It's like the antithesis of the Bucks conundrum in replacing Kevin Porter Jr and Eric Gordon with VanVleet and Dillon Brooks. Added bonus points for Ime>Silas.
2023-2024 General NBA Season Thread
- Thread starter BigSoxFan
- Start date
Listening to the Warriors broadcast makes it sound like the NBA is out to get them, which is odd. Draymond gets more leeway than any other player with the Refs, last night he didn't. Spider probably deserved a Flagrant1 for running back at Dray, what did they call there?
The # of Foul calls has always hurt the Warriors, which I always chalked up to a 5-wide jump shooting team without an offensive alpha down low. BUT maybe there is an anti-Warrior conspiracy going on? Cyrus probably has the smoking gun
Here’s the whole sequence, starting with Dray picking Mitchell clean and Mitchell fouling him:
View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ABNstWrRa6c&pp=ygUfZHJheW1vbmQgZ3JlZW4gZG9ub3ZhbiBtaXRjaGVsbA%3D%3D
On the ensuing shove: again, imagine #23 is anyone but Draymond. You think a hard shoulder-shove like that like to divert Mitchell from getting straight to the rim is ejection-worthy? It’s not a clean play, obviously — that’s why it’s typically called a foul (or at worst a flagrant 1) in a non-Dray scenario.
And as far as Spida: again, non-Dray scenario: is that kind of retaliation usually called a common foul?
I guess I’m also unclear on how far back the refs allowed to go on replay to determine original sin. I not sure I’d ever seen them go back to the previous possession. It was definitely … unusual, in any case.
Just a common foul, which I do think is bad. He deserved something (flagrant or tech) for basically running into Green, regardless of it it was earned or not. And Draymond 100% deserved his ejection.
You know this but he didn't get ejected for the cheap shot. It resulted in an ejection because he already had a T. And if you don't want fights you HAVE to penalize Green for the shove
Just a common foul — with Cleveland’s choice of FT shooter, cos Dray had been ejected.
Yeah, I get that. My suspicion is they cherry-picked “T” cos that was the one call that would get him ejected. Though I’m admittedly hazy on the the line between a flagrant and a T.
OK agree that is a bad call
That one Ref had enough of Dray's antics.
Dray crosses the line nightly. If the NBA wants to call Techs on KP for hanging on the rim a hair longer or eject Giannis for a scowl they better damn well eject Dray for his incessant chirping.
That's absolutely the kind of foul they call a technical for anyone in the league. You can't shove a guy running full speed like that. Daniel Theis does that and he probably gets deported.
Edit: a word
Edit: a word
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I guess I can kinda see what you're talking about, SRN, in that the shove (at ~0:55) doesn't involve a full arm extension, and he's trying to knock Mitchell off his line rather than knock him off the court. Mitchell does sell it a bit, running a little farther than he probably had to in order to stop his momentum. But:
(1) you're talking about the standard for a flagrant-2, which I think it's just shy of (contact "unnecessary and excessive"), but then acting like it's barely a foul or not worth a T. I think in your rush to defend him, you're moving the goalposts a bit here. No, it's not ejection worthy on its own, but it was a missed call on an off-the-ball, non-basketball play that was reckless and dangerous. A flagrant-1 might've been appropriate, and a T was perfectly fine in my eyes.
(2) those are the kind of plays Draymond makes, trying to be under the officials' radar and not get called, which are dangerous plays to some degree and show a contempt for the rules. They're not "basketball plays gone wrong", they're "what can I get away with that will give my team an edge, even if it might hurt somebody" kind of plays. It's the cognizance of what he's doing that is what makes him so uniquely hated. He thinks he's "just playing hard for his team", trying to "make winning plays", when in a basketball game that's the sort of shit that will literally start knock-down-drag-out fights on an outdoor city court. The utter disrespect for your opponent, reckless disregard for safety or normal bounds of contact in the sport - consciously, while trying to get away with it, and then acting like YOU'RE the victim when you get called out.
Like, here's a flagrant 2. The shove on Mitchell was not this blatant and not quite this dangerous. It's not up to these lofty standards Green himself has set, but it has several of the same characteristics.
