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NBA 2021


DireWolfSpirit

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Old thread marching well post 400 posts, time for a new season nearly upon us.

https://www.nba.com/news/nba-2020-21-season-faq

So games beginning late Dec. I don't know why they're bothering to call it a 2020-21 season. Seems we should just refer to this season as the 2021 season as 90+% of everything fall in 2021 except for the first week or so of games.

Anyhoo-

The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association announced on Nov. 9 that they’ve struck a deal on rules for the 2020-21 season, which will start on Dec. 22. On November 10, the NBA’s Board of Governors  approved the amended Collective Bargaining Agreement for 2020-21 by a unanimous vote, allowing the 2020-21 season to begin. The NBA announced the structure and format of the 2020-21 season, including a playoff Play-In Tournament on Nov. 17.

 

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It will be a 72 game regular season (10 less than the traditional 82) currently scheduled to end on May 16.

And then we will have the "play-in/playoff" to follow.

 

Q: What are the Key Dates for the 2020-21 season?
• Dec. 1-5: Individual player workouts and Media “Week”
• Dec. 6-10: Group player workouts begin
• Dec. 11-19: Preseason games
• Dec. 22 – March 4: First Half of regular season
 March 5-10: All-Star break
 March 11-May 16: Second Half of regular season
 May 18-21: Play-In Tournament
 May 22-July 22: 2021 NBA Playoffs

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New sign Garrett Temple is the first Bull to test positive for Covid (at least recently and publicized). I wonder who the first team will be who get gutted for a week and a half. I'm very excited for the NBA to come back, but the much smaller rosters than MLB and NFL make me very skeptical that this will be a clean, complete season for every team.

Apart from the lingering ominous cloud that is that virus, there are plenty of exciting storylines for this season. One of these major roster changes will surely become a disaster at some point. Star players have so much power right now, and I wouldn't be surprised if we see another major trade before the deadline. How are Curry and Durant going to rebound from their injuries? We have plenty of really exciting young players all over that might take a big leap this year into real stardom. Will Doncic continue to improve - and will his early warning signs of prima donna whining and flopping also get worse? I literally cannot watch Harden play basketball I loathe his game so much, and Doncic had some serious dabbles with the dark side last season in between his unmistakable brilliance. I expect the LeBrons to have plenty of drama surrounding them all pre (regular) season, then handle business come playoffs. God I can't wait for him to retire. Then again I'm convinced he's hoping Bronny becomes an NBA player, and his absurd longevity avoiding real injury might allow him several more years.

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2 hours ago, Argonath Diver said:

Bronny becomes an NBA player, and his absurd longevity avoiding real injury might allow him several more years.

If Frank Gore can maybe play at the same time as Frank Gore Jr... then LBJ and Bronny can play together.

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4 hours ago, Argonath Diver said:

I threw up in my mouth a little.

LeBron will forever be my Get Off My Lawn meme personified. The game would have been better if he'd never existed.

What the fuck?? 

 

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Oof.  I can see not liking a player, but feeling like the game would be better without him is definitely a little weird.  Particularly for a player that has such a wide array of basketball skills.  This isn't Shaq who's ability to bulldoze opponents cannot change his terrible shooting, lack of ball skills and often poor fitness.  Lebron is the complete package of a modern NBA wing player.  Even when I'm rooting against him, I am left in awe of what he can do. 

And on top of that, he's a pretty decent and thoughtful guy off the court.  He definitely treats his teammates better than Jordan did, and he isn't a scumbag with women or anything. 

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19 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

and he isn't a scumbag with women or anything. 

That we know of...

I don't want to say anything unfounded, I just back off praising any athlete or celebrity for things I don't honestly know anymore.  No one thought Kobe with his smiling face on every McDonald's ad would be accused of rape.  Even more to the point, I'll never forget a comment on this website that was talking about what a good guy Adrian Peterson was in comparison to some running back who had gotten in trouble.  Then a week or two later, AD got dinged for beating his kid.

I have no reason to believe LBJ isn't a good guy, I just hesitate before praising anyone these days.  :( 

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20 minutes ago, Rhom said:

That we know of...

