NBA 2020-21 reg season 1st half thread

let's run it back

lakers in 6

Zach Lowe listed the Nuggets as contenders 👀

They are. Nuggets fans deserve their anticipatory excitement.

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tonight!

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lol @ that Morey picture.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ek9w79qUUAAEknz.jpg:large

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https://www.nba.com/lakers/sites/lakers/files/1920_lal_mktg_freeagency_schroder_756x440_v2_jd.jpg

v excited 4 meaningful hoop games 2night

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nuggets will win the nba playoffs

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lol that derrick white pic

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great thread so far

friends there are TWO contests TONIGHT featuring some of the PREMIER basketball talents of the national basketball association

BALL

but can Alex Caruso continue that dominance in a non bubble season? xp

https://i.imgur.com/6iDqisV.png

giant rubio scary as hell

Watch James Harden Attend Maskless Stripper Christmas Party After Throwing Basketball at Teammate; Adam Silver Had Instructed NBA Players to Stay Away From COVID Booty & Strip Clubs; How Party Host Exposed Him on Instagram (Exclusive Video-IG) https://t.co/4huOgFXH6C pic.twitter.com/dTZNdvmBco

— Robert Littal BSO (@BSO) December 22, 2020

the whole throwing basketball at teammate thing and how they keep bring it up is hilarious imo

COVID booty

honestly if harden would throw the ball at his teammates during games more often, might help with the rockets offense

heyo

got em

I need that last jersey to say Ball 2 Ball and also it’s a Disney+ show

god help me, i'm excited for this

two really juicy match ups tonight

can’t wait for the nets hype machine to start kicking into gear before they implode in the playoffs. i’m practically giddy

Sources: The Warriors will start James Wiseman at center tonight in Brooklyn. No summer league, no preseason, only a sprinkle of college hoops, but he’ll debut against KD and Kyrie. Into the fire. He’s impressed enough in camp and they’re extremely high on his future.

— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) December 22, 2020

let the juice flow

nice

Brothers reunited pic.twitter.com/Y3A5O7o21E

— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) December 22, 2020

:,(

No draymond tonight is really lame

do they really still need to roll Marv Albert out there?

Yah the audio is so bad on this. They figured it out in the bubble but this may be even harder.

nets and warriors are both playing extremely fast, not sure i love it

the str3ams site i used all last season seems to be gone now

nevermind i found the new one

kd looking pretty good!

the court looks likes its covered in grime with this color scheme

nets and warriors are both playing extremely fast, not sure i love it

Kd looks sharp kyrie looks sharp

i dont think id enjoy a league where every team played like this first quarter tbh

warriors defense is a turnstile

They are missing draymond baaadddd and starting wiseman was prob not the right move

But they just handed the nets like 8 points with some really dumb turnovers

Omg what is Wiggins doing out there he looks like a borderline high school player

his minutes have been AWFUL lol

steph is gonna have some of the most drastic on/off numbers in the league

Spottie
Posted: December 22, 2020 at 7:42:28 PM
Omg what is Wiggins doing out there he looks like a borderline high school player

did they make him promise to play like a pro

This Wiggins quarter may go down as one of the worst of all time my goodness

wiggins is not a good nba player, the warriors need to find a taker

They’ll have to include that minny pick obv

wiseman has no idea what to do out there but athletically he looks pretty special... looked pretty good dribbling in the open court too before careening into KD and getting called for a charge

Oubre and Wiggins combined like 2/20 smh

i don’t think they’ll give up that minny pick just to get off wiggins unless it’s also getting them an all star level player

wiseman looks absolutely huge and athletic obvs has no idea how to play yet but he does look like a baller

Hello Demar DeRozan

Xpost
(But I don’t want wiggins on the spurs- not with three years left on that contract!)

wiseman’s FT stroke looks good... curious how he plans on scoring during the normal flow of the game aside from rim running

I hate this

Chris and Marv in garbage time ugh

ive turned it off

the warriors look bad, but im trying not to overreact to one game. they def need oubre and wiggins to be real players and dray back asap.

they would def be a lock for the playoffs in the east

I'm not sure - but they ain't sniffing the playoffs in the west

i think they can make it in the west

the bottom end of the west offs has actually turned in to a big ol question mark

just watched the first half and first chunk of the 3rd before giving up and going live--

- i never really had a reason to scrutinize wiggins and mostly trusted what people tended to say about him, but watching him closely for a half and i totally get it. it isn't organizational, he's never changing. this is what he is. you don't suddenly learn how not to get backdoored by joe harris in year 6 or whatever it is.

- hugely impressed by wiseman's athleticism. such a fluid/fast runner. he'll figure it out but it's going to take some time.

- the warriors have had opportunities on offense but look really bad finishing as a team. that's not encouraging against a nets team that is not the most physical or imposing.

- the nets look pretty good. i enjoyed levert's 2nd unit minutes. withholding more judgement because to me this game is mostly the warriors not really playing competitive basketball.

Wiggins oubre and paschall all shot like zero percent and the whole team is brand new more or less. Gonna Give them like 15 games before I make any serious declarations. On the other hand the nets are flying on positive vibes and they look great. If kd is back for real then that’s so encouraging for Achilles tear sufferers going forward.