Here are the criteria NBA refs use when evaluating a flagrant:
1: moderate severity
2: not a legitimate basketball play
3: somewhat of a follow-through, in that clearly a lot of force was used
4: moderate potential for injury (both players running full speed)
5: no injury
6: it led immediately to an altercation, with Mitchell being prepared to take whatever penalty was coming in order to confront him about it, so that's the sort of situation the officials have to be willing to recognize and defuse to maintain control of the game
I think that clears the bar for a flagrant-1 but isn't excessive enough for a flagrant-2. I'm not a ref, your mileage may vary, but let's not sit around here talking about how he's treated so unfairly or somesuch nonsense. There's nobody else who can have compilations like these made about them:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzf2mRf68Jo
This is a guy who rakes faces, throws elbows, kicks groins, headbutts, stomps chests, knees faces, grabs legs to trip, grabs plays who are in the air trying to make a play (very dangerous), steps over or around prone guys to try and taunt or enrage them, and would probably do a whole variety of other similar things if he thought he could get away with it. If you don't understand that, it's because you don't want to understand it, not because the rest of us have collectively decided upon a whipping boy.
(1) you're talking about the standard for a flagrant-2, which I think it's just shy of (contact "unnecessary and excessive"), but then acting like it's barely a foul or not worth a T. I think in your rush to defend him, you're moving the goalposts a bit here. No, it's not ejection worthy on its own, but it was a missed call on an off-the-ball, non-basketball play that was reckless and dangerous. A flagrant-1 might've been appropriate, and a T was perfectly fine in my eyes.
(2) those are the kind of plays Draymond makes, trying to be under the officials' radar and not get called, which are dangerous plays to some degree and show a contempt for the rules. They're not "basketball plays gone wrong", they're "what can I get away with that will give my team an edge, even if it might hurt somebody" kind of plays. It's the cognizance of what he's doing that is what makes him so uniquely hated. He thinks he's "just playing hard for his team", trying to "make winning plays", when in a basketball game that's the sort of shit that will literally start knock-down-drag-out fights on an outdoor city court. The utter disrespect for your opponent, reckless disregard for safety or normal bounds of contact in the sport - consciously, while trying to get away with it, and then acting like YOU'RE the victim when you get called out.
Like, here's a flagrant 2. The shove on Mitchell was not this blatant and not quite this dangerous. It's not up to these lofty standards Green himself has set, but it has several of the same characteristics.
Here are the criteria NBA refs use when evaluating a flagrant:
So, looking at the Mitchell play here:
1: moderate severity
2: not a legitimate basketball play
3: somewhat of a follow-through, in that clearly a lot of force was used
4: moderate potential for injury (both players running full speed)
5: no injury
6: it led immediately to an altercation, with Mitchell being prepared to take whatever penalty was coming in order to confront him about it, so that's the sort of situation the officials have to be willing to recognize and defuse to maintain control of the game
I think that clears the bar for a flagrant-1 but isn't excessive enough for a flagrant-2. I'm not a ref, your mileage may vary, but let's not sit around here talking about how he's treated so unfairly or somesuch nonsense. There's nobody else who can have compilations like these made about them:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzf2mRf68Jo
This is a guy who rakes faces, throws elbows, kicks groins, headbutts, stomps chests, knees faces, grabs legs to trip, grabs plays who are in the air trying to make a play (very dangerous), steps over or around prone guys to try and taunt or enrage them, and would probably do a whole variety of other similar things if he thought he could get away with it. If you don't understand that, it's because you don't want to understand it, not because the rest of us have collectively decided upon a whipping boy.
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I mean, christ, we're talking about a guy who did this to a coworker, not in the middle of a game but in cold blood:
Any of us does that, we are tried, convicted, and imprisoned for felony assault and battery. You're watching a crime, right there, the kind that literally sends people to prison on the regular. But yeah, he's just a good guy who's misunderstood and given a hard time because he "has a reputation", sure.
FOH with that bullshit. If he didn't have basketball to cover for his violent contempt for the safety of others, he would be in prison. There are many like him in prison right now, who just didn't happen to be 6'6" and athletic. THAT's who you're going out of your way to defend, in this thread and others, over and over again over the years, as the examples pile up. It frankly says some not great things about you, at this point, and I hope you reflect on that.
