It is funny, people keep on going on about the "Can't play Kanter" without looking who he played against when that happened. Harden is the reason you cannot play Kanter.You can't play Kanter against an elite offensive player like Harden. When you have Westbrook with the ball you can play Kanter. Westbrook cannot exploit Kanter like Harden does. Another reason why Harden is amazing. Teams must adjust there entire defense and even who they play just to try and contain him, and he still scores 36 ppg on amazing efficiency. Look at the Jazz they played a completly different defense to try and contain Harden. Players like Kanter and Korver just cannot be on the court because Harden will exploit them. When you play the thunder, you can keep them on the court, and they can hurt the Thunder.
Who knew Kanter was an amazing player? Starting to think Clint got away with murder on his deal all these scrubs are producing crazy statlines without James Harden.
I would love to see Portland ride/depend on Kanter all the way to the WCF where they will then get slaughtered by Harden and the Rockets.
Kanter doesn't get exposed because okc fails to see attacking him would be a huge plus. that's okc's fault. lets see if they're smart enough to adjust to this
Speaking of Kanter, he was a late season pickup after the Knicks bought him out and the Blazers are capped out this summer and have Aminu, Hood, and Curry as unrestricted free agents. Isn't he basically gone after this year?
That might be true but maybe Kanter knows OKC well enough that he won't be as huge of a liability against them as he would be against Houston. With Houston, Kanter switching onto a Harden or a CP3 in a PnR is a recipe for disaster. With OKC, if Kanter switches on Westbrook he knows he just has to clog the paint and let Russ take whatever low % shot he wants from the perimeter. If anything OKC could try to deploy this using Paul George in the PnR and see if it yields better results.
The Thunder and smart don't go together. That's why even though they have had some good talents, they have not gotten past the first round in recent years.
Looking at spotrac.com, they have over $121 million in committed salaries next year. The silver lining is that a BUNCH of contracts are expiring contracts (Evan Turner, Leonard, Harkless, Collins, etc.) . Maybe they can package those contracts with picks to get another decent player.