2023 NBA Playoffs
- Thread starter BaseballJones
- Start date
I'm not sure where to rank the recent "Philly Blunders", but Jimmy Butler for Josh Richardson has to be pretty damn close to
their #1 screw-up (Fultz for Tatum).
We do have 3 days, lists are fun, and all things anti-76ers are welcome...
I wonder whether there's a world in which Philly agrees to S&T Butler to the Cs that summer.
Full practice today for Quentin Grimes, he should be back for game 1.
View: https://twitter.com/tommybeer/status/1651967522621538304?s=46&t=0GHHaPVUX26Io0V2HIcS0g
View: https://twitter.com/tommybeer/status/1651967522621538304?s=46&t=0GHHaPVUX26Io0V2HIcS0g
We would still have to get there but like last season I hate this matchup for the Celtics especially now that they have Wiggins and Payton back. Either way this postseason is fun and will continue to be so as long as we are playing.
Butler was too interested in trying to win. That doesn't fit with Philly culture.
Au contraire, I went into this post season wanting to see GSW come out of the West because we have unfinished business to take care of. (Though I would accept the Lakers purely for legacy reasons.)
That's funny and partly true.
Fwiw, the Jimmy Butler journey is somewhat about self-actualization too. And I don't credit Spoel or Riley for doing it. I think that Jimmy's hardo competitiveness can be a turnoff for anyone in any environment if not channeled in the right way. We all laugh at the Minnesota practice story and imagine Ben Simmons shriveled into a locker, and now (even then frankly) it's obvious that those were soft places. But Jimmy has changed somewhat too, and seems to know when to whip out the edgy stuff and when to simmer the pot. He has grown up a little. It probably would've happened eventually in Philly too, and I'm damn glad that it didn't. But I'm pretty sure that Jimmy learned a bit along the way about inspiring teammates without needing to push their heads in their own poo to smell it. And in a room of millionaires, that's a super effective leadership skill. My WAG anyway.
So…
1958, 1973, 1979, 1981, 1983, 1985, 1989, 2014, 2016, 2017 … and 2023?
Or:
1953, 1961, 1963, 1966, 1969, 1998, 2018 … and 2023?
Really? They easily could have won all the games in Sac so far, and they don't look super different in SF. I'm pretty ready to write the regular season off to weirdness and injuries, because all their core guys look awesome right now.
They really do, although that's at least in part due to Sacramento's lousy defense. Whether it's LA or Memphis, they'll face a much better defense in round 2.
They'll likely have homecourt in round 2, for what it's worth. They might not need to win another road game until the conference finals.
While we ruminate about whether the Kings can force a game 7, I have a question. What percentage of people do you think believe that the button they wheel out to the scorer's table is actually connected to the beam and turns it on? I've got the o/u at 37.5%.
Imagine if this no-call happened today?
View: https://twitter.com/NBACobwebs/status/1651955805648834566
View: https://twitter.com/NBACobwebs/status/1651955805648834566
They used to have these colorful flavored drops of sugar that were stuck to paper and you'd eat them off and hope you didn't get any of the paper, and I think they were called magic buttons. I fucking hatted those, but if you didn't have access to a snickers bar, it was the best you could do. At least they were better than wax lips.What do you have against magical buttons?
You have to fill out the Austin Powers form.
https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Form/FAA_Form_7140_1.pdf
It was strange how Akeem Olajuwon had a checked personal history but Hakeem Olajuwon was a model NBA team leader. Future generations will scratch their chins.
Also: Billy Paultz' voice and Frank Layden's glasses. Great find.
Of course there's failure in sports. As in life. That doesn't mean it's the end of the world if you fail. Failure is a feedback mechanism, it helps you learn, become better. It can also give you pause and help you mull over what you are seeking. There's wisdom in knowing how to deal well with failure.
The way I hear Giannis speak, it's as if there's never failure. That doesn't ring true to me.
What Giannis did however is deflate a lazy media trope in which winning championships is everything and any type of losing is a failure. A million lazy narratives & articles are written thanks to that trope. In doing so, he did yeoman's work.
One of the words I hate the most is the word loser. And the word winner come to think of it. Both words tend to be uttered by people who have a simplistic understanding of life. So yeah. Don't divide the world into winners & losers, but don't go around saying no one ever fails. The Bucks failed big time btw. I wouldn't think they were a failure had they not won the championship. But not getting past Miami is a failure.
The way I hear Giannis speak, it's as if there's never failure. That doesn't ring true to me.
What Giannis did however is deflate a lazy media trope in which winning championships is everything and any type of losing is a failure. A million lazy narratives & articles are written thanks to that trope. In doing so, he did yeoman's work.
One of the words I hate the most is the word loser. And the word winner come to think of it. Both words tend to be uttered by people who have a simplistic understanding of life. So yeah. Don't divide the world into winners & losers, but don't go around saying no one ever fails. The Bucks failed big time btw. I wouldn't think they were a failure had they not won the championship. But not getting past Miami is a failure.
It's interesting that we watched Wiggins for years upon years in the hope of getting him in the draft lottery, then he got drafted elsewhere, he sucked/didn't have #1 performance... and now he's decent/good/great/what?
I have a hard time imagining anyone in the West beating the Suns.
Agreed on all of this.
As much as I appreciate Giannis -- he seems like a genuine and humble guy -- the whole "Jordan played fifteen season but only won six titles, was he a failure?" response is a World Cup stadium: it serves the purpose in the moment, but falls apart almost immediately afterwards.
Giannis is in his championship window -- the middle years, the prime years, the MVP years -- and those seasons are measured differently. During the regular season, he did everything a player like him could be asked to do: lead his team to the best record, the top seed, with a 20-game win streak thrown in for good measure. But then, the wheels came off in the first round of the playoffs (to an unknown degree because of injury).
That's a failure.
The mistake is personalizing things. HE is not a failure. His team is not a failure.
The season, however, was.
We'll see how the matchups go, but it took Durant/Booker averaging a combined 66 points to win a series of close games against the Clippers who, without Kawhi and George, are basically Brooklyn. They are a ticking timebomb, even if they stay healthy.
He's a slight, 6'4 offensive specialist who hits about 1/3 of his 3s. A perfectly cromulent player, just not at 4/128.
He has the basketball IQ of a turnip. I have never seen someone get more layups blocked.
The reffing in this game is horrendous.
How do the officials not see a blatant elbow to the face, during a jump ball, by one of the guys jumping against the other guy jumping? That seems impossible.
the kings pace after made baskets is so fun. the celtics could definitely incorporate that a bit getting jb the ball to attack early
There was like one year when flops weren't allowed, then it just wasn't a rule anymore. I understand how hard these things are to catch in real-time, but during stoppages in play the refs should be looking at replays and issuing technical fouls for blatant obvious flops. If it's not physical taunting, I don't know what is.
Really? I’m not even sure they should be favorites. They seem very very vulnerable to me against pretty much any matchup.
Sacramento doing they get should be doing to follow their path to a G7. Go small, go fast. Go smaller. Go faster. They have to run Looney off the floor when he’s in the game though and they haven’t done that tonight…..yet still up 7 at the half on the road.
They can go small if draymond is the center, but it's hard with Looney. He's already killing them on the offensive boards, it'll be worse if Sabonis and Len are both on the bench.
Kings should be up by 20. They are thoroughly outplaying the Warriors tonight but letting the Ws hang around.
That’s why they need to go faster and run him off the floor as they have done for parts of this series. If they don’t make this a track meet they aren’t going to make it to a G7.