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

scoot is the most damning case of him being in their system for two years, being hyped up as this super high character, wise beyond his years sage of a PG who had the mentality to change any franchise around and he gets to the NBA and i'm not sure he could've played worse if he had just gone to the league as a 17 year old

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