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

in all seriousness celtics made some good plays but the nugs really took them out of their game the balls not popping and the perfect open threes are not appearing

celts also got the ball poked out a lot in that 2nd quarter, nugs are keeping their hands busy but sure looked like a sign they are out of their game, not moving crisply and with intention

thats the kind of defense that gives the celtics problems getting up on them with active hands

theres a couple nice threes

zinger actually doing ok on joker so far salute

jesus jaylen having the perfect game but cant hit a ft

jaylen’s been really good

nuggets shooting 4/16 from 3 and being up by 10 is a good sign

tatum playing way too slow tonight nuggets have him befuddled

hmm pritchard on joker interesting

wow joker why so serious

Steph rolled ankle :’’’(

welp god comeback whatre u gonna do felt denver pretty solidly out played the celtics but they were somehow a missed wide open tatum three from the lead

bad tatum game denver was shading him all night but he has to figure out how to turn that into a team advantage

my big picture takeaway if this is the finals is that the nuggets know who is running their offense every time down in a game like that whereas the celtics do not. the celtics have more sources of offense but also less of a hierarchy, or not really one at all. that was some incredible shotmaking by jrue but jrue hero ball isn’t a sustainable strategy.

one thing i will say in boston’s favor is that jamal murray could barely dribble the ball past half court in crunch time, against jaylen specifically but there is no respite anywhere for him w/ that boston line up. it was messing with their offense and if tatum had hit that corner 3 potentially could have cost them the game

ESPN Sources: Minnesota Timberwolves star Karl-Anthony Towns will undergo surgery to repair a torn left meniscus and will be reevaluated in a month. It’s expected Towns will return by early in the Western Conference playoffs. pic.twitter.com/SkbKl7OAdu

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) March 8, 2024

"I felt like I should have guarded Jokic a little bit"

Jaylen Brown talks about the Celtics' defensive scheme on Jokic pic.twitter.com/bJQsn6W7j6

— Celtics on NBC Sports Boston (@NBCSCeltics) March 8, 2024

they should definitely try this

tbf, they tried

skip positioning to be an ant hater early adopter, needs his next lebron

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsB7bbqJeho

they should definitely try this

― brony james (k3vin k.), Friday, March 8, 2024 1:03 PM (forty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

now is the time for the nba to go with players loony defensive scheme

congratulations to rudy gobert for getting a technical foul in a 1-point game by making the money sign at the officials

game is on mute for me but… not sure about that decision to have rozier foul with like 47 sec left

cleveland needs to come through for me we can’t have both okc and minny beating good teams on the same day

some nice passing from giannis tonight

Bucks defense really improved under Doc but these last two games it's completely falling apart

wow wild 3 from Dame

D'Angelo Russell is feelin it tonight

yeah that was a sick performance

Rough stuff from dame those last few possessions a

he had some insane plays in the 4th though, I guess he's still the guy who you want to have the ball

yeah and giannis game doesnt play that well in crunch time

the funniest part of Gobert doing the money sign is he thinks anyone would bother to fix a regular season game between the Timberwolves and Cavaliers

i would

damn you're part of the cabal >:(

gobert looked at luka doing the money sign to the refs and thought i want to try that, absolute lunatic behavior

telling the refs they missed a call or that theyre having a bad game is fine obvs, telling them theyre generally bad at their job is kinda borderline but understandable when spirits are high, publicly accusing them of corruption is just over the line, its not cool and these are people who you want to like you, its counter productive

wonder if its common for refs to be bought off in europe and thats why were seeing luka and rudy doing this shit

Judging from comments from the thread about this incident on /r/nba, there's a whole conspiracy theory about Tim Donaghy and Scott Foster being homies and somehow he's still behind it.

tim donaghy is more powerful than you could ever imagine

luka was doing it at some random ref but rudy did his research lol

[freedom of speech meme] rudy has a point

there's a whole conspiracy theory about Tim Donaghy and Scott Foster being homies

Tim and Scott were friends and communicated on Tim's gambling burner phone, famously with Tim calling Scott 134 times during the period of time he was gambling on games. This was part of Tim's depositions to the FBI and is well documented.

The Untold Netflix doc on Donaghy doesn't do a whole lot to either confirm or deny Scott's potential involvement in dubious activities, but the general story goes (which is discussed in said doc) that Stern found out about the FBI investigation and blew it up in the media to prevent them from getting anyone else besides Tim under surveillance and supplying more evidence. The FBI at the time felt that Tim wasn't the "isolated incident" that the NBA would have liked everyone to believe and Foster is a ref who seemingly has a lot of statistical and visual evidence of expressing that bias in games, both in the regular and especially the post season. That alone is alarming for a lot of fans, tin foil or no.

The fact that the league keeps him around despite all this drama suggests a strong NBA ref union, but if you want to indulge in some tin foil, it's also likely that Foster "knows where the bodies are buried" and could write a tell all book about who much of a sham a good amount of potential outcomes and accomplishments of the last 20 years have been in the NBA.

who -> how

The reffing of that Wolves game was really obviously partial and inconsistent in ways that always seem to follow Foster around. Though, tbf Gobert is also a drama king and maybe this is one of the reasons a lot of players dislike him in the NBA.

Sengun left game in wheelchair

thats no good

heat lost to the wiz, winners of two in a row

gradey dick doesn’t look too bad

in stark contrast to reggie jackson

dick started the season as bad as can be and even sucked in the g league but has been looking more like an nba player recently