22-23 NBA Season Thread

[DG_ThenNowForever]

13 minutes ago, BBTV said:

But now I get it.  We know more about the long term effects of playing these sports day-in and day-out, whether on joints, brains, or whatever - and I don't blame the players at all for wanting more days off.  But the problem is that the leagues inherently contradict themselves.  Pro sports only exists to get people to pay to watch, which requires players worth paying to see.  However, those players are paid to win championships and sell merch, which means that they only really care about the playoffs.  So I'm not sure how you fix it.  There's no way to legislate playing time, no matter what threats are made.  The only possible answer is to shorten seasons, but even then, the top teams that are pretty much guaranteed to make the playoffs will still take days off.

 

This could be a league thing or a me thing, but I'm totally uninvested in this season. Some of that is last year's bonus Warriors title kind of broke me, part of it is my team stinks, and part of it I actually really hate the uniforms and my inability to tell who's who night after night.

 

I've been a night-in, night-out guy for the NBA before, but it feels especially disposable now. Totally possible that I've just joined the rest of the world in rooting for a bad team, but maybe it's also more about the uncertainty of what product you're getting night after night.

[who do you think]

On 1/21/2023 at 10:45 AM, BBTV said:

 

I'd prefer a playoff in all sports where players are healthy and on top of their game.  I don't thin it takes 80-something games (or 162) to figure out who the top teams are and who should qualify for the playoffs.  Even NFL probably only needs 14 - certainly not 17.

 

As a consumer, it angers the F out of me that this stuff happens and there's no refunds given.  During the HR chase of 1998, a group of us went to Pittsburgh to see Cardinals vs Pirates, and McGwire took the day off.  We were college kids and that was a huge sum of money for us at the time, and you can imagine how pissed we were. 

 

But now I get it.  We know more about the long term effects of playing these sports day-in and day-out, whether on joints, brains, or whatever - and I don't blame the players at all for wanting more days off.  But the problem is that the leagues inherently contradict themselves.  Pro sports only exists to get people to pay to watch, which requires players worth paying to see.  However, those players are paid to win championships and sell merch, which means that they only really care about the playoffs.  So I'm not sure how you fix it.  There's no way to legislate playing time, no matter what threats are made.  The only possible answer is to shorten seasons, but even then, the top teams that are pretty much guaranteed to make the playoffs will still take days off.

 

Glenn Rivers actually publicly calls some games "scheduled losses".  I can't believe a coach would actually say such a thing, especially with all the gambling implications.  But yeah - the Sixers actually circle "scheduled losses" on their internal team calendar.

 

Basketball players have less right to the "we need more days off" whining than any other big four sport, especially after they fully outlawed defense a few years ago. NBA players who called it quits 15 years ago aren't walking around like Bob Newhart or blowing their own heads off because of CTE. Hockey plays the same schedule and those guys all weigh 220 pounds plus gear and spend all game running into each other and the boards at full speed (and they also have CTE concerns). Baseball plays every goddamn day, back-to-backs are the standard, and day games after night games are not uncommon.

 

Not only that, but if Jeff Van Gundy is to be believed (he's been out of the game for a while now so who knows), they hardly even run team practices anymore; it's about individual drills now. All while the modern equivalents of Mario Elie and Matt Geiger make triple what those guys did in the late 90s. Yeah, they have it so hard.

 

I think what pisses me off more than anything is that Steve Kerr knows as well as anyone that the NBA would never cut their regular season schedule and reduce their own revenue. He doesn't "advocate" for dick when he's not hijacking his own press conferences to go off on some unprompted political rant. Kerr's high-horse routine is all for show. He might be the single phoniest f-ck in this entire league, especially now that LeBron seems to have gotten over his professional victim phase.

 

On 1/21/2023 at 11:02 AM, DG_ThenNowForever said:

 

This could be a league thing or a me thing, but I'm totally uninvested in this season. Some of that is last year's bonus Warriors title kind of broke me, part of it is my team stinks, and part of it I actually really hate the uniforms and my inability to tell who's who night after night.

 

I've been a night-in, night-out guy for the NBA before, but it feels especially disposable now. Totally possible that I've just joined the rest of the world in rooting for a bad team, but maybe it's also more about the uncertainty of what product you're getting night after night.

