who do you think

NBA. Uniforms are kind of a tough call here since all the Nike vomit means that all teams are wearing meme jerseys for about a third of their schedule... I'm doing this with only "primary" uniforms in mind. Never changing (bar minor tweaks): Celtics, Bulls, Heat Logo/general identity here to stay, but uniforms will be "updated" semi-regularly: 76ers, Knicks, Lakers, Warriors, Grizzlies, Pelicans, Mavericks, Trail Blazers, Hornets, Pistons, Pacers Will likely change/overhaul again in the next 5-10 years: Hawks, Jazz, Nuggets, Magic, Rockets, Clippers, Suns, Timberwolves, Kings, Wizards, Raptors Wildcards (might keep their branding for the long haul, might go off and do something crazy tomorrow): Spurs, Thunder, Bucks, Nets, Cavs

At the risk of derailing the discussion, this same problem applies to the NBA, which has largely devolved into Pat Riley's dystopian vision of it being nothing a bunch of small forward-sized guys running up and down shooting threes, switching everything, and playing interchangeable positions just because they can. Guys who don't fit that mold are now the exception. Even the bottomfeeders can do it thanks to too much talent with nowhere to go. Bill Simmons (I know) recently quipped that this year's Detroit Pistons would be a .500 team in 2006 and I don't think he's wrong. The 2018 Celtics plugged Terry Rozier (by reputation, a decent backup combo guard) in for Kyrie Irving (by reputation, a star) when the latter got injured and didn't suffer at all. If anything they were better off because Rozier was a better defender. Maybe some of this is nostalgia, but the game was more engaging and watchable when teams had a couple of all-around guys at the top, and after that it was backups and specialists. Teams had to play around what those other guys couldn't do, and put them in a position to capitalize on the things they could do. Everyone being able to do everything proficiently has removed that "problem" for the teams themselves, but it has really homogenized the product.

Said the guy with a f--king Paul George avatar.

The system that enabled the Sixers to do what they did is still very much in place; lose more games, have higher lottery odds. Adam Silver and his domdaddies aren't the system, they oversee the system, and they didn't like that Philly was exploiting their system, so they got angry and forced the Sixers to fire Hinkie. When your team is at the end of the line and you have a decision to make as to how you're going to pull back and rebuild, there are multiple ways to make that happen, and which method is the 'right' way depends on what you have to work with. If you have pieces that you're done with but someone else values more than you do, you're in business. You can hope to trade them for the motherlode of draft picks and essentially outsource your entire rebuild - like what the Celtics did - or, failing that, try to Moneyball it by rolling your assets into other assets and eventually cash them in on a difference maker - like Houston transitioning from T-Mac/Yao to Harden without ever going below .500 in a brutal conference, accomplished by using the valuable players they had (T-Mac's contract, Ariza, Battier) and rolling them into middling first rounders and the likes of Kevin Martin, Courtney Lee, Jordan Hill (guys that can help good teams or recent former lottery picks with PoTEnTiaL), until one day they had a viable trade package for when a star (Harden) became available. In the case of the Sixers, their roster was a smoldering crater that still hadn't really recovered from doing an absolutely horrible job in the Iverson era, trading Iverson himself for nothing, then getting swindled by Elton Brand. Their absolute ceiling was scrapping for the 8 seed in a crap conference every year with Iguodala (literally not a starter on a championship team) as their best player and the likes of Lavoy Allen and Spencer Hawes playing big minutes. Their only way out of that was to try and find at least one franchise player with his best days still in front of him; possible through trade, but much more likely through the draft. They had already traded Iguodala for Andrew Bynum and struck out. The only cards Hinkie had to play were Evan Turner (former #2 pick not exactly setting the world on fire), Thad Young (generic Tim Thomas-tier forward, got a first rounder out of him) and Jrue Holiday, who went for Nerlens Noel on draft day (bust) and a future pick (Elfrid Payton, traded for Dario Saric, eventually traded for Jimmy Butler). Other than that, their team was pure detritus. Please don't try to argue that they could have gotten something good for :censored:ing Tony Wroten or whoever. No way forward for Philly but to give themselves the best lottery odds possible to give themselves as many opportunities as possible to hit on that franchise guy, and the system dictates that the worse your team is, the better your lottery odds will be. So again, blame the system. The Sixers had no other viable options.

