a few signs a keto diet program just isn't working to get you. ) What things to feed on on a vegan keto diet. To help make sure you aren't getting a wide variety of nutrients on the vegetarian keto diet, "It will be essential to eat a good selection of nonstarchy fruit and vegetables, nuts, seeds, and low-carb necessary protein sources, " says Diulus. Fortunately: While vegan keto will be low in cabohydrate supply, it hasn't got to become low in fiber. Which because, as long as you're going simply no bigger than 20 to thirty grams of net carbohydrates (which is total cabohydrate supply minus fiber), you'll even so get into ketosis. Just simply be sure to wrap on high-fiber, low-net carbohydrate foods such as abundant vegetation and nonstarchy veggies want broccoli, green spinach, in addition to cauliflower. If you get a vegan keto eating habits too restrictive and even you aren't willing to contain quite a few animal products, you might also test a vegetarian keto eating habits. With advice from Diulus, here are usually some vegetarian keto-friendly foods you can choose by, with macronutrient malfunction dependent on some sort of typical meal. Pro tip: To check typically the nutritional information connected with any food, check out the USDA's FoodData Middle repository. Nonstarchy greens: Zucchini (Carbs: 0. nine gary, Fat: 0. just one g)

Oranges (Carbs: one g, Fat: 0 g) Cucumber (Carbs: 1 gary, Excess fat: 0 g) Spinach (Carbs: 1 g, Body fat: zero. 1 g) Asparagus (Carbs: 1. 1 h, Body fat: 0 g) Cauliflower (Carbs: 1. 5 g, Fat: 0 g) Meal plans (Carbs: 1. 6 g, Fat: 0 g) Brokkoli (Carbs: 1. 9 gary the gadget guy, Body fat: 0. 1 g) Environment friendly beans (Carbs: 3 g, Fat: 0 g) Brussels sprouts (Carbs: 2 . not 5 various gary, Fat: zero. one g) Spaghetti zuccinni (Carbs: 10 g, Excess fat: 0. 5 g) Low-sugar many fruits: Strawberries (Carbs: seven. 8 g, Fat: 0. 3 g) Blackberries (Carbs: ten. 2 g, Fats: zero. 5 g) Raspberries (Carbs: 11. 9 h, Fats: 0. 7 g) Good (Carbs: 14. your five gary the gadget guy, Fat: 0. 3 or more g) Coconut flakes (Carbs: 3 or more gary, Fat: ten g) Plant-based fat options: Avocado (Carbs: 4 gary the gadget guy, Fat: 8 g) Olives (Carbs: 6 g, Extra fat: 10 g) Avocado oil (Carbs: 0 g, Body fat: 13 g) Olive oil (Carbs: 0 g, Fat: 16 g) Coconut oil (Carbs: 0 g, Fat: 16 g) Full-fat coconut milk products or cream (Carbs: first gary the gadget guy, Fat: 12 g) Nuts and seeds: Pili nuts (Carbs: 1 gary the gadget guy, Fat: 22 g) Walnuts (Carbs: 2. 8 grams, Fat: 16. 5 g) South america nuts (Carbs: a few. 3 g, Fat: 21 g) Pine nuts (Carbs: 3. 7 g, Excess fat: 19. 1 g) Macadamia nuts (Carbs: 3. seven h, Fat: 21. 5 g) Pumpkin seeds (Carbs: 3. 8 g, Excess fat: 11. 8 g) Pecans (Carbs: 3. 8 gary the gadget guy, Fat: 20. 8 g) Peanuts (Carbs: 6 h, Fat: 13. 9 g) Walnuts (Carbs: 6. 1 h, Fat: 14 g) Sesame seeds (Carbs: six. 6 g, Fat: tough luck. 9 g) Sunflower vegetables (Carbs: 6. 7 h, Fat: 13. 9 g) Flaxseeds (Carbs: 8 gary, Fat: 6 g) Chia seeds (Carbs: 12. three or more g, Fat: 8. six g) Plant-based proteins: Tofu (Carbs: 2 g, Health proteins: 10 g, Fat: 6 g) Tempeh (Carbs: twelve gary, Protein: 16 gary, Fat: 4. 5 g) Edamame (Carbs: 15 gary, Necessary protein: 17 g, Body fat: 8 g) Black soybeans (Carbs: 8 g, Protein: 11 g, Fat: six g) Lupini beans (Carbs: 13 g, Protein: 10 grams, Fat: 1 g) Pea protein powder (Carbs: 2 g, Protein: 21 years of age h, Fat: 1. 5 g) Seitan (wheat-based, includes gluten) (Carbs: 10 gary, Protein: 16 g, Body fat: 2 g) Treats Low-carb, vegetarian chocolate (like Lily's) Selfmade vegan keto snacks Foods to avoid in the vegetarian keto eating habits: If you're subsequent the vegan keto diet, anyone obviously want to steer clear of all animal-derived products, as well as the following: Meat Hen Eating fish or crustaceans Eggs Dairy Collagen natural powder Whey protein Honey Moreover, you may want to prevent, or drastically lessen, the consumption of food items containing moderate to high amounts of carbohydrates on a vegetarian keto diet—even the kinds typically regarded as healthy on most vegan eating plans. All these include: Grains and grain-based foods: rice, quinoa, cereal, pasta, bread, crackers Legumes: beans, lentils, chickpeas Starchy vegetables: sweet potatoes, taters, beets, peas Fruit: pretty much all fruits, except fruits Sugars: table sugar, maple syrup, honey, coconut sugar, tequila High-carb alcohol: beverage, wine, sugary cocktails, challenging cider Ultraprocessed, packaged food items, even if they lay claim to turn out to be keto (whatever the health state, made and processed isn't a perfect idea) Vegan Keto Diet program Menu: 5-Day Food Program While you can certainly mix and match this vegan keto foods previously mentioned as you choose, here's an example of a meal strategy. (And in case you're curious about just what Diulus eats in some sort of day, below is her particular vegan keto meals system. ) Moment 1 Breakfast every day: Keto renewable smoothie mix manufactured with baby kale, freezing raspberries, avocado, enthusiast milk products, pea protein, and a flavoring booster like new mint or matcha Lunch: Mixed greens salad topped using avocado, hemp vegetables, lupini beans, different nonstarchy vegetables, and olive oil in addition to vinegar Snack: Celery pieces with nut butter Meal: Zucchini noodles tossed along with vegan pesto (basil, walnuts, EVOO, and garlic) in addition to sliced cherry tomatoes Moment 2 Breakfast: Tofu scramble with tomato vegetables and spinach Lunch: Creamy broccoli soups made with full-fat coconut whole milk, plant stock, and herbal treatments Snack: Keto chocolate mousse made with avocado, cocoa dust, and the bit of stevia (or a little bit of actual sweetener, like walnut syrup) Evening meal: Spaghetti corn having caramelized onions, roasting Brussels sprouts, lupini espresso beans, and the hefty drizzle associated with olive oil Day 3 Lunch: Chia pudding made with some sort of high-fat nut milk (like Elmhurst) or canned coconut whole milk, berries, and unsweetened coconut flakes Lunch: Lettuce-free greens made with chopped cucumber, tomatoes, olives, edamame, in addition to olive oil and apple cider vinegar Treat: Almonds and unsweet ill-flavored coconut flakes Dinner: Spargelkohl and tempeh stir-fry Working day five Breakfast: Raspberries, the handful of walnuts, together with matcha green tea blended along with coconut oil Lunchtime: *Cauliflower rice made with scallions, ginger, onions, peas, chopped carrots, sesame seeds, in addition to tofu Snack: Red bells pepper slices with guacamole or mashed avocado Supper: Cauliflower crust pizza topped with tomato sauce or maybe vegan impasto, mushrooms, potatoes, and onions *Since it is not necessary a lot of peas and carrots in cauliflower rice, it might still come to be considered vegan keto while long as you're observing your the consumption of total carbohydrates elsewhere. Time 5 Morning meal: Plain use of plant yogurt topped with low-sugar grain-free granola and blueberries Lunch: Very finely sliced purple cabbage (or bagged "coleslaw mix") thrown with sesame oil together with unseasoned grain vinegar, capped with edamame and sunflower seeds Food: Cucumber slices, celery, as well as bell peppers dunked through nut-based vegan cream mozzarella cheese (like Kite Hill) Meal: Shirataki noodles with veggies, almond garnir and coconut aminos hot sauce recipe, and tofu Bottom collection on the vegan keto diet. While much a lot more research (particularly long-term studies) is needed to establish the true benefits of the well-formulated vegan keto diet program, quite a few experts believe it can be done properly and that there are likely legitimate perks as soon as this comes to fat damage, sugar control, center health, as well as pain lessening. However, this limited characteristics of the diet program can be triggering for those people having a background of disordered eating and may furthermore lead to chemical deficiencies unless thoroughly designed having the right foods in addition to dietary supplements. Overall, a good deal is still up in often the air, but if an individual pick to obtain a vegan keto diet, clearly consider enlisting the assist of the registered dietitian.

Bam Adebayo is redefining what an NBA center can be

How Adebayo found the perfect organization to let him be his best self.

On the morning of Nov. 27, Bam Adebayo was told, from the very first moment of that night’s game against the Houston Rockets, his primary defensive assignment would be Russell Westbrook.

Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra delivered the news during the team’s shootaround at the Toyota Center. The decision was unorthodox but astute, and it didn’t take long for Adebayo’s initial shock to dissolve. He’s officially listed as a forward-center — 6’9 without sneakers, 255 pounds — with long, meddlesome arms, muscles stacked on top of muscles, and small jet engines implanted in each calf. It’s the perfect body in an era of NBA basketball defined by defensive versatility.

But still … this was Russell Westbrook, two-time scoring champ and Rottweiler who attacks the rim like its juicy brisket. For most players, the mere thought of trying to stay in front of him is traumatic. Adebayo loved everything about it.

“Your head coach having that much trust in you to guard a well-known all-star is a big, big ups to you,” he said. “Your coach telling the starting ‘center’ to guard a primetime guard like Russell Westbrook is kind of crazy.”

Questioning Spoelstra never crossed Adebayo’s mind. As a senior in high school he was regularly tapped to guard the opposing team’s best player — among them De’Aaron Fox, Lonzo Ball, and Jayson Tatum — whenever his team needed a stop. The coverages came on a possession-by-possession basis, but Adebayo held his own.

Westbrook — from the opening tip, for an entire game — was a different type of challenge. Study the box score from that night in Houston and it’s easy to think Spoelstra’s decision failed. Westbrook finished with 27 points, seven assists, and nine rebounds, and the Heat lost by nine.

But the Heat don’t regret it. When they look at Adebayo they don’t see a position, and even before they took him 14th overall in the 2017 draft they didn’t see a prospect who should be boxed into a role. Adebayo is an original, one-of-one — a jittery ball of unselfish, peerlessly athletic energy whose lone hobby is discovering new ways to dismantle traditional norms on a basketball court.

He’s a thrill ride with no precedent, both humble and supernaturally driven, supported by an organization that believes his mistakes in the short term will sprout into sustained, unwavering success. That showdown against Westbrook was a golden opportunity for Adebayo to test his potential.

“You can’t just be one of those guys where the whole league knows what you are and categorizes you as that and you accept that,” Adebayo said a few days after the Rockets game. “I want to be one of those guys who expands his zone. Kind of like what Kawhi did.”

In what has become a breakout season, Adebayo’s peak is an enticing question. Instead of tracking towards an established archetype, he may be something altogether more intriguing: an evolutionary frolic into basketball’s next frontier.

Back in July, when he first heard the Heat had included Hassan Whiteside in the four-team trade that brought Jimmy Butler to Miami, Adebayo knew he was about to take on a much bigger role. He sat down with Spoelstra several times to discuss how it would look, and in one meeting disclosed that his top personal goal was to win Most Improved Player. Chasing individual accolades doesn’t jibe with Heat culture, but in this case Adebayo’s ambition could be mutually beneficial.

“Your coach telling the starting ‘center’ to guard a primetime guard like Russell Westbrook is kind of crazy.” - Bam Adebayo

The Heat had no serious doubts about Adebayo becoming a major part of their next great team—after last year’s All-Star break, he held his own in Miami’s starting lineup — but they were nonetheless unsure how he’d handle nearly 10 more minutes of playing time per game, especially as a greater focal point in opposing scouting reports.

John Calipari, Adebayo’s head coach at Kentucky, remembers a conversation he had with Heat president Pat Riley over the summer. “I need more from Bam,” Riley told him.

So far this season, the Heat couldn’t ask for more. At 22, with his first All-Defensive team around the corner, Adebayo is averaging 15.3 points, 10.5 rebounds, 4.4 assists, 1.4 steals, and 1.2 blocks per game. (He recorded his first triple-double against the Atlanta Hawks on Dec. 10.) On a per-minute basis, all those numbers are up from last season, along with his usage rate and field goal percentage. The only players in NBA history to average at least 15 points, 10 rebounds, and four assists while making more than 59 percent of their shots are Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Charles Barkley.

Adebayo also draws more fouls per game than LeBron James, Ben Simmons, and Andre Drummond, and ranks in the NBA’s top-20 in free-throw attempts, rebound rate, steals, blocks, field-goal percentage, Value Over Replacement Player, Win Shares, and several other metrics, advanced and remedial, that suggest he’s made the leap.

Adebayo’s candidacy for Most Improved Player is valid in a crowded field. More important than that, he will make the All-Star team if the Heat continue to win. Right now they’re 18-6, with the point differential of a 54-win team, per Cleaning the Glass. Adebayo never expected this type of attention so early in his career, but he’s embracing it.

“I’m a person, and everybody wants to be an all-star. Nobody wants to just be a role-player,” he said. “I’ve thought about it. But the number one goal is to keep winning, so I’m more focused on that than being an all-star, honestly.”

As one of the most impactful young bigs in the league, Adebayo’s defense is a literal game changer. In a recent overtime win against the Toronto Raptors, he wiped Pascal Siakam off the face of the Earth, holding the defending champ to zero made baskets while covering him.

Not only does Adebayo stand out as one of a select few who can actually switch 1-through-5 without embarrassing himself, but his nimble yet violent offensive skillset blurs the lines of what a center can be. He personifies positionless basketball with moves that don’t need context to make your jaw drop.

Heat point guard Goran Dragic had to stop and think when asked if Adebayo reminds him of any other player, before landing on Draymond Green.

“But Bam is bigger,” Dragic said. “He can pass, he can score, he can defend. There’s not a lot of big guys in this league who can do that.”

Aside from volcanic superstars like Joel Embiid, Nikola Jokic, and Karl-Anthony Towns, nearly every starting center in today’s NBA slots into a cookie-cutter role. On offense, they’re off the ball, rebounding, rim running, setting screens, and either rolling to the basket or popping behind the three-point line. They exist to simultaneously complement and rely upon the wings and guards who have a greater impact on wins and losses. Very few have the bandwidth to handle more responsibilities, and most are glued to the paint on defense because venturing outside out of it would expose their stiff vulnerabilities.