Yah cad otm. As bad as Wiggins was this is the worst I’ve ever seen him so it obv shouldn’t be this bad. Oubres energy was there but the shots weren’t falling for anyone in the first half.

there were a few plays where i was like wow kd moved extremely well on that play, he looked like himself, but we didnt get to see him for instance really lock in on D and have to jibberjab his feet all over and what not

Loving the early returns on wiseman he seems fun. The only way the warriors will really win is to rely on the curry dray pnr way more than in past years. And wig and oubre have to shoot league average at least from 3.

kd is also further removed from his injury than when most guys come back fwiw

yeah i was listening to something where there were saying maybe 18 months should be the standard layoff for achilles but it prob varies for different guys

there were a few plays where i was like wow kd moved extremely well on that play, he looked like himself, but we didnt get to see him for instance really lock in on D and have to jibberjab his feet all over and what not

xp my fear is that the warriors stick to this democratic offense stuff when they don't have the personnel for it. like i'm looking at wiggins and oubre's FGAs and they are pretty scary.

Yah Kerr has to adapt or this what it will look like.

Dubs gotta take on bucks next lol yikes

lol

Inside The NBA roasting KD immediately after interviewing him...Savage LOL pic.twitter.com/JFDnuKa38P

— gifdsports (@gifdsports) December 23, 2020

wiggins shot looked good and he blocked some shots at the rim, tho his on ball defense wasn’t great. i still think he could/would be good in the harrison barnes role but they need more from him now and when they turned the offense over to him it was really ugly

i still think they’ll be in the playoff hunt all season... it’s a race for 10 spots now anyway. the problem is they need curry-oubre-wiggins-dray to get in a rhythm together pretty quickly & tonight they looked like a team that was still in preseason mode. and then you’re trying to work in wiseman, and the bench doesn’t have much... they don’t have a lot of time for it to start clicking. steph looked like one of the 10 best players in the league still tho

theres just nothing on the bench

hah i forgot that batum exists

batum is starting???????

what the fuck

looks like zubac is out? maybe when he is available ibaka will play the 4

he's in now. i don't get these lineup ideas but they're working.

cant argue with results

harrell is gonna try and score every time he has the ball tonight lol

i think the clippers starting three wings along with ibaka makes sense, now i’m just confused as to why the hornets benched batum for like 2 straight years. he doesn’t look that bad!

otoh... batum and marcus morris not really the most inspiring choices for third wing on a championship team

definitely looking forward to the Wiggins discourse now that he's on a team that people care about

The Warriors having Wiggins is never going to work because he is an average NBA basketball player

I always wondered though if he was on a team that divorced him the player from who he was supposed to be, where he was drafted, maybe he could be a good contributor

He made way more sense paired with the splash bros but now with klay out they need like 25 ppg from him on high efficiency and that’s not gonna happen

correct

cannot fucking believe Kobe died THIS YEAR

i hear it's been a weird one (year)

from a distance that guy's name looked like "Montell Pretzel"

fit in or fit OUT

Harden doing his best to tank all his trade value

it worked for kawhi

yeah

smh haters

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ep8EW3LW8AYRtpY?format=jpg&name=large

welp

Several Houston Rockets, including John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins and possibly more, are expected to miss tonight's season opener vs. OKC due to coronavirus contact tracing, sources tell @TheAthleticNBA @Stadium.

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) December 23, 2020

expected it but not this early - damn

seems like there'll be some teams that improve their playoff seeding this season, simply by having fewer positive tests in their organization.

I thought Wiseman looked pretty good!

Very fluid and loads of energy I’m sold

There was a group of Houston players -- including Martin, John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins -- away from the facility at an apartment getting haircuts, sources said. That's led to the contact tracing on Wall and Cousins as team awaits more testing results on Martin, sources said.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) December 23, 2020

getting haircuts vs going to the titty bar

shave and a hair cut
two tits

harden’s a child

On the second night of the NBA season, Houston could not field the minimum requirement of eight players in uniform

— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) December 23, 2020

Game Postponed lol

wow really disappointed in Adam Silver coming out against women becoming bosses and putting their people in a position of success

whomst would be upset if he were just suspended for the season

Imo 70% of the league has had it by now

Harden might go down as the least liked all time great since Isiah Thomas

ESPN Sources: In the past 24 hours, Rockets rookie KJ Martin had one positive coronavirus test result followed by a negative test result -- and now awaits results of an additional test. https://t.co/9PR8XX0NZk

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) December 23, 2020

does anyone know anything about the tests they use? I assume it’s the PCR tests, in which case a positive is a true positive (unless they’d been previously infected). you can’t just test negative later that day or soon after and be “negative”

Cavs by 21 at the half!!!

poor Hornets

Enjoying the new Spurs jerseys and Keldon Johnson's aggression in the paint

Is it too late to worry that the Sixers best lineup tonight has neither Embiid nor Simmons?

This is the Zion we signed up for

jesus christ lmbooooo pic.twitter.com/tOIDHInUNg

— Karens In Paris (@NekiasNBA) December 24, 2020

Can you imagine letting Jimmy Butler go so you can keep Tobias Harris? SMH.

khris f'n middleton man. destroying the celtics again.

gonna be honest i still don’t understand why the celtics didn’t want to trade hayward for myles turner

Coby White looked good in the preseason. But I have concerns

hysterical ending

xp one theory that has been floated locally that i can at least somewhat understand is that the celtics place a huge premium on their big men setting a ton of good screens, and turner is reputationally a terrible screener.

that second free throw had no chance the second he released it. you could tell.

classic basketball game lol

thats what i call ball

watching thiess clank threes in crunch time while being left open by 12 feet i might disagree with the celtics on what they value in bigs

Love Jrue on the Bucks. Exact kind of player they need, mentality-wise.

xp yeah i'm with you but they do set a ridiculous amount of screens with the 5 every game. it's just a factor to consider. as much as you or i like him the rest of the league clearly is not breaking down the door to acquire myles turner.

