It is the years 2018-19 in the National Basketball Association (NBA) - The Regular Season

this will be in the past like a ponytail

I think it was an old school pimp that said: 'You can't climb a mountain if it's smooth.'

thompson and strauss articles are really good

https://theathletic.com/653085/2018/11/14/thompson-the-future-of-the-warriors-dynasty-is-in-serious-jeopardy-now/

https://theathletic.com/653527/2018/11/14/durant-vs-draymond-theories-on-why-these-two-warriors-stars-are-fueding/

the athletic auto-renewed me recently, really would be hard to go back to not having it

I love it

it is good.

cn someone post those articles plzzz

(shd prob just subscribe)

the content i really desire is the espn draft coverage but i hate them so much and dont want to give them $5/m

theyve collected like every draft guy and put them behind that wall is devious

i'll start a separate thread for Athletic stuff, cool?

sounds good 2 me

i refuse to pay for espn+ mainly cos im still mad they thought launching with a KOBE DETAIL series would be a good idea.

this warriors stuff has me hella depressed tho damn

feel like the media is failing to connect the dots re drays decline, not that theres conclusive proof that hes permanently declining but its gotta be on managements mind, theyre reporting it as beef between franchise cornerstones but likely management is looking at it more as beef between a superstar and someone who might not play at a consistent allstar level again, which is prob one of the reasons why they came down on him so much harder than they have for past hijinks

repeatedly calling a teammate a bitch in front of the whole world is also just plain extremely bad, its the sort of behavior that under different circumstances can lead to violence

i mean even if dray is not in decline, the idea that durant and green are or have ever been comparable talents, it's not even close

thats a big part of the strauss piece

also the fact that this particular hijink was one that seemed like a fuck-you play aimed at KD, and one that maybe cost them the game

you guys are reading the play wrong jeez. watch it from the broadcast angle dray had 4 seconds and just got the ball and pushed like he always does. was expecting kd to come up and trail or fill a lane.

(obv this whole thing is not about that play and wouldve bubbled up at some point anyway)

idk i didnt see him looking for anyone, also he took the rebound away from kd

i mean kd def shdve run but im not sure what dray was doing on that play

he was doing what he always does! he grabs rebounds and pushes!

idk he had a couple guys with him and didnt seem to be looking to pass, i mean im sure it was all innocent obvs 4 seconds is not a lot of time but he didnt do anything coherent with it

seems like Dray kind of cut in there when KD was positioned for a rebound! i guess possibly it wasn't intentional (keeping in mind this is a man who was scolding for nut kicking and decided it would be a good idea after that to swing his arm into LeBron's nuts and lose a title) and the problem is Dray thought he could be the hero when he hasn't shown he's capable recently.

IT otm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pvSiLCh57w

you think dray cares about being a hero? he was never looking to shoot that EVER

it was a bad play but nothing really to get upset about theres lots of bad plays every game driving into quadruple coverage with one second left usually doesnt work out

i cant listen to isiah talk about leadership tho thats waking nightmare

also grant hills beard is kinda freaking me out

yeah its way too fake looking.

i was actually watching that live and muted it lol, which is not to say that isiah isnt right about the play, tho i dont think hes totally right once dray dribbled into that swarm of dudes it was over there wasnt an opening there, letting kd get the rebound wldve been better but whatever obvs there wasnt much to work with from the start

i don't think Dray was going to shoot, but i wonder where he was going with that ball. anyway just a perfect storm of in-game frustration and simmering locker room issues. as a Bulls fan this is really all i have to hang my hat on.

one of the interesting things about dray is he usually does make good or often even great decisions especially on defense while behaving like a total lunatic, a rare trick

part of the problem here is him and kd both have bad personalities that totally clash too

dray is a bully and kd is a weenie, naturally dray wants to bully kd, the problem is kd has higher basketball status than dray which is of course going to drive drays sense of justice crazy

its pretty funny that dray recruited kd he must be kicking himself

exceptionally bad decision on a number of levels, didnt really improve the team any even

KD to the Warriors is a bit like A-Rod to the Yankees, a once-in-a-generation talent whose motives are questioned even from within his new team and the level of respect he engenders is not commensurate with his talent level. Of course to be completely fair the Warriors have done nothing but win titles since he arrived unlike A-Rod's Yanks!

dray is a bully and kd is a weenie, naturally dray wants to bully kd, the problem is kd has higher basketball status than dray which is of course going to drive drays sense of justice crazy

I think this nails it succinctly

it's easy & fun to think about this as the warriors picking a side but you really can't go around calling your own teammate the b word in front of the world and bringing up free agency during a heated moment in a game and stuff. given draymond's history a 1 game cool down seems pretty agreeable. i feel like to whatever extent KD's decision would be driven by draymond's personality, KD's probably already more or less figured out where he stands on that.

a cool down woulda been fine or a small fine like what happened with Kerr/Dray blowup but the public suspension was a deeper statement

yeah

seems like everyone agrees that kd is out the door and this was a hail mary by management to get him to stay (or the setup for a hail mary, trading dray?) which makes sense as theyre totally fucked if he leaves dynasty over so on and so forth

my friend who lives in the bay told me recently that one of his good friends is a waiter at a place frequented by dubs players, and that once KD and dray were both there at the same time and sat at opposite ends of the restaurant and didn't so much as say hi to each other.

losing them both is obv the worst case and now thats possible

I really do wonder what happened behind closed doors and if dray escalated things even more than what we saw on the bench, that could definitely help explain things a little

what spottie said also seems true, it’s unlikely dray was looking to shoot that, more likely he was hoping KD would run with him so he could potentially find him for the shot, the converse where KD gets double teamed and maybe has to pass to dray for the shot is def less appetizing

maybe im being too sanguine about this but i feel like this is prob an exceptionally public manifestation of a dynamic that the warriors have mostly accepted bcuz they win titles, and if KD leaves (which he prob will) it will be bcuz he's bored and not bcuz draymond is an asshole

i think that's otm