NBA 2013-14 Season Thread

[DS729]

Yeah, the East really sucks, I haven't gotten any good opportunities to watch any Clips/Warriors Matchups due to time zone constraints. I should be able to now that finals are done.

Hell, the Wizards might get a home playoff series, I was thinking atthe beginning a good goal would be to get to the Playoffs. Now unless the New York teams find a way to turn the tide, a playoff spot looks like a forgone conclusion. Especially when we get Beal back.

[Rockstar Matt]

Kobe got hurt again. Out six weeks with a busted tibia.

That gif is highly irrelevant here, since the Lakers were never a threat to Miami this season, with or without Kobe.

I wouldn't bother. Logic bounces off this guy like light against a mirror.

All Laker fans really know that winning another title with Kobe is a pipe dream. Still sucks to see Kobe hurt again. He was just starting to show sustained flashes of his old self.

[truepg]

Just wondering, with Wiggins being the most hyped prospect since LeBron and sometimes being compared to him, does he have the point guard skills LeBron possesses?

[NJTank]

Brook Lopez out for the season with broken foot. Oh th Humanity

[alxy8s]

So the Nets' one-year window is slammed shut. No cap room until 2016. No draft pick until 2019. What trade assets do they have? Jerry Stackhouse? Paul Pierce?

I feel sorry for Garnett and Pierce. Somehow, the grass ended up greener in Boston. It'd be nice to see Pierce sign with the C's next summer and finish his career there.

And I allllllllmost feel sorry for the Knicks fans that were so sick of ineptitude and mismanagement that they became Nets fans when the team moved to Brooklyn. Oops.

[NJTank]

Nets season in pictures

[RyanMcD29]

/waves "STILL BETTER THAN #KNICKSTAPE" flag while hunched down on desk in defeat

//at least for a little while

[Kramerica Industries]

Every single New York/New Jersey sports team has been an unmitigated failure in their sports this season. The odds are almost impossible.

[Shumway]

I admittedly don't watch the NBA much anymore, but I get the feeling that i should. It looks like the Suns are not only not as terrible as expected, but are also a fun team to watch.

[Lights Out]

Wow, the Clippers just absolutely stole a game they had no business winning.

[ninersdd]

Looked a good game, Minnesota couldn't ice it. A bloody one as well, since Love got Griffin in the forehead.

[alxy8s]

The NBA's Possible Solution for Tanking.

This is very interesting. Instead of draft picks being determined by lottery or record, they are predetermined in perpetuity, with every team selecting in each position once in a 30-year period. It does fix tanking and makes the goal of every franchise to be as good as possible every year, so that's good. I think that should be the primary goal of the NBA.

The biggest reason this will probably never happen is shared in the first comment on the article: "Say the Raptors own the 2020 pick and the Lakers own the 2021 pick. LBJ2.0 is at Duke for the 2019 season. You can bet your ass he's gonna stay 1 more year in school to end up in LA." The league wouldn't mind – biggest markets get the biggest stars – but there are too many small-market teams that would oppose the idea for this reason.

I think this could be fixed if the NBA allowed for teams to draft the rights to a player when he turns 18 (or something that can't be manipulated by the player to select his own team.) It's up to the team, then. In the 2013, would the Cavs have rather had taken the rights to Wiggins, knowing that they'd have to wait 1-4 years for him to enter the league, or take Bennett for the instant contribution?

I can tell I'm going to like Silver's tenure. This idea may not come to fruition, but he seems very willing to field ideas to fix the league.

[The_Admiral]

This might be the dumbest thing I've ever heard. What chutzpah it takes for the NBA to be concerned about bad teams getting good draft picks when the Boston Celtics spent roughly thirty years trading into the top of the draft in exchange for magic beans. They didn't get their comeuppance for this until one of their lottery picks did a mountain of blow and died.

[TJKiddsHead]

not a fan.

what happens when there's a can't miss freshman the year before the Lakers or Knicks or Bulls pick? Do they wait the extra year to declare and be GUARANTEED to play in a major market. how much influence will agents have when they can basically guarantee their guy is going to be playing in miami and not utah?

i also just can't really get behind any scenario where the champion might get to add a top rookie to their team. the way basketball works, if your best player isn't an MVP level player, it's pretty much impossible to win a championship. short of limiting contracts to 2 or 3 years, there's no way to really see bad teams become contenders quickly outside of their ability to get future hall-of-famer in the draft. people complain about the draft being about luck, and this would put the fate of bad teams up to chance even more than it already is.

[DS729]

not a fan.

what happens when there's a can't miss freshman the year before the Lakers or Knicks or Bulls pick? Do they wait the extra year to declare and be GUARANTEED to play in a major market. how much influence will agents have when they can basically guarantee their guy is going to be playing in miami and not utah? i also just can't really get behind any scenario where the champion gets to add a top rookie to their team.

Without paying anything for it. The defending-champ Celtics did get Len Bias in '85. But you know what happened.

Yeah, and that solution wouldn't work. It already takes a hell of a coup to get a star to re-sign to a small market. Now, every small market team would be virtually out of business, no free agents, no draft picks, how the would you build a team?

[Lights Out]

The NBA is once again overthinking something as simple as the freaking draft. How hard is it to just let the worst team have the first pick? "Tanking" teams aren't generally good enough to win very many games no matter what, so I don't see what the issue is.

[Xist2inspire]

The NBA is once again overthinking something as simple as the freaking draft. How hard is it to just let the worst team have the first pick? "Tanking" teams aren't generally good enough to win very many games no matter what, so I don't see what the issue is.

This right here. I really don't understand why they decided to randomize the lottery. Honestly, I think it makes tanking worse. Bad/really bad teams need to lose A LOT to decrease the odds of a middling team strategically dropping a few games towards the end of the season and slithering their way into a #1 pick. Anytime a terrible team can stay terrible not because of poor management or drafting, but because of missing out on top draft talent, something's wrong with the system.

[Lee Noire]

Wow, the Clippers just absolutely stole a game they had no business winning.

Not sure which point deserves more of my praise/disdain:

That they won a game they should've lost or that they had to steal one against a team not as good.

[dbadefense1990]

No matter how you feel about the whole "lottery wheel," it sure seems that Adam Silver is trying to distance himself as far away from his predecessor as much as he can, from the draft to the 2-2-1-1-1 format in the NBA Finals and to scraping the idea of NBA divisions.

Now if only David Stern can take the idea of sleeved jerseys with him as well...

[alxy8s]

The NBA is once again overthinking something as simple as the freaking draft. How hard is it to just let the worst team have the first pick? "Tanking" teams aren't generally good enough to win very many games no matter what, so I don't see what the issue is.

They should try this before they do anything more drastic. It used to be this way, albeit not since 1965.

I never knew this, but in the early NBA, the draft order was worst-to-best. However, there was a "territorial pick," in which a team could give up their first round choice to take a local product. Local could mean college town or hometown. They did it to try to increase local interest in a new league. There are some franchises that could still use that kind of boost, and I wonder if that could work in some way. It could at least give small market teams a better shot at keeping star players.

No matter how you feel about the whole "lottery wheel," it sure seems that Adam Silver is trying to distance himself as far away from his predecessor as much as he can, from the draft to the 2-2-1-1-1 format in the NBA Finals and to scraping the idea of NBA divisions.

This is why I'm so excited for the league's future. There's been no "this is how it's always been" attitude. If Silver somehow fixes tanking and meaningfully addresses the one-and-done rule, I'll be impressed.