 

The game just isn't very engaging these days, even without getting into the problem of that guy you paid money to see play tonight having an achy vagingo from that brutal 3 games in 5 days spanning 2 different cities stretch and needing his load managed. No refunds! (I follow the league out of habit because Celtics and because I enjoy the sport but haven't given a dime in over a decade now)

 

Bill Simmons and undercover social media shills like to use "the league is soooooooo talented now" as their go-to for selling the game, but all that really means (especially combined with the lack of defense) is that every game now plays out like the All-Star game. I don't know about anyone else, but I was done with All-Star games after my first two, because once you got done whacking off over the fact that Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, and Michael Jordan were all on the court together, it was no fun to watch. I score, now you score, okay now I score again, now your turn, defense is hard. Much of that scoring comes from lazily spamming threes because that's the right way to play as decreed by the church of analytics.

 

Where it deviates from feeling like a perfunctory Y2K-era all-star game is that players all have the same skillsets and do all the same things and play everything ultra-safe and are more afraid to make mistakes than ever before, because the NFL-ization of the league means everything's under a microscope and any miscues or suboptimal decisions (like shooting a midrange shot or crashing the boards) will be immediately posted to /r/NBA, MMQB'd to death, and result in fat whitey-white urban northerners climbing into their twitter DM's calling them nephews and bum-ass dudes. Players are still human at the end of the day and can only take so much of that crap.

 

Starter pack of ideas that might make things better: NBA expands by 4-6 teams (don't ask me where they would go after Seattle and Las Vegas), the league reinstitutes hand-checking, corner threes are eliminated, players abandon their public social media profiles. None of this will happen.

[Indigo]

14 hours ago, who do you think said:

 

Basketball players have less right to the "we need more days off" whining than any other big four sport, especially after they fully outlawed defense a few years ago. NBA players who called it quits 15 years ago aren't walking around like Bob Newhart or blowing their own heads off because of CTE. Hockey plays the same schedule and those guys all weigh 220 pounds plus gear and spend all game running into each other and the boards at full speed (and they also have CTE concerns). Baseball plays every goddamn day, back-to-backs are the standard, and day games after night games are not uncommon.

 

Not only that, but if Jeff Van Gundy is to be believed (he's been out of the game for a while now so who knows), they hardly even run team practices anymore; it's about individual drills now. All while the modern equivalents of Mario Elie and Matt Geiger make triple what those guys did in the late 90s. Yeah, they have it so hard.

 

I think what pisses me off more than anything is that Steve Kerr knows as well as anyone that the NBA would never cut their regular season schedule and reduce their own revenue. He doesn't "advocate" for dick when he's not hijacking his own press conferences to go off on some unprompted political rant. Kerr's high-horse routine is all for show. He might be the single phoniest f-ck in this entire league, especially now that LeBron seems to have gotten over his professional victim phase.

 

 

The game just isn't very engaging these days, even without getting into the problem of that guy you paid money to see play tonight having an achy vagingo from that brutal 3 games in 5 days spanning 2 different cities stretch and needing his load managed. No refunds! (I follow the league out of habit because Celtics and because I enjoy the sport but haven't given a dime in over a decade now)

 

Bill Simmons and undercover social media shills like to use "the league is soooooooo talented now" as their go-to for selling the game, but all that really means (especially combined with the lack of defense) is that every game now plays out like the All-Star game. I don't know about anyone else, but I was done with All-Star games after my first two, because once you got done whacking off over the fact that Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, and Michael Jordan were all on the court together, it was no fun to watch. I score, now you score, okay now I score again, now your turn, defense is hard. Much of that scoring comes from lazily spamming threes because that's the right way to play as decreed by the church of analytics.

 

Where it deviates from feeling like a perfunctory Y2K-era all-star game is that players all have the same skillsets and do all the same things and play everything ultra-safe and are more afraid to make mistakes than ever before, because the NFL-ization of the league means everything's under a microscope and any miscues or suboptimal decisions (like shooting a midrange shot or crashing the boards) will be immediately posted to /r/NBA, MMQB'd to death, and result in fat whitey-white urban northerners climbing into their twitter DM's calling them nephews and bum-ass dudes. Players are still human at the end of the day and can only take so much of that crap.

 

Starter pack of ideas that might make things better: NBA expands by 4-6 teams (don't ask me where they would go after Seattle and Las Vegas), the league reinstitutes hand-checking, corner threes are eliminated, players abandon their public social media profiles. None of this will happen.

Ignoring the stereotypical "No defense! Analytics suck! I hate interweb! 90s was better!" part of this, just because other sports are more physically tolling does not mean that basketball isn't. NBA players should not be judged by NFL standards because, well, they don't play in the NFL. Just because they aren't dying to to brain damage does not mean that playing basketball at the highest level on the planet is not physically tolling.