Any of us does that, we are tried, convicted, and imprisoned for felony assault and battery. You're watching a crime, right there, the kind that literally sends people to prison on the regular. But yeah, he's just a good guy who's misunderstood and given a hard time because he "has a reputation", sure.
FOH with that bullshit. If he didn't have basketball to cover for his violent contempt for the safety of others, he would be in prison. There are many like him in prison right now, who just didn't happen to be 6'6" and athletic. THAT's who you're going out of your way to defend, in this thread and others, over and over again over the years, as the examples pile up. It frankly says some not great things about you, at this point, and I hope you reflect on that.
The sad thing is that the dirty MF’er is going to be a fixture on our TV’s for 25 years once his playing days are over. He’s already been embraced with a show on Prime, has a podcast on Apple and will surely be a personality on ESPN or TNT or NBA TV. Celtics fans had it right. FU Draymond.
The idea that Green's shove wasn't T-worthy is absurd. It wasn't a dramatic shove (which I guess is the defense -- "he did it in a sneaky almost unobservable way, so what's the BFD?"), but to deliberately shoulder a guy running full steam into the stands is quite dangerous and typical of the way Green constantly thinks and acts dirty and puts that in action in the sneakiest of ways. Compare that to Mitchell. Also tech-worthy, sure, you can't escalate, but not in the least dangerous and he clearly held back from going at it fully (perhaps because face-to-face he saw how much bigger Green is). To me it's the deliberate sneakiness of Green's cheapshot that makes it particularly reprehensible and indefensible (well, it should be indefensible, but I guess not -- laundry uber alles).
Is this like domestic violence cases, where charges aren't brought because the spouse/significant other is too scared to bring them? That's a crime, the man was defenseless. Shame on the Commonwealth of California and the Warriors organization, especially "I'm a Good Guy" Kerr.I mean, christ, we're talking about a guy who did this to a coworker, not in the middle of a game but in cold blood:
Any of us does that, we are tried, convicted, and imprisoned for felony assault and battery. You're watching a crime, right there, the kind that literally sends people to prison on the regular. But yeah, he's just a good guy who's misunderstood and given a hard time because he "has a reputation", sure.
FOH with that bullshit. If he didn't have basketball to cover for his violent contempt for the safety of others, he would be in prison. There are many like him in prison right now, who just didn't happen to be 6'6" and athletic. THAT's who you're going out of your way to defend, in this thread and others, over and over again over the years, as the examples pile up. It frankly says some not great things about you, at this point, and I hope you reflect on that.
That's the first time I've seen this and it is much, much worse than I thought it would be.
The Clippers fascinate me, four (old) future Hall of Famers and arguably the least entertaining team in the league to watch.
View: https://twitter.com/haralabob/status/1723837879195967606?s=20
View: https://twitter.com/haralabob/status/1723837879195967606?s=20
Draymond at least in his prime is a spectacular player. And a super unique one who does things defensively, screening, passing that are rarely fully appreciated.. There’s also a lot of reason to observe that current Dray—and the guy the last two or so years—is a jackass who is surfing on his rep and abusing the nba rules via that rep.
In the 2022 finals he should, by the rule book, been tossed from multiple games—that’s just reality. It’s embarrassing to all that he wasn’t. He attacked a teammate in 2022 in a way that is closer to criminal charges than an “internal matter”. That’s also a fact.
He continues to be a very good, and unique, player as well. But anyone who suggests he isn’t (over the course of his career) a dirty player is a homer and/or a moron—-that’s simply who he has chosen to be and it’s clear by nba rulings that is so.
And so what happens going forward is really interesting. He’s still essential to the team, he still is very good, and he has to figure out what he is on the court not this point.
Draymond should be ejected by halftime of nearly every game he plays if he was held to the same standard as any other player in the league. He gets and receives zero benefit of the doubt on one of the rare occasions he actually gets tossed. It's crazy to me that KP will probably end the year with more Ts than him.
View: https://twitter.com/TheHoopCentral/status/1723856987853656272
Looking forward to Wednesday nite, though why the C's are playing two in a row in Philly is beyond me.
Looking forward to Wednesday nite, though why the C's are playing two in a row in Philly is beyond me.
He was already making a leap last year but couldn't get enough touches with the Sixers pace so slow with Harden running the offense. The kid has scoring champ potential under the right circumstances.
