2024 NBA OFFS AND INS

thats why they play the games

murphy jones ingram nance out there together is so much arms

Zion such a gifted finisher

its amazing he powers though multiple guys then does an insane layup

bron looking pretty old, which makes sense since hes the oldest guy

the pelicans were doing good but now the lakers are doing good well you know what i always say basketball is a game of one team doing good then the other team doing good

it is a game like that

"life's like this"
--avril lavigne in her hit song about hoops "complicated"

avril knows what up

lil behind here incredible slowmo shot of lebron winking, sports emmy worthy

ok im caught up now

lakers are getting open shots too easy pelicans are over helping

bron gotta get out of the way

ingram real bad last two games since he came back

nuggets will win the NBA playoffs

that happened already

this game is not good sorry no offense

we are a people who thirst for novelty sorry k3v

zion showed up but the rest of the pelicans are on bourbon street celebrating mardi gras

lebron james

the oldest man in the world

Prob shoulda rolled with the team without Ingram and eased him back in

yeah

zion trying to win this game tho

i wish i could talk to someone at tnt to tell them how much i hate reggie millers commentary even if it wouldnt change anything it would be nice to let them know how i feel

a sternly worded letter about how Reggie Miller sucks

It’s sad that he brings down the goat harlen

breaking out my future predictions notebook just to make a note about zion. a decent dog candidate

the pelicans are in the game baby

ok this is getting interesting

Zion taking the Bron assignment is encouraging

plaicans figured out to not play ingram or cj

weirdest team in ages as far as awesome role players paired with unreliable stars

They have flexibility which is nice

ZION

bron waiting for the double instead of just going against alvarado

Joseeeee

being a pels fan is fun I should do this more

alverado thumbs up from me what a guy

very cool guy for sure

Our special boy is really doing it this is what we dreamed of

oh no

damn what’s up this is bad

Oh no!!!!!

he didnt look injured

he threw the towel really hard must be something

its ok jose can just get guys dunks every time

i was just going to post that the thing about zion is i don't think he can do this in every game or even the majority of games but it's pretty spectacular when he does

lakers lucky af, i can't wait for the nuggets to run them in 5 games

yeah having to play the nugs isnt much reward

i am absolutely a homer, it's the way i watch sports. cannot imagine having the brain space to give a crap about people not on my team beyond the brief windows in which they appear as villains to be vanquished. my son's the opposite though, he doesn't have a favorite team, i think he regards having a favorite team as slightly sus somehow, like you're soft if you do

My seven year old said sus for the first time the other day. He’s still grounded

I don't know about how winning a championship feels but to frogbs' post re: the Packers, it's a big deal to just be relevant, just to be in the mix and playing good quality basketball. people here used to complain about all of the KG era Wolves first round exits but damn after he was gone and you're winning like 16 games you're begging to go out in the first round again

most sports fans are homers tho the level of homerism varies, some people will watch the playoffs if their team isnt in it some wont, if youre regularly watching regular season games that dont feature your team then youre pretty far on the non homerism side of the spectrum, people who dont have or dont care that much about their rooting interest are so rare as to maybe not exist, i guess there are people who are fans of individual players but not teams which is sort of novel lol i think thats a more new thing for the era where we have access to all the games media etc

but i think almost every sports fan is a homer to some extent like i know im supposed to be mr non homer in this conversation but i missed three or four celtics games this year and have prob watched multiple times more celtics games in my life than some professed homers have of their teams, not trying to brag its just watching tv, including some truly terrible teams feast yr eyes on these guys https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/BOS/1997.html i think that was the team tommy called "the mighty mites" because they were small, they were not mighty tho, next season rick patino walked in the door and drafted and then halfway through the season traded chauncey billups, season after that paul pierce arrived

i get it i prefer celtics games to other games ill watch the celtics play the hornets over almost any non celtics game except for maybe a real good matchup like nugs-thunder, but also i just like the nba i like the game i watch a lot of non celtics games, i usually wont watch bad games but ill watch mediocre ones just to check out the teams see what theyre up to, i have teams i like based on the personnel how they play etc, your typical league pass watcher a hardcore nba fan the median ilh poster

so i dont have any problem with homerism really people just want to watch their team fine whatever, on the other hand i dont think its any great accomplishment or expression of profound passion the eggheads will never understand youre just doing what everyone else does its normal, tho i do think homerism is kind of unfortunate just in that there are many great teams and players that you could watch and are not, homers are missing out

