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

even if russ brought in fans, clips can't be hurting for cash. are gms/coaches really just blinded by former stardom, the numbers are right there for all to see

all the reporting has been that paul george advocated for russ and kawhi was on board too, but what if you told those guys oops we lost the contract in our office 365 folders, sorry!

and running bench units is the only role where you could potentially argue that he has value. and yet they're rolling him out there as part of a terrible starting line up ??

feel like it kinda gets lost in the mix of all russ stuff that hes the worst crunch time player ever too

yeah he clearly isnt a starter any more, with what they are paying him they should have no problem playing him 22 minutes off the bench and have him sitting at the end of halfs, lue will adjust id imagine

there was a time where i thought the clippers were taking things a little more seriously as far as championship basketball goes but now i think they’re probably not doing that.

LILLARD!

goodness gracious dame pic.twitter.com/fK2plGjxSe

— Steve Jones Jr. (@stevejones20) February 27, 2023

64 and counting 12 threes !

I know it ain't anything like the Greg Oden situation but man Dame being saddled to that team kinda feels the same way

feel like it kinda gets lost in the mix of all russ stuff that hes the worst crunch time player ever too

comparing dame to Greg oden in any way other than they’re both blazers is really odd to me, plenty of greats have whiled their primes away in broken situations, oden was a classic bust with a bunch of bad bones

71!

idk just a Blazer makin you think what could have been, its weird that there's a dude playing at such an insane level that you just don't think about that much. probably just me

71 for dame, damn

he was so gassed at the end lol

yeah theres no dame/oden correlation other than franchise. more of a patrick ewing thing where hes a star that never got over the hump sticking with one franchise

he's just a weird player I guess, consistently like the 8th or 9th best guy in the league but he'll have 4 of the 10 craziest statlines in a given season, I think Kyrie is a bit like that too

also maybe a bit tough to remember but those teams oden was around were actually pretty good, the Roy/Lamarcus years. They were dull (McMillan ball) but they were playoffs regulars

damn dame

DAME POSTER 😱 pic.twitter.com/RC2Q537cr5

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) February 27, 2023

trying to think of other nba players with touch like jokics. z-bo comes to mind. kyrie maybe. who am i missing?

clippers just can’t get over the hump with denver

really hope we get that playoff series tho. would be a blast

west playoffs should be fun all around

I certainly hope westbrook starts

lol

despite no announcement of such, hollinger suspects snyder took the hawks job bcuz he will have a heavy say in personnel matters

Why, exactly, would Quin Snyder take this job, given the Hawks’ cap situation, limited future draft capital and general stuck-in-the-middleness?

He wasn’t going to lack for suitors, that’s for sure. Snyder could easily have bided his time until this summer, seen if one of the league’s other plum jobs came open (Philly? Clippers? Dallas?) and given himself a more realistic pathway to a championship. That he didn’t is a tell that the Hawks made it worth his while to commit now, and that likely goes beyond finances. Our Shams Charania already reported that Snyder will be paid in the $8 million a year range, making him among the league’s highest-paid coaches, and he has the security of a deal that runs four years beyond this season (a fairly typical contract length these days for a proven coach).

However, the real question is how much juice Snyder will have when it comes to the roster’s composition. He had considerable friction over those decisions in Utah; it’s inconceivable that he’d fully outsource the roster-building to the league’s least experienced front office and the owner’s 27-year-old kid playing fantasy GM. It seems highly likely that the Hawks granted Snyder major input on important decisions. (“Input” usually ends up defined, roughly, as “direct line around the GM to the owner” and “tie-breaking vote if GM and coach don’t agree.”)

sounds like a healthy org structure

i think its good for the coach to have real input into personnel decisions but an official veto idk

ive never seen it reported but i suspect what lead to brad jumping from coach to gm with the celtics is that he was in on the personnel conversations and after a while to reflect on the outcomes it was clear he was good at it

it's not out of the question that landry fields is good at the job... he's very young but he did put in real work in the spurs org it's not like they hired him right off the court. that combined w/ a really good coach could actually be great for them. but typically when an owner is involved to the degree it's being reported here where the son is making trades and hiring his friends... that's generally really bad and i'm operating under the assumption that's where this is headed until further notice

re hollingers post if snyder was holding out for personnel power why not hold out for a real gm-coach role

he might just like the hawks team and think that those big jobs arent going to be available

tho hollinger prob actually knows what the situation is but cant report second hand stuff or whatever

hes from atlanta i think

i think hollinger underrates a bit why the hawks would be appealing to a coach, i doubt snyder was making a call based on future draft pick flexibility. they have some really good players & will be in the thick of playoff contention

the hawks did just promote fields like 2 months ago so effectively pushing him out for snyder would be really chaotic... it's possible the GM-coach practice is just over in the NBA and so there was nothing for him to hold out for. i can see the pitch being "look around, your voice will matter as much as anyone's here" and snyder finding that to be believable based on the make up of their front office and still getting a unique level of power compared to other potential available high level jobs

certainly if he really wants to have "veto power w/ the owner" level influence places like philly and LA would then be non-starters despite having teams that are theoretically closer to winning titles than atlanta

look around you what you see my idiot son my idiot sons friend landry fields whatever that is

idk just a Blazer makin you think what could have been, its weird that there's a dude playing at such an insane level that you just don't think about that much. probably just me

― frogbs, Sunday, February 26, 2023 8:29 PM

blazers are real good at keeping these guys around. drexler eventually got tired of it and immediately got a ring out of his impatience. glad they won though; they're the kind of team to have somebody put up 71 and still lose.

also read a short thing about how they drug tested dame immediately after the game. like they didn't even let him shower first. c'mon guys, it was against the rockets.

Sources: There's fear Lakers star LeBron James is likely to miss an extended period of time with his right foot injury. James suffered the injury in Sunday's win over Dallas, played through it, and belief is he will be sidelined an indefinite amount.

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) February 28, 2023

oh man the timing could not be worse

no lebron psychodrama in the play-ins :(

rip lakers rip lebron

let’s see MVP AD

Is that the same foot that was an issue in the game he broke the record?

[practicing in the mirror for my podcast appearance] man, it would have been so cool to see lebron make a playoff push with this new team

Is that the same foot that was an issue in the game he broke the record?

― Chyiv Kyiv (Fetchboy), Monday, February 27, 2023 8:06 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

other one

breaking: message board/celtics fan page i love hoops “too scared” to talk about eastern conference juggernaut new york knicks

they're okay

props to shams for making a relatively straightforward news dump sound like it was machine translated into laotian and back

breaking: message board/celtics fan page i love hoops “too scared” to talk about eastern conference juggernaut new york knicks

― avatár the way of watár (voodoo chili), Monday, February 27, 2023 10:16 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i dont know them