this is a basketball thread

Someone should throw a chair at his casket during the wake!

When I was in elementary school, my best friend was obsessed with the dude.

In middle school he turned on me and froze me out of the cool kids clique and maybe I deserved it but damn that shit sucked. So fuck him! Would have been so much better off if I'd never met him in the first place. Of course he'd love this idiot.

I bet kmac knew him but man, kmac never even registered on this version of the board.

What is the in season tournament?

I worry that it's a gimmick but I'm still interested in it, maybe they'll prove me wrong.

The NBA's obsession with Las Vegas as some holy destination or idea that's Bigger Than All Of Us is really grating on me. I hate the existence of the city to an unhealthy degree and I should probably examine that instead of stewing in it. But the idea that they're owed a team of their own is so gross to me.

If I wasn't working on Friday, maybe I'd try to go to the Bulls game. The special court for the game looks pretty sweet and I'm easily impressed by that kind of thing.

https://wgntv.com/sports/bulls/see-the-bulls-redesigned-united-center-court-for-the-nba-in-season-tournament/

Nick wrote:What is the in season tournament?

There needs to be a real incentive for this to matter

I was about to post about a League track that sampled Bobby Knight talking about Pizza Hut but then realized it doesn't exist? I think I'm getting my pop culture references confused and that the League used Knight for album art at one point... pretty sure I was thinking about an Action Bronson song.

But what Action Bronson song was it?

It wasn't Pizza Hut, it was Applebees:

If you watch this at 0.25 speed, you can tell that Demar sees Zach as he's in mid-leap but sees that Lillard is probably going to close out on him (and he might already be envisioning how Zach will pump fake and then drive into a really clogged lane with BROOK LOPEZ standing right under the basket), so he uses the next 0.1 seconds to whip his head around and then see the Coby is open and just a little more sealed-off by Vuc and that Giannis is flat-footed and just watching the ball and then he just does something I've never seen before.

This season is so depressing but at least this was fun.

Wait, what is an “In Season Tournament?”
Do we like this or think it is dumb?

Between this and all the weird pitch clock stuff, sports seem to have radically changed since I last paid attention and tbh I’m sorta not ok with that.

I wish they could trade Zach now. As a fan who sorta came back in around the end of the Jimmy butler era, this product is shit. I watched patiently through the Lauri era. When Zach was hurt and it was just Lauri, we sucked, but it felt like there was something there. Zach comes off injury and we had another bad season. Now, Zach was coming back from an ACL injury, so, you know, rust and confidence. Then we had a decent young core, had a good half a season, got rid of Lauri and picked up Vucevic, mid season. I questioned this move because Vooch is old and not Jokic. But hey, moves made, watch the end of season, I think we got bounced in the first round, if we did anything. All of a sudden, Lonzo, Demar, and Caruso come in, and for the first half of the season, the 90s Bullls magic is back. Finally, after watching through a shitty rebuild, something seems to be working. Then Lonzo is hurt mid season. Although we had the best record in the east before he was hurt, after the injury, we finish terribly and get bounced in the first round. Last season was a cruel joke, the revelation that Lonzo was our glue, and now we were a house with old bones… it just feels bad. We again, get bounced in the first round of playoffs with a sub .500 record for season. As of this post we are 5-14. We still have all stars, derozen, vooch, and Lavine, but this is our record. As stated from the jump, shit product and I feel like I’ve wasted my time waiting for this team to get better. I’m out for now until things improve. I don’t even wanna see the improvement, I’m not coming back until it’s a winning season. Fuck this ownership.

Spoiler:

this year has been tremendously demoralizing

Are the Dallas Mavericks moving to Las Vegas?????

I really don't want Las Vegas to get a team.

But if they DO (as an expansion team), along with Seattle, then someone from the Western Conference has to get transferred to the East and for years I've been hoping that would be Minnesota because it just makes sense for them to be playing multiple games a year against Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit and other teams in the same geographic region, it would cut down on their traveling so much.

If my logic is taken seriously then the league might use it to promote Memphis to the East.

Dallas just moving to Vegas would complicate this. But a team in Vegas would be expected to compete for a title right away, no more mandatory mediocrity before making a deep playoff run, they'd have to get the Golden Knights instant winners honors, nothing less will do for the greatest city and greatest fans on earth.

Man, fuck las vegas

Ned Braden wrote:Wait, what is an “In Season Tournament?”
Do we like this or think it is dumb?

Between this and all the weird pitch clock stuff, sports seem to have radically changed since I last paid attention and tbh I’m sorta not ok with that.

At this point in the tournament, I actually have no idea how it's supposed to work.

Because the games in the Group Play round also doubled as normal, Regular Season games. So you didn't have to adjust much of anything at all for them.

But now that we're in single-elimination, tournament bracket knockout games, don't these amount to being extra games that don't count during the regular season?

How are they being squeezed in between regular season games?