Adebayo has no defensive weaknesses. He can rumble in from the weakside to two-hand smash a layup against the backboard, or slide on a switch to stop shifty ball-handlers before they get downhill.

“[The next time we play] Bam’s gonna try and switch on me,” childhood friend and New York Knicks point guard Dennis Smith Jr. said. “That’s all he’s gonna want to do.”

Adebayo avoids unnecessary fouls and grabs every loose ball, too. On offense, he rolls to the rim, stalks the baseline, and initiates offense from the perimeter. Despite being trapped in a center’s body, he doesn’t think, move, or act like one very often.

“He’s carving out a new position for himself,” said Brandon Clifford, Adebayo’s coach as a high school senior at High Point Christian Academy. “He’s really just kind of blossoming into the perfect basketball player.”

Adebayo is cerebral, adaptive, and can turn a basketball court into a personal bouncy castle. Last season, he would regularly challenge Heat wing Derrick Jones Jr. — whose nickname, for good reason, is Airplane Mode — to dunk contests right after the Heat finished grueling two-hour practices. “A lot of people don’t know, but Bam is as athletic as me, if not more,” Jones Jr. said. “He’s one of the most athletic people I’ve ever seen in my life.”

The physical advantages come naturally for Adebayo, but it’s his eagerness to explore their application, combined with his playmaking ability, that could turn him into a big unlike many we’ve ever seen.

There are several ways to explain Adebayo’s rise and why he has been able to distinguish himself from homogenous big men across the league. But to have that conversation, we first need to acknowledge how the Heat have encouraged Adebayo to buck convention.

Adebayo could’ve been Clint Capela, locked into a role he’d capably dominate but with a much lower ceiling. Instead, he was drafted by a franchise that thinks outside the box. It’s any prospect’s best-case scenario, the coach, roster, system, and organization’s philosophical principles all fitting snugly together.

At Kentucky, Adebayo exhibited a selflessness that Calipari remembers fondly. He let Fox and Malik Monk operate with the ball and averaged just 0.8 assists per game, a surprisingly low number given who he is today. Kentucky’s coaches saw tantalizing ball skills, but they didn’t have much time to nurture them. As important as player development is for every college program, team success still rules.

“You won’t believe this,” Calipari said. “We have to win games here! So our practice time is based on, yes, I’m going to say 20 percent of it is individually, but most of that is defense. The rest of it is, ‘We have to get together as a team, we gotta figure this out.’ We’ve got five new guys who’ve never played together.

“[The Heat] are still figuring out exactly what he can do. Now, they’ve had him how many years? This his third year there? OK. I had him eight months. You know what I’m saying?”

Before college, Adebayo’s AAU and high school coaches saw a player who was good at making coast-to-coast, on-the-fly decisions in an open gym. But in the structural confines of an actual game, Adebayo was required to score before anything else.

“I used to hate being put in that role because I wanted to share the wealth with my teammates,” he said. “I want everybody to eat, basically. And right now I’m helping everybody eat. This is the role that fits me.”

“You’ve gotta take the leash off the dog. What’s scarier, a dog with a leash walking with a person or a dog with nobody around him?” - Bam Adebayo

Smith and Adebayo were teammates on several AAU teams growing up in North Carolina, one of which was coached by Smith’s father. Adebayo’s polymorphism doesn’t surprise Smith, but he doubted whether the world would ever get to see it.

“My dad was always telling him, ‘When you come out and play with us, show them your game. Shoot the jumper. You can push the ball up the court because you can make the right play,’” Smith said. “You see him throwing lobs and stuff now? He’s been capable of doing that. It’s good that he’s in a system that allows him to do it.”

In Miami’s offense, Adebayo is a vertical spacer and put-back machine, but he is also entrusted to be a traffic cop on the perimeter, a job he handles with the confidence of someone who knows he won’t get benched for a mistake. Right now, Jokic and Towns are the only two centers who average more assists per game, and Jokic is the only player who logs more elbow touches.

Adebayo takes advantage of the space that Miami’s three-point shooters create by hitting cutters as they dart through the paint. The passes are bold, and come from his own reads.

The Heat don’t want Adebayo to be robotic. The passes he whips around the floor are high risk, high reward. But the green light to throw them is attached to a responsibility Adebayo is still grasping. He turns the ball over a lot.

“A lot of passes that I throw, some of them are kind of thread-the-needle type of passes, and I know Year 1 or Year 2 Bam wouldn’t have done that,” Adebayo said. “But you’ve gotta take the leash off the dog. What’s scarier, a dog with a leash walking with a person or a dog with nobody around him?”

When Adebayo is on the court, Miami outscores opponents by 7.5 points per 100 possessions—a top-five point differential—with an offense that’s slightly above league average. But they’d be even more threatening if his turnover rate wasn’t one of the league’s worst. Still, Miami’s coaches aren’t too concerned.

“I don’t want to put handcuffs on him. He’ll get better with it,” Spoelstra said. “And then hopefully on the other end of this we’re going to be a better offensive team because of that.”

Adebayo’s upward trajectory is steep. He was once an uncoordinated 15-year-old who couldn’t catch the ball, let alone finish at the basket.

“You’re talking All-Defensive, Defensive Player of the Year, an all-star,” Calipari said. “There were teams that passed on him [in the draft] and I tried to tell them: ‘You have no idea what you’re passing on.’”

Every so often Adebayo will do something he couldn’t weeks prior, be it a tight left-handed in-and-out dribble that propels him into the paint …

… or various floaters he was afraid to test when he first entered the league.

“In the first Milwaukee game we played this season, I was like, ‘Bro, two years ago, first of all I wouldn’t have shot this shot. Second of all, I don’t think I would’ve made it.’ That’s just honesty,” Adebayo said. “Just thinking about it, going through your head in the game, you really start to see how hard work pays off.”

A self-described visual learner and sponge, Adebayo pays attention when teammates offer pointers. Heat forward Kelly Olynyk recently gave him a good tip: When initiating a dribble hand-off, always be on the lookout for defenders who go through the motions. “Kelly was like ‘Hey bro, do it three times and then just keep it, see what happens.’”

Adebayo has the freedom to use his imagination on the fly. At least once a week he pulls off something in a game that makes one wonder just how high his ceiling could be.

It’s clear what his rough spots are. Adebayo can put the ball on the floor and blow by his man, but his post moves are jagged, and he has only made one three all season. (“Threes might end up being apart of my arsenal,” he said. “It’s a work in progress.”) He’s still far from being a self-reliant scorer, too, with 78 percent of his baskets coming off assists.

But based on how he has handled a critical role on a successful team, it’s hard not to be optimistic that Adebayo may someday turn those weaknesses into strengths.

“Obviously he’s turning it over a little bit but that’s what you want. You want him to build that experience and that growth so he can understand what passes work, what doesn’t work, what options to go off,” Olynyk said. “You’re not seeing a finished product.”

When asked if he was willing to answer a few questions about Adebayo for this story, Philadelphia 76ers guard Josh Richardson lit up. As teammates for two years with the Heat, they hung out constantly, unwinding after road trips at each other’s apartments and playing arcade games at Dave and Buster’s. Richardson smiled through every memory, calling Adebayo his best friend.

“He’s very positive,” Richardson said.

For players who spend eight or nine months away from their families, wading through the monotony of an NBA season, Adebayo’s personality is appreciated. Moments that don’t have to be serious usually aren’t when he’s around. It’s how he’s been for as long as he can remember, going back to the bus rides his AAU team took across North Carolina when he was in middle school.

“He’s playful as hell, man,” Smith said. “When we was little, like seventh grade, everybody was way smaller. He was 6’7 at the time. He’s still sitting there trying to wrestle everybody.”

Adebayo has perspective, too. He’s sensitive and caring, aware that he may not know what a teammate is going through on any given day. Round-the-clock empathy matters, and it comes to him naturally.

“When we was little, like seventh grade, everybody was way smaller. He was 6’7 at the time. He’s still sitting there trying to wrestle everybody.” - Dennis Smith Jr., Knicks point guard

On the home screen of his phone is the green trailer where Adebayo and his mother, Marilyn, lived from the time he was seven years old until his senior year in high school; a reminder of where he comes from.

Adebayo is still learning about himself. But despite his youth, the Heat believe he’s ready to embrace responsibilities that are typically handled by veterans. Miami’s 39-year-old bedrock Udonis Haslem wants Adebayo to vocalize what his teammates need to hear. During timeouts, Haslem will motion towards the empty coach’s chair and instruct Adebayo to take a seat.

“I’m trying to restrain from [sitting in the chair]. I’m not gonna lie. I’m trying to, because it’s hard for me,” Adebayo said. “I’ve done it a couple times. Just to get out of my comfort zone. It feels weird when you have all the eyes on you. But I’m getting used to my teammates hearing my voice. They’re listening. I feel like I’ve got one of those voices where, all right, if he’s saying something, something’s wrong.”

When it comes to holding teammates accountable in an individual setting, Adebayo is less bashful, even with Butler, who has so far been a seamless fit on and off the floor for the Heat.

“Everybody just assumed he was an asshole,” Adebayo said. “Every once in a while I’ve gotta go up to Jimmy and say, ‘Hey man, it’s go time, you need to wake up a little bit,’ and there’s been times where he’s told me that. But to know that your teammates care enough to actually hold you to a standard, I feel like that just defines what kind of person you really are. You care. You want your teammates to do good. You want them to become what you envision them to be.”

Adebayo never expected to shut Westbrook down, but the film from that loss reveals a brilliant performance that just about no other defender could even approach.

His plan was to force long twos, contest everything, and set every fast twitch muscle in his body on fire when it came time to race back in transition. Easier said than done, but Adebayo checked every box.

Westbrook got his points, but not like he wanted to. He only drove the ball 10 times in 36 minutes. Not including that night, Westbrook drives the ball about 17 times per game. Against the Heat, 16 of his 21 shots were launched at least 10 feet from the rim.

Attempting to dribble around Adebayo can be a confidence-crusher; he’s already cemented himself as one of the best isolation defenders in the league.

“Sometimes I think that we look at vertical athleticism and ability to play way above the rim and we automatically think that translates to lateral athleticism and the ability to stay in front of people. And it often doesn’t,” Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens said. “But he’s got both.”

For those who value process over results, Adebayo’s individual defense on Westbrook was a roaring success. Here’s how it looked:

This was just one matchup — albeit an unusual one — in one game that was decided by several different factors besides one player making life difficult for another. But it symbolizes why Adebayo is as unique as he is effective. He turns challenges into opportunities, treating them as a step on his way to fully realizing an upside that can’t yet be understood by anyone, including himself.

In an alternate universe, Adebayo could be having a fine career on a franchise that doesn’t have the means, need, or foresight to use every dimension of his game. Instead, he’s being cast in an ideal role that lets him impact winning and still learn about everything else he can do.

“People who have a strong sense of determination about themselves, I feel like the sky is the limit for those types of people,” Adebayo said. “Shoot, Jimmy — 30th pick and ended up being an all-star because he had that determination and that drive and that vision with himself to be what he wanted to be. I feel like I’m one of those people.”

Adebayo’s offense is still volatile, with learning moments that don’t match the monstrous impact he has on defense. But his innate talent, tireless work ethic, and enthusiasm make genuine, two-way greatness possible someday.

Not every player reaches their potential, but Adebayo is a sound bet. He and Miami can’t wait for that day to come. In the meantime, they’re both enjoying the journey there.

The Official Outlet Pass All-Star Ballot

My Somewhat Positionless All-Star Ballot

Eastern Conference Starters

Backcourt: Kyrie Irving, Kemba Walker

Frontcourt: Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kawhi Leonard, Joel Embiid

I love Bradley Beal, who’s averaging 28.5 points, 6.0 assists, 5.4 rebounds, and 2.3 steals in the 11 games since John Wall’s season ended. Choosing Kemba over him wasn’t easy. But we’re splitting hairs, and a quick statistical comparison ever-so-slightly tilts the edge to Walker, who’s also scored more points in the clutch than anyone else.

Otherwise, everything here is pretty obvious. Kyrie has been lightning in a bottle, Giannis was actually born on Krypton, Kawhi is “picking his spots” to the tune of career-high numbers in several major categories, and the Philadelphia 76ers are still atrocious whenever Embiid sits.

Eastern Conference Reserves (these are entirely position-less and include two wild-cards)

Bradley Beal, Blake Griffin, Nikola Vucevic, D’Angelo Russell, Khris Middleton, Ben Simmons, Kyle Lowry

Apologies to Victor Oladipo, Domas Sabonis, Pascal Siakam, Marcus Morris Sr., JJ Redick, Jimmy Butler, and John Collins.

It’s so hard to ignore Lowry’s on/off numbers (the Raptors look like the best team in the NBA when he’s on the floor and are the Wizards when he’s not); Griffin is having the best year of his career and might quietly be the most underrated player in the league; Russell is Brooklyn’s token representative (they’re too good to snub and his usage + high-wire shot making is too impressive to deny); Middleton has molded his game into a system that needs players like him to buy in; and Nikola Vucevic is the second coming.

Also, for the sake of transparency, this is what I wrote 24 hours before Victor Oladipo injured his knee, when Ben Simmons was my last cut: “Simmons is a rough omission and will probably make double-digit All-Star games before he retires. The internal debate I had between him, Lowry, Russell, and Middleton was never ending; I’m not positive I made the right choice. Simmons has done some incredible things this year and several teams have zero answer when he’s zipping coast to coast. But the Sixers still have a negative point differential whenever he’s on the court without Embiid, something that can’t be said about Lowry’s partnership with Kawhi or even Middleton’s with Giannis. And if Simmons and Russell swapped teams tomorrow, is it obvious which one would improve, or be more potent in the playoffs? I won’t get into the broken jumper, but of all the players on this list Simmons remains the easiest to gameplan off the floor. His defensive versatility is real, but his positive impact on that end is still more theoretical than consistently realized, and his turnover rate is nearly higher than his usage percentage.”

With Oladipo out, Simmons slides right in and allows me to sleep easier at night.

Western Conference Starters

Backcourt: Steph Curry, James Harden

Frontcourt: LeBron James, Paul George, Kevin Durant

Apologies to Nikola Jokic and Anthony Davis (the latter of whom might get in over Paul George if not for this weird finger injury), but I do not care how much time LeBron James has missed. Sue me.

I know All-Star slots don't necessarily align with any one player's team-specific value, but the Los Angeles Lakers were 9th in net rating before James pulled his groin. Since, they're 22nd with the NBA's fifth-worst offense. And it's not like he's missed half the season, either. As of this writing he's only missed 14 games and is still the best player alive (sorry Harden), so whatever. He's averaging 27, eight, and seven with an extremely questionable supporting cast. LeBron's scoring and rebound averages per 36 minutes are also the highest of his damn career. There's slightly more emotion than logic involved in this choice, but, again, I do not care. It's LeBron. He's a starter.

