NBA State of Play – Rule Changes – Trends – CBA – Schedule Reform – Load Mgmt – etc

The NBA's going to survive, even if ratings are down 15%. The owners, players and networks may not make as much off the sport as their greed would like, but if future rookie contracts and max contracts for all-stars have to take a 15% haircut and 'only' 17 million people watch the NBA Finals, then boo-fucking-hoo.

The business end of the sport only interests me in terms of competitive balance within the league. Whether the NBA conquers the world, signs a 40 billion dollar tv contract, and Zion becomes a billionaire or maybe just a half-billionaire is nothing I really care about. That's not hoops. That's just raw capitalism doing its maximum profits thing. Let me find my tiny violin so I can serenade them.

The combination of cable companies dropping RSNs and a moderate loss of China business would be rough

From a fan’s perspective what we should worry about is a dramatic loss of revenue causing a lockout

A lockout would have to wait until the next CBA was being negotiated, but aiui the ultimate basis of player compensation is a fixed percentage of league revenue, not a fixed dollar amount, so a lockout over decreased league revenue would seem to be illogical, unless the position of the owners was that they want a bigger share of the shrinking pie. If so, fuck 'em.

well that is what they would want, and i agree with your stance, but it’s not good news for all of us who enjoy watching basketball.

The position would be that they’ve committed to contracts they can no longer pay

I don't imagine revenues will fall to the extent that the owners would be unable to pay the cost of staying in business without abrogating their player contracts. But if keeping the doors open and the lights on required renegotiation of player contracts, then it would be smart for the player's union to do so, rather than kill the league altogether. A lockout almost certainly would be about the owners extracting terms favorable to themselves, not because the players insist of holding them to "contracts they can no longer pay".

I like this but my twist would be to make *all* shooting fouls worth a single 2-point free throw, including "and ones" on made baskets. Since fouls are more common on 2-pointers than 3-pointers, that would further increase the expected value of 2's relative to 3's. https://t.co/dx2r7q5j5p

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 20, 2019

Todays column: Get rid of Nate Silver

i actually have to tip my hat to him here for going big

heres the hollinger article

Hollinger: The three-shot foul is a bad rule, badly enforced, with bad side effects— It needs to go

By John Hollinger 5h ago 138
When can we say an NBA rule change failed?

I can think of four potential reasons: When the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, when the officials have difficulty calling it correctly, when it encourages behavior it was originally designed to discourage, or when it takes the game in a worse direction.

In the case of the three-shot foul, we’re a perfect 4-for-4. It’s a bad rule, badly enforced, that encourages bad behavior and stylistic monotony.

The three-shot foul has been around almost as long as the 3-pointer itself. At first, it wasn’t a big deal – three-shot fouls were extremely rare. Two things changed that. First, players slowly realized that the three-shot penalty was a completely outsized response to a minor crime and modified their behavior accordingly – beginning with the exaggerated side leg kicks of Reggie Miller. This move, theoretically outlawed in 2012, remains a popular way of duping refs into a three-shot foul.

Worsening matters, recent points of emphasis from the league have made it illegal to breathe on shooters increased protection for shooters, essentially guaranteeing the shooter no contact from takeoff to landing, no matter how bizarre a path he took en route. That change, in particular, has brought on a barrage of three-shot fouls from shooters jumping forward and adjusting their landing point to collide into a closing defender, or dangling legs at the last minute, hoping to catch a body.

It’s not just James Harden either. Here’s Bryn Forbes, for instance, coming to a nice controlled stop in transition and then suddenly vaulting forward on his shot and jackknifing his legs so they can catch Kevin Huerter.

If you want more examples, believe me, I have them.

My modest proposal is that the league goes back to a two-shot foul penalty for the first 46 minutes of the game. In the last two minutes, when several other minor rules also change, it can keep the three-shot foul to prevent egregious intentional fouling by teams with three-point leads.

Why would this improve the game? Let’s go through the weaknesses, one by one.

Penalty doesn’t fit the crime
This is by far my biggest gripe, and it’s a crucial component to understanding every other reason the three-shot foul is awful. I don’t think a lot of people fully understand how absurdly rich the 3-shot reward is for a common shooting foul.

