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

obv they thought they were getting immense upside, some ppl still believe this exists, others believe it never existed in the first place

once again the haters doubters and cranks have been proven right

If you trade Tatum for Booker I don't think the Suns are suddenly title contenders. Their current roster construction is just not good enough.

― reggae mike love (polyphonic), Monday, March 18, 2024 3:07 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i definitely agree with this; thankfully for boston fans, the celtics ownership didn't overrate tatum to the extent that they thought they "Tatum + KD + a bunch of random guys" is a team that could compete for a title.

phoenix's bad roster construction is predicated, at least in part, on ishiba overrating booker, on the idea that KD and Booker together be so good that it would almost automatically make the Suns contenders.

Anyway Jordan S. very otm here, more than anything with Booker, the enormous opportunity cost of the KD trade is the bigger problem.

The Durant trade was bad but not even a fraction as bad as the Beal trade.

And to be honest all I really want is to for the local basketball team to be fun to watch, it doesn't matter too much to me whether they're contenders. So the "swing for the fences and accidentally hobble your team for a decade" thing annoys me on that level

yeah it sucks especially since they had a young homegrown core who couldve been good for a long time

which points to another problem with the swing for the fences approach its always a short window where if you build through the draft and smart smaller moves you generally have a longer time to hit the right combo

like look at all these celtics rosters, all that time they never made a super committal move, the closest they came was trading two 1st and two quality starters for jrue

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GIjqH_SWQAAxU7T?format=jpg&name=large

Yeah they did it the right way. Although they're getting pretty top-heavy tbh... I assume they won't re-sign KP, White, or Holiday. But they have a nice window here where they could win a couple chips.

theyll def extend jrue at the earliest possible date and im sure theyll do the same with white if he agrees zingers got a couple more years on his deal so guess well see with that

Interesting, I'd have thought they'd prefer to keep White over Holiday.

i think they really want to keep them both its just jrues extension has been reported as a forgone conclusion im sure they had a discussion before they traded for him, white i think wants to stay but its not a done deal

fwiw white has another year on his deal where jrue has a player option

and zinger has two more which is the extension he did with the celtics when they traded for him, i think theyll keep this team together as long as theyre contending, ownership seems happy to pay which is nice

obvs the lux tax various aprons etc are pretty brutal now so well see

obviously, ownership will be much happier to keep paying whatever is needed to keep the team together, if this roster brings home banners to hang. less success = less appetite for luxury taxes. so we'll see

celtics have to win it this year

yeah you cant have a team this good and not win thats a major miss

the thing thats really rough about the new lux tax rules is its not just a matter of paying theyre taking away teams ability to add talent via the draft free agency and trades all the ways basically so if youre over the aprons your team is more than likely deteriorating from then on

the celtics will have the same team next year but eventually at least one of their main guys is gonna have to go

by main guys i mean their starting 5

celtics played the wiz and the pistons back to back the last two games and only played half their guys each night and blew them both out anyway

wiz and pistons were missing guys too but still not great teams, evan fournier got minutes tonight and was jacking up threes and missing so badly

the heat and sixers just played a stretch of basketball w/o maxey, bam, robinson, rozier on the court w/ butler, tobias, herro, embiid not even active. really hideous basketball

not what espn was hoping for

mark jones just said that earlier in the season one of jaime jaquez jr's rookie duties was to bring kyle lowry chick-fil-a every day while on the road. i think this may explain some things about the kyle lowry experience in miami

gotta respect it most guys if theyre still in the league at 30 are like i learned how to take care of my body no fast food lowrys out there at 37 eating fat food every day

there was that one year where he lost a bunch of weight then was like like no fuck that and was back to normal the next season

mark jones just said that caleb martin's "ubiquity on the court tonight has been profound" which is a very artistic way to say he's been running around a lot and deflecting the ball and stuff

the refs are letting defenders shank guys at the basket now this is pretty hysterical

refs were just ready for something new you know

How did Lowry pass all the heat culture bmi and fitness checkpoints??

i think they game him a pass

NY beating the Dubs 18-4 halfway through the first :o

pursuant to our conversation the other day re pronouncing og anunobys name bob myers just called him "ojunoby" which kinda works

ummmm

ANTHONY EDWARDS OMG 😱🤯 pic.twitter.com/AJP27GCkxG

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) March 19, 2024

i think john collins has to retire now

did he break his finger in collins mouth?

that's beyond posterization

you know how much i hate to do this but BUT he didnt dunk it

that’s true but it was still so fluid and forceful that i’m willing to count it

i know it sounds like im being ungrateful but it just frustrates me when they dont dunk it

ant needed to complete the “dunk shot”, otherwise it was just “a shot” albeit a wild, ridiculously athletic, floating in the air, shot

malika andrews asked if it was even a dunk and perk and richard jefferson were all that is a dunk because they were too invested in celebrating it already but she was right

its not as bad as when a guy slips and people pretend he got his ankles broken thats what i hate

were living in a world where the knicks are better than the warriors now

ok i know he didn’t technically dunk it but…

Greatest Angle Ever for Anthony Edwards Dunk pic.twitter.com/mb51Ps0aRS

— nevaRWilliams (@nevaRWilliams) March 19, 2024

The speed of that is just unreal.

he's god