who do you think

Not to sound like a Tiktoker, but the NBA is firmly in their no-such-thing-as-bad-publicity era. I think it's been 10 years since Mark Cuban's famous comment about the NFL's supposed downfall, but the NBA feels a lot hoggier today than the NFL ever has. The latter has swept some egregious under the rug to keep the train otherwise running pretty much as normal save for the occasional simulcast on Nickelodeon or whatever, but the NBA's ambitions for itself have become so bizarre and off-putting, made worse by the fact that they'll throw literally anything against the wall to make just one baby step toward realizing them. I just read From Hang Time to Prime Time*, and a recurring theme throughout the book is David Stern lecturing all his new employees and business partners about how the NBA isn't actually a sports league, it's Disney, with the league's (easily identifiable thanks to the nature of the sport) being the equivalent of iconic Disney characters. Explains a lot. Considering how much more obnoxious things have gotten in the last decade, Adam Silver appears to be doubling down pretty hard on that. *Which spends very little time covering the actual business side of the sport regarding franchise placement/health and CBA stuff (which is the type of content I was hoping for, a la The Instigator for the NHL), while dedicating entire chapters to crap like Marvin Gaye singing the national anthem. I do not recommend, this thing's getting donated to the library in my next round of downsizing.

Let's give them 10 more years of chances and try scheduling some home games in the Robertson College faculty lounge before we deem the market flawed, alright? Is Winnipeg getting boned by the economy? I remember reading that Calgary and Edmonton went through some bad weather in the late 90s, right in the teeth of the Canadian dollar crapping out. Right now it's trading at $0.73 US, which I believe is not very good.

Not hard to stay loyal to a country club franchise that plays its home games in suburban SoCal. Especially when they pay you a bajillion dollars a year.

We should be due for a changing of the guard pretty soon in the East, maybe not this season, but probably by next year. The Bucks and Celtics are going for broke with their recent moves but I don't know much better either team really got, and I know the Celtics are going to be in cap hell pretty soon as a result. The Sixers window was closing anyway and the Harden situation isn't going to help. Miami is always somewhat of a wild card (and also what the hell is this). I don't know who the emergent teams would be, though. Cleveland is clearly on the way up, so that should be one, especially if Mobley makes the leap. Orlando is the proverbial spooky loaded young team but they haven't actually done anything yet and even if Banchero and Wagner are the real deal, they have to be a couple of years out at least. The Knicks are cursed until they prove otherwise. The Hawks and Pacers are what they are. Nobody else as constructed looks like anything more than a play-in team for the forseeable future.

I just listened to some of the Toy Story game and he seems to be alright. My interest in watching Red Sox games waned quite a bit when they pushed out Orsillo in favor of O'Brien, I don't think that will happen here. It is time for Gorman to go regardless. They're gonna need a better color guy than Scalabrine though. Gorman is such a seasoned pro that he can always recover seamlessly when Scal leaves him hanging. This guy is a rookie.

The Kings have had some treasures in the GM chair. Divac was the IT of his era, but I think I remember the guy before him (Pete D'Alessandro) saying he wanted to crowdsource draft picks or something; he didn't last long. And then before that the Maloofs were still burning the place down and nobody could do much of anything. Tyreke Evans would have been a perennial all-star had he not been drafted into that ongoing disaster.

They're a bunch of goobers with a dorky consulting website and no actual money.

Not my problem.

Useless franchise should be obliterated and the baseball ops people that keep on discovering and developing good players for this team-for-nobody should be folded into Pittsburgh or some other place that would actually appreciate it. Bradenton's just a drive away. Don't get me started on what I hope happens to Marlins Park II.

Smart, our standout defensive guard who's been in the league almost a decade, might drop off soon so we should trade him while we can. Hey Latvian Bargnani is available, let's do that even though he's always hurt and teams seem to get better after dealing him. Oh but the Bucks just got Lillard and now want to deal their aging standout defender point guard (who is older than Smart), we should trade our best interior defender plus two firsts for him. The only explanation I can come up with is that Smart and Williams were two of the bad seeds in that notoriously bitchy locker room from the past few years. Otherwise this just looks like the flailings of a stalled contender in panic mode.

Three team trade and it seems like everyone did at least okay. Milwaukee was already a contender and got the best player in the trade, although it's a shame Lillard's antics got rewarded. Phoenix probably got better by getting rid of Ayton and adding Nurkic and Allen. Portland's haul is decent on paper anyway. Ayton is a stiff but Holiday can be rerouted for something and by the time those picks come up the Bucks might well be in the toilet.