Shortening the schedule has many benefits, including:

• lessing the players' injury risk, by having them play less games, therefore less wear and tear.
• increasing the value of the product, so when John from OKC pays $300 to see Steph come into town, he isn't stuck watching Jordan Poole.
• Increasing ratings, for having a shorter schedule mean they can likely move out of the (eyeball machine that is the) NFL's way.

 

And just a quick question: have you ever played at the NBA level? What gives you the right to say those players don't work as hard as say, MLB players, whose sport doesn't involve a lot of physical contact? Where are you getting your information from?

[TrueYankee26]

Clippers if they only played the Lakers for 82 games

 

[who do you think]

11 hours ago, Indigo said:

Ignoring the stereotypical "No defense! Analytics suck! I hate interweb! 90s was better!" part of this, just because other sports are more physically tolling does not mean that basketball isn't. NBA players should not be judged by NFL standards because, well, they don't play in the NFL. Just because they aren't dying to to brain damage does not mean that playing basketball at the highest level on the planet is not physically tolling.

 

You're right, the likes of Jose Alvarado and Patrick Beverley risk their lives every time they're out there. One errant theatrical flop and their skulls will go right into the hardwood and they'll never be the same.

 

11 hours ago, Indigo said:

Shortening the schedule has many benefits, including:

• lessing the players' injury risk, by having them play less games, therefore less wear and tear.
• increasing the value of the product, so when John from OKC pays $300 to see Steph come into town, he isn't stuck watching Jordan Poole.
• Increasing ratings, for having a shorter schedule mean they can likely move out of the (eyeball machine that is the) NFL's way.

 

Irrelevant because not happening.

 

11 hours ago, Indigo said:

And just a quick question: have you ever played at the NBA level? What gives you the right to say those players don't work as hard as say, MLB players, whose sport doesn't involve a lot of physical contact? Where are you getting your information from?

 

Common sense with an assist from whichever ringer bro interviewed JVG recently.

[Indigo]

8 hours ago, who do you think said:

 

You're right, the likes of Jose Alvarado and Patrick Beverley risk their lives every time they're out there. One errant theatrical flop and their skulls will go right into the hardwood and they'll never be the same.

That's not what I said. What i siad was basketball is just as physically tollingas other sports. 

And none of the Big 4 sports have players risking their lives. The chances of Damar Hamlin's injury ever happening again are nearly one-in-a-million. Everything had to line up perfectly for that to happen to him. The mere notion that players "risk their lives" in any sport is absurd. Either you're being exteremely hyperbolic or you're just an idiot.

 

8 hours ago, who do you think said:

Irrelevant because not happening.

So I disagreed with you, and now my whole point is irrelevant because (in your opinion, mind you) it's not going to happen? Wow. This is like middle-school level thinking right here. You couldn't come up with a counterpoint, so you tried to cancel out my valid point. 

We fantasize on these very boards what certain teams would look like if they changed their look. (heck, we have a whole Concepts section). That part of the boards are not irrelevant just because it is unlikley.

 

8 hours ago, who do you think said:

Common sense with an assist from whichever ringer bro interviewed JVG recently.

This is what Van Gundy had to say:

Quote

"90’s NBA teams had just a trainer and a strength coach, they practiced more often and harder and played more back to backs. Teams now have huge medical & “performance” staffs and value rest over practice. Yet injuries and games missed are way up. Something’s not working!"

You twisted his words and ended up with this:

On 1/24/2023 at 2:05 AM, who do you think said:

Not only that, but if Jeff Van Gundy is to be believed (he's been out of the game for a while now so who knows), they hardly even run team practices anymore; it's about individual drills now. All while the modern equivalents of Mario Elie and Matt Geiger make triple what those guys did in the late 90s. Yeah, they have it so hard.

"Practiced more than they do now" does not equal "no practices at all". 

 

And about that common sense bit: what?

Using your common sense, MLB, NHL, and NFL players risk thier lives, while NBA players complain about light contact. Is that common sense?

 

[who do you think]

11 hours ago, Indigo said:

That's not what I said. What i siad was basketball is just as physically tolling as other sports. 

And none of the Big 4 sports have players risking their lives. The chances of Damar Hamlin's injury ever happening again are nearly one-in-a-million. Everything had to line up perfectly for that to happen to him. The mere notion that players "risk their lives" in any sport is absurd. Either you're being exteremely hyperbolic or you're just an idiot.

 

Nah. Call me when the NBA a) plays 6 games per week on average or b) allows its players to routinely tackle each other at midcourt with a running start or throw each other into the stanchions and scorer's table.

 

11 hours ago, Indigo said:

So I disagreed with you, and now my whole point is irrelevant because (in your opinion, mind you) it's not going to happen? Wow. This is like middle-school level thinking right here. You couldn't come up with a counterpoint, so you tried to cancel out my valid point. 