Western Conference Reserves

Nikola Jokic, Anthony Davis, Damian Lillard, Karl-Anthony Towns, LaMarcus Aldridge, Rudy Gobert, Tobias Harris

I really wanted to find a spot for Jrue Holiday and/or Donovan Mitchell, but each has been too inconsistent/on a struggling team. Harris gets the slightest nod over those two, Russell Westbrook, Klay Thompson, DeMar DeRozan, Buddy Hield, Luka Doncic, and *quietly weeps* Mike Conley.

The Beauty of Dame, CJ, and Curry

Terry Stotts’s offense is never more gorgeous than when Dame Lillard, C.J. McCollum, and Seth Curry share the floor. Even though C.J. is having a down year behind the arc, all are severely feared deep threats that can shoot on the move and hold an entire defense’s attention off the ball. The way they move in Stotts’s system, when everything is timed just right, can be basketball ballet.

They rarely play together, but Portland has outscored opponents by 18 points per 100 possessions with a scintillating attack that hasn’t even shot it very well, per Cleaning the Glass, when they do. That’s weird—outside of Golden State, there probably isn’t a more reputable trio of shooters on any roster in the league—but a small sample does them no favors, and nothing crystallizes their aesthetic and functional appeal more than this play from Tuesday night’s loss against the Oklahoma City Thunder, when Portland’s signature flare screens synced perfectly with action on the weak-side that could not be ignored.

The result isn’t exactly what the Blazers want, but redo that play ten times and Lillard either makes that dunk, draws a foul, or hits a wide-open Meyers Leonard on a dump off. Dame, C.J., and Curry just cycle off screens around the perimeter; it’s read-and-react basketball five or six times in a 20-second span, with OKC’s defenders ultimately dictating what type of shot the Blazers are going to get. The action climaxes when McCollum races past Meyers Leonard’s baseline screen at the exact same moment Lillard loops around Russell Westbrook and Steven Adams into the clear.

It’s well defended by a great defense, but Portland really makes them earn this stop. Watch Jerami Grant’s head throughout the possession. It’s extremely The Exorcist.

Is Towns Starting to Shake his Defensive Reputation?

Don’t let Minnesota’s fluttering playoff odds distract you from the fact that Karl-Anthony Towns is phenomenal. But the path for him to become the undisputed best player at his position is still on defense, where he’s still viewed as an undisciplined anchor that unmoors itself at random. There are games where foul trouble glues him to the bench, and those issues tend to force Towns into thinking his way through defensive possessions that the Timberwolves need him to instinctually glide through. He toggles between stretches where he’s either too aggressive and fouls a bunch or too sheepish and afraid of foul trouble.

His on/off numbers still aren’t great on that end, and even though last year’s were positive for the first time in his career, Minnesota sucked on defense when he played without Jimmy Butler.

But all is not hopeless and not everything is Towns’s fault. Before he was let go, Tom Thibodeau would sometimes have his best player hedge pick-and-rolls, a strategy that belongs in a different decade. And with Robert Covington injured, Ryan Saunders has resorted to lineups that have Anthony Tolliver defending wings (he matched up against Bryn Forbes for a stretch earlier this week!) in weird jumbo lineups that switch a bunch but remain discombobulated.

There are situations where Towns, like any other rim protector, is at the mercy of defensive miscues made by young teammates. When everyone else does their job, he tends to do his. When they don’t, he looks bad. A good example came in a recent win over the New Orleans Pelicans, where Holiday and AD spent crunch time running Spanish pick-and-roll after Spanish pick-and-roll.

Towns’s head is on a swivel and he does a fine enough job anticipating the back screen, but Tyus Jones comes up on the wrong side, which lets Holiday smash through for an easy two-handed dunk. Here’s what happened a few plays later, when Jones corrects his mistake and switches on Holiday.

Here’s another example from Tuesday night’s win over the Phoenix Suns, where Towns meets Devin Booker at the point of attack to force a pass back to Dragan Bender. So far, so good. But things quickly fall apart when Andrew Wiggins makes two questionable decisions in a row. First, he stunts too far off Mikal Bridges in the corner. Then, Bender—who’s 3-for-25 from deep this season—lifts him in the air with a pump fake. When Towns initially sees how far Wiggins has rotated off Bridges, he takes off for the opposite corner, but when Bender puts the ball on the floor to drive past Wiggins, he’s forced to cut him off. Wiggins is then two steps late contesting Bridges in the corner.

Saunders has Towns doing a bit more stuff than Thibodeau did. He’ll trap and recover against threatening ball-handlers and freely switch onto wings (something they’ve done more and more since Covington went down), while also dropping into a more conservative coverage that forces him to defend his man and the ball-handler. It’s a guessing game even the most astute defenders struggle with, and sometimes Towns will take himself out of the play by contesting a pull-up jumper that then allows his man to grab the offensive rebound. But he looks more and more comfortable making those decisions without major hesitation.

Towns is only 23 years old. He still has a lot to learn, and all signs of defensive growth deserve a tsunami siren. In their last 15 games, the Timberwolves’s defensive rating ranks top-3 with Towns on the court. That includes an absolute shellacking against Butler’s Philadelphia 76ers while opposing three-point shooters are generally nailing a crap ton of their wide-open looks.

Opponents are shooting the same percentage at the rim vs. Towns as they have against Rudy Gobert this season, and even though his feet don’t quite glide on the perimeter as most projected they would after his rookie season, Towns’s incremental baby steps are in the right direction. He works his ass off and knows where he’s supposed to be more often than not.

Not all his deficiencies can be explained by his surroundings, but it’d be interesting to see how he’d look in a less-rickety system, complemented by more obedient defenders. For now, he’s making the most of a situation that can’t look easy. And his trajectory on that side of the ball looks as optimistic as it has in a very long time.

Stop Burying Andre Iguodala

Bad news, everyone associated with the NBA except those employed by the Golden State Warriors: Andre Iguodala is still good! This might be an anecdotal straw-man argument, but people usually say his name with respectful restrain: Iguodala is *dramatically lowers voice* saving it for the playoffs. This is unnecessary.

Yes, his usage and minutes are at a career low, but that feels more like a smart organizational mandate than a signal of physical deterioration. Lets semi-ignore numbers for a moment, because on a team that now starts five All-Stars and has been to four straight NBA Finals, what’s more meaningful than regular-season production is how Iguodala looks.

It’s officially normal to think he's 25 instead of 35 (his birthday is in a few days). That springy, levitating samurai athleticism has Iguodala still doing chin-ups on the rim and cramming lobs in transition. Every night, he shoves Father Time into a locker. (A higher percentage of his shots are dunks right now than in all but three previous seasons—including when he was 21 and 22 years old—and he’s shooting a career-best 83.6 percent within three feet of the rim.)

Iguodala packs a punch when he’s on the floor. He makes the most of his playing time, unloading enough energy to pressure ball-handlers who weren’t alive when he was a teenager and denying ball reversals that force the offense to abort their first option. That stuff matters. He boxes out, recovers loose balls at a higher rate than any of his teammates, and still excels in his role as a critical cog in Golden State's OG Death Lineup, which is no longer getting steamrolled on defense.

Stats are relevant, and nobody is saying someone who averages 5.6 points per game should win Sixth Man of the Year, but whenever you see Iguodala ferociously murder a basketball in a situation where he can softly lay it up, it feels particularly significant.

A decent chunk of his offensive worth comes down to the ability to make open threes, but in spots where he could settle for the shot defenses hope he’ll take, Iguodala often decides to put his foot on the gas instead. Look at this drive and kick against Nikola Jokic’s soft closeout:

This guy is still very good, numbers and age be damned. And for anyone still worried about Golden State’s depth, interest, or general odds to win a third title in four years, please stop. If the Warriors are a Great White shark, those long sequences when Iguodala steps out of a time machine are the exact moment its jaw opens wide.

What if Patrick Patterson Were Patrick Patterson again?

Every time I watch the Oklahoma City Thunder I’m almost immediately bummed out by their need for outside shooting. The trade deadline may lessen this problem but it’s unlikely even Sam Presti can solve it. The Thunder are here to win right now, but don’t have any attractive assets to offer that won’t fundamentally alter their “get stops and push” identity. But in an alternate universe, one where Patrick Patterson isn’t one of the league’s blandest rotation players, what does this team look like?

It’s a depressing “what if” that allows us to wonder if these Thunder could hang with the Golden State Warriors in a playoff series. The answer is still probably not, but even with tempered expectations heading into this season, nobody could’ve expected Patterson (who’s only 29) to average 4.1 points per game with a field goal percentage that’s below 38 percent. Despite making eight of his last 11 threes, he isn’t anything close to the Sixth Man of the Year candidate that helped propel the Toronto Raptors.

The Thunder are outscored by 4.7 points per 100 possessions with Patterson on the court and a team-high plus-8.5 points per 100 possessions when he sits. The preseason debate over whether him or Grant should start feels like ancient history. But what if Patterson could stretch the floor and tweak opposing ball-handlers in OKC’s aggressive defensive system? What if he could post-up on switches and draw fouls and function at the four among the other four starters without OKC falling apart?

It feels highly unlikely Patterson ever moves as well as he once did, but how likely is it for his shot to come around at some point this season? Can he get hot in the playoffs? Injuries are the worst, and it’d be an awesome story if Patterson were able to resurrect his former self at some point over the next couple months. The Thunder could seriously use that player.

All Eyes On Okafor

A couple bullet points about Jahlil Okafor, who went from ghost to New Orleans’s extremely relevant starting center as Anthony Davis works his way back from a finger injury that may or may not keep him off the court for a while.

• Since they lost to the Milwaukee Bucks on December 19 (more or less his entrance into the regular rotation), the Pelicans have scored 113.9 points per 100 possessions in Okafor’s 236 minutes. That’s almost 20 points higher than his previous career-high in offensive rating. The eye test backs these numbers up. He’s playing hard and looks like an increasingly explosive offensive force—someone who can create his own shot with ease against single coverage. Only 36.9 percent of Okafor’s baskets have been assisted, which is by far the lowest among all centers in the league. (It’s also lower than Kyrie Irving and Zach LaVine.) Again, frequent put-back opportunities help, but he’s so smooth attacking from the mid-post, rip-and-going his defender baseline with a first step he didn’t have when he first entered the NBA.

• After AD, Okafor is easily New Orleans’s best rim protector. According to NBA.com, opponents are only shooting 42.6 percent at the basket when he’s guarding it. That’s obviously unsustainable and stripped from a small sample size, but this version of Okafor is completely different from the one who took up space in Philadelphia. He’s more lean, moves well laterally, and the Pelicans’s defensive rating is never better than when he’s on the court.

Opposing shot percentages at the rim are generally way down when he’s on the floor, per Cleaning the Glass. This is all something to keep an eye on. If Okafor can be a league-average defender who beasts on post-ups and putbacks, that’s definitely someone who deserves minutes. And for the next few weeks/months, the Pelicans may need everything he has to offer.

The Official Outlet Pass All-Star Ballot published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

The Official Outlet Pass All-Star Ballot

My Somewhat Positionless All-Star Ballot

Eastern Conference Starters

Backcourt: Kyrie Irving, Kemba Walker

Frontcourt: Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kawhi Leonard, Joel Embiid

I love Bradley Beal, who’s averaging 28.5 points, 6.0 assists, 5.4 rebounds, and 2.3 steals in the 11 games since John Wall’s season ended. Choosing Kemba over him wasn’t easy. But we’re splitting hairs, and a quick statistical comparison ever-so-slightly tilts the edge to Walker, who’s also scored more points in the clutch than anyone else.

Otherwise, everything here is pretty obvious. Kyrie has been lightning in a bottle, Giannis was actually born on Krypton, Kawhi is “picking his spots” to the tune of career-high numbers in several major categories, and the Philadelphia 76ers are still atrocious whenever Embiid sits.

Eastern Conference Reserves (these are entirely position-less and include two wild-cards)

Bradley Beal, Blake Griffin, Nikola Vucevic, D’Angelo Russell, Khris Middleton, Ben Simmons, Kyle Lowry

Apologies to Victor Oladipo, Domas Sabonis, Pascal Siakam, Marcus Morris Sr., JJ Redick, Jimmy Butler, and John Collins.

It’s so hard to ignore Lowry’s on/off numbers (the Raptors look like the best team in the NBA when he’s on the floor and are the Wizards when he’s not); Griffin is having the best year of his career and might quietly be the most underrated player in the league; Russell is Brooklyn’s token representative (they’re too good to snub and his usage + high-wire shot making is too impressive to deny); Middleton has molded his game into a system that needs players like him to buy in; and Nikola Vucevic is the second coming.

Also, for the sake of transparency, this is what I wrote 24 hours before Victor Oladipo injured his knee, when Ben Simmons was my last cut: “Simmons is a rough omission and will probably make double-digit All-Star games before he retires. The internal debate I had between him, Lowry, Russell, and Middleton was never ending; I’m not positive I made the right choice. Simmons has done some incredible things this year and several teams have zero answer when he’s zipping coast to coast. But the Sixers still have a negative point differential whenever he’s on the court without Embiid, something that can’t be said about Lowry’s partnership with Kawhi or even Middleton’s with Giannis. And if Simmons and Russell swapped teams tomorrow, is it obvious which one would improve, or be more potent in the playoffs? I won’t get into the broken jumper, but of all the players on this list Simmons remains the easiest to gameplan off the floor. His defensive versatility is real, but his positive impact on that end is still more theoretical than consistently realized, and his turnover rate is nearly higher than his usage percentage.”

With Oladipo out, Simmons slides right in and allows me to sleep easier at night.

Western Conference Starters

Backcourt: Steph Curry, James Harden

Frontcourt: LeBron James, Paul George, Kevin Durant

Apologies to Nikola Jokic and Anthony Davis (the latter of whom might get in over Paul George if not for this weird finger injury), but I do not care how much time LeBron James has missed. Sue me.

I know All-Star slots don’t necessarily align with any one player’s team-specific value, but the Los Angeles Lakers were 9th in net rating before James pulled his groin. Since, they’re 22nd with the NBA’s fifth-worst offense. And it’s not like he’s missed half the season, either. As of this writing he’s only missed 14 games and is still the best player alive (sorry Harden), so whatever. He’s averaging 27, eight, and seven with an extremely questionable supporting cast. LeBron’s scoring and rebound averages per 36 minutes are also the highest of his damn career. There’s slightly more emotion than logic involved in this choice, but, again, I do not care. It’s LeBron. He’s a starter.

Western Conference Reserves

Nikola Jokic, Anthony Davis, Damian Lillard, Karl-Anthony Towns, LaMarcus Aldridge, Rudy Gobert, Tobias Harris

I really wanted to find a spot for Jrue Holiday and/or Donovan Mitchell, but each has been too inconsistent/on a struggling team. Harris gets the slightest nod over those two, Russell Westbrook, Klay Thompson, DeMar DeRozan, Buddy Hield, Luka Doncic, and *quietly weeps* Mike Conley.

The Beauty of Dame, CJ, and Curry

Terry Stotts’s offense is never more gorgeous than when Dame Lillard, C.J. McCollum, and Seth Curry share the floor. Even though C.J. is having a down year behind the arc, all are severely feared deep threats that can shoot on the move and hold an entire defense’s attention off the ball. The way they move in Stotts’s system, when everything is timed just right, can be basketball ballet.