I have no reason to believe LBJ isn't a good guy, I just hesitate before praising anyone these days.  :( 

I mean, you could say the same thing about your own friends and family, you never really KNOW.  Lebron has been in the league almost 20 years, I think that if horrible allegations were going to come out, they would have by now.  I admit, anything is possible, but until we have some actual evidence, I think giving the benefit of the doubt is warranted.   Thus I'm comfortable saying he's a decent and thoughtful man, as much as I am with any celebrity I've never met. 

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5 hours ago, Relic said:

What the fuck?? 

 

I was drunk. I've disliked LeBron for a very long time. He's a stunning player, but Drunk Me was mostly upset, I am assuming, at LeBrons enormous gravity as the most powerful person in the entire sport, perhaps just under Silver. By orders of magnitude, I believe the worst thing about the sport is superstar players' power and ego, and a lot of that stems from LeBron, who has been more important than his own team every stop in his career. I just cant stand the dude. 

Im not sure what got me so riled up about him last night. He is definitely a joy to watch when he is really trying. Most talented player in history. 

No idea why I decided I wanted him deleted. I guess I figured attitude of the league would have been less selfish. Now that I'm fighting off the after effects of half a bottle of whiskey, I believe we'd have seen Durant and all the rest doing the same shit they do today regardless of LeBron being LeBron.

I didnt make any regrettable posts, texts or messages elsewhere last night upon a cursory search. Yeesh, Mondays are the worst. Sorry about that, to any LeBron fans.

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1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

I mean, you could say the same thing about your own friends and family, you never really KNOW.  Lebron has been in the league almost 20 years, I think that if horrible allegations were going to come out, they would have by now.  I admit, anything is possible, but until we have some actual evidence, I think giving the benefit of the doubt is warranted.   Thus I'm comfortable saying he's a decent and thoughtful man, as much as I am with any celebrity I've never met. 

Fair.  Just feels like we have been surprised in a bad way too many times.

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1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

I admit, anything is possible, but until we have some actual evidence, I think giving the benefit of the doubt is warranted.   Thus I'm comfortable saying he's a decent and thoughtful man, as much as I am with any celebrity I've never met. 

Yeah I'd say NBA players/athletes deserve the benefit of the doubt as much as most anyone else.  We're not talking Wall Street or K Street.  Now, if we're talking NBA players and just infidelity...

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In general it seems like violence against women is much more of an NFL problem than the NBA (although I understand NFL rosters are much larger, which distorts the picture somewhat). 

24 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yeah I'd say NBA players/athletes deserve the benefit of the doubt as much as most anyone else.  We're not talking Wall Street or K Street.  Now, if we're talking NBA players and just infidelity...

I would never claim or even imply that Lebron is faithful to his wife.

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Thinking Basketball is just killing it with the new series on The Greatest Peaks.  This is a better discussion than the tired old GOAT arguments, and since he has actual, useful numbers for these discussions of what were the top two-, three- or four-year stretches of NBA player performances, I am really enjoying this.  He appears to be rolling through the list chronologically, and the first three are:

Wilt & Bill

Big Red

Kareem

Treat yourself to some truly fine analysis of players' great peaks since the merger.

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1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

In general it seems like violence against women is much more of an NFL problem than the NBA (although I understand NFL rosters are much larger, which distorts the picture somewhat). 

Quote

I would never claim or even imply that Lebron is faithful to his wife.

It's all relative. We don't know what kind of agreement they have.

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2 hours ago, Argonath Diver said:

I was drunk. I've disliked LeBron for a very long time. He's a stunning player, but Drunk Me was mostly upset, I am assuming, at LeBrons enormous gravity as the most powerful person in the entire sport, perhaps just under Silver. By orders of magnitude, I believe the worst thing about the sport is superstar players' power and ego, and a lot of that stems from LeBron, who has been more important than his own team every stop in his career. I just cant stand the dude. 

So you want the owners to have all the power then? 

The funny thing about American sports is how far from a capitalistic model they all are, while on the flipside the Eurocommies run their main sport like it's straight business.

