The NBA Thread

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
Jonah Hill poster said:
Philadelphia 76ers currently are battling the Washington Wizards for having the worst record in the NBA so far — (2-11)

Aside from not having Joel Embiid playing along with Paul a George yet, now potential All-Star Tyrese Maxey is expressing frustration with Embiid for being chronically late to team practice

Click to expand...
Sixers fans need to give up on the Embiid era, it's just not going anywhere good.

In other news, the Cleveland Cavaliers reached 15-0 to start the season, equal fourth best start ever, but lost to the Celtics yesterday. It was a very 2024 kind of game, with the Celtics living, dying, and ultimately winning by the three-point shot. 14-22 from three in the first half, 7-19 in the second, but the Cavs still managed to get close and lose by only three points.
 
IMG_8967.jpeg
Pelicans have caught one of the worst cases of the injury bug in a long time, as shown by this horrifying lineup. While some of their players are injury prone or old, only 5 of their players that got minutes in the opening game of the season are still healthy, two of which got a minute of garbage time. Not that the Pels were a serious contender in any way, but being 4.5 games back from the play-in with widespread injuries seems to cement a lottery finish. Being in the West doesn’t help this when you look at the Sixers being 3.5 games back from the play-in in the East with two wins.
 
I still don't get the point of this in-season tournament even after trying to understand it. Is there any reason for me to care about it?
 
Gay Communist Gun Club said:
I still don't get the point of this in-season tournament even after trying to understand it. Is there any reason for me to care about it?
Click to expand...
It's an attempt by the NBA to get the players to give a shit about the early regular-season games that usually don't mean anything, and it hasn't really worked so far.

I think the solution is to make the in-season tournament have some bearing on the playoff seedings at the end of the season, like maybe if you finish at the top of your in-season tournament bracket you clinch homecourt advantage. Or something like that, I don't know what could realistically fix the players' attitudes towards the regular season at the point.
 
Gay Communist Gun Club said:
I still don't get the point of this in-season tournament even after trying to understand it. Is there any reason for me to care about it?
Click to expand...
A way to get fan interest during the nfl season plus what an above poster said about making players gove a shit. And that's why ratings are down. You have to force a.bunch of black people to care about their jobs where they're getting paid 20+ mil a year while they also tell you to vote for kamala. To say LeBron killed the league is am understatement
 
Womble of Wimbledon said:
It's an attempt by the NBA to get the players to give a shit about the early regular-season games that usually don't mean anything, and it hasn't really worked so far.

I think the solution is to make the in-season tournament have some bearing on the playoff seedings at the end of the season, like maybe if you finish at the top of your in-season tournament bracket you clinch homecourt advantage. Or something like that, I don't know what could realistically fix the players' attitudes towards the regular season at the point.
Click to expand...
I think it will work a lot better if it was the preseason, because the people in the G league will work a lot harder for the money rather than the people making millions a season. Also, the courts and jerseys they use are ugly.
 
I've been watching a lot of college basketball lately and it's been a breath of fresh air- players are actually allowed to play physical defense, there's actual plays being run instead of iso-ball, and there's little of the plagues of the NBA- no flopping, no foul baiting, no load management, and the players are unselfish and play hard every single game. We'd be missing something really special if March Madness went away. Also, sometimes it's just entertaining watching plays break down and seeing all 10 guys diving for a loose ball.
 
Nobunaga said:
You know, i miss players like Dennis Roadman, weirdos who were savants at one thing and they would just go play, do their job and then fuck off to do their own thing without acting like diva's or stars and wouldn't do this mobern nba faggotry of everyone in the team is hecking fwamily and we are all fwends
Click to expand...
That's a thing of the past in all sports, sadly.
 
Nobunaga said:
You know, i miss players like Dennis Roadman, weirdos who were savants at one thing and they would just go play, do their job and then fuck off to do their own thing without acting like diva's or stars and wouldn't do this mobern nba faggotry of everyone in the team is hecking fwamily and we are all fwends
Click to expand...
There’s hardly even specialists like that anymore (there aren’t really three point specialists with how the league is especially). Caruso is playing like a defensive specialist (Tony Allen, Andre Roberson type) this season, but is way too good of a career shooter to count. You could count Drummond since he can only rebound efficiently. Moussa Diabate seems like the next rebounder only type, he’s improved from barely averaging 2 rebounds to over 8 while averaging 3 points per game. Not sure with Drummond and Diabate on the personality stuff, but Caruso is in the faggot chamber known as OKC.
 
