NBA Playoffs - Joker's Wild

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 hours ago, Argonath Diver said:

Salaries in the NBA are utterly baffling. 

VanVleet?! 42m man?? Jesus. And over in Portland, Dame's colossal contract, while still being a phenomenal player, is absolutely catastrophic to his Blazers, and also makes him super hard to trade.

I'm really curious to see how this works with all the collapsing regional sports media deals. MLB is going to face the worst of it, NFL won't at all, but the NBA is a bit unknown. Maybe the streaming services go all in, however I don't think they need to overpay anymore and might play hardball. 

[Relic]

Fame finally asked for a trade. To the Heat. Should have traded my way earlier, IMHO 

[James Arryn]

On Wemby, the 27 points, the crossovers, the turnaround, the effortless rebounding, all that, but I’ve watched interviews with nba players/former players, coaches etc. who have seen him in person, and they all say, yeah, that stuff is all insane, but what he actually is a different species is the way he distorts opposing players sense of how much of a window they have. His combination of athleticism, speed, and length with instincts, and as one nba player I watched said ‘Players are not going to be able to process how much room he covers how quickly, with that length, they are going to know they have windows based on careers at high level basketball, but they are going to be wrong.
 

And I don’t know how teams or coaches or players are going to adjust to that. ‘Be more apprehensive when shooting/driving/dunking/passing/etc.’ is not exactly a way forward. There were moments where he legit looked like a man playing with kids. Not all the time or anything close, but there are times when he just looks on another level, mostly around the net, rebounding at either end, that kind of thing. 
 

So the obvious answer is his frame and can he take the pounding, but in an interview he said the opposite, that in France he got hit/fouled a lot more often, a lot harder, that the game there is more like earlier defence first eras in the NBA, that the biggest challenge is the generally higher level off athleticism and talent, how much faster the game moves, but on the physicality…now this IS summer league, but still in terms of style of play the NBA is a lot more open and fluid and much less physical, grind it out as what he’s used to. 
 

Lastly, and as a ~ Rockets fan, this is going to hurt a lot moving forward, but just for Wemby’s career, he could not have gone to a better organization. They invented load management, they stress wholistic physical training, health and development over satisfying fan/league demands, and they are sitting him for game 3 with just that in mind. He might only play 50 something games this year even injury free. Meantime they’ll be developing his body with a long-term outlook in mind. Seems like a match made in heaven. He even seems to have an old school, humble, respectful personality so far that fits Pop more than maybe any other current head coach. 

Edited July 11, 2023 by James Arryn

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Shooters shoot, unreal:

 

[Wilbur]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Shooters shoot, unreal:

 

I will be screening this in the gym on Monday.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Wilbur said:

I will be screening this in the gym on Monday.

 

 

[Wilbur]

14 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

 

 

I will not be screening that one on Monday, however, funny as it is.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

17 minutes ago, Wilbur said:

I will not be screening that one on Monday, however, funny as it is.

Let the girls watch. 

[BigFatCoward]

18 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Shooters shoot, unreal:

 

I've hit fewer 3 pointers in my life than she did in that video. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Shooters shoot, again:

 

[BigFatCoward]

Seeing reports that Bronny James suffered a cardiac arrest. That may be the end of his career already. 

But maybe thankfully it was picked up before it could have had more serious consequences. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Seeing reports that Bronny James suffered a cardiac arrest. That may be the end of his career already. 

But maybe thankfully it was picked up before it could have had more serious consequences. 

Eriksen was able to come back. On the news they were saying there was a spike in this happening to people in general at younger ages. Nobody knows for sure why, but Covid damaging organs was the panel's guess.

 

Holy shit Brown just got paid. Richest contract in NBA history for a guy who doesn't want to be on his team. I checked a few sites that are decent at ranking players and all but one had him outside of the top 15. Bold move Boston, especially when you consider undrafted players from the Heat openly told us what we all know, he has a major flaw and teams can just attack it. 

[Relic]

JB gets the entire bag. Crazy contract. 

Feel bad for Brony byt yeah, better they know now rather than in a few years... 

[baxus]

Not NBA related, but it is basketball related.

It's funny how little worldwide interest there is about basketball World Cup.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 minutes ago, baxus said:

Not NBA related, but it is basketball related.