The Sixers actually did that, and they landed top-three draft picks in four consecutive drafts. You don't like it, blame the system for enabling such behavior.

> Tank one season to try and land a top draft pick "Ya I guess that makes sense, they weren't winning anything anyway and whoever lands [prospect X] could turn their franchise around" > Tank multiple seasons to try and land multiple top draft picks "NOOOOOOOO YOU CAN'T DO THAT"

uw0tm8?

Yeah, what was he doing when the team was pissing away 4th quarter leads like cheap beer in a trailer park and losing to the Bismarck Flying Hamsters (or whoever Minnesota's G-League team is)? If you told everyone before the start of the season that the Celtics would be 11 games over .500 in March, only Nets, Sixers, and Lakers fans would have been excited.

The last dunk contest I watched was the one where some stick figure 12th man playing for Utah missed like 45 dunk attempts before finally completing one that was whatever at best, and IIRC he got all 10's for it. I wanted to throw batteries at my TV. It had been declining for a bit but that was my Jerry Seinfeld gif moment. Haven't watched since. Anyway I love the Celtics showing signs of life for a bit before the All-Star break, then reverting to form and choking away yet another game that they led by multiple possessions with mere minutes to go, this time against the fully decomposed corpse of the Detroit Pistons.

I mean that definitely could be a factor, because it's Norris House League levels of petty and we all know this never really stopped being the Norris House League. But I think the real explanation is just typical tail-wagging-the-dog NHL bulls**t. They need a "safe" hockey market like Quebec City on ice in case one of their multiple existing trouble franchises** finally flatlines and can't be revived, but instead of turning one of these hapless teams into a self-sustaining operation that can actually fill their arena while being the only show in town, thereby crossing them off the recurring-headache list, the owners want these other 5th-team-in-a-4-team-market franchises to keep existing for as long as some sleezeball is willing to bankroll them, because muh salary cap and muh escrow manipulation, even though I don't see any of the other (much more successful) major leagues keeping sham franchises afloat for the sole purpose of saving a few bucks on salary cap manipulation, money that surely just comes right back out of their pockets whenever one of their marks gives back the keys and their financially insolvent team defaults to being league-owned. The closest thing is the NFL/NBA keeping LA/Seattle vacant for so long to try and bully other cities into building new taxpayer-funded stadiums, but fan support has never been the issue in those cases. The NHL owners galaxy-braining to try and screw the players out of $50 by keeping multiple franchises on the verge of financial ruin is on a different plane. **Coyotes being number one for obvious reasons, Panthers being number two since fan interest appears to be as sparse as ever and I believe we're creeping up on an opt-out date for the arena lease, the Senators in third place for turning their own fanbase against them due to becoming a mashup of the Jail Blazers and Maloof era Sacramento Kings, Hurricanes fourth for being Panthers lite (Weren't they this close to having the trucks backed up a few years ago?), Houston being an instant candidate if the league is dumb enough to try and force a displaced team there first. (I know this all been covered ad nauseum, I just have too much coffee in me and felt like summarizing the state of the game as I understand it) This has always been a cope by sunbelt defenders. None of the NHL's national TV partners have ever or will ever even begin give a damn about the Coyotes, Panthers, etc. NBC didn't care about losing the Thrashers. If anything, the Canadian teams don't want to cut another slice out of their TV contracts. One reason why the Senators may be Quebec City's best chance.

>ownership group that can't/doesn't pay its bills is "committed to the market"

Oh stop. They turned nothing into something. How is that only "technically" a good trade? They turned a guy who was literally refusing to play into a perennial all-star. The only knock you could possibly make on this acquisition is that Harden, at 32, may not have much time left playing at the level we're accustomed to. > But Harden's quit on two teams now! Yeah, him and every other elite player in this stupid league when they get tired of their old superteam and want a new one. How many times has LeBron bailed on a team and left them in shambles? We're currently at 3, could very well be 4 whenever he hits free agency next and takes stock of how cloudy the Lakers' future is looking after emptying the vault for that one ring and then for Westbrick. I don't think any of LeBron's new franchises have ever regretted taking him on. Also see Durant (twice) and Kawhi Leonard (also twice, with a healthy dose of petulant gaslighting on his way out of San Antonio). At least Harden, by asking for trades, allows his old team to get something back in return.

