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

Thinking about post-ups in a vacuum, however, misses what makes them so valuable in the current NBA. The league is shifting away from static plays of any kind, and toward a fluid state of multiple actions layered on top of one another. The post-up as a primary playcall, with a ball handler dribbling downcourt and dumping the ball into the post, where a center promptly battles another center before shooting, is finished; that precise sequence has happened only twice this season.x
Once by Jokić and once by Andre Drummond.

this is wild. to think kendrick perkins used to get this play called for him to start every game!

wasting your first possession "getting your center involved" was such a bizarre coaching conventional wisdom

it really was, every team did it it felt like

big advantage for teams who had good centers

You might know it as "walking the dog."

I traced its 70-year history, from 60s legends to Chris Paul, and dug deep into how a new generation - led by @JaMorant - has found its most cutthroat purpose yet.

The history of walking the dog, for @espn: https://t.co/mqGCGIsIgl

— Ben Dowsett (@Ben_Dowsett) January 25, 2023

they need to change the rule that lets you drain the clock by rolling the ball. it should only be used to extend the clock

Disagree. The defending team should just have someone in the backcourt on the inbounds. It’s only happening because they let him do it.

I did enjoy watching peak Dwight go to town in the post

Disagree. The defending team should just have someone in the backcourt on the inbounds. It’s only happening because they let him do it.

― Jeff, Wednesday, January 25, 2023 11:22 AM (one minute ago)

right, until this happens

The tactic came to an extreme head in a late October game between the Nuggets and Celtics. With about five minutes left, Denver forward Aaron Gordon slammed a two-handed dunk to pull the Nuggets within 13. As Gordon jogged back on defense, Al Horford rolled the ball to Jayson Tatum so slowly that it completely stopped before his own free throw line. As Tatum stood alongside the ball, Horford and Grant Williams guarded him like linemen blocking for a running back. Nuggets coaches called for Gordon to force Tatum to pick the ball up. Gordon barreled through Williams so hard that he was called for a flagrant.

the fact that the main person quoted in this article crowing about the value of rolling the ball to waste the clock is chris paul should tell you everything you need to know about the legitimacy of this practice

Oh no, a single instance of it going bad!

ive seen that clip and gordon was clearly being a dickhead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU3gaffdUB8

If you pressure someone walking the dog, you’re going to get a wedgie.

love to have two guys set up in the backcourt playing offensive line for a third player who is watching the ball sit on the floor. that's the kinda basketball you really wanna see

Ideally basketball will become a game where the referee tosses the ball into the air, then bounces on the ground a few times, comes to a halt, and two teams just stare at it for 48 minutes

changing the rules is for cowards, all sports must be allowed to become as perverted as possible

not good

These are the kind of fouls the league has to let go of to bring a little bit more balance to the game.

What was De'Andre supposed to do here? pic.twitter.com/DoSEaFqhQq

— Nekias (Nuh-KY-us) Duncan (@NekiasNBA) January 31, 2023

yeah that is absurd. no one wants to watch that. except calls like that are how the league looks after its stars

dame was even surprised, he was already countering cos he knew he got beat to the call

beat to the *spot

feel like that was just a bad call but they are calling the game too tight imho

its bad when they call those but then miss the more obvious hacks and holds on the perimeter

it’s a contact sport iirc

on occasion

The NBA and NBPA, as part of CBA negotiations, have discussed tying the league's postseason awards to how many games players appear in during a season, sources told The Athletic. It's one way NBA is trying to solve the issue of star player availability. https://t.co/uWKqRdMpMU

— Mike Vorkunov (@MikeVorkunov) February 14, 2023

democratic party ass solution lol

opportunity zones for winning the mvp

thats totally gonna work and is not open to circumvention

they should just have an attendance award, like a high school

yeah this stuff comes from a genuine place but all it's going to lead to is guys starting games and then committing a foul immediately after tip off and walking off the floor and what not

maybe they'd try and tie it to minutes as opposed to games but i'm not sure that incentivizes playing in more games as much as it does playing more minutes in the games you do choose to play in

there's pretty obvious ways to do mpg & gp as combined metrics

what if they just added a bunch of worse teams so some of the games aren't as hard

it reminds me of trying to protect against hacking... the hackers are always gonna be one step ahead. teams will find the loopholes in any rule very easily

also established veteran stars like kawhi, PG, jimmy, the warriors guys will prob just be like "ok fine we don't care about awards anyway." kawhi and jimmy to pick two already essentially voluntarily remove themselves from all NBA and all star consideration w/ their rest schedules even tho there isn't any rule in place yet. they asked jimmy about not making the all star team and he said "me no care" lol... he knows what he needs to do if that stuff mattered to him but it doesn't anymore

younger stars w/ more to prove already play above what i imagine the threshold would be, they're gonna pick their spots to rest just like they already do. and guys like giannis and lebron who just seem to wanna play every game are not gonna care either way

the league is trying to legislate its way around an existential problem w/o really getting to the root of it imo

yeah everyone knows what the solution is but they dont want to do it for obvious reasons

most of the voters already have a number in their heads anyway. bill and zach always talk about it.

if they want to go full mckinsey the league should push for salaries to be contingent in some way on playing time, like a player who misses games would not collect salary for the games missed but that money would still have to be paid out by the team (and count against the cap) and put into some sort of insurance pool that is then divided among all the league’s injured players evenly. the players would never agree to something like this obviously

right, just like the owners would never agree to paying into an escrow fund that paid out bonuses based on games played, which would prob be the easiest solution. the league has enough money to do that itself but would also refuse, i'm sure. at the end of the day nobody on either end actually wants to give up money so we'll never get a more proactive solution than silly rules changes from the league

I mean call me a boot licker but paying players extra to play games they’re already getting paid to not play seems like an absurd solution

I feel like the stars would just turn around and negotiate to be paid a comparable incentive payment to not play

players shd just skip the games and go straight to making highlights for ig and tt

nba finals determined by view counts

I mean call me a boot licker but paying players extra to play games they’re already getting paid to not play seems like an absurd solution

well it's not exactly the same thing...bonuses for stats benchmarks are sort of like performance bonuses in some corporate jobs, but i don't know of a job where you get a bonus for working your allotted number of days/hours.

but either way i think exhorting the players to play with money is missing the point--the teams with the best players are generally supportive of playing those guys between 60 and 70 games a year, and i'm sure the smart ones have already priced that in to their planning and projections. so why are we doing carrots and sticks with the individual players? i can't think of a reason other than "it's easier to try that first."

like would the clippers be happy if kawhi suddenly decided he needed to play 72 games a year to get some sort of bonus? i don't think they would!

well it’s not a question of what the teams want

tbf the teams do make the rules

yeah that gets to who exactly is advocating for high profile players to play more and why this entire thing is probably noise just like the upper spending limit was noise