It's funny how little worldwide interest there is about basketball World Cup.

Is it meaningless in Europe? No one here cares*. Some of the names on our team are shocking. Bobby Portis Jr. doesn't even start on his NBA team. 

*Okay, I care a little bit because of Ant who is balling. With a bit of luck he could be a top 10 player this season.

[baxus]

It's not considered as important as the Olympics but it's still at least as important as Euros.

Serbian team has had a lot of cancellations. The biggest one is obviously Jokic, but other than him Micic (he was Euroleague MVP twice, signed for OKC for the upcoming season) and a handful of injuries among national team regulars, including the team captain. As a result, few people had faith in this team, though expectations are always to go for the medal. On top of that, Borisa Simanic got hit in a match against South Sudan and due to some fuckup at the hospital the guy lost his kidney. Even with all that crap, this morning (CET timezone) Serbia made it to the semifinals where we'll play Canada or Slovenia.

[Relic]

27 minutes ago, baxus said:

Not NBA related, but it is basketball related.

It's funny how little worldwide interest there is about basketball World Cup.

I've watched every USA match. Been entertaining. Two Knicks in the roster, I think the team is well constructed, but lacking in size. We're getting destroyed in the boards in some of these matches. The loss on Sunday was shocking, but kind of weirdly fun. 

[Rhom]

1 hour ago, Relic said:

I've watched every USA match. Been entertaining. Two Knicks in the roster, I think the team is well constructed, but lacking in size. We're getting destroyed in the boards in some of these matches. The loss on Sunday was shocking, but kind of weirdly fun. 

My son and I got in an argument over the end of that game.  Down 4.  16 seconds left.  USA gets the steal.  Has a wide open player cutting to the lane for an easy lay-up.  Passes to the corner for a three that bricks off the rim.

I couldn't believe how stupid it was to pass up points when you are down, but my son in all his modern basketball sensibilities thought it was the right move to go for three.  I honestly don't know if he was just arguing to be contrarian (he turns 13 next week...), or if he really believed that.

[Wilbur]

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

My son and I got in an argument over the end of that game.  Down 4.  16 seconds left.  USA gets the steal.  Has a wide open player cutting to the lane for an easy lay-up.  Passes to the corner for a three that bricks off the rim.

I couldn't believe how stupid it was to pass up points when you are down, but my son in all his modern basketball sensibilities thought it was the right move to go for three.  I honestly don't know if he was just arguing to be contrarian (he turns 13 next week...), or if he really believed that.

It is a common modern sensibility.

You and I may enjoy watching the Warriors move the ball and move off the ball to create opportunities that include the trey.  But we see this in the context of the basketball tactics and theory that has gone before, and we know what options or opportunity costs exist when one shot is taken and another is omitted.

Teens today don't possess this underlying experience; their sole object is to get to that trey.  This summer I had kids stop coming to sessions because they didn't want to practice shooting jump shots.  The ones that quit argued and complained about practicing anything other than the three.  Even the willing workers have a hard time concentrating on doing their Mikans to warm up - they don't understand why.

It is like new entrants to the workplace today who grew up never knowing a world without computers.  Few have any knowledge or interest in the layers of necessary hardware, operating systems, data storage, communications and PKI infrastructure that make using their favorite app possible.  The lack of understanding of these foundational layers mean that they are limited to expertise and use only of the user interface, and any creative solutions that involve anything deeper than the app are outside of their consideration.

Or in another analogy, young players today have an internal view of basketball like a baseball theorist's Three True Outcomes, where for the young basketball player, those Three True Outcomes are Three, Dunk, and Free Throw.  There is no in-between game.  To go back to the Warriors, at an awards picnic several years ago I overheard some of the HS players reveling in the fact that Shaun Livingston had just retired from the Warriors, as he was a "garbage, worthless player."

[Maithanet]

It is very easy to imagine young players not understanding that a contested 3 is a much worse shot than an open 16 footer. 

In actual NBA news, Christian Wood signed a vet minimum contract with the Lakers.  I'm really surprised he was available for that price, I remember a lot of people being really high on him a couple of years ago.  His defense does leave a lot to be desired, but if he's playing next to Davis, I'm sure the Lakers can manage.  Seems like a potentially very good signing for them.