the bucks have a lot of guys in their rotation where i’m like.... man, i guess

my read why they didnt want to trade for turner is just you know salary concerns, paying gordon hayward ~$30m is already dicey, having to take back that much salary for a quality starter and whoever else they throw in to make it match and going into the luxury tax for it, i can understand why theyd rather have thompson at $9m and a big trade exemption from signing and trading hayward

accountant shit, thats the nba baby!

spurs look...good right now! even tho ja is hanging a 40 piece on them

yes. pretty clear they liked thompson and the trade exception more than turner.

avoiding the lux tax is big in nba

brook lopez might be kind of done as an offensive player which isn't great for the bucks. only 4 fg attempts and 1/2 on threes tonight. he just doesn't really do much on that end anymore.

the funny thing abt brook lopez 3pt specialist is hes just not very good at it

it was really just that first season with the bucks where he was shooting 6 a game @ 36% and it was a real weapon. that's gone now.

Stoked with the Spurs performance tonight - despite having no answer to Morant, the young core has me excited. Athleticism, dunks, confident 3pt strokes, and some nice ball movement. The defence also looked a ton better than preseason, and Derrick White still to come back in. Happy holidays, hoopers!

yeah, you live with morant hitting those tough buckets in the paint, my god

if I had one slight concern I did expect Poeltl to defend a couple of Morant's drives better but it's early, early season

the morant highlights on twitter tonight are ridiculous

ja love

i’m a big lonnie fan... crazy athlete, he’s skilled and he can do stuff on defense

i liked the tristan signing and if they get a healthy kemba and can go kemba-smart-brown-tatum-tristan i think they’ll have a good chance. but turner looked good in the playoffs to me & trade exceptions are overrated anyway

lonnie in transition was a marvel, and his catch and shoot from 3 is very reliable. spurs played 9 dudes and 7 of them were in double figures. every starter had at least 16 pts and >50% shooting.

i'm sorry i just have to vent for a second, there is a new feature on espn dot com where if you go to a box score page there is a tiny embedded highlight video, but it doesn't start playing right away. so i check out my box score, navigate to like three other tabs, minutes pass by, and all of a sudden i'm hearing game audio coming out of nowhere because the tiny video suddenly decided to play. wtf.

ha yeah that thing sucks

espn's entire site is unholy

truly not a place of honor

i recommend not using websites unless they look like this one

its true this is how sites should be

they dont even make websites anymore, just apps masquerading as sites

its true

terry rozier scored 42 points tonight btw weird factoid

they dont call him scary terry for nothing!

http://hosted.stats.com/nba/scoreboard.asp

someone here (i forget who! ums?) pointed me here a couple years ago when I was complaining about how stats sites are bad and terrible and it's been v good

not very committed?

How committed are the Blazers to improving their defense? Coach Terry Stotts brought in Jim Boylen, the former Chicago Bulls head coach, to consult with staff for three weeks. https://t.co/TrLQsUg95W

— Jason Quick (@jwquick) December 23, 2020

http://hosted.stats.com/nba/scoreboard.asp

someone here (i forget who! ums?) pointed me here a couple years ago when I was complaining about how stats sites are bad and terrible and it's been v good

― (not a strip club) (Clay), Wednesday, December 23, 2020 11:12 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

wow nice! this site is pretty clean and fast. thanks!

wait rozier scored 42 points tonight?

yes

that article about the blazers defense is really weird. they play their scheme well enough so with better personnel this year why not just give it a shot? the defense boylen used in chicago is gimmicky as hell and would never work in the playoffs.

also why is terry stotts' job always in danger? i don't think there's a ton of untapped potential in this team.

if anything stotts' teams have routinely overperformed

yes! like, who's going to do a better job with these guys?

he's been there longer than you'd think so I guess there's the classic "risk of losing the locker room" thing but the only dudes there with him most of the time are dame and cj and they're not gonna suddenly dip at this stage

yeah if dame and cj had a problem with the coach we would have known that by now

cp3-booker-bridges-cam johnson line up looking fast and cohesive tonight

Everything that happens tonight determines the season.

wild stuff!

OMG KINGS

What a win over the Nuggets. Hustle plays all over in OT. De'Aaron Fox with the block to save it and Buddy Hield with the tip-in to win it.

INCREDIBLE pic.twitter.com/48fZwW4cpl

— Kevin O'Connor (@KevinOConnorNBA) December 24, 2020

immediately running off the court is always one of my favorite celebrations

Even better with no fans there

The jazz make so much more sense with bojan playing

i think they have as good a shot as any team in the non LA tier

Love when the ball does unpredictable things around the hoop ring

This basket from Josh Richardson lol pic.twitter.com/fZYAzAqg5o

— Jackson Frank (@jackfrank_jjf) December 24, 2020

brett brown trading mikael bridges for zhaire smith in his short tenure as acting GM turned out to be such an awful move lol

ive been using that hosted.stats.com page for years but sometimes it stops updating for a bit during games, it's not 100% reliable

suns crunch time 5 makes a lot of sense and they’re not even using crowder really at all. they look like a top 7 seed to me

i'm still having a hard time watching any of this without constantly thinking that 3/4 of these guys are gonna get covid

wont they all be vaccinated by the end of jan

When they tested all the players before the bubble, 10% had active infections. 10% had active infections before the start of the regular season. Pretty easy to see that they were all gonna get it anyway

Obi Toppin's movement defensively on the perimeter is rough pic.twitter.com/wtzEqfMQKN