They rarely play together, but Portland has outscored opponents by 18 points per 100 possessions with a scintillating attack that hasn’t even shot it very well, per Cleaning the Glass, when they do. That’s weird—outside of Golden State, there probably isn’t a more reputable trio of shooters on any roster in the league—but a small sample does them no favors, and nothing crystallizes their aesthetic and functional appeal more than this play from Tuesday night’s loss against the Oklahoma City Thunder, when Portland’s signature flare screens synced perfectly with action on the weak-side that could not be ignored.

The result isn’t exactly what the Blazers want, but redo that play ten times and Lillard either makes that dunk, draws a foul, or hits a wide-open Meyers Leonard on a dump off. Dame, C.J., and Curry just cycle off screens around the perimeter; it’s read-and-react basketball five or six times in a 20-second span, with OKC’s defenders ultimately dictating what type of shot the Blazers are going to get. The action climaxes when McCollum races past Meyers Leonard’s baseline screen at the exact same moment Lillard loops around Russell Westbrook and Steven Adams into the clear.

It’s well defended by a great defense, but Portland really makes them earn this stop. Watch Jerami Grant’s head throughout the possession. It’s extremely The Exorcist.

Is Towns Starting to Shake his Defensive Reputation?

Don’t let Minnesota’s fluttering playoff odds distract you from the fact that Karl-Anthony Towns is phenomenal. But the path for him to become the undisputed best player at his position is still on defense, where he’s still viewed as an undisciplined anchor that unmoors itself at random. There are games where foul trouble glues him to the bench, and those issues tend to force Towns into thinking his way through defensive possessions that the Timberwolves need him to instinctually glide through. He toggles between stretches where he’s either too aggressive and fouls a bunch or too sheepish and afraid of foul trouble.

His on/off numbers still aren’t great on that end, and even though last year’s were positive for the first time in his career, Minnesota sucked on defense when he played without Jimmy Butler.

But all is not hopeless and not everything is Towns’s fault. Before he was let go, Tom Thibodeau would sometimes have his best player hedge pick-and-rolls, a strategy that belongs in a different decade. And with Robert Covington injured, Ryan Saunders has resorted to lineups that have Anthony Tolliver defending wings (he matched up against Bryn Forbes for a stretch earlier this week!) in weird jumbo lineups that switch a bunch but remain discombobulated.

There are situations where Towns, like any other rim protector, is at the mercy of defensive miscues made by young teammates. When everyone else does their job, he tends to do his. When they don’t, he looks bad. A good example came in a recent win over the New Orleans Pelicans, where Holiday and AD spent crunch time running Spanish pick-and-roll after Spanish pick-and-roll.

Towns’s head is on a swivel and he does a fine enough job anticipating the back screen, but Tyus Jones comes up on the wrong side, which lets Holiday smash through for an easy two-handed dunk. Here’s what happened a few plays later, when Jones corrects his mistake and switches on Holiday.

Here’s another example from Tuesday night’s win over the Phoenix Suns, where Towns meets Devin Booker at the point of attack to force a pass back to Dragan Bender. So far, so good. But things quickly fall apart when Andrew Wiggins makes two questionable decisions in a row. First, he stunts too far off Mikal Bridges in the corner. Then, Bender—who’s 3-for-25 from deep this season—lifts him in the air with a pump fake. When Towns initially sees how far Wiggins has rotated off Bridges, he takes off for the opposite corner, but when Bender puts the ball on the floor to drive past Wiggins, he’s forced to cut him off. Wiggins is then two steps late contesting Bridges in the corner.

Saunders has Towns doing a bit more stuff than Thibodeau did. He’ll trap and recover against threatening ball-handlers and freely switch onto wings (something they’ve done more and more since Covington went down), while also dropping into a more conservative coverage that forces him to defend his man and the ball-handler. It’s a guessing game even the most astute defenders struggle with, and sometimes Towns will take himself out of the play by contesting a pull-up jumper that then allows his man to grab the offensive rebound. But he looks more and more comfortable making those decisions without major hesitation.

Towns is only 23 years old. He still has a lot to learn, and all signs of defensive growth deserve a tsunami siren. In their last 15 games, the Timberwolves’s defensive rating ranks top-3 with Towns on the court. That includes an absolute shellacking against Butler’s Philadelphia 76ers while opposing three-point shooters are generally nailing a crap ton of their wide-open looks.

Opponents are shooting the same percentage at the rim vs. Towns as they have against Rudy Gobert this season, and even though his feet don’t quite glide on the perimeter as most projected they would after his rookie season, Towns’s incremental baby steps are in the right direction. He works his ass off and knows where he’s supposed to be more often than not.

Not all his deficiencies can be explained by his surroundings, but it’d be interesting to see how he’d look in a less-rickety system, complemented by more obedient defenders. For now, he’s making the most of a situation that can’t look easy. And his trajectory on that side of the ball looks as optimistic as it has in a very long time.

Stop Burying Andre Iguodala

Bad news, everyone associated with the NBA except those employed by the Golden State Warriors: Andre Iguodala is still good! This might be an anecdotal straw-man argument, but people usually say his name with respectful restrain: Iguodala is *dramatically lowers voice* saving it for the playoffs. This is unnecessary.

Yes, his usage and minutes are at a career low, but that feels more like a smart organizational mandate than a signal of physical deterioration. Lets semi-ignore numbers for a moment, because on a team that now starts five All-Stars and has been to four straight NBA Finals, what’s more meaningful than regular-season production is how Iguodala looks.

It’s officially normal to think he’s 25 instead of 35 (his birthday is in a few days). That springy, levitating samurai athleticism has Iguodala still doing chin-ups on the rim and cramming lobs in transition. Every night, he shoves Father Time into a locker. (A higher percentage of his shots are dunks right now than in all but three previous seasons—including when he was 21 and 22 years old—and he’s shooting a career-best 83.6 percent within three feet of the rim.)

Iguodala packs a punch when he’s on the floor. He makes the most of his playing time, unloading enough energy to pressure ball-handlers who weren’t alive when he was a teenager and denying ball reversals that force the offense to abort their first option. That stuff matters. He boxes out, recovers loose balls at a higher rate than any of his teammates, and still excels in his role as a critical cog in Golden State’s OG Death Lineup, which is no longer getting steamrolled on defense.

Stats are relevant, and nobody is saying someone who averages 5.6 points per game should win Sixth Man of the Year, but whenever you see Iguodala ferociously murder a basketball in a situation where he can softly lay it up, it feels particularly significant.

A decent chunk of his offensive worth comes down to the ability to make open threes, but in spots where he could settle for the shot defenses hope he’ll take, Iguodala often decides to put his foot on the gas instead. Look at this drive and kick against Nikola Jokic’s soft closeout:

This guy is still very good, numbers and age be damned. And for anyone still worried about Golden State’s depth, interest, or general odds to win a third title in four years, please stop. If the Warriors are a Great White shark, those long sequences when Iguodala steps out of a time machine are the exact moment its jaw opens wide.

What if Patrick Patterson Were Patrick Patterson again?

Every time I watch the Oklahoma City Thunder I’m almost immediately bummed out by their need for outside shooting. The trade deadline may lessen this problem but it’s unlikely even Sam Presti can solve it. The Thunder are here to win right now, but don’t have any attractive assets to offer that won’t fundamentally alter their “get stops and push” identity. But in an alternate universe, one where Patrick Patterson isn’t one of the league’s blandest rotation players, what does this team look like?

It’s a depressing “what if” that allows us to wonder if these Thunder could hang with the Golden State Warriors in a playoff series. The answer is still probably not, but even with tempered expectations heading into this season, nobody could’ve expected Patterson (who’s only 29) to average 4.1 points per game with a field goal percentage that’s below 38 percent. Despite making eight of his last 11 threes, he isn’t anything close to the Sixth Man of the Year candidate that helped propel the Toronto Raptors.

The Thunder are outscored by 4.7 points per 100 possessions with Patterson on the court and a team-high plus-8.5 points per 100 possessions when he sits. The preseason debate over whether him or Grant should start feels like ancient history. But what if Patterson could stretch the floor and tweak opposing ball-handlers in OKC’s aggressive defensive system? What if he could post-up on switches and draw fouls and function at the four among the other four starters without OKC falling apart?

It feels highly unlikely Patterson ever moves as well as he once did, but how likely is it for his shot to come around at some point this season? Can he get hot in the playoffs? Injuries are the worst, and it’d be an awesome story if Patterson were able to resurrect his former self at some point over the next couple months. The Thunder could seriously use that player.

All Eyes On Okafor

A couple bullet points about Jahlil Okafor, who went from ghost to New Orleans’s extremely relevant starting center as Anthony Davis works his way back from a finger injury that may or may not keep him off the court for a while.

• Since they lost to the Milwaukee Bucks on December 19 (more or less his entrance into the regular rotation), the Pelicans have scored 113.9 points per 100 possessions in Okafor’s 236 minutes. That’s almost 20 points higher than his previous career-high in offensive rating. The eye test backs these numbers up. He’s playing hard and looks like an increasingly explosive offensive force—someone who can create his own shot with ease against single coverage. Only 36.9 percent of Okafor’s baskets have been assisted, which is by far the lowest among all centers in the league. (It’s also lower than Kyrie Irving and Zach LaVine.) Again, frequent put-back opportunities help, but he’s so smooth attacking from the mid-post, rip-and-going his defender baseline with a first step he didn’t have when he first entered the NBA.

• After AD, Okafor is easily New Orleans’s best rim protector. According to NBA.com, opponents are only shooting 42.6 percent at the basket when he’s guarding it. That’s obviously unsustainable and stripped from a small sample size, but this version of Okafor is completely different from the one who took up space in Philadelphia. He’s more lean, moves well laterally, and the Pelicans’s defensive rating is never better than when he’s on the court.

Opposing shot percentages at the rim are generally way down when he’s on the floor, per Cleaning the Glass. This is all something to keep an eye on. If Okafor can be a league-average defender who beasts on post-ups and putbacks, that’s definitely someone who deserves minutes. And for the next few weeks/months, the Pelicans may need everything he has to offer.

The Official Outlet Pass All-Star Ballot syndicated from https://justinbetreviews.wordpress.com/

Goran Dragic is the Biggest Reason Miami Has Hope

The Miami Heat are down one game against a team that had the best point differential in the NBA after January 1st. (That’s right: the Philadelphia 76ers have been the best basketball team in the entire world during the year of our Lord 2018.)

Joel Embiid is back looking dominant on the defensive end, Ben Simmons is channeling a controlled verve that impacts every square foot of the basketball court, and Philly’s Buyout Brothers (Marco Belinelli + Ersan Ilyasova) are shooting a combined 864 percent on contested threes while blindfolded and falling out of bounds.

The Sixers are likely to advance because they are a better team. But throughout this series there’s one action that’s given Philadelphia’s excellent defense fits. It’s uncomplicated yet devastating, and revolves around the aggressiveness of Goran Dragic, Miami’s lone All-Star and best offensive player.

The concept is simple: Let Dragic attack a defender who’s inferior to the one actually guarding him, either with a sudden pick-and-roll or methodical one-on-one pummeling. In this series, that means “get Dragic off Robert Covington.” Only three players defended Dragic more often than Covington during the regular season; in 118 possessions the 31-year-old scored 24 points on 26 field-goal attempts and shot 34.6 percent from the floor.

Dragic has had a little success creating space with Covington on him, but as one of the game’s premier perimeter defenders—long as he is bold—that strategy isn’t viable if the Heat want to poke into the second round. In the first three games of this series, Miami’s offensive rating in the 60 minutes Dragic sat is 99.6. With him on the floor that number jumps to 115.8. Here’s a huge reason why.

In Game 2, Miami’s first-quarter offense was almost like the 15-play script some football coaches like to bring into battle. The entire objective in Dragic’s minutes (before Dwyane Wade took over) was to have the point guard attack J.J. Redick and Belinelli as often as possible. Screens were routinely set by whoever those two were guarding, usually in a way that allowed the southpaw to launch himself up the left sideline.

The tactic evolved as the game went on. If Covington wasn’t initially cleared out of the way, Dragic would move from one side of the floor to the other and run a couple pick-and-rolls until he got someone (Dario Saric in the play below) he could abuse.

Miami caught Covington from odd angles that let Dragic get to his dominant hand, and the second he got a matchup he wanted, the Heat would hit that lesser defender with a pick. On its face none of this is complicated, but when unfurled in rapid fire there’s very little time for the defense to process what’s happening.

There was actually one play where the Heat went off script and made the mistake of screening with Simmons’s man. The result was an understandable disaster.

Exactly one play later they rectified the situation, targeted Belinelli, and immediately went into a pick-and-roll. With the floor spread, Dragic went away from the screen and drew a foul on Simmons (his fourth) at the rim.

In Game 3, Miami started by unleashing Dragic in more traditional pick-and-rolls and letting him go downhill against a dropping Saric. They brushed him by Kelly Olynyk, planted at the high post, for a layup and made use of Dragic’s three-point shooting with a couple flare screens. But the Heat’s bread and butter was what they turned to whenever desperate for a good look.

Miami ran this same action with Wade, too. And it’s not at all unique around the league (the Portland Trail Blazers leaned in to get C.J. McCollum going on Thursday night), but Dragic’s combination of straight-line speed, fearlessness, and deceit makes him so hard to stop whenever Miami’s offense intentionally creates controlled chaos against a mismatch. He’s like James Harden…except three years older, three inches shorter, 30 pounds lighter, 40 percent less stylish, and Slovenian.

To slow Dragic down the Sixers tried everything. They trapped him high and brought the screener’s defender level with the pick in attempts to squeeze the ball from his hands and force someone else to put the ball in the basket. But whenever two defenders came to the ball, Dragic responded by making the right read, which led to 4-on-3 situations, open three-point shots, and zero legitimate protection at the basket.

As seen above, Dragic loves to reject screens and slide towards the basket on the opposite side of where the big’s defender expects him to go, a maneuver I’ve labeled in my notes as “the tuna salad.” (According to Synergy Sports, only Lou Williams and Dennis Schroder went away from a screen more than Dragic during the regular season.)

Dragic has always been an incurable cold sore in the open floor, a harsh reality opposing defenses have to live with and accept whenever they’re backpedaling on defense. But if Miami can continue to execute in the half-court by using him to punish fragile spots in Philly’s defense, this series may go much longer than the Sixers want.

Goran Dragic is the Biggest Reason Miami Has Hope syndicated from https://australiahoverboards.wordpress.com

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Find Your Dream Job Podcast Ep 076

This is a transcript of my interview with Mac Prichard of Mac’s List.  If you prefer, you can listen to my interview and more here.