Pardon me while I take you through some my math. It won’t be terrible, I promise.

First things first — 3-pointers barely produce any more points than 2-pointers, on average. The league hits 35.2 percent of its 3s and 52.0 percent of its 2s last season, meaning both shots produced nearly identical expected returns – 1.04 points for 2s, 1.06 points for 3s.

From that perspective, giving an additional shot for a shooting foul on a 3-pointer compared to a 2-pointer makes no sense — the shooter wasn’t likely to score more points on the initial shot.

But the return on a shooting foul for these types is now radically different. Using league averages, the expected return on a 3-shot foul is 2.33 points – three times the league average free throw rate (76.6 percent), plus a small dollop for the possibility of an offensive board on a missed third shot. (Only about 11 percent of missed free throws are rebounded by the offense, and only 23.9 percent of them are missed in the first place. Ballpark the average ROI on an offensive board is 1.2 points, leading to whopping 0.03 point increase. In reality, teams try much harder on the offensive glass when awful foul shooters are at the line, but we’ll ignore that for the sake of methodological clarity here).

That contrasts with 1.56 points on a two-shot foul.

In reality, the ROI on a 3-shot foul is even better because of who draws those fouls. News flash: Andre Drummond and Dwight Howard aren’t getting fouled shooting 3s. Only threatening 3-point shooters draw these whistles, and most of them are very good free-throw shooters too. Additionally, second and third free throws convert at a slightly better than than the first one. As ESPN’s Kevin Pelton recently reported, players league-wide shot 87.1 percent on the third shot of a three-shot foul last season, compared to just 80 percent on the first attempt.

As a result, the expected ROI on 3-shot fouls isn’t 2.33 points, it’s actually more like 2.56 … a full point higher than the two-shot foul.

In fact, check this out: That return on a three-shot foul is so excessive that, on average, committing one is about as bad as committing a flagrant! The second shot on a flagrant can’t be rebounded, so the two shots on average are worth 1.53 points for the offense. The team then inbounds on a dead ball, which is the lowest efficiency initial condition for offense – yielding 1.07 points per possession last season, according to our Seth Partnow. That brings our total for the trip to 2.60 points.

So a three-shot foul hands the offense 2.56 points on average … and a flagrant gives it 2.60. It’s basically the same. Yikes.

To see how extreme a penalty it is, however, you need to understand not just the absolute value, but also the marginal value. A typical possession was worth 1.10 points in 2018-19 (I will use last year’s numbers for this exercise given the early stage of the season). As noted above, the average two-point shot was worth 1.04 (the league shot 52.0 percent on 2s), and an average 3-point shot was worth 1.06 (the league shot 35.3 percent on 3s). Offensive boards added an additional 0.13 points to the expectation on 2s and 0.18 on 3s. So that’s a marginal value of 0.07 points for a 2 (1.04+0.13-1.10), and 0.14 points for a 3 (1.06 + 0.18 – 1.10).

But a three-shot foul? Not only does it more than double the value of a possession, from 1.10 points to 2.56 points, but also its marginal value of 1.56 points dwarfs that of common fouls. Let’s see here how a 3-shot foul changes things:

Marginal value of shot types, 2018-19
Three-shot foul 1.56
Two-shot foul 0.46
Average three-point attempt 0.14
Average two-point attempt 0.07
A two-shot foul produces a 0.39-point marginal return relative to just letting the guy shoot. That’s a fair penalty. The return on a three-shot foul, however, is 1.42 — nearly FOUR TIMES as much.

Again, the outsized penalty is a huge reason for this rule’s awfulness, because it influences all kinds of other behavior. A lot of it is subtle — for instance, here’s Damian Lillard with an attempt he would never consider if it weren’t for the fact that he might get three shots. Certainly he’s not trying to make a 3-point shot here.

This happens a lot, actually. A huge chunk of three-shot fouls are the result of players playing against the rules rather than the opponent — either guards like Lillard leaning into an ugly heave after turning the corner on a screen, or catch-and-shoot specialists kicking a leg out to reach out and tag a defender. Maybe he doesn’t get the call every time, but it’s the outsized return that makes the attempt worth the investment.

