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

payton pritchard only makes $7m a year

reaves closes for them i’m not sure the starting aspect is very meaningful. breaking up the minutes he was playing with bron & russell makes sense to me bcuz reaves should have the ball a lot when he’s on the floor, tho of course now they’re playing him w russell again. i dunno he’s a pretty classic sixth man scoring guard to me so whatever the lakers are doing with his role as they flail around trying to figure their team out is not really adding any mystery to the reaves question for me

did you watch that video of him closing vs the celtics i posted, rough stuff

i think this started as a conversation about trade value and yeah there are players i would not trade him for, lavine certainly is in that camp, but at the same time i'm not really sure what problems he's solving on the current lakers roster assuming their goal is to make a deep playoff run

lakers should def try to get lavine without moving reaves, bulls gotta want to just dump him tho, not impossible but also not very bullsy

thunder are wrecking the wolves, i looked to see if this was their worst loss of the year and it might end up being but all their losses except opening night have been by double digits, pretty weird for a team with such a good record

i know i keep saying this but i can't believe how good chet is

hes insanely good

just made kyle anderson look like a nobody on a drive from outside the arc

everyone talking about the thunder being primed to make a big trade, which is true, but they might already have their team, they gotta pay all these guys eventually

Why break it up

i think this started as a conversation about trade value and yeah there are players i would not trade him for, lavine certainly is in that camp, but at the same time i'm not really sure what problems he's solving on the current lakers roster assuming their goal is to make a deep playoff run

yeah id roll with what they have, shai-chet-jdub-dort+other guys is looking pretty sick, maybe fill some holes with role players if you need to xp

xp i guess? i don't know, this is existential because what is a lebron team even trying to do in his age 39 season, but we are obligated to entertain it because it's the lakers and it's lebron.

or maybe i'm saying that because my birthday is in two days and lebron is almost exactly a year younger than me and we're almost equal in our accomplishments

extended challenge in this 1 point griz nola game with one second left, ja drove and got fouled nola challenged

and it was successful jump ball at center court

3-time nba champion and mvp Callall De Stroyer

xxp

griz win the jump and call timeout with .4 left

lol!

the center court jump ball resolution to a challenge is really funny to me, classic case of compromise leaving no one happy

loool nola fouls on the tip in attempt

nola challenges

this has to be the longest 1.5 seconds of game time ever

call stands jjj shooting two down one

every individual reaves stat advanced or otherwise that you can find will tell you that he was a clearly above average playoff performer last year. the lakers 5 most used line ups by minutes played in the playoffs last year all included reaves and they all had a positive net rating. so the “what does reaves do for you in the playoffs” argument isn’t really that convincing to me at the moment even w/ the acknowledgment that he prob won’t be a career 44% shooter from three in the playoffs

hits first... misses second, overtime

suspect reaves in the lakers playoff run last year was just one of those things but hell prob get another chance to repeat this year

monty is terrible haha every game he throws out an all bench lineup with the league’s worst roster. why?

maybe hes trying to get fired so he get all the money without working

ah yes the producers method

Bojan Bogdanovic has been back for 11 games, giving the Pistons a lineup that can space the floor and play basketball that isn't stuck in a phone booth in the 1990s.

Since then, Cade Cunningham is averaging 23.7/4.9/7.0 on 50/31/85 shooting. Down below 3 TOs per game, too.

— Sam Vecenie (@Sam_Vecenie) December 27, 2023

he didnt want the job thats why they had to give him such a ridiculous contract, maybe hes just in for one last score xp

those cade numbers are very good

it would be nice if cade could ever figure out how to hit a 3. but i think he can get to pretty much wherever he wants on the floor and when there is even a modicum of real spacing the issues he has with scoring when there’s a lot of people around
him become less pronounced

scoot henderson is playing with full on goggles, that's kind of fun

career 86% ft shooter, good chance he figures out the 3 xp

wait til you hear why hes wearing the goggles tho

funny thing about cade is that i feel like he will actually play up in the playoffs bcuz if you’re 6’ 6” can handle the ball and score from the midrange those are some of the most important things you can be/do in the playoffs and yet he’s on a team that moreso needs a morey pilled trae young type who can goose the efficiency and regular season win totals for you even if the style of play becomes a lot harder in the playoffs

he’s really in the worst situation in the league and should be allowed to file a lawsuit agains the pistons imo

yes tbf cade is on a team that needs a lot of things

i know this is sacrilegious to say but whenever i see chet play my brain is just like “what if KD but better?”

i dont think theres anyway that chet will every have the scoring fluidity that kd does, but on the other hand he plays center, KD WHO PLAYS CENTER

thats just an insane concept

chet isn’t as individually gifted offensively as KD obviously but if you took some of KD’s offensive skill away but left him with the being an elite 7 foot shooter who can handle the ball and then also gave him, like, all of bam’s defensive skills you’d have a better player than KD. and that’s kinda what i see when i watch chet???

yes exactly lmao

wild stuff lol

i can only devote so much thought to the basketball history stuff but i feel like KD is going to be the subject of some really interesting discussions when the time comes

hes a lil overrated imo, and is a worse gm than lebron

haha i was just thinking earlier today about how if this were the 90s someone would let retired KD run their team into the ground and the into the earth's core

*post-retirement, isaiah thomas style

yeah one upside to the player empowerment era for the owners is they get to see someone like KD put two teams together that he wants to leave 1.5 seasons in. hard to get hired as a GM w that track record…