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

was thinking what this game is missing a dillon brooks dustup

Lol at Niang. Could do without the WWE at the end here.

Great game. Hope the Sixers didn't waste all their energy here, because I'm going to the game Saturday vs. Celts.

nice

will be touching to see embiid reunite with his dad al horford

yeah, yeah, I know.

I've been pretty sanguine all year cause I expect another second round loss. It's not a bad place to be tbh.

wld be funny if the sixers finally make a run after everyones given up on them

forgot bamba was on the lakers kind of a random guy

pbkr have fun! since i was at the corresponding game in boston a couple weeks ago so i feel like we can do a cosmic high-5 of some kind.

Will report from courtside (well, second level).

Austin Rivers said KAT is running but still a couple weeks out from playing, going to be a very weird situation integrating him back into the lineup given how little actual game time they've had to sort out the lineups and him playing with Gobert. Especially now when he returns to a team that is definitely Ant's team and not his.

He doesn’t seem like the kinda guy to recognize and adjust but we shall see

self awareness has not been his strong suit

not even getting into the price paid, but the Gobert deal really makes it awkward because you have three mini-generations now (Ant/McDaniels at 21/22, KAT at 27, and Gobert at 30), the deal was obviously made to win-now and maximize KAT's prime years but in his absence it's become clear that Ant should have been the focus all along.

kat is a good player but def not one of the top tier dudes. buying in as a 2nd banana will make or break him on that team. i wonder if them dumping d russell was a way of letting kat know hes not dictating anything in the org from here on out

I think there were frustrations over Dlo that were bigger than KAT, but also you can't go get Mike Conley and not see that it's anything other than trying to make Rudy work at the expensive of KAT's supposed BFF

also Dlo is great when he's hot and incredibly frustrating when he's not shooting well. He doesn't really want to be a point guard. I think with KAT coming back there might have been a thought that there just wasn't enough room for DLo to get the touches and shot volume he wants, Conley will defer and assist way more.

neither of them are part of the future so you might as well get a guy that can help you more in the now and is a good locker presence

this is probably the fundamental reason why they are a bad franchise but most teams go looking for players to fit specific on-court roles but the wolves seem like they go out looking for team leaders in free agency (pat bev, kyle anderson, now conley) just because Ant is too young and goofy and KAT is such a weirdo and no one likes Gobert

cld def see a kat trade at some point the fit is weird and hes still got a ton of value

xp that's a great point

well they did go out and look to fill a specific on court role in making the gobert trade bcuz they came to the conclusion that they couldn't win with KAT playing center. but instead of trading KAT or attacking other parts of the roster to compensate for that, they did something insane

which is to say that there's structural flaws to KAT's game that the t wolves have never figured out how to build around, which is another way that bad franchises stay bad

i think on a macro level the wolves were so depressing in the period between KG and KAT that once KAT established himself as a legitimately good player they treated him like a golden goose who must be protected at all costs. but the outside world saw long ago that he's prob not the kind of guy who flourishes w/ that level of coddling. i think you can at once forgive the wolves for this -- perhaps up to doggedly pursuing d'angelo russell in order to please KAT -- while also acknowledging that it's likely the root of all their issues as a franchise

this was an all timer of a lineup

https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/MIN/2008.html

only Al averaging over 20 ppg, only 3 players averaging double digits

ah big al jeff very nice the last low post man

Big Al was the centerpiece of the KG trade and juuust squeezed into the era of teams defensibly entertaining the idea of building around an old school post-up big. What’s really jarring is the other guys who were playing ~30 mpg on that roster: Ryan Gomes, Marko Jaric, Bassy Telfair… oof

nasty nasty roster there. i have a hard time believing that roster could average more than 80 points per game in todays nba

just a horrible team and also built around the most boring player ever

ooh I remember some Bucks lineups that looked like that

sadly his site is down but there is still some evidence of Rashad McCant's poetry online

https://www.slamonline.com/nba/from-yeats-to-mccants/

he came to me with open arms, like a hawk embracing his young,
and he fed me food out his mouth but I was starving for knowledge.
the type of knowledge that can’t be fed by hand or voice, but by heart.
so when he spoke he touched my soul, and my soul would smack me if I didn’t listen
the words he spoke weren’t for the ears to hear.
because his words were real, it’s hard to hear the truth when lies are so loud.
I put my earphones on so I can hear nothing and see everything.
lies could never steal my attention when he …
he … spoke.

(it's about KG)

damn yes we need more kg poetry in the world to feed the nations famished soul

poetry about kg, tho poetry by kg would be great too

another great moment in Wolves lore:

Minnesota point guard Troy Hudson, or T-Hud as he's known in the music community, released his debut rap album on July 17th. The album, entitled Undrafted, sold 78 copies in its first week.

he was unlike most of his peers was actually good at rapping iirc

btw kevin love is starting for the miami heat up in this bitch

he had another one called The Stress of Both Worlds that was decent iirc

oh and giannis is playing i was hoping he would miss like seven games

he's in the locker room now, looked in pain

yeah that was weird wonder what happened its not my fault

he should sit a few games though

im only asking for a three or four game cushion for the celtics nothing excessive

theyre saying he bumped knees w someone

heat still getting crushed tho smh

yea hopefully it's precautionary

he didnt look like he was in terrible shape for someone who just got injured

Bobby Portis still legit

this Bulls/Nets halftime score is a typo right? What the fuck

Nets can’t hit any threes.

lol thats not good

THANASIS SIGHTING

Bulls were up by 50, now only 43. They can blow this, I know it.