— Jackson Frank (@jackfrank_jjf) December 24, 2020

idk i think he fits pretty well with the team they've got now

same insofar as a bunch of other players drafted around him are going to be much better

obi stumbling around like bambi on ice out there

even on offense he moves around like he has a 2x4 nailed to his back

"siri, create a player in nba2k named Skip Legday"

it's really as bad as advertised. the guy cannot move unless it's in a straight line.

same insofar as a bunch of other players drafted around him are going to be much better

― J0rdan S., Thursday, December 24, 2020 1:57 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yep

gotta thank the knicks for picking him and the suns for getting jalen smith bc the spurs got a real one in vassell

I’m rooting for Obi but the only way I see it working is if he’s a top 10 offensive player

yeah kinda feel like hes gotta be KAT-like in this way

his lateral movement is certainly not catlike haha

lolol
obi toppin more like slowly topplin

obi toppin more like oh (he) be (walking like his legs are) two pins

new stats thread because a fascist mod locked the old one NBA NUMB3RS 2020-21

the word u r looking 4 is "fastidious" binch

new stats thread because a fascist binch locked the old one NBA NUMB3RS 2020-21

A1 From Day 1 https://t.co/3nZT95vk6l

— Anthony Edwards (@theantedwards_) December 24, 2020

The nba must have cancelled their class for rookies on how to handle the media string together cliches and put fans to sleep.

lol that’s an amazing interview. I’ll play him in tennis for $100 tho

kid has a great personality, that interview also reinforces his whole "i only play basketball for money" thing

I’m liking what I’m seeing from RJ Barrett

Is there a team worse than the bulls this year? Looking pretty dire there

okc or nyk maybe?

I think Reddish and Hunter contribute more for the Hawks this year than Gallinari and Bogdanovic

Oh yeah knicks I guess

ESPN is clearly experimenting with a zoomed-in view with Pelicans-Heat. It's not quite as close as Mobile View on NBA League Pass, but it's way closer than the standard broadcast. What does everyone think? pic.twitter.com/EoisOkFVkf

— Kevin O'Connor (@KevinOConnorNBA) December 25, 2020

watching now and this is atrocious. you can't see the near corner or the very top of the 3-pt arc half the time!

they shd just do closeups on guys faces the ball swishing through the net slow mo put some emotional music over it shit like that

This is a fun Zion game

ok i was wondering what was going on w the camera angle, it’s very bad

zion is

— a free throw machine
— one of the best rebounders in the league
— unstoppable on the fast break

some big christmas day records being set today, witnessing history

brandon ingram heard duncan robinson broke his xmas day record for threes made and started going off

The Ingram vs Simmons debate is still alive

do you even need to say “tough day for Bledsoe” anymore, isn’t it implied by the fact of his being on the court

Zion’s FT stroke looks better to me

i see a lot of games in zion's future this year where he puts up those kinds of lines and is still -13

The Heat are exciting. Cool team

once again i don’t understand how a heat draft pick (precious) fell to them

This bucks second unit looks awful. How do they score?

God why do the warriors still have Chriss

i don’t understand how a heat draft pick (precious) fell to them

i'd say a good half the teams in the league evaluate draft picks on the assumption that raw athleticism is always more valuable than demonstrated skills on the court, because they assume skills can be taught. they overlook how hard it is to un-teach bad habits or to rebuild a player to have good habits. hoops skills are instilled by endless repetition and muscle memory and if that repetition has been laid in poorly it's an uphill battle to overcome that. 'projects' rarely pan out as desired.

It’s because Jord is a heat homer, I solved this mystery

This bucks second unit looks awful. How do they score?

idk man the heat keep finding NBA players with low picks and mostly i find myself wondering why other teams didn’t draft them first

heat are spurs east i thought this was noted long ago

heat have traded away picks or just had bad ones for a lot of the riley era but recently theyve had some late lottery picks and done well with them

they didn’t have a great run in the bron era basically only picked norris cole & shabazz lol

it’s prob a bit unfair to judge the warriors based on playing two of the fiveish best teams in the league but it’s not clear to me how they’re gonna beat good teams

they dont look great!

Bucks are unstoppable if Middleton plays like this

GS is not making the playoffs.

ILH knows things. DRAY v KLAY

tbf neither of them have played this season

nets in the basquiats today they must not prosper

Trying to avoid judging my boys too much... but it’s hard. I think we need 2016 draymond to show up somehow. Hope he got that klutch hgh connection.

i still think dray was the better player at the time of that poll

I don’t see how the Warriors make the playoffs. Looks like they got something with Wiseman tho

Middleton was just trash in the bubble, bubble created lots of illusions

bubble boys go pop

the google pandemic ad makes me want to do terrorism

loooooooool

they wd just put your terrorism in their montage, theyre crafty like that

cant beat the big g

its sucks, theyre called alphabet bc they own all the letters, cant beat em

more like alpha butt

Just an absurd shot from Jayson Tatum pic.twitter.com/6c9i49iZVZ

— Chris Grenham (@chrisgrenham) December 25, 2020

kd is moving and playing at 100% imo and let me add yikes

the nets are...good

is the google pandemic ad the one where a bunch of dead celebs are made to seem to be endorsing google because that is a crime

they could accomplish the same thing with a tupac hologram looking up his death date on google and saying "damn."

lmao

Middleton was just trash in the bubble, bubble created lots of illusions

durant looking scary good it’s true

Middleton said he didn’t touch a basketball in quarantine and now he’s back in business so I’m all in on it. Millsap looks a lot better out of the bubble too btw, maybe because he’s a dad.