 

It's irrelevant because it's not happening because revenue trumps all, so brainstorming the possible benefits of a shortened schedule is a useless endeavor. 

 

(But I do enjoy the seemingly internet-wide assumption that load management will stop if the players get their shortened schedule and they won't just load manage their way down to playing 50-something games out of the new 72 game slate.) 

 

11 hours ago, Indigo said:

This is what Van Gundy had to say:

You twisted his words and ended up with this:

"Practiced more than they do now" does not equal "no practices at all". 

 

Hey, now we're on to things that I never said! Is this the part where we kill an entire page lecturing each other about what the other person ackshually said?

 

11 hours ago, Indigo said:

 

And about that common sense bit: what?

Using your common sense, MLB, NHL, and NFL players risk thier lives, while NBA players complain about light contact. Is that common sense?

 

Players from other leagues play under more demanding conditions than NBA players do, that is common sense. 

[Discrim]

On 1/21/2023 at 9:45 AM, BBTV said:

Glenn Rivers actually publicly calls some games "scheduled losses".  I can't believe a coach would actually say such a thing, especially with all the gambling implications.  But yeah - the Sixers actually circle "scheduled losses" on their internal team calendar.

I take it, since "Doc" would imply top tier intelligence, that you feel he's not worthy of the moniker.  But yeah, saying something about the occasional loss being the nature of the game is fine.  Outright saying you made no attempt to set your team up for success is dumb.

[The_Admiral]

On 1/21/2023 at 9:45 AM, BBTV said:

Glenn Rivers actually publicly calls some games "scheduled losses".  I can't believe a coach would actually say such a thing, especially with all the gambling implications.  But yeah - the Sixers actually circle "scheduled losses" on their internal team calendar.

 

[Indigo]

13 hours ago, who do you think said:

 

Nah. Call me when the NBA a) plays 6 games per week on average or b) allows its players to routinely tackle each other at midcourt with a running start or throw each other into the stanchions and scorer's table.

It's unfeasable (and almost physically impossible) forNBA player to play 6 times a week. Baseball doesn't involve that much direct physical contact (along with constant running and jumping) that baskeball does, which allows them to play more games. The load management problem you see now would be 10x worse if NBA players played an MLB schedule, not to mention all the health concerns.

13 hours ago, who do you think said:

It's irrelevant because it's not happening because revenue trumps all, so brainstorming the possible benefits of a shortened schedule is a useless endeavor. 

Sure, it's useless, but so is making up concepts about purple Bulls uniforms. They aren't going to happen, but it's fun to at least imagine or speculate.

13 hours ago, who do you think said:

Hey, now we're on to things that I never said! Is this the part where we kill an entire page lecturing each other about what the other person ackshually said?

I'd prefer to not do that, so let's leave this part here.

13 hours ago, who do you think said:

Players from other leagues play under more demanding conditions than NBA players do, that is common sense. 

Players from other leagues also play different sports which have diifferent physical effect on the human body. If you want to compare today's NBA players to the 1990's NBA players, sure. but it's nonsense to hold players of one sport to a standard of a different sport. They didn't sign up to play 180+ games. They signed up to play 82, and now they're realizing that it's beneficical for both them and the common fan to play 72.

 

Players don't just load manage becuase it's fun. It's called "load managment" because they are literally managing the load of a long season. Shorten the season, and there will be less of a load, which means--gasp--less load managment. Now there will still be outlires like Kawhi who just won't play, but majority of NBA players would load mannage less on a shorter schedule.

[Digby]

Comparing these things on a sport-to-sport basis is probably a fruitless endeavor. Hockey and soccer are almost certainly more demanding, I suppose football is but more for its barbaric aspects. Baseball is probably more a mentally taxing sport with the precision of the action and the grind of daily games, but the physical demands? I cover more ground walking from the subway to Fenway than the players do in the course of action.

 

As far as load management goes and these pampered kids these days, but let's not forget the Moneyball type FOs of the NBA see advantage to drafting guys who'll be out a year so they can prolong the tank anyway. There's more incentive for teams to shut players down at the slightest hint of anything to protect their investments and look to tank. (This can work in the player's favor, as we saw last year with Old Al Horford turning the clock back three years after OKC gave him a half-year off for no reason.) 

 

52 minutes ago, Indigo said:

If you want to compare today's NBA players to the 1990's NBA players, sure.

 

I don't even know if you can do that; the game back then was more "physical" in terms of pure contact but today's game covers more ground at a faster pace. Bruises and impact injuries vs. fatigue injuries are different beasts besides. The turn of the millennium is probably when MPG peaked but at a historically slow pace of the game compared to earlier and later times.