And here’s the beautiful basketball that same play yields when it doesn’t work:

It even impacts areas you wouldn’t consider — such as the coach’s challenge. From an ROI basis, far and away the best use of it is to challenge a leg-kick three-shot foul and turn 2.56 points into an offensive foul — to the point that coaches should probably save their challenge for three quarters in case one of these comes up.

More contact, not less
Because of the outsized return on 3-shot fouls, and that players KNOW about the outsize return, they’ve modified their behavior accordingly. Rather than avoid collisions when they rise up for a jumper, smart players seek it out. As a result, a mission designed to protect shooters and reduce contact (and hopefully injuries) has had the unintended consequence of increasing it. Several players — not even elite ones — have quickly adopted the habit of kicking their non-shooting leg out and forward in hopes of attracting a three-shot foul, creating conditions for ankle sprains rather than removing them. It’s exactly what the league was originally trying to prevent.

It’s remarkable to see how much players’ behavior changes on 3-point jump shots versus two-point jump shots. The clip above with Forbes is a great example, but it’s not hard to find others. In fact, it’s not hard to find them with Bryn Forbes (or any other volume 3-point shooter, for that matter) … and you can actually see it the most in clips where players aren’t fouled. Here is Forbes searching out contact with his right leg, hoping he can tag Terrence Ferguson and create a 3-shot collision.

For a more egregious example, here is T.J. Warren’s submission into the pantheon, just praying he can get a piece of Cedi Osman with his right leg:

Now that you’ve seen it NOT work, here’s what it looks like when it does. Kelly Oubre was awarded three shots for this bit of ridiculousness:

More subtly, here’s Kemba Walker rising up with his left leg well behind him and behind the 3-point line. George Hill’s feet never totally cross the 3-point line, yet somehow “foul” Kemba’s left leg by being in position to receive Kemba’s love tap. For a right-handed shooter, this is, um, not natural:

For a more common example, it’s possible James Harden would have been fouled on this play by Dillon Brooks anyway, but he sticks out his left leg to make sure of it.

OK, fine, let’s talk about Harden
In particular, his left leg. Here’s another one. In real time it looks like Jimmy Butler annihilated him. Zapruder it and you see Harden rise up for a normal shot before he sees Butler and plays tag with his left leg.

And again, more blatantly, here he gets the Nets’ Taurean Prince with a piece of extended-leg absurdity only highlighted by Brooklyn’s monochrome court palette.

Finally, let’s give credit where it’s due. Shout out to Tyler Ford, who nabbed Harden here on his leg kick. Not all heroes wear capes. I don’t think it’s an accident that he made the call from behind the play and a bit away from it — the ref on the sideline is actually too close to see both the hands and feet of the shooter. More on that in a minute.

The Refs can’t call it correctly
Another unintended consequence of the three-shot foul is that it highlights how awful the officials are at calling it. It’s not their fault — it has to do with their position on the court and the impossibility of what’s asked of them.

We’re giving a huge reward on a play where a significant portion of the calls are just flat-out wrong.

You think I’m just going to pull more Harden clips? Think again. Here’s our very first three-shot foul of the season, an egregious leg kick by New Orleans’ Kenrich Williams that should have been an offensive foul (if not a flagrant); the dude basically tripped Pascal Siakam in midair.

Sideways leg kicks by shooters are very difficult for officials to see due to the geography of the court. We don’t want officials standing in the middle of it, for good reason. But most 3-point attempts either come from the corner, or from the top of the key — the two places an official standing at the coach’s box is mostly like to be looking from a straight-on vantage point. That gives them little to no depth perception to see if a leg is kicked sideways or straight out, making them suckers for preying shooters. We can’t always see it from the camera angle, either.

