2022 NBA OFF SEASON DRAFT FREE AGENCY TAMPERING ETC

they have brogdon! and horf! and rob williams! its a deep team!

Yikes

the celtics are definitely better than those OKC teams even without KD

or would be even with KD, rather? either way

I would much rather have White than Smart if I’m the nets

hollinger: Jaylen Brown is only eligible to make $36 million in 2024-25 in an extension on his current contract, compared to the $44 million he can make as a free agent. The only way out of it, again, is if he becomes supermax eligible by making one of the three All-NBA teams this season. Otherwise, he has no rational reason to extend his deal and would become an unrestricted free agent in 2024.

that’s very odd. possible he makes third team this year but def will be an uphill battle for him

btw friends It's the 5th Annual I Love Hoops NBA Role Player Hollafame - TIEBREAKER FLASH POLL

feel like i should post this here, and that some of you will enjoy:

https://daily.bandcamp.com/album-of-the-day/wrecking-crew-sedale-threat-review

omg that is a player i have not thought about in a lonnnnng time.

There actually is a rational reason to extend his deal

its true

It's the 5th Annual I Love Hoops NBA Role Player Hollafame - Class of 2022 Inductees

friends...

Is Jimmy wearing a wig here or what

International Jimmy living his best life in Colombia 🍸

(via @JimmyButler) pic.twitter.com/akgd1sWVqw

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) July 29, 2022

Jimmy Butler went and got some premium bundles. pic.twitter.com/GYdgKY29Xp

— . (@Nigerianscamsss) July 27, 2022

What’s Jimmy Butler looking at? pic.twitter.com/pTdY4l2ccF

— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPointsApp) July 29, 2022

rip ray raposa of castanets, wonderful dude, guy I took to several blazer games, and very occasional ILH poster under the name Bear, Bear, Bear :(

oh man thats awful

rest in peace ray

very sorry to hear that

sorry clay :(

RIP

Sorry clay

sorry to hear that clay

I had one castanets song hearted in my Spotify library:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LgaaYoqYhA

May 28 and the Blazers won in OT
Carlyle agreed that the boys had played fair
clean in the paint and the calls had been square
Jason Kidd and Oden were the last ones there when the cameras had gone

ray was one of the purest blazer fans out there, he really joyed in watching the game in a way that i admired and he even eased some of my cynicism about it all at times. such a massive heart!

what a lovely song. RIP

RIP Ray.
Sorry for your loss, Clay. From that song it sounds like he was a real one.

Sorry Clay, RIP Ray.

An announcement… pic.twitter.com/KMJ7pG4R5Z

— TheBillRussell (@RealBillRussell) July 31, 2022

rip big man

one of GOATs on and off the court. i dont think anyone will ever come close to his 11 titles.

that stings. he set the standard while he played and in retirement.

An absolute legend. RIP big man.

I didn't know blocked-shots weren't officially kept track of until '73 or so. According to this, there's data on Russell for 135 games:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-fRFgkADAK80/VkG0j3zRocI/AAAAAAAAHTA/swVybP9vvpE/s0-Ic42/Russell%252520blocked%252520shots%252520135g.jpg

That averages out to 8.1 per game, which, for his career, would project to ~7,800 blocked shots--more than twice as many as Olajuwon's 3,830 (#1 on the career-leaders list).

Chamberlain averaged 8.8 for 112 known games...I know it was a much smaller game when those guys started, but still.

rest in peace, bill. hard to imagine a bigger legend of the game, even mj isn't really more important. i noticed he wasn't at the finals this year, but understandably i don't think he'd been there since 2019.

Yah the last clip they showed of him after the finals looked like he was declining pretty bad

this article from his daughter 35 years ago is incredible

https://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/14/magazine/growing-up-with-privilege-and-prejudice.html

from 1987: "The neo-conservative movement, personified by President Reagan, seems to be leading the way toward retrenchment. To me, the slogan ''Let's Make America Great Again'' is scary.

How far back do these people want to go? Moreover, if making America great again entails the perpetual existence of a poor underclass, I don't know if I want it. If it means enormous military buildup at the expense of social programs, I don't know that I'm for it."

the striking thing about russell is how he never became bitter, about anything--about how he was treated as a player, about how the game changed around him as he aged, about how his impact wasn't always fully understood. he just kept on going out there with dignity and decency till the end.

i was checking in on a boston sports forum and we've got children of old boston garden employees posting in near tears because they met him once and he made that kind of impact on them.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/bill-russell-champion-nba-civil-rights/671010/

[b]Russell had seen Barkley on television complaining about how much he paid in taxes. Russell was displeased with Barkley’s comments.

“He called me. ‘Charles Barkley, this is Bill Russell.’ I said, ‘Oh hey, Mr. Russell,’” Barkley told me.

“He said, ‘I need you to shut the fuck up.’ I said, ‘Okay.’”

“[Russell] said, ‘Son, let me tell you something,” Barkley said. “‘You grew up poor. You went to public school, and I bet the police came to your neighborhood when somebody called the cops.’ I said, ‘Yes, Mr. Russell.’ He said, ‘Somebody was paying those people, and you didn’t have any money. I don’t ever want to see your Black ass on TV complain about taxes ever again.’ And I never did.”[/b']

“He said, ‘I need you to shut the fuck up.

Fucking amazing lmao

who else can say that and get an 'okay' response from charles

sonned by bill russell in a taxation beef

lol

i don't know if it's better than the stuff that's getting published this week, but i think this frank deford feature was my first exposure to the legend of russell, and it holds up pretty well.

https://vault.si.com/vault/1999/05/10/the-ring-leader-the-greatest-team-player-of-all-time-bill-russell-was-the-hub-of-a-celtics-dynasty-that-ruled-its-sport-as-no-other-team-ever-has

it's very weird to reread something from a long time ago and realize what little parts have been stuck in my brain the whole time.

I’ll give that a read tomorrow

"Look, all I know is, the guy won two NCAA championships, 50-some college games in a row, the ['56] Olympics, then he came to Boston and won 11 championships in 13 years, and they named a f------ tunnel after Ted Williams."

love this quote

tbf williams was better than russell

and just FWIW many of those years the celtics won with him there were literally eight teams in the whole nba, iirc some others there were ten

in his final year there were 14!

thats a lotta teams

almost too many to count

i have mixed feelings about russell and his image which tbf was not totally his doing, the whole triumphalist ultimate winner thing is really unappealing to me its yankees monument park type shit making heroes and meaning out of guys who were good at ball sport is tedious and dumb IMHO and as mentioned in this case the winning part when examined is suspect, i greatly admire his participation in the civil rights movement but i do think always trying to make everything about celebrities is fundamentally a psyop, stuff like telling barkley to stfu about taxes is awesome and hilarious but most of the time when you saw him interviewed he was super serious to the point of ponderousness despite his protestations a consumer of his own mythology, also it must be said that and the evidence is available on youtube the basketball they were playing back then was just absolute garbage, guys running up and down jacking weird jumpers everyone shooting 30% while not even really being defended and russell himself on offense looked like he had never touched a basketball before its kind of shocking to see he was the dennis rodman of his day i guess, one thing to understand about that era was basketball wasnt popular, the garden wasnt even sold out during those finals, obvs the players were just working with what they had and building the foundations of the game and they should be recognized and appreciated for it, but they really were on some baseball dead ball era shit all the kinks had just not been worked out