Nets look great and they are fun to watch the vibes are strong so far

did he touch a ball before the 2019 east finals?

the not touching a ball thing was such an obvious lie lol

wes matthews has looked completely cooked to me for like 4 years and keeps getting signed and put on the floor by title contenders

think the nets might be the favs in the east

lmao jvg never change my man

yeah i agree if kd feels as good as he looks idk that's a real scary team

their roster makes a lot of sense but i’m curious to see how it goes when they hit some bumps. kyrie has been hitting deep threes like he’s steph, some of it is not sustainable and i think the chemistry there will be fragile. it’s not the most likable pair of superstars the world has ever conceived

i’m willing to die on the “nets will crash and burn in the second round of the playoffs” hill

i really hate the ridiculous touch fouls that ad manages to draw

Why would Khris Middleton lie about that

lol Giannis lied about that too during the quarantine but nobody believed him

do you think a professional basketball player “didn’t touch a basketball” for 3 months?

saying so is a good way to appropriately set expectations

do you think a professional basketball player “didn’t touch a basketball” for 3 months?

even if that’s true he played a good dozen games before the miami series i don’t think it matters either way. go look at his stats from game 5-6 of the 2019 ECF there’s no way of explaining that away. the guy has to shake the playoff pressure

haven’t been able to turn the nuggets game on but why are we losing by a lot

clippers are v good

Because not one of the games today was remotely close, why would Nuggs v Clips be any different?

I like these red nuggs jerseys in isolation but I’m not sure about the clash between these and the clippers jerseys

uh just flipped the game back on is there a reason kawhi is lying on the floor in a pool of blood?

took an elbow to the mouth from his teammate

probably busted a tooth out?

Really disappointed in Will Barton so far, looks healthy but defense is straight trash

Biden administration needs to do something about Trae Young’s hair

ja is so fuckin good

its true

really really dumb tech there tho

JJJ is injured and they have basically no one else who can score regularly (kyle anderson is having a good game tho).

nathan knight out of william and mary (!) scored 14 points in 9 minutes for the hawks tonight. pretty sure i had never heard of him before just now

russ putting up neverending triple-doubles in the void while suffering one trillion losses is some very real rolling the boulder stuff and I have to say i love it

uhh

Thomas Bryant really dunked on the wrong basket 😅 pic.twitter.com/b5AojbpZjZ

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) December 27, 2020

lol. he was trying to grab the rebound but the darn basket was in the way.

Chris Paul just faked De’Aaron Fox into jumping clear over him. pic.twitter.com/we97nwTMXd

— Mike Vigil (@protectedpick) December 27, 2020

Harden def looks thiccccc. The hair doesn’t help, and the beard looks puffier than normal too

russ putting up neverending triple-doubles in the void while suffering one trillion losses is some very real rolling the boulder stuff and I have to say i love it

theyve got a dece roster

fun blazers rox ot. harden blows the final possession, but puts up 44 for a guy that supposedly wants out

What a pass from Anthony Edwards in transition pic.twitter.com/ICv9OHqLvF

— Joe Viray (@JoeViray90) December 27, 2020

your undefeated twolves!

Damnit

Warriors center Marquese Chriss has suffered a broken right leg (fibula) and will miss remainder of the season, sources tell @TheAthleticNBA @Stadium.

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) December 27, 2020

shoooooooot

Is this all punishment for moving across the Bay?

your undefeated twolves!

― trans-panda express (m bison), Sunday, December 27, 2020 10:05 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I can't lie, it feels good to have put the Lakers in the rear view mirror, but we can't get overconfident, gotta stay focused on the Clippers

mavs are beating the clippers by 40 in the second quarter

damn, warriors going through a three year beatdown

well on pace for 154-54 full time :/

what streaming sites are good this year?

spectrum

77-27?????????

i've been using nbastreams.to to find streams, they've got a bunch indexed

nbabite is similar, might even be the same folks

cool thanks will check those out

no way to get fox sports north without going back to comcast, they are feuding with dish, hulu and YouTube tv

Yah man it really sucks

Hope draymond is ok they just announced he’s out again tonight saying his foot... but everyone is saying he doesn’t have his stamina back from covid

Might have to play wiseman 48 minutes tonight

wiggins is focused and determined this year, don't worry

fuck me

Timberwolves: Karl-Anthony Towns suffered a left wrist dislocation and will be re-evaluated weekly on a return to play plan. He won’t require surgery. A hand specialist evaluated Towns in LA today.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) December 28, 2020

Sixers can't handle the juggernaut Cavs.

looks like embiid isn't playing?

but if sexton is making a 3rd-year leap, he and drummond could be good enough to get a team in shouting distance of .500

ntilikina and payton a combined 7/7 from 3 as the knicks destroy the bucks. end the season now, please

ngl this is the best knicks game i’ve experienced since...idk, the mike woodson era?

Bucks shooting 18% from 3 after shooting 55% in their last game

NBA is just producing these scores with a random number generators right?

— John Hollinger (@johnhollinger) December 28, 2020

theres no fans in attendance to keep them honest, they can break out the mirrors

deepfake nba games

anybody who is gambling on anything this season is out of their minds

This oubre thing is getting weird.

Damion leeeeeeee

apparently brad stevens has been coaching the celtics for 8 years now?

And that's the 5th longest tenure in the league.