the one area homerism does kind of bother me is in media and conversation, if you dont watch the rest of the league and yr general orientation is mostly on an emotional rooting level its hard to analyze basketball good, but thats not stopping anyone, local sports radio is the ultimate example of this unrealistic expectations weirdo grudges guys with very bad personalities, yr average fan is like that too if generally not as gross, widely overrating their own players proposing never gonna happen lopsided trades etc, i saw someone on twitter say luka was a better defender than tatum, which is the total warfare level of being a sports fan

some might say thats what its all about get out there and scream and be irrational, and obvs that is a lot of what its about dont get me wrong, but then there this whole ostensibly analytical aspect of being a fan, talking about the particularities of the game and whatnot, where if you bring the heart of a homer and you dont watch the league you might be very passionate but what youll also be is wrong

oh i'm under no illusions i'm wrong about pretty much everything

theres just too many basketball games to watch more than your own team's games, until the later roudns of the playoffs at least

just watch yr own teams game then keep watching games until you are drooling

oh i'm under no illusions i'm wrong about pretty much everything

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Monday, June 3, 2024 8:59 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

its an interesting situation sports talk its so inconsequential its totally ok to be wrong, like arguing about teams at a bar at some point everyone knows its not really about the facts you just want to have lil low stakes fight, but on the other hand we live in the golden age of sports information and you really can learn a lot about them if you want to, tho basketball has lagged way behind football and baseball in producing educated hardcore fans

I don't know about how winning a championship feels but to frogbs' post re: the Packers, it's a big deal to just be relevant, just to be in the mix and playing good quality basketball. people here used to complain about all of the KG era Wolves first round exits but damn after he was gone and you're winning like 16 games you're begging to go out in the first round again

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, June 3, 2024 7:41 AM (twenty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah the down years really do suck but sometimes they aren't bad if the team is at least developing the right way, for example that first Giannis/Middleton year you got the sense those guys could really be special even if they lost a ton of games. to me that was more fun than say the Brandon Jennings years where you'd keep getting demolished by LeBron as the 8 seed. I mean at least in the former scenario you know you got a good lottery pick

once your team is actually expected to perform well it's a whole different turkey, I mean I get it winning a championship is hard but man Milwaukee getting rated #1-#2 in the East and going out in the first round twice really hurts

i'm not a stupid homer, but one thing that does bug me is when folks who watch your team play one game and then start making a bunch a "educated" assumptions. players suck some nights, injuries happen (esp to deandre hunter), all sorts of shit. i can do the opposite and get really fired up about one game and try imagining some wonderful future, but i've learned to temper that.

deandre hunter is not a bad player but he is the type of guy who if i had to watch him on my team every game would drive me up a wall, hes just too passive never lived up to his potential type of guy if he had that dog in him would be so quality but he just doesnt, sort of a lesser tobias harris

he's surprisingly bad around the rim. great defender and has a good midrange game. they need someone better there. he's also injury prone

idk if hes even a great defender he should be but i feel like ive seen him get cooked too much, tho if you plugged him into a really good defensive team he might be great there, feel like he still has some upside if he found the right fit, like pj washington in dallas tho tbf it could be that pj was good all along theres just no way to tell cause no one has ever seen a hornets game

i guess if the hawks moved trae they could have a future of a great defensive team

yeah i'm not sure. trae feeding sarr, jalen and okongwu would be really cool, but he will always be a defensive liability. if he could just chill with the TOs i think he would be more of a net positive

yeah i see the vision kinda doubt theyll trade him but guess you never know

i just checked and trae is listed at 6-1, 164, i wonder how big he really is? obviously less than that probably and definitely not more

nba physical measurements drive me crazy cant they just give us the real numbers cmon, measuring guys with shoes on whatre u doin, its funny how the short guys list as taller and the tall guys list as shorter everyone wants to be 6 foot something

the draft combine does to real measurements now which is good, but im not sure if the nba uses those or not, obvs guys weights are gonna change over time and some guys are even still growing when they come into the league

I get agents wanting to list players who could be seen as undersized for the league as biggest than they are, but what's the motivation for the bigs being listed as smaller?

being a seven footer is a thing, guess some of them just dont want to deal with it

if u r 7 footer u get typecast into being a center, iird kd tried to keep his measurement below so he would be looked at as a forward

ah yeah that makes sense

as a luka non believer/hater ive gotta admit ive really been enjoying watching him this postseason. i feel like the harden parallels are diverging. its really fascinating watching the way he does things, its basically like if Kyle Anderson was somehow the best player in the world. hes so slow footed and hobbled... and yet he gets wherever he wants. even the snipping at the refs is just kinda funny to me right now, legit noteworthy if he goes even two consecutive trips down the floor without looking at a ref.