Yeah, classic "addition by subtraction," at least for his development, when they got rid of Harden. The kid is so quick too, it's like he moves at 1.5 times the speed of the rest of the players on the court. If he can shoot 39%, 40% from three, coupled with that speed, he's going to be really hard to stop.
I admit I really didn't see Maxey coming. I put him in the boat as Herro and Poole - undersized shooting guard who can score with reasonable efficiency, but can't play defense (thus get exposed in the playoffs). Maybe I've been blinded by the fact that I mostly watch him against the Celtics who've always handled him (he averages 9.7 ppg on a .425 TS% against Boston, his worst marks against any team), but unless this is just a hot streak, he's gonna be an all-star and likely all-NBA guy this year.
Butler with another toasty performance so far tonight. He’s played 2, maybe 3 good games out of 7 this year. FG% way down, FTA way down, assists way down.
Obviously I’m not defending the despicable punch in any way, nor did I at the time. Come on.I mean, christ, we're talking about a guy who did this to a coworker, not in the middle of a game but in cold blood:
Any of us does that, we are tried, convicted, and imprisoned for felony assault and battery. You're watching a crime, right there, the kind that literally sends people to prison on the regular. But yeah, he's just a good guy who's misunderstood and given a hard time because he "has a reputation", sure.
FOH with that bullshit. If he didn't have basketball to cover for his violent contempt for the safety of others, he would be in prison. There are many like him in prison right now, who just didn't happen to be 6'6" and athletic. THAT's who you're going out of your way to defend, in this thread and others, over and over again over the years, as the examples pile up. It frankly says some not great things about you, at this point, and I hope you reflect on that.
And I wasn’t really “going out of my way” to defend him on the play in question. I was just noting (1) the Mitchell retaliation was miscalled (which I think most here agree with); and (2) in my viewing experience the initial shove would more typically be deemed a loose ball foul or Flagrant 1 than a T (which I think at least some here agree with).
I mean, yes, “Laundry Uber Alles” is how it works to some degree, for all of us. But anyone is free to imagine that they’d think exactly the same of Dray were he a lifelong Celtic.
Ime is having a nice start to the season with the Rockets. They've had a favorable schedule but he's turned them into a real basketball team. Also saved the franchise from landing Harden again
Late night West Coast NBA! It's FAN-tastic....except when LeBron, AD, Brogdon, Simons, and Scoot are all out.
Speaking of things on which one is 100% wrong on, I really thought it was a joke the Rockets overpaid for good (Van Fleet) and not so good (Brooks) players just to change their culture. Not sure if Brooks can keep up his shooting, but at least so far they look pretty darn good, and obviously that young talent is exciting.
I'll give Durant some credit for playing every game so far, at least until he inevitably stubs his toe in the parking lot or something.
I got them 65:1 to win it all like 3-4 days ago. Now 45:1. With a leveled up Ant Man, the sky is the limit.
I watched the game today and man was it boring. The positive spin is offensively they’re deferring too much and with all that talent they’ll get it together in a week or two. Lue is going small ball and they have a sky high ceiling. On the negative, Memphis is a bad offensive team and Bane was missing shots, but nonetheless the defense Clips defense was nil. Made Biyombo look like he was a stud and zero rim protection against pretty much anyone going to the hoop. I don’t see how that gets fixed.
These "overpays" often look good, because the contract finishes before you have to pay your young guys, and the young guys develop a lot better with culture and talent around them.
Philly did a similar thing when it "overpaid" JJ Reddick on a series of 1 year deals, and it worked out great for them. Indy doing it with Bruce Brown now, also looks good.
Anthony Edwards is going to single-handedly make the Rudy Gobert trade look fine, because a decent team with him is not missing the playoffs any time soon. Sorry, Danny.
If they could just turn KAT into role players and assets to re-stock and re-balance, they'd really have something going.
If they could just turn KAT into role players and assets to re-stock and re-balance, they'd really have something going.
Celtics didn't "handle" Maxey last week, when the Sixers won in Philly, though Boston didn't have Derrick White in that game. Rematch is Wednesday nite, again in Boston.
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I don't know which of them it will be, but it really looks like we'll get a Billy King Nets situation on one of the Suns, Bucks or Clippers.
Everything seems like a struggle, the cores are aging, and no assets are left. One key injury or severe decline could put any of them into scorched earth franchise territory.
