BBTV

I recommend not watching that unless you want to lose 20-30 IQ points.

I think it's not only possible, but probable. I think he genuinely likes playing here, but he's never recovered from the front office choosing Tobias Harris over Jimmy Butler (granted, pre-Morey) and he's said some passive-aggressive things in the past that could be interpreted as him understanding his prime is being wasted by this revolving door of Robins and Jokers. If Maxey doesn't take a giant leap forward this year and prove to be the #2 he needs to win, even if not this season, I could see him asking out. It would be very out of character for him to do something like that, but at some point he'll be pushed over the edge.

I suppose the option would be to hang onto him like they did with Ben Simmons and then make a deadline deal, but when a guy says that he'll only suit up for one team, you lose all leverage if that team falls out of contention by the deadline and has no reason to trade for him. I could be wrong because I don't watch much NBA, but if getting rid of Harden allows for Tyrese Maxey to become a star, then it's basically a break-even trade for the Sixers, even if what they got in return was technically already on the roster. Regardless, it doesn't seem like they're contenders to get out of the second (if first) round this year, so it's just a bad situation all around (except for Harden.)

Who’s the street fighter and the theif?

They can't. If true, merch has already been made and paperwork filed. Poor foresight on their part to not predict that they'd make it to the world series - what were they thinking Off the top of my head, no, but that probably has more to do with the fact that MLB has been more conservative than some of the other leagues as far as teams redesigning (it's relatively rare, as opposed to NBA and recent NFL), and teams tend to plan these things when they totally suck (though as we've seen recently, you can go from suck to pretty good pretty quickly these days.)

I guess they wanted expiring contracts. What a F'd up league where lousy players are desirable simply because of their contracts. Harden's is expiring too, so I'm not sure if/how this is really worth it unless it would have rolled over due to him not playing. This is the same league where Jamal Mashburn was traded for several times after he had retired. How does anyone think the CBA is good for anyone? It's great for superstar players, but pretty lousy for everyone else.

At least that clearly says RICE, so there’s little chance of confusing them for having a licensing deal for Oilers stuff.

Those colors are just perfect. Damn them for wearing the trash they have now when they could leverage such awesome colors from their past.

Gray would look really good with their shade of red. I've often thought that they could get away with gray/silver helmet/pants, but an unnecessary gray jersey with an unnecessary red alt helmet and red pants wouldn't look bad at all (as long as the gray was dark enough to be obviously gray, and not dirty white). Something like this wouldn't be bad either:

Curious which ref calls are you referring to. There was the obvious drop, but Rivera could/should have challenged it. That's half on the refs, but come on - Smith was motioning for everyone to hustle up and snap the ball. That's a dead giveaway that it was dropped pass. I didn't notice anything egregious on either side. Typical missed holds, a few typically-missed inconsequential defensive holdings, but I don't recall anything that stood out. It wasn't like there was phantom personal fouls or PIs. I'm typically the first one to point out lobsided officiating on either side, but I didn't see it today. I had the local radio synced, so I didn't hear the TV broadcast. Local radio was killing the Eagles, with the exception of AJ Brown and Hurts. Like it or not, the Eagles have a lot of likeable players and are going to get the benefit of the doubt from national media (for a change). It's also possible that FOX was trying hard to build up next week's Phila-Dallas game. Washington lost that game more than the Eagles won it. Eagles turned it over twice inside the five. You don't deserve to win if you do that. Their defense had nobody in the right position all game long, and Howell - who is much better than I thought - looked like Tom Brady. He's good - maybe even very good - but he's not Tom Brady. Hurts played out of his mind - with one leg, and AJ Brown is the best receiver I've seen here since TO. He's just incredible. Washington played hard, and deserved to win. Howell looks like he might just develop into a true franchise guy - he just needs to work on some of the intangibles, like leadershipy stuff. He's young and well coached. No reason to think he can't get there. The problem with Washington is that they might have a gem there, but they lack the organizational competence to capitalize on it and craft the right team around him. They'll likely end up wasting him, and that's a shame. There's some real talent on that team, some really good offensive coaching, but despite all the good things, Ron Rivera seems to always blunder when it matters most - whether it's turtling up and not going for two, or missing a clear opportunity to challenge, etc. They also don't seem to have a shrewd GM to manage the cap and fleece teams like the Eagles did with AJ Brown. And unfortunately, their new owner isn't the panacea the fans think he is.

We need a dedicated thread for discussing the mismatched disaster that is the Cowboys home uniform since that's all this thread devolves to every week. The Pointless Cowboys Color Standardization Outpost. Mods, make it so.

IMO, wearing silver hats and white pants (or vice versa) is nearly as egregious as wearing silver hats with seafoam-green pants. Not quite as bad as wearing silver helmets with navy star, royal numbers, and seafoam-green pants, but bad. I'm definitely on team "standardize the blues and silvers". I actually spent too much time trying to find a pic of them wearing navy over silver at home and couldn't do it. I'm glad someone else could. Their navy uniforms were far better before the floating white outline over the numbers - pretty much any version of navy before the current one is better. But didn't wear at home.

Way to make a baseless-dismissive-generalizing statement. I hate today's uniform for reasons I've clearly articulated that have nothing to do with their terrible home uniform. Don't summarily dismiss everyone's opinions just because they may be different than yours.

White and silver should never be worn together as helmet / pants, in either combo. No exceptions.

Eagles coordinators lose to the Commanders, gifting one to Dallas and SF. I hate both of these guys. One is Hurts' long time buddy, and the other thinks he's smart because he has a PhD and a million other degrees. Get a degree in football, jackass.