They're also probably the three most unpleasant locations on the MLB map in terms of outdoor conditions from June to August/September. Bit of a deterrent for getting people to the park in the first place, and also forces home games to take place in crappy airplane hangars. (Although a possible counterpoint is that Houston, DFW, and Atlanta aren't far behind in terms of total ballsweat produced per summer, but they get by okay. Maybe we're just back to the sad fact that nobody cares and full-time teams shouldn't have ever existed in spring training sprawls where more famous teams have had a flag planted for far longer and nobody who lives there is actually from there.) Those cities are only "locks" because they're obvious holes on the NBA map relative to the bevy of smaller markets that the league already successfully operates in. MLB expansion is only "wide open" because all available US markets are in the same glut of uninspiring, replacement-level whatevervilles. MLB Columbus is the top end of what any of them can be. Why does that need to exist?

Nobody. Cares. About. This. F***ing. Team.

The Sox don't hire GMs as much as they hire guys to execute specific directives (rebuild the farm system, Go For It, reduce player spending), and then immediately remove and replace them once ownership decides that directive is out of date. Like Microsoft contractors or something.

Not wrong, but he still pulled it off. Al Michaels in his heyday was so naturally good that he could do play-by-play for the kitchen at Chili's and I'd probably still watch. Exhibit A of the gulf between NBC and ESPN is Game 1 of the 2001 Finals. Irrespective of the game itself - which was compelling going in and turned out to be a classic - it just feels like every single person involved in that broadcast, from Marv Albert and Doug Collins all the way down to [whoever, name a grunt position, I'm not in the business] was absolutely locked in. Multiple times I've opened the full-game broadcast on Youtube intending to skip ahead to overtime and/or the Iverson stepover, and instead get suckered in and end up just watching the whole thing. I'm sure there's some nostalgia at work there but whatever. ESPN has never and will never put on an NBA broadcast like that. Even when they've had truly classic games to work with - like 2016 Game 7 - the energy just hasn't been there.

Doc Rivers was great with Al Michaels in 2004, but that was way before ESPN's house style became "talk about literally anything but the game happening right now", so all bets are off. Even if Doc ends up being a net positive, never fear, Bore-is Burke is here to ensure a mediocre-at-best telecast.

Golden State has absolutely nothing on the horizon past this current core so they might as well hang on for as long as Lacob's willing to pay up. He sucks, they suck. It's perfect.

Poole sucks and never should have gotten paid. Washington is going to be really bad for the next few years, and they wouldn't have it any other way. Also, the finalized Beal trade: Imagine emptying the entire vault (all future draft picks plus any depth and/or prospects you had lying around) for mid-30s Kevin Durant and any-age Bradley Beal. The Suns are mesmerizingly stupid.

We've seen the best of Smart already, it's very possible that he drops off soon (nine years with his playstyle is a lot), and Derrick White is just better at this point, so I get wanting to flip him for something while you can. If Draymond leaves and GS doesn't replace him with anything substantial, that pick could be semi-decent. But all this for Porzingis? The guy who's always hurt for half the year? The 7-3 shooter who's not actually that great of a shooter and has never been on a good team? The guy Dallas traded right before finishing their 21-22 season strong and going to the conference finals? Latvian Bargnani? That's the missing piece? Where's that anime meme I posted a while back that pissed everyone off?

The Suns are moonjumping up the dumbest-franchises-in-sports list.

The NHL has less than zero business in Austin.

No it doesn't.

There's a lot more talent now than 20 years ago, especially after some early-00s rule changes to de-emphasize the importance of centers. The days of teams blowing their lottery picks on Johan Petro and Saer Sene just because they're tall are over, high schoolers were banned from the draft a while ago (but lord help us if they come back), and controlling jerkoffs like Larry Brown who habitually stepped on developing talent have mostly gone extinct. There are enough decent guys buried on rosters right now that could at least give theoretical teams 31 and 32 a much better start than the Bobcats. The question is why add two more teams when you don't have to? The NBA definitely doesn't have to expand.

There is zero reason for the NBA to be screwing around in any of those places. RE New Orleans the league already bent over backwards for them once, they probably will again. They'll fight for Memphis and OKC too. The league likes places where they're the only major league game in town.

Whoops forgot this thread had been made. Paul is clearly in decline at this point but the team's certainly not going to get better without him; he's the only reason they got good in the first place. Sitting here right now, I'd say there's a much-higher-than-zero chance that the Suns are .500 or worse at some critical juncture of next season, and Durant gets traded again (or maybe demands one) - for less, probably a lot less, than what they gave Brooklyn to acquire him. Ishbia pulled a Prokhorov.