Props to Eric Dahlen, who missed the Williams call above but nails Forbes with the left leg maneuver on a very difficult to see call here:

The other issue that comes up is that sometimes the officials are too close, particular on wing 3-point attempts. They can’t possibly be looking at both hands and feet when the players are right on top of them, so they have to guess. Here’s a clip where Tom Washington ends up with both the shooter and defender right in his lap and essentially has to blindly extrapolate whether the shooter’s leg got clipped. Combined with Harden’s left-leg voodoo, you can guess the result.

Before we finish, I should point out something else — I’m only pointing out one kind of error in these clips. Officials also struggle to correctly identify three-shot fouls for some of the same reasons I’ve listed above, something the Rockets outlined last spring before the Golden State series in their Magna Gripe-a missive to the league office. Again, these are huge calls (or misses) because the penalty is so severe.

Is this the game you want?
Hey, all you midrange jumper fans — now is your chance to chime in. All we’ve done with the three-shot foul is further incentivize every single team to tilt even more toward the same monolithic outcome of spreading the floor and shooting a ton of catch-and-shoot 3s.

With defenses disincentivized from challenging the shot, and the occasional super bonus of a 3-shot foul juicing expected returns from the strategy, teams would be crazy NOT to go in that direction. Anybody who wants to see some stylistic distinctions left in this league should at least be thinking about how to favor the 3-point shot a bit less. Changing the three-shot foul is one obvious, lightly intrusive means.

So, summing it all up: The three-shot foul creates a massively disproportionate penalty to the crime committed, on a play type that officials have difficulty calling correctly. It also likely creates more contact and injury potential rather than reducing it, and incentivizes both boorish behavior and stylistic monotony that make the game less entertaining. The league can go back to three shots in the final two minutes to eliminate intentional fouling incentives late in games; we already have several other rules that change in the last two minutes.

But for the first 46 minutes, it’s clearly a bad rule. And if you still don’t think so, let me leave you with this magical piece of basketball from Trae Young as my parting gift:

Simply changing it to a two-short foul would eliminate a lot of the worst incentives and cheap foul-hunting, while also introducing a more fair penalty for a shot that isn’t any more valuable than 2-pointer at the time of release.

The three-shot foul stinks. It’s time for it to go.

thats really good

agree 100%

twolves announcers were talking about this 3pt 2ft thing during todays game

2ft is far too close for the 3pt line

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/28145944/sources-nba-considering-reseeding-conference-finalists-postseason-play-in

all for conferenceless playoffs but the in season tourney just seems like a novelty to distract from the fact that individual regular season games dont matter, they shd fix that fundamental problem

yeah not in favor of the tournament thing

the most important reason to go to the single 2-pt foul shot is to eliminate the lamest part of the game, which is the dead time between free throws and the high fives. very against the high fives

the high fives suck

nfl teams play 16 games a year and make way more money than the nba, the march madness tv contract is bigger than the entire nba contract, nba shd think about these things

scarcity creates ~value~ heads up

The NFL plays as many games as they can without the average career length being 2 years

yeah I'm not sure the two are really comparable

after reading more about the proposal I think I hate everything about it

it's really telling that their brilliant ideas actually result in a scenario where some teams might play *more* than 82 games.

there's not much to say about the in-season tournament idea other than it's a really stupid idea that no one will care about. bill simmons couldn't have even thought of this

the play-in games basically risk a 10 seed potentially advancing over a 7 seed with something like 10 more regular season wins, which makes me wonder what the point of the regular season is. it could encourage resting. and then you could have a 9 or 10 seed playing a 1 seed and making the first round even worse

the reseeding is a good idea but they should just do it 1-16

they're just throwing darts because they can't fathom that fewer games is the solution

why does there have to be any solution? I know viewership is down this year but hadn't the league been doing great? have they considered that maybe it's temporary because the warriors suck and 2 of the 5 best players in the league are injured?

not really a ratings guy but i would think that the two LA teams being good would mean the league had higher hopes for this year than what they're currently getting. i thought i heard that local broadcast ratings are down all over the place so it's not just national showcase games. while they're in the current round of tv contracts they will be doing great. problem comes when they need to renew in a couple years if ratings still aren't strong.

