NBA State of Play – Rule Changes – Trends – CBA – Schedule Reform – Load Mgmt – etc

could def see playing with a bunch of other top guys suppressing their stock a lil over being in a program that lets them hoist to their hearts content, but calipari gets them in the first round, whats his system for that do gms just listen to him or what

im sure hes had some whiffs too the harrison twins come to mind, but still

herro, bam, maxey, shai, quickley were all 5 star top 20 prospects so definitely on first round radars, but we're not talking about anthony davis, john wall, karl towns type prospects where anything less than no 1 overall would've been a failure. i don't think you'd necessarily say those other guys exceeded or fell short of their pre-draft ranges, like you said first round is first round. but they're all gonna make hundreds of millions of dollars in the league as non top 10 picks that's pretty crazy. you can also throw guys like booker and murray in there who were the same level of prospect, went a smidge higher but still in the range (7-10) in the draft where there's soooo many busts

yeah kentucky guys have had such crazy success in the league seems like teams would be wise to factor it in to their draft process

maybe calipari is just a genius coach, would be funny considering hes seen as more of a recruiter

MKG, nerlens noel, cauley stein, kevin knox, kanter, brandon knight not some of his greatest moments but still as far as busts go some of those guys had moments of being decent or better players and for their own purposes most of them got paid life changing money.

you compare it to some of duke's busts like okafor, bagley, jabari parker, austin rivers where it's like "wait do you even belong in the NBA?" cal doesn't really have stuff like that on his resume

yeah lol knwo its been said before but duke doesnt have the deepest nba bench

considering it bam is def a guy who wasnt allowed to show his whole game at kentuky think he was mostly a rim runner youd have no idea about his passing and ball handling, dont follow college enough to say for the rest of them tho, but maybe it doesnt matter cause calipari just tells gms to draft his guys and they say ok, maybe thats the key he provides super accurate scouting to nba teams, i know hes known for doing the same for players as far as telling them when theyre ready for the league

Toronto Raptors center Jontay Porter is out of the lineup and a subject of an NBA investigation into irregularities on prop betting involving him, sources tell @DavidPurdum, @ESPNWindhorst and me. Story soon. pic.twitter.com/DncBNbDptW

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) March 25, 2024

I got a feeling we're going to see more and more such investigations.

Cmon, fellas. Either play professional basketball or gamble on professional basketball. Can't do both. It's a slap in the face to good people like me who pass up our shot at a successful NBA career so we can gamble on the games.

oh hes mpj's brother

mpj makes 30 mil a year! could have just given his little brother some money

i mean hes making two million dollars this year on his own

this is sad, hope it’s not true

xp is that right? i thought i saw he was on a two-way deal

pic.twitter.com/NCOhZsRXJR https://t.co/sA1Ycc0qCe

— jimmy changa 🍉 (@sultanwaystar) April 6, 2024

I love it lol

thats a foul, celtics did it last year anyway

that's at least a 'delay of game' warning no matter what else is going on.

the ball is in play tho. they’re just trying to run the clock

Jokic had one the other day where he waited for the ref to get it then passed it to the ref then waited 5 seconds to pass it in then I think slow rolled it and it ate up like ~15 seconds of game time

looks like a rugby play starting except without the other 19 guys

did the nba’s new schedule and rules lead to more injuries at the worst time? sam presti says that, while the league wanted star players to be more available, the IST compressed the late-season schedule and officiating changes made games more physical https://t.co/v1nXoW9wHM

— James Herbert (@outsidethenba) May 29, 2024

In discussing the new rules, Dumars has repeatedly said that the NBA is "an 82-game league." These 82 games, however, are not distributed evenly, and the tournament made scheduling much more complicated. When the league released its schedule last summer, each team had 80 games on it, rather than the full 82, and there were zero games scheduled from Dec. 3 to Dec. 10. Games were added on most of those days, but the schedule remained empty on Dec. 3 and Dec. 10 and there were no non-tournament games on Dec. 7 (the day of the semifinals) or Dec. 9 (the day of the championship game).

The second half of the season "was more compressed and had more back-to-backs, less days off, than any non-COVID schedule since like 2015-16," Presti said. "So you've got players playing more [early on], for incentive, but in the back half of the schedule, I mean, every team had a schedule like this, but we had 17 games in a month, we had five back-to-backs in that month, because there's just no room in the schedule."

Presti pointed out that the league now takes the night off on Election Day, and that its All-Star break is longer than ever. These are good things, as is the NBA Cup, but if they are not accompanied by a reduction in the overall number of games or an increase in the length of the season, then there will be consequences.

"Those games gotta go somewhere, Presti said.

"Whether we say that we changed the rules or we changed the way the rules were being enforced, there was a significant change," Presti said. "There was a bigger drop-off in fouls called than we've ever seen in the history of the league, so it wasn't a [small] modification. Right? It was a change. And that's fine. That's the rules of the game, that's what happened. But we went from 22.6 free throws a game per team to 19.8 after the break. That's three a game. Again that's the biggest drop in free throws in the second half of the season as far back as you can go data-wise."

For context, Presti noted that 19.8 free throws per game would be the lowest league-wide average in history, and that the average team shot 26.5 free throws per game in the 1990s, which was, in Presti's words, the age of "brawl-ball."

Presti said he doesn't have a problem with increased physicality, per se, but he thinks that "we need to watch those three components" -- i.e. the anti-rest policies, the schedule and the officiating -- "and the availability in the playoffs for the best players."

Dumars has repeatedly said that the NBA is "an 82-game league."

theyll do everything except the one thing that will actually help

as long as league revenue is tied to TV inventory which is tied to number of games, the players would also have to be willing to give up money to shorten the season. it's not unilaterally a league concern

similarly the players could agree to shorten their offseason if it meant keeping 82 games worth of money but lengthening the schedule around them in order to build in more rest. maybe it would keep them healthier but they'd also have to give up time being on vacation instead of at work

in reality the set up the players have right now is pretty advantageous, they get paid for 82 games but nobody expects them to play in more than 70-75 of them. it seems like fans players GMs coaches all agree that nobody would miss 7-10 games being wiped from the schedule... but it doesn't effect our paychecks

the vast majority of the tv money is national games which constitute a tiny percentage of overall games so it wouldnt actually effect it thered still be plenty of games to air, where youd lose money is live stadium stuff and local broadcast

cutting games from 82 to 58 all other things being equal would prob result in a low single digit revenue loss, but all things wouldnt be equal you now have a better product so youre laying the groundwork for long term gains

you even could do more national games since the nba is so good now everyone wants to watch it no stars are resting teams are fresh and healthy what a beautiful vision

sadly what you're asking for is the owners to prioritize the longterm good of the game even if it means paying the players the same salaries for fewer games

owners need to wake the heck up do they think having half the stars injured for the playoffs is good, they already know that resting is bad and theres one obvious solution out there that they wont touch cause theyre hopeless bean counters, even tho they bought the teams as toys! it doesnt make much sense

someone in the media needs to get the idea out there no one even talks about it we need a national conversation

make the games shorter. 8 minute quarters