NBA on NYE: the badness of bad teams and the TANK would seem like as much of a problem as load management shenanigans. On NYE there are FIVE teams that still haven't reached double digits in wins: CHA 7-25 TOR 7-26 UTAH 7-24 WIZ 5-25 Pels 5-28 TOR put up 71 points total against the C-Bags today, and lost by 54. Maybe they need more 3-point shooting? Jeeeez.
I can see it now: TEAM A is down by 2 with 22 seconds to go and TEAM B has the ball. TEAM A is out of fouls. Despite good defense, some guy like Shai/Brunson/Ant makes a 2-point hot: TEAM A is now down 4 with no timeouts left, so they need a 4-pointer. TEAM B knows the one guy on TEAM A who can possibly make that shot from beyond halfcourt. They put a guy on him, and as he works the ball up to around the 55 foot "line", another comes over to help, but the heaver/marksman jumps to the side and puts it up with 2 secs left, appears to get knocked-down, IT BANKS IN! And-one! He makes the FT for a 5-point play and TEAM B loses by 1. Gawd that would be a drag. STATS: NBA: 2034: 4 FGA/4FGM: Going into the last week of the season, 47 year old Steph Curry still leads the NBA in 4-pointers made, 4-pointers attempted and he's 3rd in 4FG%, at 17%. This last week will be a dogfight to see who wins this season's Heaver's Trophy. I'm still adjusting to the Euro-step.
Re: the 3-ball and lousy games. Clips go into Wemby-town and shoot 11 for 41 from 3. The Spurs shoot it even worse: 9 for 40. Two teams combine for 20 for 81 from deep. You'd think it was a close game. It wasn't: Spurs shot 49% overall; Clips 34%. Spurs win by 36. Spurs out-rebounded Clips 58-41, the tale for this game. Not exactly a game you want to have spent half a week's paycheck to see. This is the kind of game Silver was talking about. Pug-fugly-azzed ball. But hey, you got to see Wemby: 10 for 18: 27/9/5 with a measly 3 blocks.
I'm not a conventionally religious person, but all my best vibes and well-wishing to Jaden Ivey, who may have suffered a career-ending lower leg injury in the 4th Q of DET's win over ORL today. I am too squeamish to watch it; I learned my lesson with Joe Theismann. I read about Jaden's freak thing: Cole Anthony fell into him...it sounds really bad. Ivey was really putting it together this season. I hope he can come back. This kind of thing is such a friggin' drag, man.
Broken fibula, he already had surgery on it. The video reminded me of Odom and Kobe falling into Bynum's knees. Rough. The Shaun Livingston, Paul George and Gordon Hayward injuries are the worst I've seen.
Man I forgot about the Livingston one. I saw that as it happened, then felt so bad for him I wrote him a handwritten letter telling him I was one of his fans, that he can come back, that his skillz are major, he still has a lot of game left, etc. By the time Hayward had his thing I had promised myself to look away and not see this stuff; a friend who has a degree in Neuroscience told me that I may be one of the relatively small number of people whose mirror neurons are over-active. Like I can't watch "j******" where those dipshitz jump off a building onto a trampoline, which makes them ricochet through a window, but the guy's head hits the frame: most people laff at that but I sympathetically "feel" the pain too much. Just someone trying to learn to ice skate whose legs slide out from under them and they fall on the tailbone: it's very unpleasant for me. I can't imagine the level of pain from a broken fibula. At some point he must have gone into shock.
This dude is never happy, I wouldn’t trade for his old, NOW overpaid a** if I were any team anywhere near contention already
He's always been a malcontent, and now that he's past his prime who will want to deal with that emo prima Donna? Get my joy back lol at how many millions he's being paid smh, when you got people out of work for months and folks that can't afford rent foh with all that
if i'm a bad team in the east that just wants to be relevant for a year for once, i consider moving assets i don't care that much about for him. but that salary makes it tough. for example, i can only think of three teams that should consider this move: washington, charlotte, and maybe chicago. charlotte would have to include bridges, and i'm not sure that they'd do it. wiz can chuck their kuz/brogdon package at it, and miami would definitely bite, imo. bulls would have to move lavine, and it seems like they value him more now, so maybe they'd be out, too. people keep saying gs, but are you moving wiggins for butler right now? and you'd have to add a couple more guys, maybe three. miami ends up improving there, too. it's going to be hard to move him. butler finishing his career in washington would definitely make sense, lol.