regardless of ratings, seems like we're hitting a crest of dissatisfaction with the 82-game schedule. the nba is more or less proposing to shuffle it which makes no sense to me. the midseason tournament is inane, i can't believe they're actually putting it out there.

also "load management" is al over the media, not great press!

xp it’s actually bad that both of the Los Angeles teams are really good because East Coast markets don’t watch West Coast games

Bill Simmons was 1st guy I heard talk about midseason tourney

yeah

wasn't the original simmons plan to do a tourney for the 8th seed?

makes me wonder what the point of the regular season is

i think this about most american sports, tbh

its to enjoy a bit of sport

the nfl regular season is pretty perfect in that its fewer games and fewer teams making the playoff make it function almost on a playoff level

baseball i have no idea what goes on in the head of baseball watchers but having different pitchers on different days breaks up the monotony somewhat i guess

playoffless euro soccer is def the most rigorous system for picking the best team there will be no upsets but its kinda a bummer not having the "playoff atmosphere" they compensate for that by adding excitement w promotion/relegation and seeding for various other tournaments and with singing and rioting

another thing about euro soccer is theres like 9 teams across 5 leagues who have any chance and if youre a fan of a different team u just have to hope a russian oligarch improves yr fortunes

also each country has its own league so the best players dont play each other

baseball i have no idea what goes on in the head of baseball watchers but having different pitchers on different days breaks up the monotony somewhat i guess

it's better as a pre-TV, pre-night games sport. wandering over to the local stadium in your ratty suit and hat to check out your local squadron, the lush grass spread before you, it's a nice way to spend a summer day in the city.

oh going to the game is nice dont get me wrong and tbh i used to be a baseball watcher myself but i dont remember what i was thinking about now

also each country has its own league so the best players dont play each other

― lag∞n, Monday, November 25, 2019 12:06 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

there shd be one eurowide super league w promotion/relegation from the respective country systems

(and plz dont tell me theres already the euroleague i know the difference between a tournament and a league)

wasn't the original simmons plan to do a tourney for the 8th seed?

― call all destroyer, Monday, November 25, 2019 11:48 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah he came up with the bottom seed tourney at the end of the season iirc, never heard of this mid season thing till now

feel like he also talked abt the midseason thing or at least ive heard of it somewhere before

i have now thought a bunch about these proposals and listened to some pros and cons and honestly i don't care for any of them. they don't offer any meaningful progress toward making either the regular season or the first round of the playoffs more competitive.

the play-in for the bottom of the playoffs is....fine. it will make the end of the reg season slightly more interesting and in theory reduce tanking at the top but i do wonder how the incentives will work out over time (e.g. if you're the 10 seed don't you really want to stay in the lottery even if you're playing well down the meaningless stretch at the end of the season?) but the first round 8/1 and 7/2 matchups will still suck and be worthless regardless of the outcome.

reseeding the final four is dumb and a very tactical response to an unfortunate situation from two finals ago. i still like the romance of having to go through a conference rival and seeing those matchups play out over a number of years. also the two teams in the finals have only played each other twice which adds some intrigue. the league needs to take the long view on this.

the tournament--here are the pros i've heard:

- there are ~10 teams right now with no winning tradition that would go all-in to win it
- gradually over time interia will cause people and teams to care
- it opens up the possibility of reducing the number of games even more over time
- what the hell, nothing could be worse than the current regular season

it's telling that they can't even find a good time in the schedule to do it. where they've landed is probably the best bet but it's still really early and a lot of teams are just figuring out how they want to play.

my main thing is that even if you believe that ultimately it will become something that matters, the first couple years are going to be so, so bad. players aren't going to take it seriously. coaches are the most conservative people in the game probably and i doubt any of them are going to want to push their guys hard to win something in early december. i see it being awkward and weird and public perception could just render it d.o.a.

it's also the most roundabout possible way of trying to address lack of interest in the regular season. it doesn't make the non-tournament games matter more. it doesn't address load management. it sure as hell isn't going to make the season *feel* shorter or fix the slog that is march and april. the format is going to be confusing to casuals. the rumor that they're looking to do it at neutral sites is insane.