One of my fav things about kd is that he tries to block dunks

TERRY ROZIER ON KD 🔨 pic.twitter.com/s2syYwVbe3

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) December 28, 2020

yo wrecked

I think we’ve all decided that these 2 officially go by Sexland 🤷🏽‍♂️ https://t.co/Vn3TRWezp4

— Larry Nance Jr (@Larrydn22) December 28, 2020

one of my fav games of all time, i’ve still never seen lebron react this way to anything

7 years ago today, With LeBron sidelined with an injury in a road game vs the Blazers @chrisbosh took over for Miami, CB went deep in his bag, Scored 37 pts and hit the game winner three with 0.5 secs left in the contest. 🔥🔥🐐 pic.twitter.com/eSFMlHVcPd

— FreeDawkins.com (@DawkinsMTA) December 28, 2020

health cld be a big issue for the nets and this wasnt even one of the guys you worry about

ESPN story on Spencer Dinwiddie, who is scheduled to have surgery on his partially torn ACL next week: https://t.co/H5LwgFUSnP

— Malika Andrews (@malika_andrews) December 28, 2020

feel like health would be an issue for a lot of teams that were playing playoff games just 2-3 months ago

nets have kyrie who has never been healthy and kd who is coming off one of the worst injuries

yeah the nets are a franchise taken over by two unlikable and fragile superstars led by a coach who is in his first season coaching at any level, i think it’s a bad playoff alchemy

couple guys behind them in levert and dinwiddie who have ball dominant styles and want shots too

this is silly

Daryl Morey has been fined $50,000 by the NBA for violating anti-tampering rules with this tweet a week ago. I wrote about how the league is implementing its vast new anti-tampering powers on @TheAthleticNBA after the Bucks penalty came down. https://t.co/ycY1AfoVvG pic.twitter.com/EicWfSUUTj

— Jared Weiss (@JaredWeissNBA) December 28, 2020

crying. tax his ass

itd be easier just to tax all nba tweets

if u r in management/ownership, u already have the power of the purse, why shd u get free clout too?

imagine mark cuban paying $25,000 every time he wanted to flick his belly button lint on the bird app, amazing

The Cavs are fun in transition. pic.twitter.com/pH4ThU4yIt

— Dave DuFour (@DaveDuFourNBA) December 28, 2020

Kevin love is hurt again btw

Jokic has 18 assists tonight

ugh that ja injury looked really ugly.

Is Kyle Anderson good now

Concerned about Hartenstein as the backup center... Really forcing things

The Pistons are the strangest NBA team to me, the strangest I’ve experienced

just the roster or the way they play? or the vibes?

gary trent jr have yourself a game

taht ja morant ankle roll was nasty

jokic with a casual 24-12-14 on 62%/43%/73% through 3 games

just the roster or the way they play? or the vibes?

Jokic is better than ever, the physical fitness improvement really jumps out in a lot of ways. More able to contest at the rim, faster off the dribble, just better at everything.

yeah i watched the highlights from that game and he was noticeably active on D

I was gonna post about how trae young is becoming one of the most underrated players in the league, but then noticed some dude on espn calling him the leader of the mvp race after beating the bulls, grizz and pistons

yeah the pendulum definitely swung too far last year, it was his second year and he didn't have enough help around him yet. he'll probably be an MVP candidate soon

let’s wait and see if he can cease being literally the worst defensive player in the NBA before start going that far

He’s playing better than luka so far this season

trae was amazing last year, were ppl really hating on him that much, obvs the defense is awful but he was nuts last year

the thing that cld take him to the next level is just better 3pt shot selection / refining his technique on that part of his game, hes so good at driving and passing theres really no need to be taking all these crazy 3s, and if he is going to take them they shd be more fundamentally sound, same thing as luka actually, both of them should watch a bunch of harden tape and maybe a lil less steph

they both also have the team/coaching issue where they dominate the ball too much, and they were traded for each other, crazy

hawks have really used a lot of high draft picks on guys who are not playmakers

Trae's not a playmaker?

...

or are you just talking about Hunter

trae was amazing last year, were ppl really hating on him that much, obvs the defense is awful but he was nuts last year

so

dame hasnt gotten an mvp is trae gonna be better than him

theres getting an mvp and theres being an mvp candidate

probably not xp

If we’re going off 3 game samples Terry Rozier is in the mvp race

That was kind of the point of my post.

Anyway Hawks are gonna trade Collins sooner or later

he was on a team that was 27 games under .500 lol
― J0rdan S., Tuesday, December 29, 2020 1:08 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

he was 20. what’s the track record for 20 year olds who put up his numbers? what’s his floor, kyrie irving?

Anyway Hawks are gonna trade Collins sooner or later

if we're gonna do a three game mvp, i think 29/15/14 kinda wins it

well 29/12/14, but still

he was 20. what’s the track record for 20 year olds who put up his numbers? what’s his floor, kyrie irving?

― k3vin k., Tuesday, December 29, 2020 1:39 PM (six minutes ago)bookmarkflaglink

yeah it's just simply impossible to imagine trae young having a career worse than kyrie irving

kyrie really shouldve been one of the prime beneficiaries of the game getting called ridiculously tight the last few years but hes been injured the whole time

I would argue that trae has superior court vision than kyrie or dame

need a larger sample size unless you mean "right now" in which case i think kyrie has the edge there

comparing trae's stats across eras is useless given his insane usage rate, his style of play, and the style of play of the league in general. his floor is a good stats high usage point guard who makes some all star games and whose teams don't win anything. take your pick of these sorts of players from years past -- stephon marbury, gilbert arenas w/o the knee problems, baron davis...

his ceiling is a good stats high usage point guard who makes a lot of all star games and whose teams don't win anything so... chris paul hehe

Comparing him to someone like Marbury or Gil insane to me. Those guys were straight up ball hogs that hurt their teams

i mean, trae young's *floor* is definitely that of a ball hog player whose teams don't accomplish much. whether his assist numbers would superficially paper over the ways in which his play "hurts" his team would be a matter of interpretation. in his age 23, 24 and 25 seasons gilbert arenas made 3 all star teams averaging something like 27/6/5 on .500ish teams that made the second round once and got bounced out of the playoffs in the first round twice. that general level of individual value and team success is well w/in the range of outcomes for trae young -- he could also transcend that up to the level of dame lillard or whoever.