Butler setting the house on fire on his way out as usual. I wouldn’t trade anything important for him.
Receives seven-game suspension January 3, 2025 Butler has received a seven-game suspension for multiple instances of conduct detrimental to the team. LMAO And he will get 52 millions next season
Ant drops 53 on DET and MIN still loses, and are now 17-17 and in 10th in the West. Ant had over 50% of Minnie's total points. He declined to speak to reporters afterwards. Reporters asked Chris Finch if he was thinking about changing his starting lineup and he said, "You guys ask me this question all the time. If I felt that the magic bullet was changing the starting lineup, I would've done that already." (source) And: winning and losing is complex, but it's beginning to seem like a pretty safe answer as to who won the Julius-KAT trade with the Knicks, who are now 24-12. I really didn't think losing KAT would affect MIN that much. As I said: maybe it's a lot of other things too. But with KAT gone and all the other stuff, something's gone wrong for MIN. I still suspect they're better than this and will figure it out and not finished 10th, or even out of the play-in. Ant is signed through 2029, just in time for us to get him after 44 year old Lebron James retires, still averaging 24/8/9.
This short comment from Kenzo has been haunting me. First off: I totally agree. Wemby, then Luka, then Ant: guys I'd love to see in P&G. Here's what kinda bothers me: I grew up in LA as a total rabid basketball nerd-fan. I had a court in my driveway that all the neighborhood kids used, and I was "Jerry West" when I was 11. Until it got dark or other kids' sisters came by to tell 'em mom says come home for dinner. And UCLA had Kareem, Walton, Wicks, Wooden, won 88 straight games at one point. Lakers went 69-13 when I was 11. 33 straight. Their first title in LA. And I wished we'd get Kareem. And we did. Because you want to come to LA. You'd like to show them something somehow as good or better than Wilt. We get Magic: that whole lucky story. I wanted him on the Lakers when Michigan St beat Bird and Indiana St in the NCAA Finals. Magic at 21 turns pro after his sophomore year: we get him. Lotsa championships. I saw Shaq in the McDonald's All-American high school thing or whatever that was: it was ridiculous: d*** Vitale watched Shaq get the rebound, then dribble the length of the court and slam, and Vitale sounded like he splooged in his pants. This Shaquille guy should eventually play for the Lakers. He does. We get him. Lotsa championships. Sorry to the city of Orlando. Jerry West sees Kobe try out and maneuvers Vlade Divac outta here to draft a kid right outta Lower Merion HS. Rings! One of the most physically gifted and talented players ever born comes here from Cleveland-Miami, we win a ring. I feel entitled. I'm spoiled as a fan. Have there been very lean years? Of course. You gotta wait it out, enjoy the game, deepen your understanding of the nuances, say to yourself this is how most fans of other teams feel all the time, etc. But the Lakers Always Return to championship status. All those rings the Bags won were mostly from the 1960s. The question is, as an adult: at what point are you kinda spoiled rotten? And is that just luck on our part? 'Cuz I'm an olde dude and I've followed this stuff for a long time: one of those 3 guys (Wemby/Luka/Ant) will somehow end up with the Lakers. 'Cuz guys like that always have ended up here. But I just feel lucky as a fan over a long life. No doubt if I grew up and lived in DC I'd be a lifelong Bullets/Wiz fan. And living off that Wes Unseld year. If I grew up in Atlanta, lots of good teams and exciting players. Only championship: 1958. Yikes! Sacramento? Don't make me laff. My parents happened to have grown up in Pasadena, where I was born. I didn't have anything to do with being a Laker fan. It was just luck: they were on TV, and I was supposed to be a fan, so I was. What? You root for the Knicks while growing up in the dead-eye 'burbs of LA as a 10 year old? I knew no one from New York at age 10. Get real. I am, as the Irish man says, fookin' spoiled. Seriously: it's all gravy from here on out for this fan. But I like gravy.