  Now let’s turn to this week’s guest expert, Jeff Altman. Jeff Altman is known as the big game hunter, and he’s helped organizations find leaders, employees, and consultants since 1971. In this role, Jeff’s evaluated almost 700,000 people and filled more than 1,200 positions. Jeff also publishes the No BS Coaching Advice Newsletter to help job hunters, HR professionals, and business owners make better staffing positions. He’s the author of eight books about job-hunting, and the host of the Job Search Radio podcast. He joins us today from Asheville, North Carolina. Jeff, thanks for being on the show.

Jeff Altman:

Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate the invitation.

Mac Prichard:

It’s a pleasure. Our topic this week, as you know Jeff, is job interviews, and there is, you say, one best question every candidate can ask a hiring manager. Before we get into that, though, let’s start with the interview process and talk about job interviews. Most of them are pretty formally structured conversations, aren’t they?

Jeff Altman:

Invariably, they have a format, too. The job hunter walks in, immediately surrenders their power to the interviewer at the door. They sit down, the interviewer asks that immortal question. So, tell me about yourself and what you’ve been doing professionally, or something to that effect, that’s right out of the interview, open-ended question playbook. After playing interview karate for about 10 minutes, and by that I mean the interviewer throws a question, the job hunter puts up a block. Another question, hip roll. Back and forth for about 10, 15 minutes, until they get to the objective evaluation part of the interview, and either you have the skills or you don’t. That’s invariably part of what an interviewer’s assessing for, but then they come to the magic moment. So, do you have any questions for us, at which point you ask about the job, and they tell you, and invariably you say, “Sounds great. Terrific.” We’ll get back to you. That’s a pretty standard interview, isn’t it?

Mac Prichard:

It is, but you say there’s a better way, there’s a better process, and it starts with a question. Tell us what you coach people to do both when they’re hiring and when they’re a candidate sitting in that hot seat.

Jeff Altman:

I’m going to start off with a job hunter perspective, and from the job hunter perspective, I want you to flip the interview all on its head. Whether it’s a phone interview or an in-person interview, I encourage people to start by saying, “Hey, thank you so much for making time to meet with me, speak with me,” depending on the situation. “I spoke with Mac about the position, and he gave me a brief description, but I wanted to get your take on the role. Could you tell me about the job as you see it, and what I can do to help?” What that does is give you the information at the beginning of the interview, so that you can use it to talk about what you’ve done that’s relevant to the employer and not just talk about what you’ve done.

Mac Prichard:

This is the game-changer of a question; this is the one that can change the dynamic.

Jeff Altman:

Absolutely, because if you think about it from the employer’s perspective for a moment, even if you have a job description, generally it has evolved a couple of times before you’ve walked in the door. If a recruiter has sent that job description to you, you don’t know if it’s really changed. Those small tweaks, or those major changes, no one ever goes back to get them re-approved, so the job description is static, because why bother? We got this one approved, but from the job hunter perspective, unless you know of the changes, you’re out of luck. I always tell people, start off by asking that question at the beginning of the interview, so they can use that information to address what really matters to them, and not just talk about what you’ve done, which you may hit on the right point. Those nuanced questions, those nuanced points that you make by knowing what they’re really looking for now can make all the difference in the world.

Mac Prichard:

Okay, so start with, you walk in the room, you go through the pleasantries, you sit down in the hot seat, and then you take charge is what I’m hearing you say.

Jeff Altman:  

As soon as you lower your butt into the chair, that’s when you’re the one who starts speaking. Occasionally, they will say, “We’ll get to that later,” and to me, that’s very useful information, because it lets you know that they want to be controlling. They really don’t want to have a conversation with you. They’re being very cut and dry, and this is not about developing a relationship with you or selling to you. They just want to collect data. That’s useful.

Mac Prichard:

Let’s go back to, you’re sitting in that chair. You’ve had the opportunity to ask that question, and what I’m hearing you say is one of the benefits is fact-finding. It starts a conversation about what’s on the employer’s mind. What are some of the other benefits of starting with that question, and having that conversation, Jeff?

Jeff Altman:

Right off the bat, it’s knowing exactly what the current job description is, which again, may be different than that job description you saw in the ad that was sent to you by the recruiter. Invariably when employers have been interviewing for a while, they’re zeroing in on certain things. Right off the bat, you’re hearing from them what they zeroed into, zeroed into in this job description, so that this way you can focus on that. In addition, since hiring managers are often distracted, when you think about it, your arrival has caused them to turn away from something else that they were doing, and as a friend of mine once said, so many hiring managers start off a conversation with a job hunter by saying, “I want you to talk to Joel, for example. I just have to finish up something for about 15 minutes. I’ll be right back with you, and Joel will start off.”

Okay. You’re getting them focused if you have them in the room on what they have to deal with with you, so that you’re getting their attention. In addition, it levels the playing field between you. So often an interview is a process of, they are the superior, you are the subordinate. You’re the supplicant, hat-in-hand, and this isn’t Game of Thrones. This is an interview, and it shouldn’t be royalty in the peon. It should be two people having a conversation about a need, so right off the bat, with that question, you’re getting them focused, you’re alerting what you need so that you can address their concerns.

Mac Prichard:

I like your point, particularly about leveling the playing field, because I think many job seekers are thinking they’re in the position of a supplicant. In the end, it’s about finding out what the employer’s needs are, and what the problems are, and putting your best foot forward when you’re looking for work about how you can address and solve those problems. You mentioned earlier a benefit is that some employers might be controlling about the process, and not want to address that question, but there are many hiring processes that are just formal, and you walk into that room, and there’s a committee, or a set of structured questions, and you simply don’t have the opportunity to take charge, and ask that question right up front. What do you recommend job hunters do then, Jeff?

Jeff Altman:

What I’ll start off by saying is most of the committee interviews, most of the panel interviews, are actually the second interview following an initial phone interview. Occasionally the panel is the first. However, I must in all honestly tell you why I’ve advised people to do this in the panel situation. It works just as well. “Thank you for making time to meet with me tonight. I appreciate you carving out time on all of your calendars to sit down and evaluate my credentials. I want to be respectful of you and your time, and just thought I’d say I saw the position description. I think I match it well, but I just want to make sure. Can one of you tell me about the role as you see it, and what I can do to help?” One of them will take the bull by the horns, and discuss the position with you. Someone will correct them in some way, which also lets you know about the different agendas that the people around the table have, because each of them may represent a different constituency within the organization.

For example, in IT, you may have a program manager interviewing you, and you may have someone from the business side. You may have someone from HR there, three of them evaluating you, so only the HR person will take the lead, discuss what was in the formal specification. The project manager or program manager will pick up from there to tweak a couple of points, and occasionally the business person will step in at that point. You learn something about the job from that process.

Mac Prichard:

You’re doing that fact finding; you’re getting answers to that question. How do you continue the conversation, whether it’s in a formal setting with a committee, or a one-on-one conversation? Are there other questions, for example, Jeff, that you recommend candidates bring up?

Jeff Altman:

I’d only start by saying, job hunting for most job hunters is a pretty standard process. By asking this question at the beginning, you change it a little bit, but you need to be prepared with answers to all the predictable questions that might be asked. That includes “tell me about yourself,” so you might as well have an answer scripted out in your own mind that doesn’t sound rehearsed. This is part of the theater of interviewing, and in that theater, you are an actor or actress on the stage putting on a performance, showing yourself for you as your best. I think it always makes sense for people to be rehearsed with answers to the predictable questions. At the end of the interview, there’s another situation that comes up, and that is when they say, “So, do you have any questions for us,” you obviously cannot ask about the job there, because they started by talking about that, right?

I recommend a couple of different questions that people can pose there. They include, “Could you tell me about the first 30, 60, 90 days of what your expectations are? How would you want me to start off?”

Mac Prichard:

What’s the advantage of asking that question, Jeff?

Jeff Altman:

Two questions I suggest people ask are designed to give you a sense of what you’re walking into, and what their expectations of you are. Every once in awhile, you hear about an unreasonable hiring manager, an unreasonable situation that someone steps into. For example, I had been in search for a long time and I remember getting a phone call from a friend of mine named Marty. He had been a client, a friend, and he had taken a job where he didn’t realize this on the way in, but he accepted a position managing a project with a firm, where 80% of the money had been spent, but only 20% of the work had been done. He was doomed to failure right away, so you want to know what you’re walking into, and what the expectations are. Right off the bat, asking about the first 30, 60, and 90 days allows you to get a sense of what the initial goals are that they’re going to set out for you, and how they’re going to start figuring out whether to keep you past the probation period.

Then there’s the second question, which I think is the great one. Even better than the first one, this question starts off with, “let’s say you hire me, and it’s a year from now, and it’s time to give me my first review. I haven’t just done a good job. I’ve done a spectacular job, amongst the best that you’ve ever seen in a role like this, if not the best. What would I have accomplished during that year that would cause you to think that way?” Again, they’re going to start talking with you, and their first reaction is to go, “Gee, I haven’t really thought about it,” and that’s how most people answer that, but then they start talking about the first year, what the goals are in the department, and the goals that they’re going to have for you in this group. They get the sense of you as thinking big, that you’re not there to be average. You want to be a stronger player, if not the strongest one, and that this matters to you.

In asking a question like that, you’re planting seeds in the hiring manager’s mind that are helpful in their decision making. Plus, you are also eliciting information from them that allows you to decide whether this person’s crazy or not. Every once in awhile, you do hear about a manger who lays out this insane objective that’s impossible to do. I would just say fact-finding at the back end about their expectations for you are also important.

Mac Prichard:

Okay, so fact-finding is a constant theme that runs through this. The second one I’m hearing in all three of these questions, Jeff, is you’re getting insights into the organization’s culture, and the expectations of the manager, and whether they’re realistic or not, and it helps you uncover that occasionally crazy manager who I think we’ve all run across, and if we’ve had a long career. A third theme that’s running through all of this is you’re positioning yourself as a problem solver, and while you uncover those problems. Am I getting that right?

Jeff Altman:  

You’ve got it right, and I’ll hand the extra thing on top of that, at the same place I … Most of the time, job hunters make things harder for them than it needs to be, and by asking questions like this, you’re having a conversation with your future boss. Instead of being in that superior-subordinate situation, you’re setting the table for your future relationship, if there is to be one, that I think is important to set at the beginning for you as the job hunter, so that you know whether or not you’d ever feel comfortable working for this [person and organization].

Mac Prichard:

Great. Terrific. Excellent advice. Three great questions, not only the first one, but the two bonus ones as well. Tell us, Jeff, what’s coming up next for you?

Jeff Altman:

Oh, there’s so much. Jobsearchcoachinghq.com, which is a site that I launched to coach job hunters, is expanding tremendously during the first quarter. I’ve expanded it tremendously, so I’ve been taking on new coaching people to help people with their job search, plus the site has great information I’ve curated of my own, and from around the web with permission, of course, that’s going to help people find work more quickly, so again, the site is jobsearchcoachinghq.com.

Mac Prichard:

I’ve had a chance to visit the site this weekend. It’s a very good one, so we’ll be sure to include links to the site, and your other resources in our show notes. Jeff, thanks for being on the show this week.

Jeff Altman:

My pleasure. Thank you for having me on, and folks, I hope I’ve been able to help you.

Mac Prichard:

All right. It’s been a pleasure having you. Take care.

Okay. We’re back in the Mac’s List studio with Jenna and Ben. Tell me, Jenna, what were your impressions of my conversation with Jeff?

Jenna Forstrom:

I thought it was really great. I like how he gives this sense to the job hunter. It’s like, you’re in control; take command. Engage in a conversation. Feel out the company culture, and if they’re willing to engage with you, or if they’re on a fact-finding mission, and adjust accordingly. Halfway through your conversation, I was like, because this is a podcast and it’s not visual, but I was like, man, if you could capture his interview skillset with Vanessa Van Edwards’ body language, you are golden for any interview. If you can practice those two things, commanding an audience with strong visual body language, nothing in the world could stop you, but it was just very personable, the way he was talking.

Mac Prichard:

Very personable, and I like his message that job seekers should take charge. Obviously, you need the employers running the meeting, but you can come in with your own questions, and your own agenda, and it should be a two-way conversation.

Jenna Forstrom:

Yes.

Ben Forstag:

Along those same lines, I liked how he encouraged folks to ask questions right up front, and not wait until you’re prompted by the interviewer. I guess I’ve never really thought about that, right? It does put you in a subordinate position just waiting to be asked if you have any questions, but I think he presents a very viable, very nuanced way to introduce a question right off the bat. As he said, as soon as you put your butt in the seat. I thought that was a really good point.

Mac Prichard:

I like that, too, and again, the more you can put yourself into a conversation I think, with an employer or a hiring panel, and talking about panel problems, and Jeff’s questions allow you to uncover those problems, the more successful I think you’re going to be. Lots of good food for thought from Jeff.

The Official Outlet Pass All-Star Ballot

My Somewhat Positionless All-Star Ballot

Eastern Conference Starters

Backcourt: Kyrie Irving, Kemba Walker

Frontcourt: Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kawhi Leonard, Joel Embiid

I love Bradley Beal, who’s averaging 28.5 points, 6.0 assists, 5.4 rebounds, and 2.3 steals in the 11 games since John Wall’s season ended. Choosing Kemba over him wasn’t easy. But we’re splitting hairs, and a quick statistical comparison ever-so-slightly tilts the edge to Walker, who’s also scored more points in the clutch than anyone else.

Otherwise, everything here is pretty obvious. Kyrie has been lightning in a bottle, Giannis was actually born on Krypton, Kawhi is “picking his spots” to the tune of career-high numbers in several major categories, and the Philadelphia 76ers are still atrocious whenever Embiid sits.

Eastern Conference Reserves (these are entirely position-less and include two wild-cards)

Bradley Beal, Blake Griffin, Nikola Vucevic, D’Angelo Russell, Khris Middleton, Ben Simmons, Kyle Lowry

Apologies to Victor Oladipo, Domas Sabonis, Pascal Siakam, Marcus Morris Sr., JJ Redick, Jimmy Butler, and John Collins.

It’s so hard to ignore Lowry’s on/off numbers (the Raptors look like the best team in the NBA when he’s on the floor and are the Wizards when he’s not); Griffin is having the best year of his career and might quietly be the most underrated player in the league; Russell is Brooklyn’s token representative (they’re too good to snub and his usage + high-wire shot making is too impressive to deny); Middleton has molded his game into a system that needs players like him to buy in; and Nikola Vucevic is the second coming.

Also, for the sake of transparency, this is what I wrote 24 hours before Victor Oladipo injured his knee, when Ben Simmons was my last cut: “Simmons is a rough omission and will probably make double-digit All-Star games before he retires. The internal debate I had between him, Lowry, Russell, and Middleton was never ending; I’m not positive I made the right choice. Simmons has done some incredible things this year and several teams have zero answer when he’s zipping coast to coast. But the Sixers still have a negative point differential whenever he’s on the court without Embiid, something that can’t be said about Lowry’s partnership with Kawhi or even Middleton’s with Giannis. And if Simmons and Russell swapped teams tomorrow, is it obvious which one would improve, or be more potent in the playoffs? I won’t get into the broken jumper, but of all the players on this list Simmons remains the easiest to gameplan off the floor. His defensive versatility is real, but his positive impact on that end is still more theoretical than consistently realized, and his turnover rate is nearly higher than his usage percentage.”