Even if Simmons was actually honoring his contract and performing at his usual standard, you would still trade him for James Harden if you could. The Sixers pulled it off with Simmons literally sitting out and refusing to play and all it cost them was a rent-a-shooter, a career loser of a center, and two worthless draft picks. Unless Simmons gets his act together, the Nets threw away half-a-decade's worth of unprotected first rounders again! Not to mention the $130M they threw away on Kyrie even though they had ample warning that the guy is pure anal cancer. The absolute state of professional basketball in New York. Here's the NBA draft picks owed page if you want to laugh or give yourself a stroke. I'm not sure what the best/worst part is: all of Brooklyn's draft picks going to Houston, all of Houston's draft picks going to OKC for Westbrick, all of the Clippers' draft picks going to OKC for another anal cancer career loser, needing a bathroom break to get through OKC's "incoming picks" section, the Celtics not having any second rounders past 2023 for I-don't-know-what reason, or the Knicks of all teams being the only one not owing a single future draft pick. Yes, pasty white NBA Twitter nerd, tell me more about how there are no stupid franchises these days.

Bettman is just a stooge for the owners. He takes point when it's league vs. players, league vs. TV partners, league vs. advertisers, etc., but when it comes how the NHL organizes itself and where they plop down their franchises, the owners call the shots while Bettman spazzes out to the media on their behalf. You should be barking up the trees of the Molson Family, MLSE, and Jeremy Jacobs, probably in that order. They're the ones most responsible for the NHL tying itself in double-knots to avoid placing a franchise in one of the very few viable open locations in North America with an actual hockey appetite and wouldn't require constant handouts to keep afloat (barring another crapout of the Canadian dollar).

Five games a year in Saskatoon is bad optix for a major sports league, but a 5,000 seat auditorium in Tempe that's only free when ASU hockey and gymnastics are off is fine. What a wonderful opportunity to grow the game.

Over the Sacramento Kings, the NBA's toilet for the last 15 years now. Jaylen Brown does nothing to affect the game if he's not scoring. He hasn't developed his skillset since his second year in the league, he's just received more scoring opportunities due to the departure/injury of everyone previously ahead of him in the pecking order. I also wonder if he's a source of the obvious locker room dysfunction, considering the grating, holier-than-thou persona he presents to the public. I'd still rather have him than Ben Simmons because at least he plays, but I'd much prefer to find some sucker team to trade some value players for him under the delusion that he can be a successful franchise player for them. If possible, of course; seems like there are fewer idiots running teams nowadays. The real problem is the Celtics got too good too soon after the Nets trade, and the people in charge decided that seizing the day was a more appropriate course of action than solidifying the foundation. True, windows in the NBA are fleeting, but that doesn't mean you go off half-cocked like the Celtics did in 2017. The IT trade was the beginning of the end. Trading IT at the peak of his value was a good idea, but swapping him for Irving was unnecessary and turned out to be disastrous. The Celtics have spent the last five years now being run like the 2009-2012 Red Sox. They refuse to accept the need for a retool/rebuild until it is forced upon them, they hastily go shopping for the wrong guys on the trade/FA market because star power (in total ignorance of why the 2016-18 NBA teams played so well), they piss pants about tomorrow's headlines at the expense of all on-court concerns, and then they change coaches in response to their (very good) previous coach's inability to "reach" the players in his Japanese :censored: painting of a locker room that management created by mashing random pieces together with zero consideration for fit. I highly doubt that. The Warriors swept the Cavs rather easily, and we were not a decisively better team than Cleveland. Westbrook is a stat-padder, Paul George is scum and pure anal cancer in every locker room he sets foot in (there's a reason he never wins and hopefully never does), Kawhi would have dipped after one year (ultimately what happened with Kyrie anyway, though). Getting Chris Paul in 2019 instead of Walker would have been nice but I don't remember any discussion or any way that they could have swung that.