That kind of points to the impossibility of comparing across eras. Marbury was definitely ball dominant, but he averaged around 8 assists/game almost every season of his career, right up until the final Knicks phase. He couldn't shoot though, and I kind of doubt he would've learned to be a significantly better shooter in the modern game. Trae as that player, but with the shooting capacity he already has, is pretty damn good. Remains to be seen whether it can translate to team success. I think he's a good enough passer that he can rebalance his arsenal enough for that elusive winning formula, in the right context. Will be fun to watch either way, though, and doubly so if he can hover close enough to Luka to generate barstool arguments and think pieces about the draft day trade for years to come.

xp similar to what J0rdan said. J0rdan, love your bball insights and much respect for your take on the game

atm trae is more or less singlehandedly making watching hawks games fun for the first time since like 2014

xp ha thanks :) i love chatting ball w/ my guys

just looked up trae's player projection page on 538

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2021-nba-player-projections/trae-young/

performance of the 10 most comparable players

1. chris paul
2. stephon marbury
3. russell westbrook
4. devin booker
5. kyrie irving
6. gilbert arenas

this seems entirely reasonable to me as a range of outcomes. devin booker showing up is interesting for better or worse

having watched most of the guy's games, the chris paul comparison is the only one that fits. he has superb court vision which i would not attribute to the rest of that group. i'm not arguing that his teams will outperform any of those other players (or even that he'll have a better career than a few of those guys), just that stylistically, he's much different

J0rdan, love your bball insights and much respect for your take on the game

― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Tuesday, December 29, 2020 2:37 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

please do not encourage the chris paul slander -_-

CP3 is controversial. Not his all-star status, but just where to place him in an era of fabulous guards.

noticed cp3s status amongst contrarian minded people even those who arent really huge basketball fan has reached god level, a natural byproduct of him being generally underrated

cp3 is at least the 3rd greatest PG of all time maybe 2nd so yeah

as the original cp3 fan i feel pretty comfortable saying chris paul is a lot like john stockton, both of them are wildly overachieving little guys who play extremely sound basketball and make their teammates better, but both are limited in comparison to the greatest players of all time by their inability to score points at an elite level, for instance if i had to win a playoff game i would take steph over cp3 every time, and i would take isiah thomas too, but also being the best at any particular position isnt meaningful

simmons and russillo did a book of basketball episode on him recently...simmons’ take was truly deranged, basically a standard twitter egg perspective, russillo is a stan and also generally is a much better thinker about basketball so his was much more informed

2nd or third is probably right, depends how the rest of curry’s career shapes out. (maybe third or fourth, I admit my sense of isiah’s place is very incomplete.) comparing those two is fascinating because it’s a comparison between a guy who always plays well and never wins and a guy who usually underperforms yet wins anyway

tangentially i do wonder what guys like marbury or arenas would’ve looked like if they got to play in the spacing era as opposed to the last gasp of the packed inside the arch, no movement era

arenas was really ahead of his time. he would have cooked in today's game.

the guy who wouldve been just unstoppable is iverson

I think Marbury had personal issues that would have always derailed him

CP3 has such a brain-boggling highlight reel though, so many plays that just seem impossible

Iverson would have averaged 10 assists per game as a shooting guard in today’s game

I’ve always been so confused by the zoomer/millennial stat nerds who think iverson sucked but love Westbrook

there are stats nerds who love westbrook?

stands to reason as he makes a lot of stats

stands to reason as he makes a lot of stats

steph vs cp3 is an interesting comparison... kind of a peak vs longevity argument even putting aside the respective playoff histories. don’t think cp ever reached the heights of even steph’s pre KD MVP/championship season. cp is more of a “pure” PG & his game is prob more consistent/adaptable... if you put him on the KD warriors i’m sure he wins a title. i just think steph’s long distance shooting & how that opens up his entire game puts him above cp as a player for me

the one time paul was paired with an truly elite bucket getter, james harden, he came very close to getting a ring even tho the team on the whole was pretty flawed

hot take alert but imo steph will never regain his prior form and will come to be seen as unable to perform without a super supporting cast

thats prob where he paul been best as a second option star, but i mean thats the thing, the first option guys you just put next to whoever

blake was a really good scorer but couldnt just do it on his own whenever he wanted

if I were a Rockets fan I don't know if I'd ever get over that game 7

hot take alert but imo steph will never regain his prior form and will come to be seen as unable to perform without a super supporting cast

― micah, Tuesday, December 29, 2020 5:49 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this may end up being a popular idea but its obvs not true, just check out the dubs first champ team, not any sort of superteam

there were three all-stars and none of them won finals mvp, they became a super team that year

im sorry but thats just silly

the super team was the friends they made along the way

there’s a version of steph’s career where KD stays in OKC and cp3 gets to houston and there’s some epic battles to get out of the west just to face those excellent cavs teams. steph certainly wins fewer titles that way but maybe wins one in a way that garners him more respect ultimately.