With Oladipo out, Simmons slides right in and allows me to sleep easier at night.

Western Conference Starters

Backcourt: Steph Curry, James Harden

Frontcourt: LeBron James, Paul George, Kevin Durant

Apologies to Nikola Jokic and Anthony Davis (the latter of whom might get in over Paul George if not for this weird finger injury), but I do not care how much time LeBron James has missed. Sue me.

I know All-Star slots don't necessarily align with any one player's team-specific value, but the Los Angeles Lakers were 9th in net rating before James pulled his groin. Since, they're 22nd with the NBA's fifth-worst offense. And it's not like he's missed half the season, either. As of this writing he's only missed 14 games and is still the best player alive (sorry Harden), so whatever. He's averaging 27, eight, and seven with an extremely questionable supporting cast. LeBron's scoring and rebound averages per 36 minutes are also the highest of his damn career. There's slightly more emotion than logic involved in this choice, but, again, I do not care. It's LeBron. He's a starter.

Western Conference Reserves

Nikola Jokic, Anthony Davis, Damian Lillard, Karl-Anthony Towns, LaMarcus Aldridge, Rudy Gobert, Tobias Harris

I really wanted to find a spot for Jrue Holiday and/or Donovan Mitchell, but each has been too inconsistent/on a struggling team. Harris gets the slightest nod over those two, Russell Westbrook, Klay Thompson, DeMar DeRozan, Buddy Hield, Luka Doncic, and *quietly weeps* Mike Conley.

The Beauty of Dame, CJ, and Curry

Terry Stotts’s offense is never more gorgeous than when Dame Lillard, C.J. McCollum, and Seth Curry share the floor. Even though C.J. is having a down year behind the arc, all are severely feared deep threats that can shoot on the move and hold an entire defense’s attention off the ball. The way they move in Stotts’s system, when everything is timed just right, can be basketball ballet.

They rarely play together, but Portland has outscored opponents by 18 points per 100 possessions with a scintillating attack that hasn’t even shot it very well, per Cleaning the Glass, when they do. That’s weird—outside of Golden State, there probably isn’t a more reputable trio of shooters on any roster in the league—but a small sample does them no favors, and nothing crystallizes their aesthetic and functional appeal more than this play from Tuesday night’s loss against the Oklahoma City Thunder, when Portland’s signature flare screens synced perfectly with action on the weak-side that could not be ignored.

The result isn’t exactly what the Blazers want, but redo that play ten times and Lillard either makes that dunk, draws a foul, or hits a wide-open Meyers Leonard on a dump off. Dame, C.J., and Curry just cycle off screens around the perimeter; it’s read-and-react basketball five or six times in a 20-second span, with OKC’s defenders ultimately dictating what type of shot the Blazers are going to get. The action climaxes when McCollum races past Meyers Leonard’s baseline screen at the exact same moment Lillard loops around Russell Westbrook and Steven Adams into the clear.

It’s well defended by a great defense, but Portland really makes them earn this stop. Watch Jerami Grant’s head throughout the possession. It’s extremely The Exorcist.

Is Towns Starting to Shake his Defensive Reputation?

Don’t let Minnesota’s fluttering playoff odds distract you from the fact that Karl-Anthony Towns is phenomenal. But the path for him to become the undisputed best player at his position is still on defense, where he’s still viewed as an undisciplined anchor that unmoors itself at random. There are games where foul trouble glues him to the bench, and those issues tend to force Towns into thinking his way through defensive possessions that the Timberwolves need him to instinctually glide through. He toggles between stretches where he’s either too aggressive and fouls a bunch or too sheepish and afraid of foul trouble.

His on/off numbers still aren’t great on that end, and even though last year’s were positive for the first time in his career, Minnesota sucked on defense when he played without Jimmy Butler.

But all is not hopeless and not everything is Towns’s fault. Before he was let go, Tom Thibodeau would sometimes have his best player hedge pick-and-rolls, a strategy that belongs in a different decade. And with Robert Covington injured, Ryan Saunders has resorted to lineups that have Anthony Tolliver defending wings (he matched up against Bryn Forbes for a stretch earlier this week!) in weird jumbo lineups that switch a bunch but remain discombobulated.

There are situations where Towns, like any other rim protector, is at the mercy of defensive miscues made by young teammates. When everyone else does their job, he tends to do his. When they don’t, he looks bad. A good example came in a recent win over the New Orleans Pelicans, where Holiday and AD spent crunch time running Spanish pick-and-roll after Spanish pick-and-roll.

Towns’s head is on a swivel and he does a fine enough job anticipating the back screen, but Tyus Jones comes up on the wrong side, which lets Holiday smash through for an easy two-handed dunk. Here’s what happened a few plays later, when Jones corrects his mistake and switches on Holiday.

Here’s another example from Tuesday night’s win over the Phoenix Suns, where Towns meets Devin Booker at the point of attack to force a pass back to Dragan Bender. So far, so good. But things quickly fall apart when Andrew Wiggins makes two questionable decisions in a row. First, he stunts too far off Mikal Bridges in the corner. Then, Bender—who’s 3-for-25 from deep this season—lifts him in the air with a pump fake. When Towns initially sees how far Wiggins has rotated off Bridges, he takes off for the opposite corner, but when Bender puts the ball on the floor to drive past Wiggins, he’s forced to cut him off. Wiggins is then two steps late contesting Bridges in the corner.

Saunders has Towns doing a bit more stuff than Thibodeau did. He’ll trap and recover against threatening ball-handlers and freely switch onto wings (something they’ve done more and more since Covington went down), while also dropping into a more conservative coverage that forces him to defend his man and the ball-handler. It’s a guessing game even the most astute defenders struggle with, and sometimes Towns will take himself out of the play by contesting a pull-up jumper that then allows his man to grab the offensive rebound. But he looks more and more comfortable making those decisions without major hesitation.

Towns is only 23 years old. He still has a lot to learn, and all signs of defensive growth deserve a tsunami siren. In their last 15 games, the Timberwolves’s defensive rating ranks top-3 with Towns on the court. That includes an absolute shellacking against Butler’s Philadelphia 76ers while opposing three-point shooters are generally nailing a crap ton of their wide-open looks.

Opponents are shooting the same percentage at the rim vs. Towns as they have against Rudy Gobert this season, and even though his feet don’t quite glide on the perimeter as most projected they would after his rookie season, Towns’s incremental baby steps are in the right direction. He works his ass off and knows where he’s supposed to be more often than not.

Not all his deficiencies can be explained by his surroundings, but it’d be interesting to see how he’d look in a less-rickety system, complemented by more obedient defenders. For now, he’s making the most of a situation that can’t look easy. And his trajectory on that side of the ball looks as optimistic as it has in a very long time.

Stop Burying Andre Iguodala

Bad news, everyone associated with the NBA except those employed by the Golden State Warriors: Andre Iguodala is still good! This might be an anecdotal straw-man argument, but people usually say his name with respectful restrain: Iguodala is *dramatically lowers voice* saving it for the playoffs. This is unnecessary.

Yes, his usage and minutes are at a career low, but that feels more like a smart organizational mandate than a signal of physical deterioration. Lets semi-ignore numbers for a moment, because on a team that now starts five All-Stars and has been to four straight NBA Finals, what’s more meaningful than regular-season production is how Iguodala looks.

It’s officially normal to think he's 25 instead of 35 (his birthday is in a few days). That springy, levitating samurai athleticism has Iguodala still doing chin-ups on the rim and cramming lobs in transition. Every night, he shoves Father Time into a locker. (A higher percentage of his shots are dunks right now than in all but three previous seasons—including when he was 21 and 22 years old—and he’s shooting a career-best 83.6 percent within three feet of the rim.)

Iguodala packs a punch when he’s on the floor. He makes the most of his playing time, unloading enough energy to pressure ball-handlers who weren’t alive when he was a teenager and denying ball reversals that force the offense to abort their first option. That stuff matters. He boxes out, recovers loose balls at a higher rate than any of his teammates, and still excels in his role as a critical cog in Golden State's OG Death Lineup, which is no longer getting steamrolled on defense.

Stats are relevant, and nobody is saying someone who averages 5.6 points per game should win Sixth Man of the Year, but whenever you see Iguodala ferociously murder a basketball in a situation where he can softly lay it up, it feels particularly significant.

A decent chunk of his offensive worth comes down to the ability to make open threes, but in spots where he could settle for the shot defenses hope he’ll take, Iguodala often decides to put his foot on the gas instead. Look at this drive and kick against Nikola Jokic’s soft closeout:

This guy is still very good, numbers and age be damned. And for anyone still worried about Golden State’s depth, interest, or general odds to win a third title in four years, please stop. If the Warriors are a Great White shark, those long sequences when Iguodala steps out of a time machine are the exact moment its jaw opens wide.

What if Patrick Patterson Were Patrick Patterson again?

Every time I watch the Oklahoma City Thunder I’m almost immediately bummed out by their need for outside shooting. The trade deadline may lessen this problem but it’s unlikely even Sam Presti can solve it. The Thunder are here to win right now, but don’t have any attractive assets to offer that won’t fundamentally alter their “get stops and push” identity. But in an alternate universe, one where Patrick Patterson isn’t one of the league’s blandest rotation players, what does this team look like?

It’s a depressing “what if” that allows us to wonder if these Thunder could hang with the Golden State Warriors in a playoff series. The answer is still probably not, but even with tempered expectations heading into this season, nobody could’ve expected Patterson (who’s only 29) to average 4.1 points per game with a field goal percentage that’s below 38 percent. Despite making eight of his last 11 threes, he isn’t anything close to the Sixth Man of the Year candidate that helped propel the Toronto Raptors.

The Thunder are outscored by 4.7 points per 100 possessions with Patterson on the court and a team-high plus-8.5 points per 100 possessions when he sits. The preseason debate over whether him or Grant should start feels like ancient history. But what if Patterson could stretch the floor and tweak opposing ball-handlers in OKC’s aggressive defensive system? What if he could post-up on switches and draw fouls and function at the four among the other four starters without OKC falling apart?

It feels highly unlikely Patterson ever moves as well as he once did, but how likely is it for his shot to come around at some point this season? Can he get hot in the playoffs? Injuries are the worst, and it’d be an awesome story if Patterson were able to resurrect his former self at some point over the next couple months. The Thunder could seriously use that player.

All Eyes On Okafor

A couple bullet points about Jahlil Okafor, who went from ghost to New Orleans’s extremely relevant starting center as Anthony Davis works his way back from a finger injury that may or may not keep him off the court for a while.

• Since they lost to the Milwaukee Bucks on December 19 (more or less his entrance into the regular rotation), the Pelicans have scored 113.9 points per 100 possessions in Okafor’s 236 minutes. That’s almost 20 points higher than his previous career-high in offensive rating. The eye test backs these numbers up. He’s playing hard and looks like an increasingly explosive offensive force—someone who can create his own shot with ease against single coverage. Only 36.9 percent of Okafor’s baskets have been assisted, which is by far the lowest among all centers in the league. (It’s also lower than Kyrie Irving and Zach LaVine.) Again, frequent put-back opportunities help, but he’s so smooth attacking from the mid-post, rip-and-going his defender baseline with a first step he didn’t have when he first entered the NBA.

• After AD, Okafor is easily New Orleans’s best rim protector. According to NBA.com, opponents are only shooting 42.6 percent at the basket when he’s guarding it. That’s obviously unsustainable and stripped from a small sample size, but this version of Okafor is completely different from the one who took up space in Philadelphia. He’s more lean, moves well laterally, and the Pelicans’s defensive rating is never better than when he’s on the court.

Opposing shot percentages at the rim are generally way down when he’s on the floor, per Cleaning the Glass. This is all something to keep an eye on. If Okafor can be a league-average defender who beasts on post-ups and putbacks, that’s definitely someone who deserves minutes. And for the next few weeks/months, the Pelicans may need everything he has to offer.

The Official Outlet Pass All-Star Ballot published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

The Official Outlet Pass All-Star Ballot

My Somewhat Positionless All-Star Ballot

Eastern Conference Starters

Backcourt: Kyrie Irving, Kemba Walker

Frontcourt: Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kawhi Leonard, Joel Embiid

I love Bradley Beal, who’s averaging 28.5 points, 6.0 assists, 5.4 rebounds, and 2.3 steals in the 11 games since John Wall’s season ended. Choosing Kemba over him wasn’t easy. But we’re splitting hairs, and a quick statistical comparison ever-so-slightly tilts the edge to Walker, who’s also scored more points in the clutch than anyone else.

Otherwise, everything here is pretty obvious. Kyrie has been lightning in a bottle, Giannis was actually born on Krypton, Kawhi is “picking his spots” to the tune of career-high numbers in several major categories, and the Philadelphia 76ers are still atrocious whenever Embiid sits.

Eastern Conference Reserves (these are entirely position-less and include two wild-cards)

Bradley Beal, Blake Griffin, Nikola Vucevic, D’Angelo Russell, Khris Middleton, Ben Simmons, Kyle Lowry

Apologies to Victor Oladipo, Domas Sabonis, Pascal Siakam, Marcus Morris Sr., JJ Redick, Jimmy Butler, and John Collins.

It’s so hard to ignore Lowry’s on/off numbers (the Raptors look like the best team in the NBA when he’s on the floor and are the Wizards when he’s not); Griffin is having the best year of his career and might quietly be the most underrated player in the league; Russell is Brooklyn’s token representative (they’re too good to snub and his usage + high-wire shot making is too impressive to deny); Middleton has molded his game into a system that needs players like him to buy in; and Nikola Vucevic is the second coming.

Also, for the sake of transparency, this is what I wrote 24 hours before Victor Oladipo injured his knee, when Ben Simmons was my last cut: “Simmons is a rough omission and will probably make double-digit All-Star games before he retires. The internal debate I had between him, Lowry, Russell, and Middleton was never ending; I’m not positive I made the right choice. Simmons has done some incredible things this year and several teams have zero answer when he’s zipping coast to coast. But the Sixers still have a negative point differential whenever he’s on the court without Embiid, something that can’t be said about Lowry’s partnership with Kawhi or even Middleton’s with Giannis. And if Simmons and Russell swapped teams tomorrow, is it obvious which one would improve, or be more potent in the playoffs? I won’t get into the broken jumper, but of all the players on this list Simmons remains the easiest to gameplan off the floor. His defensive versatility is real, but his positive impact on that end is still more theoretical than consistently realized, and his turnover rate is nearly higher than his usage percentage.”

With Oladipo out, Simmons slides right in and allows me to sleep easier at night.

Western Conference Starters

Backcourt: Steph Curry, James Harden

Frontcourt: LeBron James, Paul George, Kevin Durant

Apologies to Nikola Jokic and Anthony Davis (the latter of whom might get in over Paul George if not for this weird finger injury), but I do not care how much time LeBron James has missed. Sue me.

