2022/23 NBA REGULAR SEASON THREAD "TANKING FOR WEMBANYAMA"

oops

personally still think trading two firsts for harden was a bad trade but maybe getting off simmons contract makes it worth it on its own

yeah youd have to give up at least a first to get someone to take simmons at this point

harden is overpaid and very odd but he is playing good basketball this season, which is not to say i would want him on my team, still worked out pretty well for philly tho

not as well as trading for haliburton tho

kinda think you could take half the shooting guards in the league and put them on this sixers team and they'd still be third in the east. the trade of simmons was all about getting further in the postseason and if you wanna put that on harden, we all know the deal there. but maybe i'm just being a hater

just looked at simmon's contract, due $40M two seasons from now yikes

yea I'll give Harden credit I kinda expected this to be the year he'd fall off a cliff and he's actually been playing pretty well

hes even changed his game to be more of a distributor and team player credit where its due

you guys are suckers

i stand with jordan

listen you have to give credit where its due that just a rule

now do i think the sixers are serious contenders of course not cmon but harden has done good the situation had all the signs of a massive fiasco but its actually working out

this year at least lol

it will be really really funny if he actually walks in free agency

doubt anyone with cap space has any interest in signing him which might allow philly to give him a big but short deal which is certainly in their best interest, giving him a big long deal wld be guaranteed to end in tears

sometimes that's just how we like things to end people are complicated creatures

thats really true

well the rumor that must be so omnipresent that nba reporter types feel comfortable mentioning it on podcasts all the time now is that he wants to go back to houston, which will have a lot of cap space and some incentive to be good next year bcuz they owe picks to OKC. but i think that would require such an epic playoff meltdown that a. returning to philly becomes untenable and b. harden is basically like "i'm so bad in the playoffs that i'm gonna go sign w/ the worst team in the NBA and not have to worry about this anymore." it's certainly not out of the question, but prob not very likely

theres no way harden isnt just making up the houston stuff to give himself leverage why would houston want him back it doesnt make sense hes the last guy in the world you want around young players and he just got done fucking the franchise over two years ago

im willing to conceded theres a possibility the rockets are just psychotically incompetent but man that would be a very bad decision

watched like 10 mins of the hawks/hornets last night and it occurred to me that i don't really see/hear much about lamelo anymore. is he having a weird year or something?

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, February 14, 2023 11:13 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

the franchise is just too dire

Simmons on the other hand looks broken, he's still making those "when you accidentally hit the pass instead of shoot in 2K"-type plays every game, despite being on a team that nobody expects anything from anymore. there's just something fundamentally wrong with that guy.

anyone who makes a point of calling himself 'simmo the savage' on a neon sign inside his own home probably has deep-seated problems with self-esteem

i mean, there have been other examples of guys who had the worst moment of their careers in highly visible playoff games and were broken mentally after that and were never the same. nick anderson in particular comes to mind... also john starks to some degree. simmons is a bit different bcuz he was younger and was a number one overall pick, but in other ways it's an age old tale

simmons probably also an example of a guy who caved under the pressure to live up to the future star reputation which followed for for a long time before the nba, like as soon as any self-doubt crept it, it just spread exponentially within with every miscue.

sort of the polar opposite of so many guys who succeed. and probably seeing those polar opposites all the time makes it even worse for him.

also just had a ton of flaws in his game making the whole situation that much more difficult

plus the not liking basketball thing

Celtics depth chart vs. Bucks

Guards: White, Brogdon, Pritchard, Davison
Wings/Forwards: Hauser, G. Williams, Muscala
Bigs: R. Williams**, Horford**, Kornet, Griffin, Kabengele

**Questionable

OUT: Tatum, Brown, Smart, Gallinari

— Brian Robb (@BrianTRobb) February 14, 2023

ah celtics punting tonight cmon

yeah once it got to the point where he couldnt even shoot in public or even practice without being self conscious about it was curtains xp

this Bucks game has been EXCRUCIATING

how about now?

HOW THE FUCK did Hauser make that???? christ

:)

Bucks vs. random dudes are always like this, it's the most predictable shit ever

like I knew someone was hitting a 3 there but what an absolute moon shot

uh random dudes you mean the eastern conference player of the week for a team that went 4-0

apparently coach bud used his challenge like two minutes into this game? what a legend.

you know what I mean whenever a team pulls their starters vs. Milwaukee it's always really close and the Bucks will turn it over 37 times

ya im just playin

celtics are deep tho

yeah they are but man Milwaukee looked unstoppable these last 3 weeks it's crazy they're gonna lose this one at home

this game isnt over!

yeah this celtics lineup can't be that fun to play against, lot of defensive effort and threatening shooters if nothing else

Giannis going 7-15 at the line in a game that went to OT really sucks too

good news Jrue has been incredible

yeah that play he blew up resulted from hauser not being confident inside the arc which is something he'll need to get better at

lmao 2 free throws he didn't even touch him

should not have let them play there--c's should have held to take a 3 for the game