Well with their two lottery-winning Brooklyn picks, the Celtics found the next Carmelo Anthony and the next Jason Richardson. On one hand, it is hard to complain about having used top-3 picks on productive NBA starters with good counting stats who are both willing and able to take the court with regularity, in an era where several other top-3 picks who should be in their prime right now are either making up mental illnesses while failing to honor their contract (Simmons), have the yips plus nerve damage (Fultz), are morbidly obese (Zion), are unremarkable underachievers (Lonzo, Bagley, Jabari Parker), or are nuclear busts (Bennett). On the other hand, this is pretty clearly not a championship foundation, and some drastic changes are in order... even though they've already made several by parting ways with their GM, making the coach the new GM, hiring a puppet coach because he fits a skin color mandate issued by one of their "franchise" players, salary dumping the expensive scoring-oriented/no-defense PG they signed to replace the old crazy one who they traded for to replace the old short one (meanwhile Rozier did all their jobs just as well in the 2018 playoffs for a fraction of the price), and worst of all, changing the color of the TD Garden from yellow to black and removing all character from the place.

I want Cari Champion and Artie Lange to host a recap show together.

Yeah Salt Lake has 2.5 million in its CSA. More than sufficient for most other sports, but on the low end for baseball (they'd be ahead of KC, Pittsburgh and Milwaukee I think) and without any apparent special interest in the sport in the area. They wouldn't have much of a TV market either. Like I said upthread, when Montreal (a graphic failure the first time around) currently looks like the best landing spot for an MLB team in trouble, that's not good, and when baseball has two teams in gots-to-go situations due to 15-20+ year stadium hunts that have gone nowhere, that's really not good. I'm standing by my bold prediction that two MLB franchises (probably these two) are getting axed before 2030, optics and MLBPA rage duly noted.

If/when the NBA expands to Vegas I would bet on another rent-a-superteam springing up there within five years of their launch date, making life more difficult for the Knights as they exit their honeymoon period, but still probably leaving the A's as the odd team out. Enjoy funding that baseball stadium that can't be used for anything else, taxpayers.

2.5 million regional population for soon-to-be four major league teams, in case anyone forgot. I was gonna follow that up with a line about how Denver (3.5 million) struggles to simultaneously support the Avs, Nuggets, and Rockies, but I looked and they were actually all doing pretty well attendance-wise in the seasons leading up to COVID. So I guess they can make it work as long as the teams are good. I still say this is gonna end badly for somebody in Vegas in the not-so-distant future.

I googled Addison Rae hoping she was a porn star or something... nope, just some Chanel West Coast knock off with a brother named Enzo. Also I caught ESPN with sound the other day for the first time in a while, more specifically Get Up, and I don't know how anyone tolerates it. Five solid minutes of commercials before Keyshawn Johnson started yelling at some Situation look-a-like about something to do with Odell Beckham. It was like PTI with substitute hosts on its worst day, x10.

Wait, are Kareem, Dirk and Durant the cover athletes? Kareem would be interesting, wonder if that would indicate a renewed focus on older classic players and/or teams (actual classic teams, not the f***ing 07-08 Nuggets or 13-14 Pacers). I don't really do 2K or video games at all anymore but I might make an exception for more Bird teams, more Magic/Kareem Laker teams, Barkley, Reggie Miller, etc.

On today's episode of Problematic Opinions There's audio excerpts in the page (and on Youtube), and also a Deadspin link within that has more audio, for those that wish to give clicks to that infected anal fissure of a website.

Expand to where? Forget expansion, baseball has no good landing spots for the A's or Rays if their stadium issues don't get resolved (and seeing as both battles have been going for well over a decade at this point with no resolution...). >Montreal Failed the first time around, had a Coyotes-tier final decade, not much reason to think they would succeed this time around other than blind optimism... and they're the most appealing city on the list. >Nashville >North Carolina For NBA/NHL, maybe. For MLB, with twice as many home dates and seats to fill per game? You're scraping the bottom of the barrel hoping they can be as good a market as Milwaukee or Arizona, and praying that it's not Florida all over again... I don't know about that. Have we mentioned that all three cities are transplant hell? >NBA city roll call oh please