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I don't want an ownership-dominant league where players have to accept their fate and salary unjustly, like pre-free agency baseball. I am not sure how to counter-balance Top 20 players' ability to manipulate their situation. If we go down the list of the best talents in the league - and we really are lucky right now to have so many tremendous players to watch - I think every single guy except Jokic has been mentioned in rumors of wanting to leave the team that signed their most recent contract, or were already successful in doing so from their previous team. Oh, I guess I haven't ever heard Curry bitch and moan about the Dubs, but he's had a wonderful time there apart from devastating injury, seems to me. A lot of fault can be placed on greedy, ineffectual owners like Fertitta and Dolan for their young stars becoming angsty whiners as well.

I am rapidly aging into Get Off My Lawn crankiness for both the NBA and MLB regarding dissatisfied superstars. I just wish more guys wanted to stick to the team that drafted them. It's an impossible dream. Perhaps some kind of Franchise tag where a player could be signed to a contract where his piece of the team's salary cap hits a certain max (35% of the cap or whatever figure smarter guys that me come up with), but the team can pay him any amount above that. So the Lakers would pay LeBron Eleven Billionty dollars a year to stay in LA, but it would only count as a Super Max contract against the cap. That might get Giannis to stay in Milwaukee, or Harden in Houston, etc.

If Chicago were an actual attractive destination for the best guys, my opinion would probably change overnight. 

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5 minutes ago, Argonath Diver said:

I don't want an ownership-dominant league where players have to accept their fate and salary unjustly, like pre-free agency baseball. I am not sure how to counter-balance Top 20 players' ability to manipulate their situation. If we go down the list of the best talents in the league - and we really are lucky right now to have so many tremendous players to watch - I think every single guy except Jokic has been mentioned in rumors of wanting to leave the team that signed their most recent contract, or were already successful in doing so from their previous team. Oh, I guess I haven't ever heard Curry bitch and moan about the Dubs, but he's had a wonderful time there apart from devastating injury, seems to me. A lot of fault can be placed on greedy, ineffectual owners like Fertitta and Dolan for their young stars becoming angsty whiners as well.

I am rapidly aging into Get Off My Lawn crankiness for both the NBA and MLB regarding dissatisfied superstars. I just wish more guys wanted to stick to the team that drafted them. It's an impossible dream. Perhaps some kind of Franchise tag where a player could be signed to a contract where his piece of the team's salary cap hits a certain max (35% of the cap or whatever figure smarter guys that me come up with), but the team can pay him any amount above that. So the Lakers would pay LeBron Eleven Billionty dollars a year to stay in LA, but it would only count as a Super Max contract against the cap. That might get Giannis to stay in Milwaukee, or Harden in Houston, etc.

If Chicago were an actual attractive destination for the best guys, my opinion would probably change overnight. 

I don't think that solution would actually help, because that would allow the big spending teams to have an even bigger advantage over the small market teams.  The problem is not "players have too much control", it's that the economics of the NBA is such that certain teams are just much more appealing free agent locations than others, and there's almost nothing anybody can do about it.  If Lebron had stayed in Cleveland his entire career, would he have won a title?  They certainly wouldn't have had a draft pick like Irving or the trade chips to get Love, and I'm not sure even with Lebron there that 1st tier free agents were gonna go to Cleveland.  It hadn't happened yet, and it was clear that Lebron was a baller by 2007. 

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Fair point regarding richer teams. I have seen other basketball fans discussing a Franchise tag idea, and it's generally refuted. Perhaps if only the original team that drafted a player could stick on a Franchise tag. I understand that I can't solve superstars acting like divas with a 5-minute shower thought. I'm just exasperated by the best guys in the league. Just today we're reading about Harden out clubbing this weekend, and rumors persist that he simply wants out of Houston that badly to continue to give Fertitta the finger. On that note, I loathe Fertitta, so they can both burn n basketball misery for all I care.

Players back in the Good Old Days were probably just as much of petulant shits as the guys we see today, I was simply younger and we didn't have social media and constant rumor mill updates to show that. Besides, I'm being a complete hypocrite. I do enjoy all the wild trade rumors that pop up in the NBA more than other sports - I'm that guy who bitches about how stupid reality TV is, but knows as much as his wife about the Vanderpump Rules cast. (note: I don't actually know anything about reality TV).

On another note than my yelling at clouds, it's great seeing all the training camp photos and vids coming out. Shockingly, all thirty teams in the league have improved and are going to be super exciting this year! Look at this 8 second clip of a guy dunking in sweatpants! Let the Best Shape Of His Life tweets begin!

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