I know All-Star slots don't necessarily align with any one player's team-specific value, but the Los Angeles Lakers were 9th in net rating before James pulled his groin. Since, they're 22nd with the NBA's fifth-worst offense. And it's not like he's missed half the season, either. As of this writing he's only missed 14 games and is still the best player alive (sorry Harden), so whatever. He's averaging 27, eight, and seven with an extremely questionable supporting cast. LeBron's scoring and rebound averages per 36 minutes are also the highest of his damn career. There's slightly more emotion than logic involved in this choice, but, again, I do not care. It's LeBron. He's a starter.

Western Conference Reserves

Nikola Jokic, Anthony Davis, Damian Lillard, Karl-Anthony Towns, LaMarcus Aldridge, Rudy Gobert, Tobias Harris

I really wanted to find a spot for Jrue Holiday and/or Donovan Mitchell, but each has been too inconsistent/on a struggling team. Harris gets the slightest nod over those two, Russell Westbrook, Klay Thompson, DeMar DeRozan, Buddy Hield, Luka Doncic, and *quietly weeps* Mike Conley.

The Beauty of Dame, CJ, and Curry

Terry Stotts’s offense is never more gorgeous than when Dame Lillard, C.J. McCollum, and Seth Curry share the floor. Even though C.J. is having a down year behind the arc, all are severely feared deep threats that can shoot on the move and hold an entire defense’s attention off the ball. The way they move in Stotts’s system, when everything is timed just right, can be basketball ballet.

They rarely play together, but Portland has outscored opponents by 18 points per 100 possessions with a scintillating attack that hasn’t even shot it very well, per Cleaning the Glass, when they do. That’s weird—outside of Golden State, there probably isn’t a more reputable trio of shooters on any roster in the league—but a small sample does them no favors, and nothing crystallizes their aesthetic and functional appeal more than this play from Tuesday night’s loss against the Oklahoma City Thunder, when Portland’s signature flare screens synced perfectly with action on the weak-side that could not be ignored.

The result isn’t exactly what the Blazers want, but redo that play ten times and Lillard either makes that dunk, draws a foul, or hits a wide-open Meyers Leonard on a dump off. Dame, C.J., and Curry just cycle off screens around the perimeter; it’s read-and-react basketball five or six times in a 20-second span, with OKC’s defenders ultimately dictating what type of shot the Blazers are going to get. The action climaxes when McCollum races past Meyers Leonard’s baseline screen at the exact same moment Lillard loops around Russell Westbrook and Steven Adams into the clear.

It’s well defended by a great defense, but Portland really makes them earn this stop. Watch Jerami Grant’s head throughout the possession. It’s extremely The Exorcist.

Is Towns Starting to Shake his Defensive Reputation?

Don’t let Minnesota’s fluttering playoff odds distract you from the fact that Karl-Anthony Towns is phenomenal. But the path for him to become the undisputed best player at his position is still on defense, where he’s still viewed as an undisciplined anchor that unmoors itself at random. There are games where foul trouble glues him to the bench, and those issues tend to force Towns into thinking his way through defensive possessions that the Timberwolves need him to instinctually glide through. He toggles between stretches where he’s either too aggressive and fouls a bunch or too sheepish and afraid of foul trouble.

His on/off numbers still aren’t great on that end, and even though last year’s were positive for the first time in his career, Minnesota sucked on defense when he played without Jimmy Butler.

But all is not hopeless and not everything is Towns’s fault. Before he was let go, Tom Thibodeau would sometimes have his best player hedge pick-and-rolls, a strategy that belongs in a different decade. And with Robert Covington injured, Ryan Saunders has resorted to lineups that have Anthony Tolliver defending wings (he matched up against Bryn Forbes for a stretch earlier this week!) in weird jumbo lineups that switch a bunch but remain discombobulated.

There are situations where Towns, like any other rim protector, is at the mercy of defensive miscues made by young teammates. When everyone else does their job, he tends to do his. When they don’t, he looks bad. A good example came in a recent win over the New Orleans Pelicans, where Holiday and AD spent crunch time running Spanish pick-and-roll after Spanish pick-and-roll.

Towns’s head is on a swivel and he does a fine enough job anticipating the back screen, but Tyus Jones comes up on the wrong side, which lets Holiday smash through for an easy two-handed dunk. Here’s what happened a few plays later, when Jones corrects his mistake and switches on Holiday.

Here’s another example from Tuesday night’s win over the Phoenix Suns, where Towns meets Devin Booker at the point of attack to force a pass back to Dragan Bender. So far, so good. But things quickly fall apart when Andrew Wiggins makes two questionable decisions in a row. First, he stunts too far off Mikal Bridges in the corner. Then, Bender—who’s 3-for-25 from deep this season—lifts him in the air with a pump fake. When Towns initially sees how far Wiggins has rotated off Bridges, he takes off for the opposite corner, but when Bender puts the ball on the floor to drive past Wiggins, he’s forced to cut him off. Wiggins is then two steps late contesting Bridges in the corner.

Saunders has Towns doing a bit more stuff than Thibodeau did. He’ll trap and recover against threatening ball-handlers and freely switch onto wings (something they’ve done more and more since Covington went down), while also dropping into a more conservative coverage that forces him to defend his man and the ball-handler. It’s a guessing game even the most astute defenders struggle with, and sometimes Towns will take himself out of the play by contesting a pull-up jumper that then allows his man to grab the offensive rebound. But he looks more and more comfortable making those decisions without major hesitation.

Towns is only 23 years old. He still has a lot to learn, and all signs of defensive growth deserve a tsunami siren. In their last 15 games, the Timberwolves’s defensive rating ranks top-3 with Towns on the court. That includes an absolute shellacking against Butler’s Philadelphia 76ers while opposing three-point shooters are generally nailing a crap ton of their wide-open looks.

Opponents are shooting the same percentage at the rim vs. Towns as they have against Rudy Gobert this season, and even though his feet don’t quite glide on the perimeter as most projected they would after his rookie season, Towns’s incremental baby steps are in the right direction. He works his ass off and knows where he’s supposed to be more often than not.

Not all his deficiencies can be explained by his surroundings, but it’d be interesting to see how he’d look in a less-rickety system, complemented by more obedient defenders. For now, he’s making the most of a situation that can’t look easy. And his trajectory on that side of the ball looks as optimistic as it has in a very long time.

Stop Burying Andre Iguodala

Bad news, everyone associated with the NBA except those employed by the Golden State Warriors: Andre Iguodala is still good! This might be an anecdotal straw-man argument, but people usually say his name with respectful restrain: Iguodala is *dramatically lowers voice* saving it for the playoffs. This is unnecessary.

Yes, his usage and minutes are at a career low, but that feels more like a smart organizational mandate than a signal of physical deterioration. Lets semi-ignore numbers for a moment, because on a team that now starts five All-Stars and has been to four straight NBA Finals, what’s more meaningful than regular-season production is how Iguodala looks.

It’s officially normal to think he's 25 instead of 35 (his birthday is in a few days). That springy, levitating samurai athleticism has Iguodala still doing chin-ups on the rim and cramming lobs in transition. Every night, he shoves Father Time into a locker. (A higher percentage of his shots are dunks right now than in all but three previous seasons—including when he was 21 and 22 years old—and he’s shooting a career-best 83.6 percent within three feet of the rim.)

Iguodala packs a punch when he’s on the floor. He makes the most of his playing time, unloading enough energy to pressure ball-handlers who weren’t alive when he was a teenager and denying ball reversals that force the offense to abort their first option. That stuff matters. He boxes out, recovers loose balls at a higher rate than any of his teammates, and still excels in his role as a critical cog in Golden State's OG Death Lineup, which is no longer getting steamrolled on defense.

Stats are relevant, and nobody is saying someone who averages 5.6 points per game should win Sixth Man of the Year, but whenever you see Iguodala ferociously murder a basketball in a situation where he can softly lay it up, it feels particularly significant.

A decent chunk of his offensive worth comes down to the ability to make open threes, but in spots where he could settle for the shot defenses hope he’ll take, Iguodala often decides to put his foot on the gas instead. Look at this drive and kick against Nikola Jokic’s soft closeout:

This guy is still very good, numbers and age be damned. And for anyone still worried about Golden State’s depth, interest, or general odds to win a third title in four years, please stop. If the Warriors are a Great White shark, those long sequences when Iguodala steps out of a time machine are the exact moment its jaw opens wide.

What if Patrick Patterson Were Patrick Patterson again?

Every time I watch the Oklahoma City Thunder I’m almost immediately bummed out by their need for outside shooting. The trade deadline may lessen this problem but it’s unlikely even Sam Presti can solve it. The Thunder are here to win right now, but don’t have any attractive assets to offer that won’t fundamentally alter their “get stops and push” identity. But in an alternate universe, one where Patrick Patterson isn’t one of the league’s blandest rotation players, what does this team look like?

It’s a depressing “what if” that allows us to wonder if these Thunder could hang with the Golden State Warriors in a playoff series. The answer is still probably not, but even with tempered expectations heading into this season, nobody could’ve expected Patterson (who’s only 29) to average 4.1 points per game with a field goal percentage that’s below 38 percent. Despite making eight of his last 11 threes, he isn’t anything close to the Sixth Man of the Year candidate that helped propel the Toronto Raptors.

The Thunder are outscored by 4.7 points per 100 possessions with Patterson on the court and a team-high plus-8.5 points per 100 possessions when he sits. The preseason debate over whether him or Grant should start feels like ancient history. But what if Patterson could stretch the floor and tweak opposing ball-handlers in OKC’s aggressive defensive system? What if he could post-up on switches and draw fouls and function at the four among the other four starters without OKC falling apart?

It feels highly unlikely Patterson ever moves as well as he once did, but how likely is it for his shot to come around at some point this season? Can he get hot in the playoffs? Injuries are the worst, and it’d be an awesome story if Patterson were able to resurrect his former self at some point over the next couple months. The Thunder could seriously use that player.

All Eyes On Okafor

A couple bullet points about Jahlil Okafor, who went from ghost to New Orleans’s extremely relevant starting center as Anthony Davis works his way back from a finger injury that may or may not keep him off the court for a while.

• Since they lost to the Milwaukee Bucks on December 19 (more or less his entrance into the regular rotation), the Pelicans have scored 113.9 points per 100 possessions in Okafor’s 236 minutes. That’s almost 20 points higher than his previous career-high in offensive rating. The eye test backs these numbers up. He’s playing hard and looks like an increasingly explosive offensive force—someone who can create his own shot with ease against single coverage. Only 36.9 percent of Okafor’s baskets have been assisted, which is by far the lowest among all centers in the league. (It’s also lower than Kyrie Irving and Zach LaVine.) Again, frequent put-back opportunities help, but he’s so smooth attacking from the mid-post, rip-and-going his defender baseline with a first step he didn’t have when he first entered the NBA.

• After AD, Okafor is easily New Orleans’s best rim protector. According to NBA.com, opponents are only shooting 42.6 percent at the basket when he’s guarding it. That’s obviously unsustainable and stripped from a small sample size, but this version of Okafor is completely different from the one who took up space in Philadelphia. He’s more lean, moves well laterally, and the Pelicans’s defensive rating is never better than when he’s on the court.

Opposing shot percentages at the rim are generally way down when he’s on the floor, per Cleaning the Glass. This is all something to keep an eye on. If Okafor can be a league-average defender who beasts on post-ups and putbacks, that’s definitely someone who deserves minutes. And for the next few weeks/months, the Pelicans may need everything he has to offer.

The Official Outlet Pass All-Star Ballot published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

The Official Outlet Pass All-Star Ballot

My Somewhat Positionless All-Star Ballot

Eastern Conference Starters

Backcourt: Kyrie Irving, Kemba Walker

Frontcourt: Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kawhi Leonard, Joel Embiid

I love Bradley Beal, who’s averaging 28.5 points, 6.0 assists, 5.4 rebounds, and 2.3 steals in the 11 games since John Wall’s season ended. Choosing Kemba over him wasn’t easy. But we’re splitting hairs, and a quick statistical comparison ever-so-slightly tilts the edge to Walker, who’s also scored more points in the clutch than anyone else.

Otherwise, everything here is pretty obvious. Kyrie has been lightning in a bottle, Giannis was actually born on Krypton, Kawhi is “picking his spots” to the tune of career-high numbers in several major categories, and the Philadelphia 76ers are still atrocious whenever Embiid sits.

Eastern Conference Reserves (these are entirely position-less and include two wild-cards)

Bradley Beal, Blake Griffin, Nikola Vucevic, D’Angelo Russell, Khris Middleton, Ben Simmons, Kyle Lowry

Apologies to Victor Oladipo, Domas Sabonis, Pascal Siakam, Marcus Morris Sr., JJ Redick, Jimmy Butler, and John Collins.

It’s so hard to ignore Lowry’s on/off numbers (the Raptors look like the best team in the NBA when he’s on the floor and are the Wizards when he’s not); Griffin is having the best year of his career and might quietly be the most underrated player in the league; Russell is Brooklyn’s token representative (they’re too good to snub and his usage + high-wire shot making is too impressive to deny); Middleton has molded his game into a system that needs players like him to buy in; and Nikola Vucevic is the second coming.

Also, for the sake of transparency, this is what I wrote 24 hours before Victor Oladipo injured his knee, when Ben Simmons was my last cut: “Simmons is a rough omission and will probably make double-digit All-Star games before he retires. The internal debate I had between him, Lowry, Russell, and Middleton was never ending; I’m not positive I made the right choice. Simmons has done some incredible things this year and several teams have zero answer when he’s zipping coast to coast. But the Sixers still have a negative point differential whenever he’s on the court without Embiid, something that can’t be said about Lowry’s partnership with Kawhi or even Middleton’s with Giannis. And if Simmons and Russell swapped teams tomorrow, is it obvious which one would improve, or be more potent in the playoffs? I won’t get into the broken jumper, but of all the players on this list Simmons remains the easiest to gameplan off the floor. His defensive versatility is real, but his positive impact on that end is still more theoretical than consistently realized, and his turnover rate is nearly higher than his usage percentage.”

With Oladipo out, Simmons slides right in and allows me to sleep easier at night.

Western Conference Starters

Backcourt: Steph Curry, James Harden

Frontcourt: LeBron James, Paul George, Kevin Durant

Apologies to Nikola Jokic and Anthony Davis (the latter of whom might get in over Paul George if not for this weird finger injury), but I do not care how much time LeBron James has missed. Sue me.

I know All-Star slots don't necessarily align with any one player's team-specific value, but the Los Angeles Lakers were 9th in net rating before James pulled his groin. Since, they're 22nd with the NBA's fifth-worst offense. And it's not like he's missed half the season, either. As of this writing he's only missed 14 games and is still the best player alive (sorry Harden), so whatever. He's averaging 27, eight, and seven with an extremely questionable supporting cast. LeBron's scoring and rebound averages per 36 minutes are also the highest of his damn career. There's slightly more emotion than logic involved in this choice, but, again, I do not care. It's LeBron. He's a starter.

