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

now whether he's a heel on the court & w/in the context of the NBA is a different question. the grizzles as a team seem to be rapidly headed in that direction

there’s a pattern of unquestionably sociopathic behavior at this point, not great

this green hue on the hornets court is an abomination

is it sociopathic behavior, or just street shit? calling him a sociopath feels like painting with a very wide brush

hmm

not excusing any of his behavior, or saying that a multi-millionaire nba player should be worried about what “the streets” think of him

it's hard to completely extricate yourself from that life, money doesn't completely insulate you from violence anymore. and ja in particular probably feels more kinship with someone like nba youngboy (whose music the grizz exclusively listen to during practice) than someone like jayson tatum

yeah man…this multimillionaire grown ass adult doesn’t need me defending him

in more wholesome news, kevin durant seems to still be good

i hate everything about the hornets fire this team to the moon (seattle) please thx

you know whats funny how much players check for blood after they dont get a call, its never there

except that one time lebron crushed isaiah stewart

jokic’s arms to thread (not really they’re grody)

"That was clean! Play on!" pic.twitter.com/lMBCzEsrEq

— Harrison Wind (@HarrisonWind) February 26, 2023

yeah whats up with them i dont like it

his horses keep tossin him into the brambles

no one with fucked up cuts on their arms should be allowed to win three straight mvps sorry just how i feel

your feelings are valid but wrong

he should at least wear some sleeves

MODS!

its nasty

is jokic goth an investigation

i hate this ja stuff, just the worst smalltime bullshit that he thinks he can get away with bc now he's the biggest fish in a very small pond

wow apparently i have been yellow carded by a mod this is cancel culture at its worst

randle loves it when the knicks go up big cause he can hero ball without people yelling at him

feels good

brunsanity has been fun

Brunson daps up Coach Thibs! pic.twitter.com/EXd7Xb7Itq

— KnicksMuse (@KnicksMuse) March 2, 2023

tonight is the first every dame vs cj game my heart can't take it

Kinda cool the Knicks have figured it out a bit.

Dame making some truly stupid shots again tonight

Having a pretty special season

too bad about the team

now he's the biggest fish in a very small pond

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, March 1, 2023 8:54 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Been tearing through those kids book huh

big sigh ja morant. what a silly man. i remember seeing an article on r/nba only like three weeks ago and there was another player (don't recall who; maybe a former teammate?) and he was basically saying this about ja:

worried about what “the streets” think of him

the tone was very "c'mon bruh" and now the news of jm roughing up teenagers comes to light.

gonna stick with "C'MON BRUH!!!" on this one.

thinkin bout the cavs after watching them last night, theyve got a lot of talent but its doesnt necessarily all work together theyve got two bigs who cant shoot and a hole on the wing, and why are they playing the slowest pace in the league doesnt make any sense with all the young guys they have, seems like they just let mitchell and garland mismatch hunt instead of having a real offense, in conclusion prob need to trade allen for a wing at some point and trade bickerstaff for a better coach

crazy thing is theyre still quite good, if they patch those problems and continue to develop their guys they should be contenders before long

if they overcome the aforementioned hurdles i guess the biggest question is if in the era of big wings you can really build a contender when your two best offensive players guards, the warriors did it but klay is much bigger more wingy than mitchell, fwiw the worries about the cavs point of attack d being bad havent really panned out due to mitchell trying much harder than he has in the past, altogether great season from him he is much better than i thought

and fwiw mitchell plays a lot more like a 6-4 guy than his listed 6-1 due to being very strong and have insanely long (6-10!) arms

i think they have a really strong regular season formula. two rim protectors and two elite ball handler scorer guards & all their guys are young and play every game if they're healthy. feels like a high floor team. i'm skeptical of the ceiling aspect once we get to the playoffs tho just bcuz i feel like if you don't have line up flexibility and big/small optionality right now it's gonna be really hard to compete w/ the best teams. i just don't see what their chess moves are in a 7 game series... benching allen or mobley but then putting in who? more minutes for cedi osman and lavert? i just feel like if they can't win playing their style then they're pretty much fucked

the good news is that they were prob the single biggest beneficiaries of the kyrie/KD trades, their first round match up went from a guaranteed series w/ either philly or the good version of the nets to in all likelihood the knicks, or possibly the heat or this new less good version of the nets. if they get the knicks in particular i think they'll be heavily favored and shouldn't have too much trouble advancing. so long as they're merely competitive in round 2 i think they'd feel pretty great about their season. vs boston or milwaukee i could see them going out w/ one of those respectable 4-2 losses where the higher seed feels threatened for maybe one game before shutting shit down.

also if you look at the top 10 teams in the league right now... there isn't very many that you can say w/ real confidence that the nucleus of the team will be around for 3-5 more seasons and/or there's still moves to be made to improve the roster even further. i think you could say that about boston, denver, memphis... that's probably it? the bucks simply bcuz of giannis even if the middleton/jrue/brook core ages out or moves on in part. but w/ so many teams kinda all in on slightly older teams they're sitting in a nice position even given that they're out a lot of picks and are in cleveland

yeah agreed basically, theyre fine for now but need to make changes to take the next step, tho i would rate their chances of losing to the knicks higher than you, and it would be a bummer, nice for knicks fans tho maybe well get some more crazed fan videos

one problem for them taking that next step is they already broke the bank for mitchell

its still doable but its not like they can just throw a bunch of draft picks at the raptors and receive og anunoby in return

yeah it will require some creativity. i'm sure it's more likely that they try and make some moves on the margins but they have young tradable stars if they want to make a big move

i guess the fear is that they become a sort of dame-era blazers of the midwest where they're consistently a second tier team in their conference while refusing to trade homegrown guys like garland or mobley or allen the way the blazers never broke up the dame-cj pairing even if it could've balanced out the roster and improved it overall. but still i think they're in a pretty good spot relative to teams like philly, miami, atlanta, toronto, chicago etc

also i’ll take the under on a thibs team’s playoff run every time. brunson makes them more dangerous than the last time they were in the 4-5 running everything thru randle. but still

i was thinking that too and i went to check the minutes load and thibs is playing all the guys 35 a night so he may have learned

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/35765518/cavaliers-skipping-steps-east-reshuffle-creates-playoff-path

bontemps story on cavs

xp i think aside from the fatigue factor i do buy into the theory that his general coaching style of emphasizing playing super hard defense every possession and such squeezes as many regular seasons wins out of his rosters as possible but doesn’t leave a lot of upside once they reach the playoffs. the knicks feel maxed out to me currently, i don’t see what next level they hit. brunson putting up 30 ppg in a series is the one thing i can think of but he also feels susceptible to the kinda series trae young had vs the heat last year

also thibs just isn’t the most creative & flexible coach tho maybe the cavs are a good match up for them in that regard bcuz of the roster issues we were discussing

part of squeezing out the regular season wins was playing his starters big minutes, so if you account for the fact hes not doing that + less fatigue i think we need to adjust our thibs math