2023/24 NBA REGULAR SEASON THREAD "THANKING FOR WEMBANYAMA"

i think the way they did it means there is basically zero downside for the fan — if you don’t want to pay attention that’s very simple & it won’t impact your ability to follow the season otherwise. the 3-4 games in vegas should be pretty fun. i have a hard time getting worked up about this in a negative or positive way until proven otherwise

I'm curious why the office thinks it needs stuff like this and the play-in tournament

You just know that they held dozens upon dozens of meetings about whether to do the tournaments and what they should look like if they did, and focus groups were held, and white papers written, so that all the league front office people looked smart, busy and productive. But most especially like they were intently focused on making more money for the owners.

I mean easiest way is to make the regular season matter more is to reduce the number of games and playoff teams but I don't think any major sports league has ever done that

personally I wish they'd kick around that All-Star 4th quarter idea more, where you take the highest score at the end of 3, add 24, and say whoever hits that score wins. that feels like it would make the games feel way more exciting, everyone loves game winning shots and it would get rid of some of the gamesmanship in the final minute that grinds down the whole experience. they should at least try doing it for a preseason

i can answer that question pretty simply for you — the NBA’s revenue is still largely based on television money. the league is renegotiating its TV deals with the major networks. the major networks have told them (slash they realized themselves), your regular season is devalued and that has to be accounted for in this deal. so the NBA is now trying to reinvigorate its regular season so it can still hang the networks over a balcony and shake out their pockets

an important addendum to my post is that because salaries are tied to the cap and the cap is tied to TV money, the players have equal incentive as the league office to prop up the value of the regular season

think silver is prob feeling pretty confident re trying new things after the success of the play in tourney + new lottery format too

for sure

yeah, worth a shot anyway, like you said no downside

i think i’d prefer the league be overly experimental than overly static, if i had to choose

true, not everything will work obv but if you have a league built on constant evolution then it's easy to pivot as needed.

like they already did away with the all star game draft. was fun but probably ran its course.

Allow G League teams to draft the 2nd round instead of the NBA teams then enforce relegation on the bottom 2 NBA and top 2 G League teams.

Elite https://t.co/HNFc4A6BAc pic.twitter.com/9AFSMnfwX7

— Automatic (@automaticnba) November 3, 2023

haha

a man of the people

hoop collective pod did a long segment on the grizz today. apparently the offensive numbers when bane/smart/jarren on the court together have been completely ghastly. also derrick rose has been like a -100,000,000 (approximate) in his minutes this year

was also reading this "convo" on the athletic between hollinger and kelly iko and iko said this of marcus smart:

Defensively, he’s definitely been a step slower than what we’ve become accustomed to. He’s tried to make up for it by being more aggressive and taking more risks which hasn’t paid off but I’d imagine he improves his defensive output by the 15-20 game mark. I know the Grizzlies probably want that done as soon as possible.

Jalen Williams said on the JJ pod that before he hit a growth spurt, he was 5'10" with a 6'11" wingspan!!!

lol tie his shoes without bending down

marcus defense was not totally up to his standards last year fwiw, hes put a lot of miles on diving around and whatnot xp

celtics sold at the right time

yeah sad but true

and they somehow got a better player and draft picks back

Lol at this promo of the players trying to muster enthusiasm for the in-season tournament. They should hold up a newspaper so we know the hostages are still alive.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F-Bs6_ka8AA1NPU?format=jpg&name=small

puro pinche grayson

its pretty funny that the suns chose lowriders to celebrate chicano culture but at the same time yeah theyre pretty sick

why do these guys part their hair at the side of their skull i don't get it

yeah the custom car they built for this looks incredible. booker leaning into his mexican heritage has gone over very well in the valley.

its pretty cool, booker turned out to be a cool guy

ah a bucks fan hit a halfcourt shot for 10k very nice

Watching dubs at OKC. The blue court isn’t ideal for watching the game. Judging by the score, the players don’t seem to mind tho

had no idea gallo was getting minutes for the wiz

both dame and giannis have had up and down calls go against them in the first half, rare

Dubs with 11 TOs at 5 min left in the 2nd.

OKC with like 8 guys that can shoot the 3 from the wing

adrian griffin just said that the players told him he needed to go back to drop overage with lopez lol, and to his credit he did it

celtics sold at the right time

― infinite wiggles (Spottie), Friday, November 3, 2023 7:25 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i forgot about avery bradley until now but that was kinda similar, guy with overinflated defensive rep sucking as soon as he left the celtics

i was just thinking about the smart trade from the grizzlies perspective and uh, it's a little dicey

smart’s defensive rep was only slightly inflated (the year he won DPOY). bradley was a diff story. also just much worse in general

if he’s just lost a step then it won’t be what they wanted but i feel like he’ll still be pretty good at least the next two years. and he really isn’t paid a ton

you do have to wonder if they would’ve made a diff series of moves if they knew that adams was gonna miss the season tho

pacers will win the nba mid season tournament

same

i don't think smart will suddenly be bad or anything but they traded two firsts and their backup point guard who was actually important for them, and i'm not sure i understand what the objective was

and he played starting point guard when ja was out which was a lot and they were good

now hes on the wizards whats the point of that

bruson with a huge game tonight wonder whos guarding him hold on i will check who plays point guard for the bucks now

welp the bucks won, barely, they didnt look great they didnt look bad they looked ok, the dame giannis synergy is not really happening yet

that’s two winnable games blown by the knicks vs playoff teams in this young season

the nuggets court just makes it hard to see the ball