Western Conference Reserves

Nikola Jokic, Anthony Davis, Damian Lillard, Karl-Anthony Towns, LaMarcus Aldridge, Rudy Gobert, Tobias Harris

I really wanted to find a spot for Jrue Holiday and/or Donovan Mitchell, but each has been too inconsistent/on a struggling team. Harris gets the slightest nod over those two, Russell Westbrook, Klay Thompson, DeMar DeRozan, Buddy Hield, Luka Doncic, and *quietly weeps* Mike Conley.

The Beauty of Dame, CJ, and Curry

Terry Stotts’s offense is never more gorgeous than when Dame Lillard, C.J. McCollum, and Seth Curry share the floor. Even though C.J. is having a down year behind the arc, all are severely feared deep threats that can shoot on the move and hold an entire defense’s attention off the ball. The way they move in Stotts’s system, when everything is timed just right, can be basketball ballet.

They rarely play together, but Portland has outscored opponents by 18 points per 100 possessions with a scintillating attack that hasn’t even shot it very well, per Cleaning the Glass, when they do. That’s weird—outside of Golden State, there probably isn’t a more reputable trio of shooters on any roster in the league—but a small sample does them no favors, and nothing crystallizes their aesthetic and functional appeal more than this play from Tuesday night’s loss against the Oklahoma City Thunder, when Portland’s signature flare screens synced perfectly with action on the weak-side that could not be ignored.

The result isn’t exactly what the Blazers want, but redo that play ten times and Lillard either makes that dunk, draws a foul, or hits a wide-open Meyers Leonard on a dump off. Dame, C.J., and Curry just cycle off screens around the perimeter; it’s read-and-react basketball five or six times in a 20-second span, with OKC’s defenders ultimately dictating what type of shot the Blazers are going to get. The action climaxes when McCollum races past Meyers Leonard’s baseline screen at the exact same moment Lillard loops around Russell Westbrook and Steven Adams into the clear.

It’s well defended by a great defense, but Portland really makes them earn this stop. Watch Jerami Grant’s head throughout the possession. It’s extremely The Exorcist.

Is Towns Starting to Shake his Defensive Reputation?

Don’t let Minnesota’s fluttering playoff odds distract you from the fact that Karl-Anthony Towns is phenomenal. But the path for him to become the undisputed best player at his position is still on defense, where he’s still viewed as an undisciplined anchor that unmoors itself at random. There are games where foul trouble glues him to the bench, and those issues tend to force Towns into thinking his way through defensive possessions that the Timberwolves need him to instinctually glide through. He toggles between stretches where he’s either too aggressive and fouls a bunch or too sheepish and afraid of foul trouble.

His on/off numbers still aren’t great on that end, and even though last year’s were positive for the first time in his career, Minnesota sucked on defense when he played without Jimmy Butler.

But all is not hopeless and not everything is Towns’s fault. Before he was let go, Tom Thibodeau would sometimes have his best player hedge pick-and-rolls, a strategy that belongs in a different decade. And with Robert Covington injured, Ryan Saunders has resorted to lineups that have Anthony Tolliver defending wings (he matched up against Bryn Forbes for a stretch earlier this week!) in weird jumbo lineups that switch a bunch but remain discombobulated.

There are situations where Towns, like any other rim protector, is at the mercy of defensive miscues made by young teammates. When everyone else does their job, he tends to do his. When they don’t, he looks bad. A good example came in a recent win over the New Orleans Pelicans, where Holiday and AD spent crunch time running Spanish pick-and-roll after Spanish pick-and-roll.

Towns’s head is on a swivel and he does a fine enough job anticipating the back screen, but Tyus Jones comes up on the wrong side, which lets Holiday smash through for an easy two-handed dunk. Here’s what happened a few plays later, when Jones corrects his mistake and switches on Holiday.

Here’s another example from Tuesday night’s win over the Phoenix Suns, where Towns meets Devin Booker at the point of attack to force a pass back to Dragan Bender. So far, so good. But things quickly fall apart when Andrew Wiggins makes two questionable decisions in a row. First, he stunts too far off Mikal Bridges in the corner. Then, Bender—who’s 3-for-25 from deep this season—lifts him in the air with a pump fake. When Towns initially sees how far Wiggins has rotated off Bridges, he takes off for the opposite corner, but when Bender puts the ball on the floor to drive past Wiggins, he’s forced to cut him off. Wiggins is then two steps late contesting Bridges in the corner.

Saunders has Towns doing a bit more stuff than Thibodeau did. He’ll trap and recover against threatening ball-handlers and freely switch onto wings (something they’ve done more and more since Covington went down), while also dropping into a more conservative coverage that forces him to defend his man and the ball-handler. It’s a guessing game even the most astute defenders struggle with, and sometimes Towns will take himself out of the play by contesting a pull-up jumper that then allows his man to grab the offensive rebound. But he looks more and more comfortable making those decisions without major hesitation.

Towns is only 23 years old. He still has a lot to learn, and all signs of defensive growth deserve a tsunami siren. In their last 15 games, the Timberwolves’s defensive rating ranks top-3 with Towns on the court. That includes an absolute shellacking against Butler’s Philadelphia 76ers while opposing three-point shooters are generally nailing a crap ton of their wide-open looks.

Opponents are shooting the same percentage at the rim vs. Towns as they have against Rudy Gobert this season, and even though his feet don’t quite glide on the perimeter as most projected they would after his rookie season, Towns’s incremental baby steps are in the right direction. He works his ass off and knows where he’s supposed to be more often than not.

Not all his deficiencies can be explained by his surroundings, but it’d be interesting to see how he’d look in a less-rickety system, complemented by more obedient defenders. For now, he’s making the most of a situation that can’t look easy. And his trajectory on that side of the ball looks as optimistic as it has in a very long time.

Stop Burying Andre Iguodala

Bad news, everyone associated with the NBA except those employed by the Golden State Warriors: Andre Iguodala is still good! This might be an anecdotal straw-man argument, but people usually say his name with respectful restrain: Iguodala is *dramatically lowers voice* saving it for the playoffs. This is unnecessary.

Yes, his usage and minutes are at a career low, but that feels more like a smart organizational mandate than a signal of physical deterioration. Lets semi-ignore numbers for a moment, because on a team that now starts five All-Stars and has been to four straight NBA Finals, what’s more meaningful than regular-season production is how Iguodala looks.

It’s officially normal to think he's 25 instead of 35 (his birthday is in a few days). That springy, levitating samurai athleticism has Iguodala still doing chin-ups on the rim and cramming lobs in transition. Every night, he shoves Father Time into a locker. (A higher percentage of his shots are dunks right now than in all but three previous seasons—including when he was 21 and 22 years old—and he’s shooting a career-best 83.6 percent within three feet of the rim.)

Iguodala packs a punch when he’s on the floor. He makes the most of his playing time, unloading enough energy to pressure ball-handlers who weren’t alive when he was a teenager and denying ball reversals that force the offense to abort their first option. That stuff matters. He boxes out, recovers loose balls at a higher rate than any of his teammates, and still excels in his role as a critical cog in Golden State's OG Death Lineup, which is no longer getting steamrolled on defense.

Stats are relevant, and nobody is saying someone who averages 5.6 points per game should win Sixth Man of the Year, but whenever you see Iguodala ferociously murder a basketball in a situation where he can softly lay it up, it feels particularly significant.

A decent chunk of his offensive worth comes down to the ability to make open threes, but in spots where he could settle for the shot defenses hope he’ll take, Iguodala often decides to put his foot on the gas instead. Look at this drive and kick against Nikola Jokic’s soft closeout:

This guy is still very good, numbers and age be damned. And for anyone still worried about Golden State’s depth, interest, or general odds to win a third title in four years, please stop. If the Warriors are a Great White shark, those long sequences when Iguodala steps out of a time machine are the exact moment its jaw opens wide.

What if Patrick Patterson Were Patrick Patterson again?

Every time I watch the Oklahoma City Thunder I’m almost immediately bummed out by their need for outside shooting. The trade deadline may lessen this problem but it’s unlikely even Sam Presti can solve it. The Thunder are here to win right now, but don’t have any attractive assets to offer that won’t fundamentally alter their “get stops and push” identity. But in an alternate universe, one where Patrick Patterson isn’t one of the league’s blandest rotation players, what does this team look like?

It’s a depressing “what if” that allows us to wonder if these Thunder could hang with the Golden State Warriors in a playoff series. The answer is still probably not, but even with tempered expectations heading into this season, nobody could’ve expected Patterson (who’s only 29) to average 4.1 points per game with a field goal percentage that’s below 38 percent. Despite making eight of his last 11 threes, he isn’t anything close to the Sixth Man of the Year candidate that helped propel the Toronto Raptors.

The Thunder are outscored by 4.7 points per 100 possessions with Patterson on the court and a team-high plus-8.5 points per 100 possessions when he sits. The preseason debate over whether him or Grant should start feels like ancient history. But what if Patterson could stretch the floor and tweak opposing ball-handlers in OKC’s aggressive defensive system? What if he could post-up on switches and draw fouls and function at the four among the other four starters without OKC falling apart?

It feels highly unlikely Patterson ever moves as well as he once did, but how likely is it for his shot to come around at some point this season? Can he get hot in the playoffs? Injuries are the worst, and it’d be an awesome story if Patterson were able to resurrect his former self at some point over the next couple months. The Thunder could seriously use that player.

All Eyes On Okafor

A couple bullet points about Jahlil Okafor, who went from ghost to New Orleans’s extremely relevant starting center as Anthony Davis works his way back from a finger injury that may or may not keep him off the court for a while.

• Since they lost to the Milwaukee Bucks on December 19 (more or less his entrance into the regular rotation), the Pelicans have scored 113.9 points per 100 possessions in Okafor’s 236 minutes. That’s almost 20 points higher than his previous career-high in offensive rating. The eye test backs these numbers up. He’s playing hard and looks like an increasingly explosive offensive force—someone who can create his own shot with ease against single coverage. Only 36.9 percent of Okafor’s baskets have been assisted, which is by far the lowest among all centers in the league. (It’s also lower than Kyrie Irving and Zach LaVine.) Again, frequent put-back opportunities help, but he’s so smooth attacking from the mid-post, rip-and-going his defender baseline with a first step he didn’t have when he first entered the NBA.

• After AD, Okafor is easily New Orleans’s best rim protector. According to NBA.com, opponents are only shooting 42.6 percent at the basket when he’s guarding it. That’s obviously unsustainable and stripped from a small sample size, but this version of Okafor is completely different from the one who took up space in Philadelphia. He’s more lean, moves well laterally, and the Pelicans’s defensive rating is never better than when he’s on the court.

Opposing shot percentages at the rim are generally way down when he’s on the floor, per Cleaning the Glass. This is all something to keep an eye on. If Okafor can be a league-average defender who beasts on post-ups and putbacks, that’s definitely someone who deserves minutes. And for the next few weeks/months, the Pelicans may need everything he has to offer.

The Official Outlet Pass All-Star Ballot published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

Goran Dragic is the Biggest Reason Miami Has Hope

The Miami Heat are down one game against a team that had the best point differential in the NBA after January 1st. (That’s right: the Philadelphia 76ers have been the best basketball team in the entire world during the year of our Lord 2018.)

Joel Embiid is back looking dominant on the defensive end, Ben Simmons is channeling a controlled verve that impacts every square foot of the basketball court, and Philly’s Buyout Brothers (Marco Belinelli + Ersan Ilyasova) are shooting a combined 864 percent on contested threes while blindfolded and falling out of bounds.

The Sixers are likely to advance because they are a better team. But throughout this series there’s one action that’s given Philadelphia’s excellent defense fits. It’s uncomplicated yet devastating, and revolves around the aggressiveness of Goran Dragic, Miami’s lone All-Star and best offensive player.

The concept is simple: Let Dragic attack a defender who's inferior to the one actually guarding him, either with a sudden pick-and-roll or methodical one-on-one pummeling. In this series, that means “get Dragic off Robert Covington.” Only three players defended Dragic more often than Covington during the regular season; in 118 possessions the 31-year-old scored 24 points on 26 field-goal attempts and shot 34.6 percent from the floor.

Dragic has had a little success creating space with Covington on him, but as one of the game’s premier perimeter defenders—long as he is bold—that strategy isn’t viable if the Heat want to poke into the second round. In the first three games of this series, Miami’s offensive rating in the 60 minutes Dragic sat is 99.6. With him on the floor that number jumps to 115.8. Here’s a huge reason why.

In Game 2, Miami’s first-quarter offense was almost like the 15-play script some football coaches like to bring into battle. The entire objective in Dragic’s minutes (before Dwyane Wade took over) was to have the point guard attack J.J. Redick and Belinelli as often as possible. Screens were routinely set by whoever those two were guarding, usually in a way that allowed the southpaw to launch himself up the left sideline.

The tactic evolved as the game went on. If Covington wasn’t initially cleared out of the way, Dragic would move from one side of the floor to the other and run a couple pick-and-rolls until he got someone (Dario Saric in the play below) he could abuse.

Miami caught Covington from odd angles that let Dragic get to his dominant hand, and the second he got a matchup he wanted, the Heat would hit that lesser defender with a pick. On its face none of this is complicated, but when unfurled in rapid fire there's very little time for the defense to process what's happening.

There was actually one play where the Heat went off script and made the mistake of screening with Simmons’s man. The result was an understandable disaster.

Exactly one play later they rectified the situation, targeted Belinelli, and immediately went into a pick-and-roll. With the floor spread, Dragic went away from the screen and drew a foul on Simmons (his fourth) at the rim.

In Game 3, Miami started by unleashing Dragic in more traditional pick-and-rolls and letting him go downhill against a dropping Saric. They brushed him by Kelly Olynyk, planted at the high post, for a layup and made use of Dragic’s three-point shooting with a couple flare screens. But the Heat’s bread and butter was what they turned to whenever desperate for a good look.

Miami ran this same action with Wade, too. And it’s not at all unique around the league (the Portland Trail Blazers leaned in to get C.J. McCollum going on Thursday night), but Dragic’s combination of straight-line speed, fearlessness, and deceit makes him so hard to stop whenever Miami’s offense intentionally creates controlled chaos against a mismatch. He’s like James Harden...except three years older, three inches shorter, 30 pounds lighter, 40 percent less stylish, and Slovenian.

To slow Dragic down the Sixers tried everything. They trapped him high and brought the screener’s defender level with the pick in attempts to squeeze the ball from his hands and force someone else to put the ball in the basket. But whenever two defenders came to the ball, Dragic responded by making the right read, which led to 4-on-3 situations, open three-point shots, and zero legitimate protection at the basket.

As seen above, Dragic loves to reject screens and slide towards the basket on the opposite side of where the big's defender expects him to go, a maneuver I’ve labeled in my notes as “the tuna salad.” (According to Synergy Sports, only Lou Williams and Dennis Schroder went away from a screen more than Dragic during the regular season.)

Dragic has always been an incurable cold sore in the open floor, a harsh reality opposing defenses have to live with and accept whenever they're backpedaling on defense. But if Miami can continue to execute in the half-court by using him to punish fragile spots in Philly's defense, this series may go much longer than the Sixers want.

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