( ( ( ( ( nba bubble ball 2020 ) ) ) ) )

Kings GM Vlade Divac is stepping down, source tells @TheAthleticNBA. Joe Dumars (advisor previously) will be interim executive VP of basketball ops and immediately assumes GM duties. Dumars will be involved in the search for a new GM.

— Sam Amick (@sam_amick) August 14, 2020

end of an era

fire up the 21 cig salute

"My understanding is that Divac being so close to Luka and knowing his dad so well factored into their decision," MacMahon said on ESPN's "The Woj Pod." "Basically, he didn't think a whole lot of Luka's dad, and the whole like father like son ... well ... no, this is a different dude.

yo is it true vlade divac got sonned by a slovenian kid after a yugoslav beef????

wow, that is quite an acceleration from the story i read ~24 hours ago about how joe dumars was an emerging voice in the kings org and that he and vlade would be working together closely!

Shoulda happened years ago

would be into a season or two of succession but it's vivek and vlade and whoever else just flailing helplessly behind the curtain

lol thinking abt vivek just getting madder and madder the better luka gets until he cant stand it anymore

joe dumars is there with both of his phones, ready to listen

Houston is lifeless

sixers are going to score 150

i assume everyone is pulling there starters pretty soon

Vlade did talk Bjelica into coming back to the nba. Luka thing is just unforgivable tho

yeah the scale of those two things is....very different

i have seen what vivek is doing play out in my own professional life. the cliche about some leaders is that they will act like they are experts on things they know nothing about and then they make a bunch of bad decisions.

but that's not usually it. there are really smart people, who are good at a bunch of things, that end up with responsibility for something they know nothing about. and they know that they don't know about it! and that they need to listen to experts. and then they become very.....credulous. and they listen to whichever *expert* is around at the time. and *that's* how they end up making all the bad decisions.

the play in games are prob here to stay right having all those teams in the race down to the wire was good

i don't like the idea of them with a full 82 game season but if it's just 8 vs 9 i can deal

like why are we playing 82 games in a sport with decently low variance if we're still not going to accept the results at the end

also in this case it didn't actually add any relevant teams

memphis is relevant

but i think the greater benefit is just keeping more teams in the mix down the stretch

I think they shouldn’t do play in games if there’s like a 5 game gap between 8 and 9

the rules don't suggest they should either!
given how dead the end of the season often gets, a play-in has the potential for a little spice; i diggit.

memphis was already relevant is what i meant, the play-in just adds 1-2 more bubble games

Alvin Gentry gone

imo, Gentry is good enough to hover above the cutoff line and find a team to hire him, but once hired he's not quite good enough to squeeze more wins out of his players than a dozen others could have achieved with the same group.

Yeah. Pels never looked like they knew what they were doing in half court offense. Especially at the end of games.

Pelicans have “bad organization” vibes rn

mostly attributable to bubble performance tbh

pels have had those vibes for ages, remember when the entire team got injured by december every season

"Bad organization vibes" would have been retaining Gentry another year after how unmitigatedly awful he's been for basically all of his tenure in New Orleans save 1 lone year. Just two seasons of winning more than 40 games in 16 years as a head coach; both those seasons he had MVP candidate superstars carrying his rosters. Gentry's a nice and affable man but that clearly has never translated to consistently winning basketball games in the NBA. At least in the head coaching spot as opposed to as an assistant.

gonna give griffin a chance here he hired the suns trainer and fired gentry both good moves imo

see who he hires now

Lue would be an obvious pick since they worked together before but I think Lue's a decent coach

feel like lue is more of a vets coach u need a teaching coach for their roster

The Pelicans aren't as bad as the Knicks, Cavs, or Timberwolves, but they are in the bottom third in terms of obvious organizational flaws.

I will coach the pels

solved

big day

Damian Lillard has been named Bubble MVP

— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) August 15, 2020

Does he get to wear a big sash with that printed on it, or is it just a merit badge?

he gets one of these

https://k2imagesblob.blob.core.windows.net/optimized/Option/8208/2404/815G-BIG-Soccer-Classic-Trophy-Male-Large.jpg

lol, no one is feeling the first round upset

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/29662426/nba-playoffs-2020-experts-predictions-every-opening-round-series

doesn't look like it's gonna happen for the grizz today

nuggets are the only one of the 1-3 seeds that are at all vulnerable in the first round but the jazz kinda suck

absurd back to back plays in the paint by slomo

time for david griffin to earn his money. i *think* he’s pretty good but you always have to watch it with guys who work the media.

Dame and Nurkic playing great hoops. Blazer bench looking like a trash fire, unless you count Gary Trent, Jr. as a bench player, which is not exactly true rn with CJ's fractured back.

yes dame and nurkic chemistry is amazing

ja and dame trading punches *_*