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

Yah they were kinda fun when lonzo was playing

i still have real doubts they were actually better than last year’s east final 4 (boston, miami, milwaukee, philly) but clearly there was something going on there that is miles from what they look like now

also find it a bit odd we still have no idea (afaik) whether the pelicans let lonzo walk in the first place over medical concerns & to what degree the bulls knew or should’ve known what they were getting into in that regard

bcuz the counter narrative on bulls twitter is that this was an excellent team that fell apart when their lynchpin role player suffered a weirdly catastrophic knee injury & you can’t fully fault their front office for how this played out. but that narrative falls apart if the pelicans sold them a lemon

yeah gotta think lonzos knee was already fucked

they are obviously missing the things that he brought, but that team was also way way over its head.

would have been a good team if basketball had separate offenses and defenses like football

Yah when they were hot last year it was demar on an unsustainable heater plus hitting all kinda random game winnners. They were a tier below at their best. Not where you wanna be with the price they paid (money +draft capital)

they werent first place good but maybe generally of second round quality if not as good as any of the actual second round teams

yeah they were better than toronto when healthy which was the only other team that finished above them even with their team breaking down. if they had been in the 4-5 with philly it’s certainly not inconceivable that they could’ve won

in the 4-5 with lonzo etc healthy

Yah totally fine place to be if the core is coming up on their primes and not looking back at them. The cavs did similar moves and are set up nicely for now and the future

not a dunk contest aficionado but that was great

best one in a while

considering my last week and a half i will consider it auspicious that a guy name mcclung won the thing

lung szn!

Showstopping. 🎬

It's the 2023 #ATTSlamDunk contest champion Mac McClung Mixtape#StateFarmSaturday pic.twitter.com/c2ClPqNO77

— NBA (@NBA) February 19, 2023

three point & dunk contests were both fun tonight. dame beat hield on a buzzer beater

love to heat

After clearing waivers, Kevin Love plans to sign with the Miami Heat, his agent Jeff Schwartz of @Excelbasketball tells ESPN. pic.twitter.com/c1Ff4tLfKP

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) February 19, 2023

also signing cody zeller off the street… welcome back cody

Nikola Jokic will be the first player in #NBA history to start an #NBAAllStar game on his birthday, per @TheSteinLine.

Happy birthday to Joker, who turns 28 today. pic.twitter.com/oAU1WiZCs9

— Joel Rush (@JoelRushNBA) February 19, 2023

big birthday honey

lebron does not really have the live entertainment charisma gene

he really tries but it’s just not there

he's a cornball, really

embiid and jokic being on the same team is a good subplot

kyrie getting arguably the most cheers from the crowd okay

lebron and silver seemed pretty excited to announce him too

surely there's a way to make all star basketball actually watchable

not really, no. new fourth quarter logic usually gets pretty intersting

burna boy halftime show is an inspired choice

oh wow it's a whole afrobeats show

just turned it on and the two celtics are playing one on one very nice

the weird scoring format has failed to trick the players into playing hard this year they got used to it

salute to joe mazzulla for playing tatum the entire game so he cld get the mvp

so much fucking around, thankfully dame put a stop to it

yeah there was no trying at all this year, had to be one of the worst ones ever

I couldn’t even watch, had it on mute and when I looked up it was just some dude dunking on no one or a 45 footer clanking back to the arc

I would rather watch 8 teams of 3 on 3 playing a one night half court 21 tournament.

they should just full-on embrace a 2K collab, 2v2, 3v3, 1v1, ProAm with the best streetball players teaming up w established stars, BlackTop etc

russ 2 clips

ESPN story on Russell Westbrook committing to sign with the Clippers: https://t.co/ynhsDDCoTg

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) February 20, 2023

I would rather watch 8 teams of 3 on 3 playing a one night half court 21 tournament.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Monday, February 20, 2023 1:45 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

they should just full-on embrace a 2K collab, 2v2, 3v3, 1v1, ProAm with the best streetball players teaming up w established stars, BlackTop etc

― Tracer Hand, Monday, February 20, 2023 3:29 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

there are def lots of cool things they could do, i think a four team tournament of nine man teams would be nice get more players in mix, but the main problem is the players dont care about the game and you cant make them

maybe a big cash prize would do it but it would create all sorts of other problems, you dont really want too much complaining about the refs getting selected for the game etc in this fun exhibition, also it just might not work since the best nba players are for the most part already extremely rich

what are the clippers doing

https://i.imgur.com/37XQ70r.png

I love this for the other west contenders

i was gonna say, if youre phx this is a great move

btw nba pundits seem to think that phoenix is a tru contender now that they have kd but im not seeing it theyre soft shallow kd is overrated (but tbf still very good) one of their main guys is deandre ayton another is 37 y/o chris paul none of their guys get to the rim they lost all their wings

on the other hand the west is pretty wide open, but im def not picking the suns

I think they’re terrifying tbh particularly in the playoff and in crunch time. of course they’re an injury away from flaming out, but I would not want to play them

They’ve also got like 20 games to figure it out and gel, that’s really hard to do with basically a whole new team hierarchy and scheme

i lean more towards lagoon’s side of the argument. it feels like a lot has to go right for them and very little can go wrong. it’s hard to argue w the theoretical upside but the margin of error seems very small to me. even when fully healthy they’re gonna be relying on guys in the playoffs that would barely get on the floor for other contenders & we know one of their 3 main guys is getting hurt for some period of time at minimum

also maybe it was simply a bad match up but we just watched KD look extremely mortal in the playoffs last year