Got some old heads in the family that I ended up speaking to about basketball at thanksgiving, had some interesting conversations and I'll post a few ideas that came up:
  • The reduced emphasis in rebounding has a lot to do with the perceived lack of physicality in the modern game. Outside a few outlier players who are just way better at rebounding than usual, it's typically more beneficial to get back on defense than it is to gamble for the rebound because long shots make long rebounds and modern offenses will just kill you in the 4v5.
  • College defense isn't better, but their offense is a lot worse and it makes the defense look better.
  • The death of the defensive specialist stems from the rise of the role player. The biggest way in which modern players are better than older ones is less in the high end outliers (I think everyone in the top 15-20 range is going to do fine in pretty much any era) and more in the average level of aptitude being much higher. Worse role players and illegal defense rules meant the game used to be a lot more iso heavy and as such you could run a guy who doesn't contribute offensively if he's able to competently defend the enemy team's main guy. In the modern game, everyone has to be involved. Look at teams like the Celtics and Cavs who are doing amazing off a much more even spread of talent, compared to teams which are having issues with individually superior players at the top like the Bucks and Nuggets. Your defensive impact is not going to be greater than missing an entire player on offense because you're only guarding one player at a time (Besides maybe a few of the centers via rim protection) and fewer teams run super heliocentric game plans these days while the ones that still do are doing it with players who nobody can really shut down 1v1. Looking at the game's current best defenders, Gobert is really the only one who can afford to be outright bad on offense and that still hurts the team quite a bit and limits roster construction. If you can get a guy with 90% of the defense of a Tony Allen type of guy but he's also got a 3 point shot, why wouldn't you?
  • Someone put on the 1999 WCF because they'd remembered it very much as a rough and tumble physical series and just sort of had it running in the background (highlights here) and it did live up to that. Interestingly enough, players still really did just foul the shit out of Shaq and Duncan and there was still a lot of stop and go gameplay as a result. This is despite the fact that it's been admitted that refs just usually didn't call fouls on Shaq because it would make the game take too long and they didn't even help the Lakers because he was awful at free throws. However, you also see less being done by the rest of the teams around them. The linked video is Duncan and Shaq highlights so it's even more extreme there but the majority of the action was still carried out by Shaq, Duncan, or David Robinson just being told to go physically force it through while more modern team schemes would better utilize player and ball movement to free up space for those guys.
  • Going off of that, it's kinda funny how Tim Duncan won both with that sort of super physical bully ball style and also on the very modern styled 2014 Spurs heavily emphasizing motion and spacing.
  • Overall there's definitely a refereeing difference but a lot of it is also just modern offense being too good at avoiding the need for the physical shit in the first place. A big hurdle with the reffing is that rules as written, basically any contact with a shooter really is a foul. "Rules" adjustments usually are done more through directives to refs but this is a case where they probably do need to change the actual lettering somewhere so there's something more concrete to appeal to rather than a vague notion of how the game "should" be.
Past that, some open questions for the thread.
  • Should something be done about the end of game fouling? It's done to deny possession in close games but it makes things extremely start and stop and can drag the last 4 minutes out into 30. People were pretty split on this because seemingly simple solutions like making end of game fouls give the fouled possession encourages further baiting. I'm personally partial to just letting teams voluntarily wave fouls off but I have no idea how to logistically get that to work.
  • Will Tatum's reputation improve after he's done? He was compared to Tim Duncan in this regard. Obviously he's not as good, the similarities lie more in how he's considered a guy with a boring playstyle that's frustratingly effective who also doesn't have a personality people easily latch on to. Outside of San Antonio fans, Duncan wasn't very popular during his heyday (not that he cared) and the Spurs finals were some of the lowest finals ratings ever. I think 2005 was the lowest until the COVID one, that being Spurs-Pistons which was actually a competitive series but it was between the two defense teams that people didn't want to watch. Nowadays, nerds outside of San Antonio like him better because they're more able to appreciate how good he was at the game without having to watch the result of him being good at making the enemy team look worse while not having much interest in looking better himself. Could Tatum end up similarly, with people respecting the fact he's undeniably very effective even if it's more in the sense of holding a system together and denying the enemy the opportunity to look cool?
Aside from all that, I've enjoyed some Cavs games recently. I've always been partial to good passers and ball movement, which they've got. They've got good defenders who're allowed to really go hard on that end like Evan Mobely and Jarett Allen. Donovan Mitchell is still a big offensive scoring hub, providing some of that iso game that's ultimately just easier to follow and pay attention to while not completely taking over the spotlight. I'd recommend checking one of those out.
 
Active User said:
Should something be done about the end of game fouling?
Click to expand...
I've thought about what you suggested, giving the fouled team 2 free throws + possession, but it would be very hard to gauge whether that's fair in a genuine attempt to contest a shot that results in a foul vs bullshit intentional fouling. Ultimately I think it's always been an unfortunate part of the game and it probably always will be.
Active User said:
Will Tatum's reputation improve after he's done?
Click to expand...
No, unless he wins several more championships and the Finals MVP to boot, he will probably be largely forgotten by the casual fans. I would compare him to someone like Chauncey Billups or Paul Pierce - a very good player who was part of a very successful team, but not a well-remembered dynasty and didn't have the most memorable playstyle.

Tim Duncan was boring because the whole Spurs offense revolved entirely around him for years, basically running very slow, very methodical isos in the post until Parker and Ginobilli started coming up around 2005. Duncan was personality-less on a whole 'nother level to Tatum, he just gave absolutely nothing away, a bit like Kawhi minus the retard laugh. He also came across as kind of dorky and clean-cut in the era of thug aesthetics when Allen Iverson was the most popular player in the league.
 
Who would've thunk that a 40 year old Lebron, Mr. Glass and a bunch of scrubs coached by a talking head from First Take wasn't a good idea. LeAge is catching up.

Alternately in a another timeline, Ty Lue is coaching Lonzo, Randle, D-Lo, Ingram and Zubac Lakers team to success.
 
Cleveland Cavaliers are currently the only team to win 21 games this season, while the New Orleans Pelicans have lost 20.

Washington Wizards will fall into currently having the second worst record in the league, even though they recently beat the Denver Nuggets.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom