2019-20 NBA Regular Degular Season thread

its wild how much better all the greats are than kobe at the advanced stats but he had like 15 all-nba selections, a whole mess of all-defense selections, 5 rings, 2 fmvp, 1 real mvp. kobe's career is a study in contrasts.

xp

yeah his best argument is longevity which certainly isnt nothin

I never really hated Kobe even as a non-Lakers fan not while Derek Fisher was sticking around at least. At the end Kobe was becoming more likable. His final game was hilarious of course.

Second best argument was “I’m not fish“

i think i placed kobe as one of the villains of much of my adult life and i kinda feel like batman w/o the joker rn

kobe meticulously planned then executed becoming more likable i mean cmon ppl right

he was probably the first sports person i truly hated (sports hate). I found him insufferable and thought his final season lovefest farewell tour was a bizarre stain on the league. cad otm i loved cheering against him, more than any other athlete. i loved him on the 08 redeem team. def agree his second act seemed to be headed in a real positive direction. i hope he truly changed his ways after aspen but we'll really never know. news hit me more cos he really seemed to love his daughter(s) and was on the way to her basketball thing...

there's a great what-if scenario with kobe that i'd like to really dig into sometime, like if he had been in a small market and gotten 1 championship in an advantageous year but otherwise put up the same stats how would he be thought of

he just did some weird psycho dad coach shit with his daughters team like 6 months ago

yah if charlotte kept him or something xp

one of my stronger memories of being at a bball game was at the rose garden sitting pretty close to the floor surrounded by teenagers w/ kobe jerseys (they were ubiquitous when the lakers came to town). this was maybe 2009 or so, and the lakers were winning but double digits going into the fourth. this kid a couple rows in front of me has two kobe jerseys, one on his chest and one he's using like a flag, just waving it around in that showy boastful laker fan way. the blazers came back in the fourth and won and the absolute slump to his gait as he walked past my seat is seared in my memory

there's a great what-if scenario with kobe that i'd like to really dig into sometime, like if he had been in a small market and gotten 1 championship in an advantageous year but otherwise put up the same stats how would he be thought of

― call all destroyer, Sunday, January 26, 2020 11:35 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

prob something like wade

xp truly nothing sweeter than a dejected kobe stan. witnessed it many time vs the suns (and the opposite of course)

xp lol wow, thank you for just taking care of that for me. i mean you're right, that's what it would have been.

just doin my job

I liked Kobe well enough as a player during the failure seasons, I think success + the presence of Phil made him twice as intolerable but again I found him less hateable than some other laker scrubs from the era.

this kid a couple rows in front of me has two kobe jerseys, one on his chest and one he's using like a flag, just waving it around in that showy boastful laker fan way. the blazers came back in the fourth and won and the absolute slump to his gait as he walked past my seat is seared in my memory

― Clay, Sunday, January 26, 2020 11:38 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i can jusr see this

very vividly

the only time i ever left a hoops game early was when the lakers destroyed the spurs in ~2010 or so, the bandwagon SA-born-and-bred laker fan contingent was just too much to handle past the first half.

speaking to the heart of a nation in pain

“They were inspired by what he did on the field, what he meant off the field” — Pete Buttigieg on Kobe Bryant, who played basketball pic.twitter.com/nv67WSz4UK

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 27, 2020

this is the first time ive actually felt bad for mayor pete bc this is such a colossal self-own

Did you guys see how Trump or probably one of his staffers kinda copied Obama’s tweet?

Kobe was a legend on the court and just getting started in what would have been just as meaningful a second act. To lose Gianna is even more heartbreaking to us as parents. Michelle and I send love and prayers to Vanessa and the entire Bryant family on an unthinkable day.

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) January 26, 2020

Kobe Bryant, despite being one of the truly great basketball players of all time, was just getting started in life. He loved his family so much, and had such strong passion for the future. The loss of his beautiful daughter, Gianna, makes this moment even more devastating....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2020

“kinda”

lmao man what a world

i don't know how you come back from that but i feel like mayor pete stans prob proudly say "sportsball" xxp

its funny cause hes so expertly executing the boilerplate otherwise

1) the thoughts expressed in both are relatively obvious and are a good match what you can fit into a tweet, but they are not a particularly close match in their language or weight of emotion. 2) no way in hell did Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America, compose that tweet.

The odd use of despite makes me think it’s a poorly plagiarized version tbh

still the all time greatest kobe gif
https://media1.giphy.com/media/a7JyJuA7gjV2o/source.gif

display name checks out

lol

i don't know how you come back from that but i feel like mayor pete stans prob proudly say "sportsball" xxp

OTM

this really all feels very wrong for such a fun good times league, the best league in all sports if i'm being real w/myself.

you'll remember pete when the west wind moves upon the fields of kobe

I decided to search Buttigieg sportsball to reinforce the stan hypothesis and came across a tweet so cringeworthy that I hesitate to post it because I don't want traffic linking back to here but I also feel like I have to share it because it has to be read to be believed:

twitter.com/SoReasonable/status/1218506379205529601

When that happens they will inevitably learn the truth about circumcision. #Pete2020

https://media.giphy.com/media/uOW1f99Beb2q4/giphy.gif

feeling very privileged to not know what the truth could be. the foreskin is actually still there?

sorry i missed that the entire twitter conversation there was about circumcision

they actually add more?

The fuck is this bullshit in the hoops thread?

fyi it began with a tweet embed

ban tweets

yah no idea whats going on here.

everyone just watch zion highlights
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZUu5vct4YE

also this marcus thompson piece on kobe was good i think.
https://theathletic.com/1564051/2020/01/27/thompson-kobe-bryants-death-hit-me-hard-and-even-worse-because-of-what-we-had-in-common/

on his podcast, BS revealed kobe once prevented him from writing about a conversation they'd shared on "leadership". thanks for everything, kobe. rip.

i don't know how you come back from that but i feel like mayor pete stans prob proudly say "sportsball" xxp

― Clay, Sunday, January 26, 2020 9:57 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

truth bomb

xxpost Zion is so good at getting his own rebound and finishing, crazy

he just always seems to have the ball at the rim lol

he and lonzo have a great connection already

yeah theres gonna be a lot of dunks