On October 05 2023 22:20 JimmyJRaynor wrote: the Rockets spent the money intended for James Harden on undrafted, G-Leaguer Fred VanVleet.
NBA champ Fred VanVleet. And now the Rockets are above .500. Man I wish they could win a road game.
But who cares about that. Josh Giddy from down under!
Heyo![2] I was positive that the Giddy case would be enough to resurrect this thread
Not talking about Josh Giddey has been quite a topic. THing is , for ESPN , the bodies are piling up. In the last little while ESPN railroaded 4 innocent men. They have to be careful because each of these 4 have the resources to start their own class action lawsuit. Furthermore, the Players Unions of the various leagues are taking aim.
PAs offer the equivalent of a half credit college course on avoiding false accusations.
That fucking moron, Malika Qerim, or whatever her name is ... said this about the drafted player in the murder investigation ... "he is a co operating witness". What an idiot. Is she trying to get him killed?
Almost all the women covering men's sports on ESPN are on the clock. Other than Chiney Ogwumike , as soon as they are not-hot no one wants to hear a thing they have to say.
Welp that's about all she wrote for the Lakers this season. Not surprised how it turned out honestly. I don't see anyone beating this Nuggets team in a 7 game series especially anyone from the weak Eastern conference. If Murray and Jokic stay healthy I don't see anyone stopping them from repeating.
On April 27 2024 11:29 Jerubaal wrote: Considering the Lakers are getting blasted in the third quarter, seems like a coaching issue.
It's not JUST a coaching issue. AD has stamina issues and Lebron is nearly 40. When those two slow down the entire team collapses because our role players are getting massacred by Denver's.
All through the regular season Lebron likes to coast until late in games, or he doesnt play defense and focuses on scoring. In these playoffs against Denver he needs to be active on both sides of the ball for the Lakers to win and AD needs to be active on both sides as well. They don't have the stamina to keep that up for 4 quarters.
It's crazy. I read some stat that the Lakers have held the lead for something like 140 minutes and the Nuggets only 40. Yet the Nuggets have a 3-1 lead. The fast pace of the current NBA is not kind to old farts. Warriors, Suns, Clippers, Bucks have all had their share of late game struggles.
On April 27 2024 11:29 Jerubaal wrote: Considering the Lakers are getting blasted in the third quarter, seems like a coaching issue.
Lebron, aside from the bubble, has been a good stats bad team guy for years now. In the bubble, he magically gained athleticism for "unknown" reasons. But otherwise since the move to LA he's been mostly unable to contribute defensively, and puts up empty stats on the offensive end that don't cause concern from real contenders.
That aint coaching, so much it is the 3Q is when historically elite teams have leveraged their elite players into building leads. It makes sense. The streaky player has lost his streak, the elite players are fresh. Thus, those with the elite athletes will build a lead.
I think if LBJ accepted a 28 minute per game role he'd be at the same level he was in 2016 during those 28 minutes. He is able to do everything he did at the apex of his career. However, he is losing his cardio and can't do it for as many minutes in a game.
Middle distance runners peak from 25 to 27. They have the similar cardio requirements as playing in an NBA game.
If LBJ accepted a 28 minute per game role he'd be a benefit to every team in the NBA. Obviously, he'll never do that.
He tries to "pace himself" in a way he never did earlier in his career and that kills his effectiveness. I do not think he realizes he is doing this. No one around LBJ can stand up to him and give him the bad news. Most older players accept a reduced role and acknowledge their age related loss of cardio translates into less minutes and more limited playing time.
It is getting harder and harder to paper over LBJ's declining cardio.
On April 27 2024 11:29 Jerubaal wrote: Considering the Lakers are getting blasted in the third quarter, seems like a coaching issue.
Lebron, aside from the bubble, has been a good stats bad team guy for years now. In the bubble, he magically gained athleticism for "unknown" reasons. But otherwise since the move to LA he's been mostly unable to contribute defensively, and puts up empty stats on the offensive end that don't cause concern from real contenders.
That aint coaching, so much it is the 3Q is when historically elite teams have leveraged their elite players into building leads. It makes sense. The streaky player has lost his streak, the elite players are fresh. Thus, those with the elite athletes will build a lead.
Lebron and AD benefitted perhaps more than anybody for having sufficient time off from the regular season so they could fully exert themselves in the playoffs. It helped that in hindsight the playoff bracket that year was pretty light considering Portland was an easy first round, Houston was a bad roster with playoff choke artists leading it and Denver had just come off of a 3-1 comeback against the Clippers.
Miami was a good match up for us too, would have been a lot more difficult to have faced Giannis.
You need luck oftentimes to win a title and in 2020, the Lakers had a lot of fortunate things break their way. Was still the best team the Lakers have had in the Lebron era, but they got the extra push from circumstances to seal the deal.
Seems a theme with the post-pandemic NBA. The last great championship team was the 2018 Warriors. Everybody afterwards had a bit of help.
If Boston wins this year, the rest of the east imploding would have helped them greatly. 2023, Denver only had to face a lower-seeded Miami in the finals. The west was in transition. 2 and 3 seeds were not good and got upset early. 2022, Warriors faced a bunch of young teams that were not ready yet. West was in transition. The Suns are chokers. 2021, Bucks barely got past a Nets team having to deal with the Kyrie circus. 76ers lost to Hawks LMAO. Yet again, the Suns are chokers.
Can't give Denver much grief for facing a lower seeded Miami team. It's tradition in the NBA for the Western Conference finals to be the REAL finals.
It's not very often the East is actually a real threat, more often than not you get paper tigers coming out of the east riding on an inflated win total because they got to farm twice as many wins off of the bottom dwellers of the pitiful east while the Western Conference playoff teams slug it out with each other for playoff positioning.
Same thing is gonna happen this year, regardless of who makes the finals, but it will be extra hilarious if Boston doesn't come out of the East since they should have the easiest route there that any team has had in a long time.
Boston looks really good this year. We'll see if they pull through. East looked tough early on but both the Bucks and Sixers imploded. Thunder and T-Wolves surprisingly kept it up the entire season. The Gobert-KAT pairing looked disastrous last year but has somehow worked out this year. Maybe the Suns should take notes. Even the Clips and Mavs were better than expected.
My dislike of the Celtics has nothing to do with the overblown, antisemitism hysteria surrounding the city and the state. IMO, its overblown and the media is playing with #s.
Unfortunately, I'd have to say the antisemitism in Toronto is worse than in Boston. With Larry Tanenbaum owning the Toronto Raptors... its a bad scene. It'll be interesting to see if the anti-Israel protests and boycotts begin to impact the Raptors. Even the antisemitism in the suburbs of Toronto is concerning.
EPT
