09 playoffs thread

I think your Kobe-anal rape fantasies are a little strange. Probably not worth being committed over, but maybe you should get help just in case.

alex if you don't share his opinion on this or anything else you are WRONG and DEMENTED

lol @ devolution into inane generalizations.

Haha seriously do you think the rest of these guys are fucking boy scouts? They're professional athletes fer chrissakes! They're all retrograde assholes and pigs.

― Alex in SF, Tuesday, May 26, 2009 1:10 PM (15 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

see its statements like that which might lead people to believe yr not the most observant - while im willing to allow that theyre more likely than average to be dicks nba athletes are individuals like everyone else - im sure they run the gamut of behavior and disposition

ice cr?m have you ever actually been in locker room? Or known a professional athlete? Or even read an article about professional athletes and the bevy of women who follow them around? If you think that Kobe's attitude towards women are in some way exceptional then you are WRONG and DEMENTED.

"all" was a bit strong. I'll replace with "mostly" or "frequently" so as not to appear to be painting with too broad a brush.

k again how is this difference from the population at large except that athletes have enough money to make it happen?

I'm not saying it is different (although I think increased opportunity and money make athletes a little more extreme than most people are, yes). But that's my point. Kobe doesn't really strike me as exceptional (except that his dirty laundry got briefly aired for all to see.)

famous wealthy people def get mindfucked by entitlement and im sure many of them are quite horrible people but alexs inability to differentiate between the qualities of all the tall guys in the asshole pile is pretty weird - i guess u need to have been in a locker room or something to do that

xp yeah i guess we agree in that the rape accusation is far down on my list of things that make kobe unusual even as pro athletes go.

xp Your amazing ability to differentiate between the qualities of people you've never met is truly exceptional though, Kreskin.

i was creeped out by kobe long before the rape accusation - when i saw that i was just like o of course - which is not to say it was actually rape - i dont know what happened in that room and people falsely accuse each other of crimes all the time and kobe never even went to trail - but from what came out in the news it was def at lest v creepy and borderline

xp Your amazing ability to differentiate between the qualities of people you've never met is truly exceptional though, Kreskin.

― Alex in SF, Tuesday, May 26, 2009 1:27 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

to tell the differences between people is just a basic human facility - its not infallible and some people are more tuned in than others - but w/o it wed all be helpless - and a lot of people share my opinion of kobe

basically icey just doesn’t like the cut of kobe’s jib and definitely goes out of his way to let us all know that.

lol i didn't know kobel's middle name was "bean"

i watch a lot of basketball and seeing the nba marketing machine try to sell me on this heartless bastard for the last 15 years def has exacerbated my distaste for the man - i def do think hes mentally ill tho for real just to be clear

I can def. see where if Kobe made me slightly uncomfortable 14 years ago that the last 14 years of over-the-top NBA media blitz would get a bit wearying.

hah ok

I would take Kobe on my team in a heartbeat, for what it's worth.

i was just listening to simmons' podcast with j.a. adande and he had some good kobe insight. basically saying that kobe was pretty much a cipher to the nba fraternity and it wasn't until he did the redeem team that other guys came to understand his work ethic and that he was actually ok to hang out with and more than just some hypercompetitive weirdo.

in other words never underestimate the fact that kobe was never socialized like a normal person.

btw if you want to read abt a cool nba player check out lamar odom:

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1153359/1/index.htm

i didn't know a lot of stuff about this guy but he sounds like a bro.

"in other words never underestimate the fact that kobe was never socialized like a normal person."

Yeah this is sort of what I was trying to say above wrt Kobe's coming into the league at 17 and playing for an immensely screwed up Laker squad, but that really only gets to a fraction of what's unusual about the dude. This is not someone who had the kind of upbringing which would allow him to be relatable to for a lot of players (esp. coming into the league as young as he did and being as insanely overconfident as he was--some people probably still don't forgive him for throwing up all those airball threes against the Jazz in his first playoff series.) Playing a year or two of college probably would have helped.

simmons had a good point about this recently - he compared kobe to a child actor, which is basically what he was, breaking into los angeles at 17 and never leaving. there is no one in the nba - and arguably no one in the world - who can relate to kobe's upbringing as a kid and his beginning in the nba. it's def much diff than KG in minnesota or oden in portland. i agree with icey that there is something psychologically off with him. i don't think he's mentally ill, but he's totally maniacal and he knows it, which is completely evidenced in his fake acting and the way he hijacked the spike lee doc. as simmons points out, jordan had the same maniacal demeanor, but he didn't pretend he didn't. also, he never forced scottie pippien out of chicago and thus never had to convince the public that he wasn't the hugest asshole living.

as for j.r. smith, i don't see how he's at all defensible, even for a nuggs fan. the guy is a glorified deshawn stevenson and sometimes teams forget about him and he scores 24 points and that's all. you would think he scored 30 at least. he's hurt the nuggs in this series more than he's helped them anyway, so it's all relative. he'd be be perfect on the hawks btw.

