2012-13 NBA Season Thread

[The Six]

It's going to be a while before I get tired of hearing "the Lakers pooped their big boy pants."

[zpqmaowl]

Kobe Bryant has scored his 30,000th point.

[pmoehrin]

Kobe Bryant has scored his 30,000th point.

Probably should be a bigger deal then it will be. You look at the guys he's joining Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan and Karl Malone. I would stick all four of them in the top ten for greatest players of all-time. It's quite a list. Unfortunately baseball is really the only sport where numbers like that actually mean something, but it is a great accomplishment.

I don't know if Kobe is going to play long enough to catch Kareem or if he even wants to. Assuming he can still average close to 2,000 points a season for the rest career, he'll be almost 40 by the time he gets close to Kareem. I do think he wants to play long enough to have more points then Michael and seeing that he's only about 2,300 points back he should be able to pass him barring injury.

[zpqmaowl]

[dbadefense1990]

Where are the Mayans right now?

They're trying to wipe away the NHL from human civilization.

[pmoehrin]

The NBA will see the NFL's proposed ban of kickoffs and will call/raise them a proposed ban on hacking at the end of quarters/halves.

http://sports.yahoo....58614--nba.html

[NJTank]

Ugh Hack a Howard is smart basketball what the hell is wrong with Stern. What will make this stop is people making their foul shots

[Eye]

How the hell is Dwight Howard shooting 47% from the free throw line? I can't believe a pro is that bad at shooting free throws.

[NEW.ERA]

I swear the Raptors haven't won on the road in the Western Conference in 10 years. Every time I look, they're getting the Basketball driven down their throat.

[pmoehrin]

How the hell is Dwight Howard shooting 47% from the free throw line? I can't believe a pro is that bad at shooting free throws.

Well if you never work at it (which I will guarantee you is the number one reason for why he's so bad, because even somebody off the streets should be able to shoot at least 60% on NBA rims after a few months if they put in an hour or two a week) then yeah I could buy it.

Teams generally do not practice free throws because its something players are expected to work on their own. You don't need to be in a full team situation to practice free throws, so why should a head coach devote valuable practice time to it?

I don't understand why the NBA needs to make excuses for players being lazy when it comes to this. Work on your damn free throws. In part that's what your getting paid for.

[ninersdd]

Hadn't teams done this before with Shaq? Ironic, in the 2008 playoffs, guess what coach used this to perfection on the Diesel?

[TFoA]

Ugh Hack a Howard is smart basketball what the hell is wrong with Stern. What will make this stop is people making their foul shots

Bingo. Hack-a-Player may be ugly, but it's smart and it's been proven to work on certain players. If you can't make the free throws, don't get mad when people force you to shoot them.

[The Six]

11th place in the West, eight games out of first place, 2-6 on the road, having played five more home games than road games to date.

.

[Rockstar Matt]

That post is great. Made me laugh.

Seriously, Steve Nash can't get back soon enough. I know he won't fix the defense, but he should be able to help the offense. If the Lakers still stink with Nash at the helm, then the Lakers made a mistake by not hiring Phil.

[zpqmaowl]

That post is great. Made me laugh.

Seriously, Steve Nash can't get back soon enough. I know he won't fix the defense, but he should be able to help the offense. If the Lakers still stink with Nash at the helm, then the Lakers made a mistake by not hiring Phil.

Steve Nash is an injured 38 year old. He's not going to come back in his prime.

[Lights Out]

That post is great. Made me laugh.

Seriously, Steve Nash can't get back soon enough. I know he won't fix the defense, but he should be able to help the offense. If the Lakers still stink with Nash at the helm, then the Lakers made a mistake by not hiring Phil.

Offense isn't the Lakers' problem... it's chemistry (that's mostly on Kobe and Dwight) and defense, which is pretty much unfixable with this roster and coaching staff.

[NJTank]

I think we are learning something very early in this season and its Dwight Howard is extremely overrated. He is only considered great and an All-Star because we are in an era derth of players that can play in the middle. Put him 20 years ago against, Ewing, Shaq, Hakeem, and David Robinson and he would be a nobody.

[dbadefense1990]

That post is great. Made me laugh.

Seriously, Steve Nash can't get back soon enough. I know he won't fix the defense, but he should be able to help the offense. If the Lakers still stink with Nash at the helm, then the Lakers made a mistake by not hiring Phil.

Offense isn't the Lakers' problem... it's chemistry (that's mostly on Kobe and Dwight) and defense, which is pretty much unfixable with this roster and coaching staff.

D'Antoni thinks this team can run like his fun & gun Suns teams. But every time the Lakers must play full court defense, they get out hustled big time. Look at the many open fast break baskets Utah did on Sunday. The bench sucks scrubbing pads, and the team's offense is mainly 3-pointers; can't shoot for crap inside the key.

Maybe it changes today in Cleveland. Maybe...

[dbadefense1990]

I think we are learning something very early in this season and its Dwight Howard is extremely overrated. He is only considered great and an All-Star because we are in an era derth of players that can play in the middle. Put him 20 years ago against, Ewing, Shaq, Hakeem, and David Robinson and he would be a nobody.

There are no true centers anymore. They're being trained now to the same regiments as power forwards, like Gasol. Howard is probably the last player who you can dish in the paint with 3 men open for a jump shot, but that philosophy doomed the Magic. Why do you think the NBA eliminated the center position from the all-star ballots?

And yes, highly agreed. If Howard played in the 1990s, Ewing, Olajuwon, Robinson and young Shaq would do a 1-2 on Howard.

[pmoehrin]

To me the main reason the center position is all but dead is because guys just don't want to play it.

Your just not going to get as many scoring opportunities just hanging out in the paint and by in large that's what centers do. Your also going to expend the most amount of energy out of anybody on the court on the defensive end, which means your either going to be a decoy or just out of alot of offensive plays.

If your grading your ability purely on your individual statistics as alot of players do, center is not a very appealing position to play. And I think we've seen alot of guys in recent years that could have made for great centers, Garnett, Dirk, Shawn Kemp, Amare, Pau Gasol really shy away from playing the position. And all of them have gone on to have solid if not great careers. But I do wonder what they could have been had they played the 5 instead of the 4 for the majority of their careers.

As for Howard, yeah he is a big fish in a small pond when it comes to NBA centers today, but he is still a big fish. Defensively he's as good as anybody I've ever seen. You don't finish top five in blocked shots and rebounds in virtually single year of your career and not be a great defensive player. Offensively he could be better, but people talk about him like he's totally inept on that end of the floor and I don't really understand why. He's not Wilt Chamberlain in his prime on that end of the floor, but he's not Ben Wallace either. He's hovered right around that 20 PPG mark for virtually every year of his career with a field goal percentage right around 60%. So you do have to at least respect him on that end of the floor or he will hurt you.

If people don't like him, that's fine. But he's had a run over the past few years that's right there with any Hall of Fame center that's ever played the game, and if Dwight Howard were to retire today, I would say he belongs in the Hall as well.