For the two teams that eventually play for the "championship," is it really worth it for having to play an extra 3 games during the season?

Just makes me think of Baseketball.

Dan Patrick: With the first nine months of the Baseketball postseason out of the way, the playoff picture is now starting to emerge.

Kenny Mayne: So, with last night's victory over Boston, next week the Milwaukee Beers must beat Indianapolis in order to advance to Charlotte. That's in an effort to reduce their magic number to three.

Dan Patrick: Right, and then the Beers can advance to the National Eastern Division North to play Tampa.

Kenny Mayne: So, if the Beers beat Detroit and Denver beats Atlanta in the American Southwestern Division East Northern, then Milwaukee goes to the Denslow Cup, unless Baltimore can upset Buffalo and Charlotte ties Toronto, then Oakland would play LA and Pittsburgh in a blind choice round robin. And if no clear winner emerges from all of this, a two-man sack race will be held on consecutive Sundays until a champion is crowned.

I don't have cable so I just don't get to watch Bulls games at all.

Except for tonight where it was on national television for no apparent reason, which I found out when the game was in the 4th quarter. The arrow shows when I turned it on.



Nonexistent rebounding, sloppy ballhandling, bad calls, Brunson just torching them at will, I didn't have fun.

To be fair, it was a back to back for them so they prob got tired out. The game was very close until the 3rd quarter, seemed like they just ran outta gas. I haven’t stopped watching like I said I would, but I’m not fully engaged like I used to be either. However, I must say, since that post I made at the top of the page, they’ve played way harder defensively. Their current issue seems to be no shooters. DeRozen isn’t producing as much so they’re really missing Zach’s points. With that said though, I think the ball movement and style of play is better without Zach. He plays too slow. He’s got a nice burst but most of the time when he brings the ball up court he uses almost the full 8 seconds. Fine as a time wasting tactic, but some of the players we have that thrive on speed, White, Dosunmu, etc. seem to kinda stick in place when Zach controls the offense. Without Zach everyone is moving, reminds me of what golden state looks like at times, just without the scoring!

I don’t know what they need to do. Because Zach is hurt nobody is interested in him, so the best we can hope for is he comes back from injury and doesn’t break the momentum they have currently. I know they’ve lost the last few but they are trending up. Hopefully teams will see something from him they can use and the interest picks back up. If we can’t move on from him by the trade deadline I don’t think the rest of this season will be good. I used to think that nobody got along with Zach and that the chemistry was the issue but now I think it’s his style of play. It doesn’t fit with what Billy D wants and what that’s younger players are good at.

I was at the Wednesday game against Houston. Zach flirted with a triple-double and had a decent shooting game, 8 for 15, as efficient as you can ask for really.

Sengun was scoreless in the entire first half and still ended up with 25. He was getting everything he wanted and more in the 4th quarter and Vuc seemed powerless to stop him (while still ending up with a game leading +/- of 16, whatever that's worth to you). There were lots of chants from the crowd to put Drummond in but I don't know how you do that at that point in the game without it being a really disrespectful slap in the face, besides Drummond had zero boards in twelve and a half minutes and despite his two crafty steals wasn't really a force to be reckoned with this time out. Bench didn't add much and they were lucky to escape with an overtime win (I mean, despite earning it in OT, which they did).

Would have loved to see them beat the Warriors, that would have been such a crucial win on the eve of a traveling b2b, which I'm now a little concerned about tbh, even though I'm sure San Antonio would love to get a top 3 pick to pair with Wemby going into next season.

I'm calling him Wemby because I'll butcher his last name if I don't. I still don't know for sure if I can properly spell Antentokumpo off the top of my head without looking it up.

Do the Suns always use a horribly digitized sample of the ‘DEFENSE’ chant? I can’t find an example online, but you can actually hear the ‘digital effervescence’ that surrounds a bad low-bit sample. You know what I’m talking about, imagine the worst mp3 you’ve downloaded.

Getting fired after a 30-13 record, smh

I remember buying this issue when it was on newsstands and, like many random, individual magazines I purchased back then, lots of it still exists in bits and pieces in my mind and I'm very eager to revisit it.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/175970556572?hash=item28f8a99a9c:g:jfEAAOSwGDllLyCa

$69 is the cheapest that anyone is selling it for. I had higher hopes because there's lots of old issues of Spin on ebay from the same time period for $10 or $12 each.

I don't remember if it was the issue with Shawn Kemp on the cover or one of the other few that I bought from the same time period, but someone wrote a letter to the editor saying that this player was about to come into the league and tear Michael Jordan to pieces.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trajan_Langdon

And all I could do at the time was take their word for it because what did I know? So I kept a vigilant eye out for Trajan Langdon, arguably one of the top 10 players from Alaska of all time, to make a big splash in the league. He eventually played scraps of three seasons in Cleveland before leaving for Europe.

Why are the Lakers so mid?

I don't like using that word but what could possibly be a more fitting one for them this year?