The Tom Friend article on Chauncey Billups does a good job of explaining that JR Smith is basically a guy who will follow whomever is the pack leader. When it was AI, he (and Melo) would follow AI's lead and go out to clubs every night and etc. With Billups in town, he has adopted better habits, and last night you saw a guy who was more willing to penetrate and pass than I personally have ever seen from him before. He's still a douchebag who takes bad shots, but he is a valuable player when surrounded by the right influences.

sociopath narcissist - something like that - he is just so one of those people who is always trying to act human but has no idea what its actually like

― ice cr?m, Tuesday, May 26, 2009 12:51 PM (4 hours ago)

i dunno. he's more human than, say, alex rodriguez

Uh you are aware that a huge % of athletes are OCD weirdos. It's not exactly a crippling psychological hump. It's more like a bonus feature.

― Alex in SF, Tuesday, May 26, 2009 4:58 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

don't know ray allen's story, but good god, i had someone w/actual OCD break shit down to me and it's fucking beyond and nightmare (basically, the crux of was him standing there with a written check he didn't like because he'd signed it "wrong" and it eventually became like an all-day nightmare of trying to deal with a check)....like it sounded so horrible, not a "bonus feature" or some quirky anal type personality quirk

lol kelly dwyer on ball don't lie today, talking about Kobe Bryant, Doin' Work:

"Actually, it isn't a wonder. Kobe has isolated himself so much from anyone who will tell him that things aren't heading in a direction that isn't particularly appropriate, that it's pretty obvious that he doesn't know how poorly he came off.

I'm years removed from being angry about that. At this point, in May of 2009, I'm just sort of sad about that. The guy is so maladjusted, he just has no clue."

i don't think he came off so bad? it's just like, there are so many more entertaining ways to stage the thing than as a dvd commentary, where it didn't even seem like he was familiar with the game beforehand. that nike thing with him teaching his moves or whatever i would pay for, he seems to really be inside what he's doing physically and mentally and realistic about how far talent and 'specialness' is taking him in a way that a say, jr. smith is years away from figuring out.
if i were to do the pop-psych thing i'd lean more toward cultural anxiety/general social anxiety being the root of his awkwardness and the sort of rote way he tends to present himself. chicken and the egg thing whether the competitiveness came about to mask his insecurities or the other way around, i'd lean toward the former fwiw

"i had someone w/actual OCD break shit down to me"

Obv there are degrees of OCD. My only point was that certain kinds of obsessive compulsive behavior can be a boon in certain professions (take it from the son of an OCD librarian.) I think assuming that it's hurting (rather than helping) Ray Allen in his seems pretty weird.

Cavs forward Ben Wallace was angered today when he heard Magic coach Stan Van Gundy’s comments about his supposed flopping in Game 3. On Monday Van Gundy said “Ben Wallace and Mo Williams fell down more than a baby learning to walk.”

Wallace, who is a four-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year and does not have a reputation as a flopper, was not happy with that comment.

“Either come out there and do something about it or shut the (expletive) up,” Wallace said after the Cavs shootaround this morning at Amway Arena. “That’s what I tell him.”

you are calling me a floppER

godalmightyFUCK i hate these taunting foul calls. what the hell is this, nursery school?

yeah that was horrible

it's insane is what it is. guys now can't pump their fists in the nba playoffs.

it's the jd drew-ization of pro basketball.

magic are shooting smart right now

wau rafer

appalling performance by cleveland imo

yeah rafer playin hero for sure. orlando crowd vs cleveland crowd is a world of difference too.

yeah cavs've shown no energy every 4th quarter this series

wow the turk bails himself out

cavs best shot is to foul happy howard out

breaking news from the future: lebron james to sign with the knicks

west missed wide open 3 -> lewis drilled contested 3 pretty much personifies this series huh

wtf is with cleveland not getting to orlando's shooters on kickouts. it's the ultimate drive and kick team, so defend it.

orl is 15/31 from outside tonight! jeez, cavs.

i've been impressed w/ magic's decision-making on offense tonight. then again easy to look good when you're sinking jays

omg

my lebroner is def at half mast after that