Everything seems like a struggle, the cores are aging, and no assets are left. One key injury or severe decline could put any of them into scorched earth franchise territory.
View: https://twitter.com/WorldWideWob/status/1723924586612277336
Minnesota has now beaten Nuggets, Celtics and Warriors.
Minnesota has now beaten Nuggets, Celtics and Warriors.
Not only did Ant hit every big shot down the stretch — he also dropped one of the dunks of the season to date on poor Dario Saric…
View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C9WMKuC6o30
Keep in mind that this was a 12:30pm Sunday afternoon game in LA. There may not have been a single player on the floor who wanted to be playing basketball on a Sunday noon game after a night in LA.
Brooks has cut his FGA in half from his Memphis days over the first 9 game and is looking like prime-Draymond out there. This version of him is a really really good player if he can reign in the desire to be a 20ppg scorer. The Rockets turned Stephen Silas, Kevin Porter Jr and Eric Gordon into Udoka, Brooks and VanVleet....that's an instant culture overhaul. They are a good team and these changes will probably bring out the best in Sengun too.
I would not have thought it odd at all if they called the shove a flagrant 1. But a T is a lesser penalty, to the team anyway. I share your confusion as to the dividing line between what can be a T vs what can only be a flagrant or common foul (I realize Ts are almost always dead-ball or off-ball things - but I know that's not always true), but if you think it might've been an F-1 then you agree the team got off lightly.
We don't have to wonder, many Boston fans who watch hockey have been in the position of having to enjoy watching Brad Marchand play for their team the last 12 or so years. Who was just made team captain. He has settled down a bit in his old age, but isn't that far removed from various fines and suspensions. But I've been listening to (more-diehard-than-I) Bruins fans talk about him for just as long, and it tends to fall roughly along these lines:
1) He's not dirty, he's pesky - he'll try to annoy opponents, get them off their game. But he's not Ulf Samuelsson who's out to just inflict injury on people to try and fill the hole in his soul or something.
2) He's often the smallest guy out there, so he'll do stuff to protect himself that bigger players would consider unsportsmanlike
3) OK he's the kind of player you love to hate when you're playing against him, but love to cheer for if he's on your team
Some of that's a rationalization - he's clearly made some dangerous plays, although those are much more frequent (and much more frequently unintentional) in hockey. I've seen him start fights over nothing, and even as recently as a week ago he's sent hockey into an uproar with a play that was probably dirty. But there's also an understanding by his fans of why he's hated and that he takes things too far, and they've just learned to take the bad with the good. So you don't really get a full-throated defense of him that much, usually more along the lines of #2 and #3.
(by contrast, Patriots fans have defiantly defended the honor of Rodney Harrison, who in their view made some big hits that were legal in the context of the game, and unfairly got a bad rep)
I think you'd get less crap if your approach to Dray were more "yes, he's a dirty player, but when he's not pulling some stunt I can really enjoy his focus, hustle and BBIQ."
I was gonna go through your history and pull up all your various defenses of him here... but since this was pretty much the first thing I found, I think I can give you credit for some self-awareness and call a truce:
In related news, I watched Minnesota - GSW for about 7 minutes before the half, and in that time I saw:
- Draymond called for an obvious offensive foul who then demonstratively cursed out an official for at least 10 seconds (no T)
- Draymond winding up and hacking Gobert in the head right under the basket... and the nearest official doesn't even call anything. Gobert looks around with a "WTF?" and like multiple seconds later an official off the ball calls the (common) foul. But that could've easily been reviewed for a flagrant, given the windup and blow to the head.
I think the dirty plays would be like 40% easier to put up with if the whining weren't present. We call out no less than Jayson Tatum on his whining around here on the regular, and he's usually being less attention-grabbing with it than Draymond is.
As an aside to this, I think the Tatum histrionics this season have been drastically reduced. He's clearly working on it. The biggest change in him I've seen this season is just a calmness and authority that his constant whining was stripping from him. Now he just looks like he's the best dude on the court at all times and that he knows it and doesn't need to tell anyone about it. Huge difference, in my opinion.
View: https://twitter.com/JonKrawczynski/status/1723958783968432212?s=20
Chris Paul out here bowling for knees.
Chris Paul out here bowling for knees.