its borderline magical how he jogs with the ball to wherever he wants on the floor, quirkiest luka thing is beating his man letting him catch up then shooting over him he doesnt like being open its weird to him

this is him

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:mdhqf6mc7rcq4ubsiv5fiun4/bafkreicbivmvaex3kfd2kp6y3jm25p6ivrfpehgld2a2bm7bhiup3m46cy@jpeg

the ick

I'm less bothered by the occasional bursts of rage than I am by the constant smarmy smile when any minor call doesn't go his way.

its borderline magical how he jogs with the ball to wherever he wants on the floor, quirkiest luka thing is beating his man letting him catch up then shooting over him he doesnt like being open its weird to him

― lag∞n, Monday, June 3, 2024 10:26 AM (forty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

his bag of tricks is insane. imagining him and jokic on the same team is just too much

im still cheering for his downfall of course (go celts!) but im finding stuff to appreciate watching in there. gonan be some good matchups to watch. 2 years ago wiggins did just about as good as anyone has ever done against him and the celts have two guys like that to throw at him. then again he just shredded two guys like that in mcdaniels and NAW so... maybe he's solved the long rangy wings.

imagining him and jokic on the same team is just too much

― I Chet the Holmgren (Spottie), Monday, June 3, 2024 2:11 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i will not imagine that its against god

think jrue will prob be lukas primary defender he isnt a rangy wing but is an all world defender and insanely strong, think the wolves guys just werent strong enough is one thing, all tatum brown and jrue are very strong, tho no one can really guard luka think the best thing you can do is try to tire him out, which the celtics are in good position to do via both personnel and scheme, tho i did see some stats that trapping him has been effective might be worth a try especially late

I think the secret with luka is that his handle is just so insanely tight for a guy his size. so he can use his body to crawl to his spot but no one can poke it away

think jrue will prob be lukas primary defender he isnt a rangy wing but is an all world defender and insanely strong, think the wolves guys just werent strong enough is one thing, all tatum brown and jrue are very strong, tho no one can really guard luka think the best thing you can do is try to tire him out, which the celtics are in good position to do via both personnel and scheme, tho i did see some stats that trapping him has been effective might be worth a try especially late

― lag∞n, Monday, June 3, 2024 11:30 AM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

jrue too short i think. they have options tho which is key

jrue has guarded him this year fwiw and luka has called him the best perimeter defender in the game, and i called him maybe the best guy at guarding up in the league

I think the secret with luka is that his handle is just so insanely tight for a guy his size. so he can use his body to crawl to his spot but no one can poke it away

― brony james (k3vin k.), Monday, June 3, 2024 2:44 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i think its those two + psychic level ability to read his defender, he does these tiny shuffly read and react movements then once he sees an opening he goes for it

tiring luka out has been the best overall strategy since he came into the league, but he was 19 then and he's 25 now, so his stamina has improved a fair bit

also his passing cant forget that the defense is always very concerned with him making a cool pass xp

lukas endurance is still pretty bad but using kyrie as a ball handler a lot more has helped the situation

which is why its critical to make him defend, a thing the celtics are very good at, theyve been relentless targeting guys all season

jrue has guarded him this year fwiw and luka has called him the best perimeter defender in the game, and i called him maybe the best guy at guarding up in the league

― lag∞n, Monday, June 3, 2024 11:51 AM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i thought he said this about dort lol

maybe he thinks theyre the same guy

maybe theyre tied, sounds like he likes jrue best tho

Ahead of Game 1 between the Dallas Mavericks and the Oklahoma City Thunder, Luka Doncic was asked about his matchup against defensive specialist Lu Dort. Doncic spoke glowingly of Dort, hailing him as one of the three best perimeter defenders in the NBA.

"I just got to be aggressive," Doncic said. "But as I said before, I think it was one year ago or something like that, I think he's a top three defender in the league, guarding perimeter position. I think he's very good defensively, he understands what he's doing so he's pretty smart on defense too, so it's going to be a tough matchup."

Doncic was then asked to name who else was in his top three, and he went with Jrue Holiday and Herb Jones.

"Jrue Holiday, for sure," Doncic stated. "I would say Jones, Herb Jones. I think he's a pretty good one too. I'll go with those three."

interesting both jrue and dort are shorter than luka, only jones is a rangy wing

i do think tatum is prob their best defender for luka but the celtics arent going to want to start him or jaylen there its too hard, could see jaylen getting some looks at him as the game goes on and then maybe switch tatum on to him late

luka finding the strong small guys tough to play against prob cause he has trouble moving them a thing thats key to his game

interesting xps. he's really had to go through the gauntlet of tough defensive specialists.