finally, maybe, just maybe, looking to european soccer with its own longstanding traditions and issues is not the best place to find inspiration to fix engagement in a relatively young american sports league. the reason the play the FA cup is because they've been playing the FA cup for 150 years, and afaik the only cool thing that happens in the FA cup is when a team from one of the lower divisions makes a run--the same thing that happens in the NCAA tournament which is also impossible to replicate in the nba. meanwhile, they conveniently do not look at one of the best features of the premier league which is that each team plays a home and home and every game feels like an event.

both the play-in and the midseason tournament are Really bad ideas imo. its classic fudging the results of a process instead of fixing the process to give better results

having fewer teams make the playoffs seems good but giving a whole round as a bye also seems dicey

mb go back to best of 5 first round with byes for the top 4 teams

i'd love to see them do something closer to the nfl first round. the top 2 teams in each conference have no reason to play a first round series, they're not losing it.

why did they go to 7 games in 1st rnd? was that after nuggs beat the #1 seed in 94??

for instance european soccer basically operates on a g league ignite model for player development, the academies, and they do a great job, think the nba mustve just half assed it not really had a plan

― lag∞n, Friday, March 22, 2024 3:42 PM (one hour ago)

i think there's just a huge difference between individual franchises doing this as opposed to a centralized league. the NBA doesn't know how to run a successful franchise but man city and real madrid do. you also have kids going into these teams systems as like 8 year olds compared to what ignite was trying to pull off

i also think there's something to be said for individual soccer clubs training their youth prospects in the vision of a specific system -- barcelona's u14 team is taught to play the same style as barcelona's A team and tho that might not be great for kids who can't hack it in that system it does self select for players who can thrive for the pro team. and then as a prospect advances you have a real top class league where he can start to get meaningful playing time as he further develops

i'm gonna lapse into coach speak here which i know lagoon hates but i also think there is an element that matters about playing a team sport, being trained in an environment where there is a shared vision/goal. i think even at the college level w/ the exception of like kentucky even the top schools like kansas and gonzaga are thinking about things like team fit, do we have enough leaders on this team etc. you could prob train a pitcher or hitter in baseball w/o any concept of teammates in mind, not sure that can really be pulled off in basketball. can you really be receiving proper training at point guard if you're heavily incentivized to not care all that much about your teammates' success?

think about the fact that we see teams of hall of famers like bron wade bosh or kawhi PG harden play ugly disjointed awkward losing basketball for 20-30 games after being thrown together in one offseason before figuring it out. that's basically the ignite's whole model: putting random guys together for about 30 games but w/ no shared goal of future success to force them to figure out how to play better basketball

if the heat, spurs, warriors, celtics etc had youth academies where they were training the best teenagers for 5+ years that would prob be amazing for the NBA the problem is you can't do that and have a draft model

lagoon the NBA is doing more what you describe w/ their international academies and i think that's a much better path for them to travel, those places can call getting like 2 or 3 guys just onto NBA rosters as a huge success. they don't need to be meddling w/ top 10 picks

The comparison with european talent-development systems doesn't quite work because europe never had the equivalent of big time college sports, a system that grew and developed for more than a century in the USA.

the academy system pointedly focuses on skills over winning games, games are seen as a treat for the players, which i think points to the fact that players want to play and win, winning is very satisfying you dont really need to motivate it, what players dont want to do is work on their floater or eat healthy food which is where a training environment thats not focussed on winning can really help

worth noting that its not just soccer, euro basketball has youth systems too, luka jokic et al went to spain when they were teens and went through the process

usa has a system thats just about winning all the time theres not much incentive to care about the long term success of the players, thats most obvious in aau where kids play so many games that its physically unhealthy

ignite obvs isnt exactly the same as the academy system but the similarities are obvious and i dont think theres any reason why it shouldnt work for the same reasons, who knows what they were up to over there tho

doesnt seem like they were helping scoot with his shot tho

yeah i'd never defend AAU or any of the haphazard organizations that exist in america to try and capitalize on young basketball talent

but i do think that colleges esp the ones whose recruiting pitches depend on their players getting drafted and being successful are more so able to strike a balance where they're training kids w/ their eyes on the pros while also putting them an environment that doesn't solely prioritize the self

calipari's run at kentucky in terms of producing high level NBA talent is pretty insane, kentucky as a college team has really fallen off but he had like a 10 year run there where he was hitting at least the elite 8 every year while also pumping $100m contract guys into the league. and not all of them were like can't miss phenom recruits

he made a lot of hay getting guys drafted in the 1st round, which tbf is a good recruiting pitch, and interesting thing is a bunch of his guys went lower than they should have based on their nba performance, tho they did go in the 1st round so who can complain

