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

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

do they play in new york or is it like the football teams where they play in new jersey

Charlotte Hornets guard LaMelo Ball suffered a fracture in his right ankle in tonight’s home game vs. Detroit.

ugh

The worst way to tank

ball bros not looking too robust

fractured ankle is a really bad injury thankfully he might as well just take all of next season off too at this rate

Where Lakers reside in standings by then could impact how soon it makes sense

ESPN Sources: LeBron James’s right foot is expected to be reassessed in two weeks to see how much progress he’s made, but timeline on return expected to extend beyond that checkpoint. Where Lakers reside in standings by then could impact how soon it makes sense for him to return.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) February 28, 2023

big sigh. we always hear these kinds of injuries and think, "oh they're just being extra cautious" and i really hope that's the case here. weird season for lebron.

looking forward to tonight's game in memphis tho—

The meeting will be the first of two over an eight-day span for teams that hooked up in a doozy in Los Angeles last month, with the Lakers prevailing 122-121 thanks to a 41-point, fourth-quarter explosion and a go-ahead three-point play by Dennis Schroder with seven seconds left.

The Lakers got 29 points from Russell Westbrook in that one. He is no longer with the team, but Anthony Davis, who missed that game, has returned to help Los Angeles win three in a row, including a remarkable 111-108, come-from-behind effort Sunday in Dallas.

i hate the lakers and even i'd love to see AD make an end-of-season mvp campaign. the dude is incredibly solid (when he's on) and i just love to watch him play.

weird season for lebron.

yup but he's now the NBA's all time leading scorer in both the regular season and the playoffs, which I think will mean more to him after he retires than a fifth ring would.

man i dunno, i think hed trade that record for another ring in a heartbeat.

he's never going to match russell for number of rings, but those scoring records put him above everyone else and ensure a preeminence that won't change for a very long time.

11 is not the standard, it’s 6 (or 7 if you want to count horry). you’d obviously never get an honest answer from lebron about anything let alone this question, but I’d be interested which is more important to him. obviously he’s already got the scoring record so it’s a bit of a moot point

also they're not mutually exclusive. he was going to break the scoring record regardless... but he could've done it on a winning team

he could've done it on a winning team

what do you suggest he could have done to ensure that?

he could've signed with the knicks

what do you suggest he could have done to ensure that?

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Tuesday, February 28, 2023 3:36 PM (two minutes ago)bookmarkflaglink

sign w/ a different franchise? what are you talking about...

you guys are talking about whether one thing is more important to lebron than the other but they're completely unrelated. if he was on a better team such a debate wouldn't even exist

but lets say for the sake of argument he had to choose one, go inside the mind of lebron so to speak, it would be the scoring title

we know the most important thing to him is living in LA. everything else falls after that including winning

every ring is a career pinnacle. i have no doubt that of all that lebron has accomplished, he'll cherish the championship he won in Cleveland the most. he won over the team that had the most regular season wins ever and featured the 'death lineup', while his team had much less talent. The near-miraculous aspect of that championship kind of puts any other ring lebron won before or might win now in a lesser light. any theoretical 'next ring' would be a highlight, but not the highlight of his career.

otoh, the career scoring achievement is a better measure of how his whole career stacks up against that of every other NBA player who ever got minutes in a game and it puts his career at the very top of that list.

they each measure different things, but putting the unique honor of the scoring record next to yet another ring, I think the record would mean more to him as the more enduring accomplishment. but I can't prove that. I'm just typing on the internet.

this is silly it’s apples and oranges, career vs one season, things of that nature