There's probably something to that. Someone in that consortium seems to die every year now, and the current "managing partner" John Middleton is quietly buying more shares from the estates of the deceased. That's not a bad thing - he's a local billionaire ready to spend (in his words) "stupid money". The managing partner has always made 90% of the financial decisions, and I think only needed the approval of the others for BFD things like going over their approved payroll, financial decisions regarding stadium financing, etc. Since Bill Giles stepped down (he was the one that claimed that the Phillies were a "small market franchise"), the next managing partner (Dave Montgomery) really built a culture of connecting with the community, loyalty to long-time employees (they've had the same PA announcer since the mid 70s, and while he was let go by the Eagles and now has a bit of a speech impediment due to surgeries for sinus cancer, he is there for as long as he wants to be) only having high-character players (though they've had a couple of misses there, but have been better than most), and again, connecting with alumni, and again, the community. Objectively, they really do all of the non-playing stuff really well. Their only swing-and-miss in recent years was allowing Pete Rose to come back for alumni weekend last year, where he proceeded to degrade their female beat writer, curse repeatedly on the live broadcast, make fun of John Kruk only having one ball due to cancer, etc. But overall, their record is amazing. Also to your point, the Sixers were much better when they were owned by the Flyers and managed by Pat Croce (local fitness person turned millionaire, who was the face of the franchise during the Iverson finals run). He wanted full control of the Sixers, and Ed Snider wouldn't hand it over, so he left, and the Flyers didn't give two Fs about the Sixers, so their whole operation turned to hell, then Josh Harris came in and it just got worse. Josh Harris doesn't give a damn about the teams or communities he operates in. Commanders fans are complete idiots for all their "we're different because he's from here and said he visits his grandma sometimes". He's a POS, and while he's so focused on raising the value of his assets that he'll likely get them a new stadium, anyone who thinks he cares about the teams, fans, or communities is hopped up on goofballs. Goofballs, I tells ya. EDIT: Ed Snider was absolutely outstanding at community stuff and culture. It's obvious what's happend to the flyers on ice since he died, but off ice is just as bad.

It's almost like there's a whole new world order now.

I'm legitimately curious to know what the cognition test is. I found this via quick Google search. I don't know if it includes that information, but at a glance, it appears pretty comprehensive. Not gonna be able to read the full thing tonight, but I plan to tomorrow. https://static.www.nfl.com/image/upload/v1665264248/league/moexjmdzy2kvjtqsdpbx.pdf

In their defense, while the metro area isn't called "Tampa Bay", colloquially the metro area is known as that, there's precedent with another sports team, and there's at least one newspaper that goes by Tampa Bay (Tampa Bay Times... although a google search reveals that it was the St Petersburg times up until around 10 years ago). Though to your point, it would be like Philadelphia teams being called "Delaware Valley Eagles", though there's no city in the DelVal region that would possibly be ticked by that, with the possible exception of the state of NJ had the Sixers moved there as planned.

Great point. I doubt it was intentional, but it does work to his favor. The Sixers are claiming that he's missing required games (I think "required" == national) because he missed so many practices that he's not in "game shape" and would be risking injury, so their medical staff advised him to sit out. "The NBA's player participation policy allows teams and players an out for injury, personal reasons and "rare and unusual circumstances." A team could be fined $100,000 for a first offense, with increasing penalties thereafter." https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/38751350/nba-investigating-76ers-james-harden-participation-policy As much as I'm pro-player (not Pro Player as in the defunct apparel company), there should be some exception here that helps teams out when their players choose to pursue this option.

Exactly!

I'd love if FOX or some non-NCAA organization created a CFB and/or CBB tournament that offered prize money to players and schools, and actually became the primary tournament. The NCAA is awful, and I'm not sure there's much they could do about it. They couldn't punish the teams or players (they just wouldn't be allowed to come back... but we know the NCAA would take them back), and they couldn't punish the other school-sponsored teams.

Oh, another thing - while I don't follow the NBA, I do occasionally listen to sports radio and watch ESPN, and heard that the Sixers might be in trouble for Harden's behavior! Apparently if someone (especially a star) isn't playing, he has to be injured (I guess it's something with the war against 'load management'?) so since Harden isn't on the injury report, the team is in violation of some rule. Now that's some .

Harden (and the Sixers in general) are the anti-Phillies and anti-Eagles. I can't imagine two franchises that are more involved in the community and where each player independently does so much local work and supports good causes. They - especially the individual Phillies - truly feel like your neighbors. But the Sixers? Maybe it's due to Josh Harris' ownership, but other than hiring 3rd-party contractors to half-assedly build basketball courts that people get shot at, haven't done anything of note that I can think of. Embiid randomly showing up at pickup games to block dudes' shots and then leave, doesn't count. I never expected Harden to try and become part of the community, because he was never going to be here long term, and was clearly just a lease as opposed to a purchase. But he's basically gone out of his way to avoid the community, and has basically just been aloof since he's been here. Some guys are just like that - and it's fine, but it gets them less leeway. TO is a great example. Despite the sit-ups in the driveway incident, people still had his back in his feud with the Eagles and McNabb. I'm totally fine with players holding out to get their way, including Harden. We'd all do it if we had that leverage, and had the safety net of hundreds of millions in our bank account. It's just part of the business. Buttttttttt... ads others have mentioned, he really doesn't have the leverage in this case, since nobody wants him, and he's said he'll only sign an extension with one team, and publicly gone to war with the guy with the power (and who just a year ago was wacking off to videos of Harden playing.) TL;DR I have no issue with what Harden is doing. I just think he may have miscalculated just a bit.