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

his skin is uh much darker than usual

really leaning into Black History Month

lol

A-Rod: "I think Minnesota is very, very underrated ... It's a great sports town, and they're hungry and thirsty for a championship, and a sustainable winner."

(h/t @awfulannouncing)pic.twitter.com/33mAx8ijkJ

— Dime (@DimeUPROXX) February 24, 2024

man the suns just don't have any fight in them. really tired of watching them, wish the owner hadn't moved them to broadcast tv where I feel obligated to tune in

Bucks are playing...incredibly well??

dunno if I like Dame's Jekell and Hyde thing though

ruh roh

wemby got a 5x5 ???

perhaps a wee bit of traveling on paolo’s game winner in detroit last night

What are we doing https://t.co/xjdSCnQwyN pic.twitter.com/KD5fptJQoP

— ᗩᑎT ᗯᖇIGᕼT (@itsAntWright) February 25, 2024

The Hawks say Trae Young is having surgery to repair a ligament in a finger on his left hand, and he’ll be re-evaluated in four weeks. pic.twitter.com/g97eOHngh8

— Tim Bontemps (@TimBontemps) February 25, 2024

this felt like a big deal to me then i looked at the east standings and actually im not sure it will have an effect on anything

Fire up the tank

east looking pretty soft right now with the knicks and sixers plunging due to injuries the bucks plunging due to being a bad team cavs seeming not that believable despite absolutely crushing the last couple months pacers disappointing, still plenty of time for teams to turn it around before the offs but celtics are cruising and everyone is in the mud atm

Fire up the tank

meanwhile the west is a dogfight or maybe two dogfights

i think we can safely say at this point that if the celtics stay healthy and don’t make the finals it will be a humongous failure

i think the knicks w/ brunson & OG are the second best team in the east & i’m not sure they would be very competitive in a 7 game series vs boston

Yah that’s just a very untested team who hasn’t played much together

i think we can safely say at this point that if the celtics stay healthy and don’t make the finals it will be a humongous failure

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Sunday, February 25, 2024 2:29 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

they gotta win it all, i generally dont like to take that sort of mamba mindset but this year thats just the facts

tuning into the 4th quarter of bucks sixers, not good stuff

pat bevs presence on this bucks team is a perfect symbol of their decline

agree entirely lol

my current east pecking order is

celtics > knicks > heat > bucks > cavs > sixers > pacers

its hard to figure with the knicks and sixers injuries, i think everyones assuming embiid wont be back at full strength but even the knicks less serious injuries theyre like hey good news maybe theyll be back in three weeks which doesnt sound great

randle is the only one where it sounds like he might miss time in the playoffs & i'm not sure how bad that would be for the knicks

w/ the sixers i'm just assuming embiid will come back at some point but i also think the idea of him being 100%/staying healthy/playing with high intensity for between 12 and 20 straight playoff games, for essentially the first time in his career, after having knee surgery just seems far fetched

they do need randle tho is part of the problem, im not sure their offense is really good enough to hold up under playoff scrutiny, plus youve got the thibs effect to keep in mind

to me brunson was the one guy the heat saw in the east last year who went toe to toe w/ jimmy, and that of course includes giannis, tatum etc

the final 3 games of the series brunson had 32 on 21 shots in an 8 point loss, 38 on 22 shots in a 9 point win, and 41 on 22 shots in a 4 point loss. he was scary.

i like OG, hart, dante & bojan as the wing rotation around brunson w/ whatever big or bigs need to be out there. i don't think they're the best team in the NBA like they were playing immediately after the trade but i was buying the fit there w/ OG. i'm a little curious to see if hart & dante, and to a lesser extent OG, can hit threes in the playoffs, but hart and OG are two of the tougher on ball defenders in the conference imo independent of thibs. i think they're gonna be able to play defense and to me they verifiably have a guy who can singlehandedly win games playing 1 on 1 basketball offensively. in my view it's a good enough combo given the rest of the state of the east

idk i think brunson and randle are a pretty marginal 1-2 for a team looking to win multiple playoff rounds, og is perfect in his role, not sure how much you can play donte or bojan next to brunson for defensive reasons so then youre looking at starting hart who is not that good at offense with one of their not good at offense centers and idk, i think the knicks could make a playoff run by just playing good against fucked up competition but i think fundamentally their offensive talent is just not quite there, they are are a good defensive team tho which isnt nothing

a fully healthy knicks v sixers match up would be interesting, the overachievers vs the underachievers

as good as brunson is i think you can neutralize him to some extent by putting a big quality defender on him, he can have a hard time with your jayson tatums and jimmy butlers of the world, teams dont really want to do it all the time cause it fucks up their matchups but in crunch time if youre looking to get some stops its def a thing

celtics let him cook most of the game yesterday didnt double didnt try to get the ball out of his hands and he was lighting them up then in second half they went to tatum on him a bit and it was different

shd say too as far as the knicks pros they are deep theyve got a lot of guys which is nice

celtics putting tatum on the knicks center then switches on to their point guard, you need to be able to punish this behavior but im not sure the knicks can

Fun little things from Boston's defense working to tilt matchups. Porzingis on Precious, Tatum on Hartenstein. Turns all of Hartenstein's actions into a switch. Celtics at their best when they can switch and keep everything in front. pic.twitter.com/cQ4Sc9Iqnu

— Steve Jones Jr. (@stevejones20) February 25, 2024

well, the celtics are a unique team. there's other match ups like vs the bucks and cavs where the question of how you stop brunson is a lot less obvious

the bucks i feel pretty confident would not be able to stop brunson lol, the cavs dont really have an obvious brunson stopper but they have been a very good defensive team id be curious to see what they came up with, maybe they just play him straight up and try to limit the rest of the team

hope he wears down by the end of the game maybe throw a lil extra at him in the 4th

hart feels like the key to me because i think he can be a marcus smart level defensive player... imo he is the best at defending jimmy butler of anyone in the conference. but these days in the playoffs if it's 4 on 5 offensively because of you, you're eventually going to get benched. and if he can't play big minutes then they start to look a lot thinner. dante is a 38/31/65 shooter in 26 career playoff games. we don't know if bojan will be able to hold up defensively in later rounds either. but brunson-hart-OG feels like a strong backbone to me given their depth elsewhere, if hart can give you something offensively. to be clear i think they have a hard ceiling of losing 4-2 to boston in the ECF but as of now i think they have the strongest rotation (when healthy) of the remaining teams. it's not like i would take them vs the field tho

i def like them best from a vibes perspective but the injuries are troubling and we havent even discussed playoff randle (not good), things could def break their way with embiid out or ailing cavs roster just being too redundant to work in the offs etc, but i think theyd be a pretty weak conference finals teams

man this suns team is such a farce theyre giving bol bol big minutes now

they should put this mavs-pacers game on TV instead

oh good call i will simply change the channel

Suns team just so much more dynamic with Beal it’s still kinda hard to judge them imo

its too late ive judged them

lakers are such a deeply unserious team. down 10 with 2 minutes left and either bron or AD lagging behind complaining about no-calls while the suns push 5-on-4. just hate to see it

bad loss for the lakers

down 10 with 2 minutes left and either bron or AD lagging behind complaining about no-calls while the suns push 5-on-4.

― brony james (k3vin k.), Sunday, February 25, 2024 5:57 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

its bizarre how obsessed with the refs some players are, its so obviously counter productive

halliburton’s dad just shook luka’s shooting hand so hard during what i can only call an out of bounds encounter that luka’s still feeling it lol, man wanted to crunch luka’s bones

lol get him