 

I don't even know that swinging the officiating dial back to incentivize defense and physical contact would change much; the return of the hand check would be nice, but you simply have way more role players who can shoot than you used to, and that plus the general tactical trendiness of taking 3's has been a far more fundamental shift in how the game's played.

[The_Admiral]

How does Tyler Herro get away with these Bose commercials where he's like "mah stahl is urrting tuh me"? Isn't he from Waukesha?

[who do you think]

10 hours ago, Indigo said:

Players from other leagues also play different sports which have diifferent physical effect on the human body. If you want to compare today's NBA players to the 1990's NBA players, sure. but it's nonsense to hold players of one sport to a standard of a different sport. They didn't sign up to play 180+ games. They signed up to play 82, and now they're realizing that it's beneficical for both them and the common fan to play 72.

 

Players don't just load manage becuase it's fun. It's called "load managment" because they are literally managing the load of a long season. Shorten the season, and there will be less of a load, which means--gasp--less load managment. Now there will still be outlires like Kawhi who just won't play, but majority of NBA players would load mannage less on a shorter schedule.

 

80+ games has been the standard since 1960 and wasn't a problem for anybody until very recently. And no, the common fan doesn't benefit from a shortened schedule, since less supply of home games = higher ticket prices.

 

9 hours ago, Digby said:

As far as load management goes and these pampered kids these days, but let's not forget the Moneyball type FOs of the NBA see advantage to drafting guys who'll be out a year so they can prolong the tank anyway. There's more incentive for teams to shut players down at the slightest hint of anything to protect their investments and look to tank. (This can work in the player's favor, as we saw last year with Old Al Horford turning the clock back three years after OKC gave him a half-year off for no reason.) 

 

Not one single solitary person in the Oklahoma City area bought a ticket so they could watch Al Horford.

 

9 hours ago, Digby said:

I don't even know that swinging the officiating dial back to incentivize defense and physical contact would change much; the return of the hand check would be nice, but you simply have way more role players who can shoot than you used to, and that plus the general tactical trendiness of taking 3's has been a far more fundamental shift in how the game's played.

 

Why do you think players have the room to get off all those threes in the first place?

[The_Admiral]

It's true about Kerr's advocacy of dropping ten games being pretty low-stakes. Players aren't taking a 12% pay cut, owners aren't taking a 12% cut in gameday revenues or TV contracts, it's just big-brain "what if better because less thing." 

 

"Do you want to go to a T-Wolves game?"
"no"

"there are five fewer home dates this year so that players feel less sad"
"oh, then yes"

 

a conversation never to be had.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Tonight in the Lakers/Celtics game, there was a clear no-call on LeBron as he drove to the basket as time expired, sending the game to OT.

 

LeBron was clearly hacked by Jayston Tatum, and nothing from the refs. LA went on to lose in OT, though they should have had a chance to win at the the line.

 

If you've watched much of the Lakers, this isn't the first time this happened to them this year, though this might be the most egregious.

 

It's really hard to watch the game when the refereeing is all over the place. And seemingly grossly unfair.

[DoctorWhom]

If there's any team that has 0 room to complain about the Refs, it's the Lakers.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

24 minutes ago, DoctorWhom said:

If there's any team that has 0 room to complain about the Refs, it's the Lakers.

 

You're not watching their games, so you don't know.

[DoctorWhom]

Just now, DG_ThenNowForever said:

 

You're not watching their games, so you don't know.

[oldschoolvikings]

9 hours ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

 

You're not watching their games, so you don't know.

 

I almost never watch an NBA regular season game, so I also do not know, but weirdly I happened to stumble across the last few minutes of this game, so I saw that no call.  And yeah, it certainly could’ve been called, he got hit, but I think you probably see half a dozen similar no calls during the average game. 
 

What stuck me as truly amazing was Lebron’s spectacularly over the top tantrum, which was still going on minutes later as the game went to commercial. My goodness, if you didn’t see it, it was truly amazing. The faces he made were Ed Wood worthy, and there was a fair amount of floor rolling.  As the director cut to fade, he was on all fours with his forehead pressed to the foul line, I’m not making this up. This could not possibly have been standard procedure for him, right? 
 

If there were any justice in the world, he should receive zero calls for the next few games, just for having exhausted his grievance reservoir. 

[The_Admiral]

30 minutes ago, oldschoolvikings said:

As the director cut to fade, he was on all fours with his forehead pressed to the foul line, I’m not making this up.

Face down, ass up, that's the way we like to complain about questionable NBA officiating