part two of the nba 2020-21 anything but regular season

nbas back baby

The Hornets have moved LaMelo Ball (right wrist fracture) to questionable for Saturday's game against Detroit.

— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) April 30, 2021

LeBron James has been upgraded to questionable for tonight’s game against Sacramento.

He’s been out since March 20 with a high ankle sprain.

— Mike Trudell (@LakersReporter) April 30, 2021

just yesterday i had to google what lebron's injury was bc i'd forgotten, 5 weeks is a long time for an ankle sprain!

tbf it was of the infamous high variety

i suspect some people who got out of the habit of watching will just not get back in, from a human nature perspective and so forth

― lag∞n, Friday, April 30, 2021 3:21 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

but even if your max possible audience has decreased theres still a lot you can do to make sure youre hitting that max

2. the idea that the owners are super micro focused on the bottom line is imo pretty clearly not true, these are play things for super rich guys, you can see that in the warriors paying a $100m in luxury tax for kelly oubre or whatever it was, nba teams arent really good business investments, except... for the resale values have been spiking the last however many years, which idk its tough to forecast how far that will go and what exactly is driving it, i dont think its gate revenue, tho having a league with increasing interest that seems —hot— couldnt hurt

one one hand you have lacob, on the other you have fertitta

3. the resting/injury issue is already acknowledged, theyve done what they can to eliminate back to backs, and are fining teams for resting guys on national games which is obvs just a pr thing to get teams to make up fake injuries so the fans dont get pissed off which is ridiculous but anyway the problem is well accepted already

one counter would be that if you shorten the season then the injuries will knock guys out longer. a famous high ankle sprain may now eat up like 1/3 of your season where in the normal 82 it eats up only 1/4 or less. of course do the math and you should have less injuries cos less games, but injuries happen no matter what.

like also the players and basketball ops people have already made their position pretty clear. the traditional methods of capturing consumer sentiment like tv ratings and game attendance are pretty useless at the moment but my guess is that there's an underrating of the erosion of interest due to guys never playing. i heard somewhere that we recently went like 3 weeks between national tv games where both teams were good and at full health--that should be pretty scary.

― call all destroyer, Friday, April 30, 2021 11:55 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yikes

some anecdotal evidence from hanging out with (+ arguing/debating) my 15-25 y/o nephews/cousins is that they really dont watch full reg season games, like at all. they might tune into a big matchup here or there but if lebron isnt playing or whatever then they wont watch. they just scroll the socials and follow the B/R and highlight aggregators and get their hoops fix that way... snippets and individual game stats. also all of them are AZ natives and none of them care about the suns, they just follow lebron or kyrie or whatever.

I have a theory that a sort of "meta sports fandom" has emerged, basically people who are engaged with following a sports -- could include listening to sports talk radio or podcasts, watching ESPN, following it on Twitter or IG -- but not actually *watching* sports

i was writing that when spottie posted jinx

def

yeah that’s basically how i keep tabs on the patriots and sox. i’m sure as shit not actually watching a baseball game.

its nearly impossible to watch a baseball game. even if you record and ffwd its still easily two hours of your time. i can get through a hoops game in 45 minutes.

i was writing that when spottie posted jinx

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, April 30, 2021 5:44 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

haa

some anecdotal evidence from hanging out with (+ arguing/debating) my 15-25 y/o nephews/cousins is that they really dont watch full reg season games, like at all. they might tune into a big matchup here or there but if lebron isnt playing or whatever then they wont watch. they just scroll the socials and follow the B/R and highlight aggregators and get their hoops fix that way... snippets and individual game stats. also all of them are AZ natives and none of them care about the suns, they just follow lebron or kyrie or whatever.

it's prob also easier to rack up the social media points if you're not bogged down in the flow of a single game but are instead posting micheal scott reaction gifs to a dozen clips an hour

what

13-year NBA veteran Anderson Varejao plans to sign with the Cleveland Cavaliers for the remainder of the season, sources tell @TheAthletic @Stadium. Varejao is returning to the franchise with which he’s spent 12 decorated years.

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) April 30, 2021

what? aren't there like 2 weeks left in the season?

makes sense, cavs are only 7 games back on the last play-in spot and he’s only been completely out of the league for 4 years

they want him to retire there prob?

prob join the coaching squad or something after this season

why are the celtics down 20 in the first q

they decided that only tatum was allowed to score and the maximum number of points was 12

looks like the spurs havent missed a single shot yet as well

😬

The boos in here are not quiet.

— Jay King (@ByJayKing) May 1, 2021

They were down 30 now tied. Nice comeback

ah tatum good look to win at the buzzer, ot

nesmith is good now i guess

bards played the same lineup for a half an hour straight tho idk wouldve been better to hit that shot

This is a great game

No foul

man it would be so fuckin impressive of the Celtics to come back here

Just massive shots back and forth love it

damn nice victory

having watched derozan assassinate the celtics so many times over the years it was bittersweet seeing him brick a bunch of shots down the stretch

unbelievable

The beautiful game

tatum tied the alltime celtics single game scoring record with that bird game where atlantas bench was cheering for him

insane performance by tatum

zero turnovers

32 points down ppl on twitter are saying its the 3rd biggest comeback in nba history, someone else said in the last 40 years tho so idk

either way big comeback baby

some cute deuce content in the postgame.

also tristan thompson leading the postgame congrats. every couple days i sit back, sip my coffee, and wonder if kevin o'connor is ever going to publicly take responsibility for his reporting at the trade deadline that everyone on the team hated thompson and that he was absolutely getting shipped out. as everyone know i'm not the biggest fan of tristan but he serves a purpose on the team and it seems clear based on all interactions i can see that he is liked just fine.

yeah tho someone said on twitter said that it was actually some other lesser known nba writer on the podcast who laid the whole thing out and all oconnor said was "yeah i heard the same thing", but i didnt look into it

and credit where its due tristan was good tonight mixed in some good defense with his usual offensive rebounds

yeah i think chris vernon initiated the topic but o'connor emphatically doubled down. really bad job from someone who is supposed to have sources and be a real journalist.

tristan was definitely good tonight, played a ton of minutes when they needed him to hold down the fort against poeltl.

hes seems to be coming around in general more defense less trying to do stuff with the ball, celtics are still passing to him way too much tho

yeah i think chris vernon initiated the topic but o'connor emphatically doubled down. really bad job from someone who is supposed to have sources and be a real journalist.

― call all destroyer, Friday, April 30, 2021 10:54 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

maybe tristan started the rumor cause he didnt want to get traded

ooh good call, he does have a reality tv background