i don’t think steph will ever be remembered as some great champion but his legacy as a pivotal figure in the history of basketball is pretty cemented at this point imo

i don't think they were a superteam pre KD, just a perfectly assembled regular team

jordan-pippen-rodman wasn't a superteam either

the guy who wouldve been just unstoppable is iverson

― lag∞n, Tuesday, December 29, 2020 5:35 PM (forty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

He's my favorite, but I wonder. He wasn't a great 3P shooter by today's standards, but he spent more time on his back in the paint than any player ever and now that's getting called every time and he could shoot FT's reasonably well.

when evaluating steph and cp3, i look at whose game changed the way hoops are played on every team from the pros down to high school.

iverson would have had a lot more room for drives with today's spacing. fewer 6'11 stiffs hanging out near the lane.

dipos made a couple nice plays tonight looks like he might be getting heathy

When iverson started slowing down the jumper got better. His mechanics were good. I think with a lot of guys who are insanely fast they mess up their shooting because you just can’t shoot with that kind of suddenness. And he probably was the quickest, fastest guy ever.

also chucking was consider ok back then there wasnt a lot of pressure to not shoot 30%

I think for sure that steph’s peak was higher than paul’s peak, but it’s closer than most people think — everyone forgets how great paul was in the 08 and 09 seasons. he doesn’t have that knee injury forcing him to change his game pretty radically and who knows what kind of player he ends up being. longevity it’s simply not close and unless steph plays well for another 10 years it won’t be. paul is setting the new standard for PGs into their mid-30s and beyond

it’s hardly worth rehashing the playoff debates but paul simply has some of the best numbers ever and has been — to this point — a better playoff player than curry on a minute to minute basis. it simply is not his fault that blake griffin missed something like 30% of the clippers playoff games during his peak. he played hurt and missed a small number of games of his own which is not his “fault” but you can argue the best ability is availability which is fairer. and I mean just imagine what his playoff record would be if he played in the east lol

Embiid is 1 for 5 from 3! This team is done.

raps outhustling the sixers rn

and then they blew it

Yeah they really blew this game

may i just say that theres a feed down the side of the espn nba scoreboard thats broken and this guys face has been sitting on top of it for at least a week

https://i.imgur.com/09nn8dT.png

Raps might have their own problems.

feel like there arent a lot of great teams in the nba right now

bucks just set the NBA record for threes in a game (28) two days after missing 31 threes in a 20 point loss to the knicks

the clippers should great, the lakers won last year with two starting quality players but have moderately better guys now, the nugs have a lot of guys but are they the right guys, heat are cool but dont quite have the star power, bucks idk...

i think it's going to be a very flat season with the compressed schedule, the rapid restart, and lack of training camp affecting teams in a bunch of different ways. even if you had a team that was stacked enough to dominate, would you bother when the offseason was barely 2 months and you're going to be playing more or less every other night?

the serious contender teams should only be worried about being a 4 seed in their conference

yeah prob true

how do you go from getting blown out by the Knicks to beating the team that destroyed you in the playoffs by 50

shooting luck, baby!

feel like the minimal training camp/preseason is def showing so far

early season nba is always pretty ragged anyway

just want to acknowledge that udonis haslem is still on the heat roster

def one of the odder lil nba details

congratulations to the orlando magic who will start 4-0 for the first time in their history

if the question is "who is the most boring player you love to watch" my answer might well be vooch

vooch has moves

This kid is gonna be somethin else

JAMES. WISEMAN. 🤯 pic.twitter.com/GZ3kLsE8pc

— Golden State Warriors (@warriors) December 30, 2020

he as they say moves well

wow that wiseman clip

luv to be a young lad in the open court

one of these days the nuggets are going to want to rethink their “let the other team shoot as many threes as they want” strategy

that's Kiddball

wiseman showing off his unicorn horn there.

has there been a single good national TV game so far this year? i guess the bucks-celtics from last week. feels like it's just been a series of dreadful games

yeah it hasn't been amazing

Julius Randle is ballin. 24/10/6 through 4 games

it looks like he's in great shape just from a physical perspective

has there been a single good national TV game so far this year? i guess the bucks-celtics from last week. feels like it's just been a series of dreadful games

ratings are a disaster surely

Wiggins probably the best game I’ve ever seen him play tonight. Has like 15 or 17 in the 4th. Compare that to last week where he looked like completely lost. Gonna be a wild ride having to cheer for this dude.

ratings are a disaster surely

the steph vs cp argument... it isn’t even close lol y’all are crazy.

feels like the pandemic permanently killed sports ratings? dunno when/why they will come back if not now. how's football doing

yeah it's weird -- in theory everyone is home and has already watched the queen's gambit so what else is there

people didn't start reading did they

maybe sports bars are a bigger deal than I thought

I do remember hearing the NFL was doing really well this year

the steph vs cp argument... it isn’t even close lol y’all are crazy.

― Spottie, Wednesday, December 30, 2020 1:08 AM (thirty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I promise you it is

football is doing fine and every other sport tanked.

https://www.theringer.com/nba/2020/12/30/22205663/trae-young-atlanta-hawks

Article up at the Ringer today that touches very closely on the debate about exactly who Trae Young should be modeling himself after that spurred this Steph vs CP3 digression.

Part of their conclusion is that the path to more team success is in his Harden-esque foul drawing. While it’s hard to mount a compelling disagreement, those are (obv) the least enjoyable parts of Trae’s game to watch. There’s an alley oop montage in that article that closely recalls the early years of lob city and is exciting as hell. The excitement is then canceled out by another one of Trae drawing three shot fouls.

Julius Randle is ballin. 24/10/6 through 4 games