*jokic didnt go to spain he stayed in serbia

i don't think guys like bam, herro, shai, maxey, quickley were seen as going lower than they should have, they weren't no doubt top 10 pick type prospects. they just all outplayed their draft positions by a pretty massive degree

yeah thats what im saying its interesting, tho idk where they were as hs prospects, pretty easy to look up i guess

could def see playing with a bunch of other top guys suppressing their stock a lil over being in a program that lets them hoist to their hearts content, but calipari gets them in the first round, whats his system for that do gms just listen to him or what

im sure hes had some whiffs too the harrison twins come to mind, but still

herro, bam, maxey, shai, quickley were all 5 star top 20 prospects so definitely on first round radars, but we're not talking about anthony davis, john wall, karl towns type prospects where anything less than no 1 overall would've been a failure. i don't think you'd necessarily say those other guys exceeded or fell short of their pre-draft ranges, like you said first round is first round. but they're all gonna make hundreds of millions of dollars in the league as non top 10 picks that's pretty crazy. you can also throw guys like booker and murray in there who were the same level of prospect, went a smidge higher but still in the range (7-10) in the draft where there's soooo many busts

yeah kentucky guys have had such crazy success in the league seems like teams would be wise to factor it in to their draft process

maybe calipari is just a genius coach, would be funny considering hes seen as more of a recruiter

MKG, nerlens noel, cauley stein, kevin knox, kanter, brandon knight not some of his greatest moments but still as far as busts go some of those guys had moments of being decent or better players and for their own purposes most of them got paid life changing money.

you compare it to some of duke's busts like okafor, bagley, jabari parker, austin rivers where it's like "wait do you even belong in the NBA?" cal doesn't really have stuff like that on his resume

yeah lol knwo its been said before but duke doesnt have the deepest nba bench

considering it bam is def a guy who wasnt allowed to show his whole game at kentuky think he was mostly a rim runner youd have no idea about his passing and ball handling, dont follow college enough to say for the rest of them tho, but maybe it doesnt matter cause calipari just tells gms to draft his guys and they say ok, maybe thats the key he provides super accurate scouting to nba teams, i know hes known for doing the same for players as far as telling them when theyre ready for the league

Toronto Raptors center Jontay Porter is out of the lineup and a subject of an NBA investigation into irregularities on prop betting involving him, sources tell @DavidPurdum, @ESPNWindhorst and me. Story soon. pic.twitter.com/DncBNbDptW

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) March 25, 2024

I got a feeling we're going to see more and more such investigations.

Cmon, fellas. Either play professional basketball or gamble on professional basketball. Can't do both. It's a slap in the face to good people like me who pass up our shot at a successful NBA career so we can gamble on the games.

oh hes mpj's brother

mpj makes 30 mil a year! could have just given his little brother some money

i mean hes making two million dollars this year on his own

this is sad, hope it’s not true

xp is that right? i thought i saw he was on a two-way deal

pic.twitter.com/NCOhZsRXJR https://t.co/sA1Ycc0qCe

— jimmy changa 🍉 (@sultanwaystar) April 6, 2024

I love it lol

thats a foul, celtics did it last year anyway

that's at least a 'delay of game' warning no matter what else is going on.

the ball is in play tho. they’re just trying to run the clock

Jokic had one the other day where he waited for the ref to get it then passed it to the ref then waited 5 seconds to pass it in then I think slow rolled it and it ate up like ~15 seconds of game time

looks like a rugby play starting except without the other 19 guys