A thread to talk about NBA Podcasts / Personalities / Announcers / Shows / Broadcasters / Commentators

there's just too many super gifted offensive players on a bunch of teams

think it was more the Celtics just breaking down on offense like for 5 minutes they barely got a shot off

its was a real bad stretch but thats why you go up by 20, and then they pulled it together and won the game

wtf is lowe’s problem, i haven’t listened but heard he was dissecting luka’s fouls like the zapruder film

hes got bristol brain, baby, incurable

dallas never led or even tied lol

i forwarded past the those first two segments of the luka fouls and the celtics cold snap where he seemed depressed over the whole sitch, and now hes cheered up and is complimenting the celtics saying he always believed in them shouldve started that way then dug into the details after, weird stuff

dallas never led or even tied lol

― call all destroyer, Thursday, June 13, 2024 12:59 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

they were up the whole first half!

no i meant in the famous run following the 21 point lead

Haven't listened to this Lowe-cast, and honestly probably won't.

I had the same experience others had upthread with his Finals preview, where he started with a capital-S SERIOUS "WHICH TEAM HAS MORE AT STAKE?" question. Then he was pre-emptively super-defensive about the question itself, then started talking about some dumb shit that Perk said on TV. Had to shut it off!

I listened to his podcast religiously from like 2017 to 2022 but I feel like something changed around then that I can't quite put my finger on.

Maybe I don't really feel like I learn anything from him anymore, plus he's like 20% more manic and shticky than he used to be. And the constant mentions of what his ESPN TV colleagues think, as has been covered well upthread.

I tend to skip to the guest with TLP but I like his guest segments a lot. They usually have room to talk, whereas THC is the same ten jokes over and over mixed with small servings of very good analysis.

xp manic and schticky is right, he also talks way more than he lets the guests talk. he usually has some good points buried in there but it’s a lot.

it is really weird the whole groupthink that developed over the course of this season where somehow the team that was by far the best team in the nba all regular season by any objective/statistical measure was somehow not the favorite the win the championship

people saw the 2021 jazz and the 2022 suns and have now overcorrected into thinking the statistically strongest team is always a paper tiger

also boston playing in the weaker east was a factor, even though they went 23-7 against western teams during the regular season

i don't think it was misguided groupthink to say that denver should have been considered the favorites. i think at any point in history any title team returning their starting 5 of guys all still more or less in their primes has had a claim to being title favorites. and if denver played boston in a 7 game series maybe they would beat them

yes Denver for sure I was more thinking of how people across the board were picking Dallas

Yeah, it's totally fair to have had the Nuggets as favorites to repeat. That said, I do think a lot of people saw Boston's regular season success as a mirage on some level. I mean, more than half of the ESPN experts picked the Mavs to win this series

well…I think it was also a bit of a case of not understanding basic probability. even if the nuggets were the best team this year, which is arguable, they still had to make their way through a loaded west to even have the chance to play the celtics in the finals. you can hypothetically be a 3-1 favorite three series in a row and you’d still be well under 50% to make it through all three.

I do think the celtics were the best and most complete team, but their road to the finals was probably historically easy…something that’s been more or less the case for east champs for 25 years now. at some point someone should do something about this imo…

and it turned out it wasnt just the celtics path to the finals that was easy, the finals was easy too

yeah I don’t want to get too much in the business of discounting individual championship runs, the celtics have def earned it this year. but there’s a pattern that seems like it’s bad for the league esp now that lebron is out of the east/irrelevant

on the other hand in the aforementioned 25 years, the east has gone 8-17 against the west

it would be more fair and also more entertaining to de conference the league imho

needs to happen at some point

Now that the broadcast is over, I’ve gotta say, I don’t feel like the NBA and ABC did a good job at all making this feel like a big event. Finals logos and legends should just be everywhere. The Stephen A halftime show was a joke. Top to bottom, they’ve gotta reevaluate it all.

— Shehan Jeyarajah (@ShehanJeyarajah) June 18, 2024

kinda true tho i liked not having the big dumb logo sticker at center court, especially since players slip on it

I do think the celtics were the best and most complete team, but their road to the finals was probably historically easy…something that’s been more or less the case for east champs for 25 years now. at some point someone should do something about this imo…

― brony james (k3vin k.), Thursday, June 13, 2024 5:09 PM (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

what do you even do about this though besides dropping the conferences, is the league gonna force new ownership in NY and chicago? theres not any fundamental reason the east should be worse, its mostly from that

lol cedric maxwell wandering around jumping in on multiple broadcasts to say how bout them celtics and somewhat incongruously see you later fakin lakers

lol I just listened to Lowe and was coming to post about Cedric, trash talking James Worthy lol

cornbread time

I hate that the Celtics officially have more championships than us now 🙄

— Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) June 18, 2024

simmons championship pod w/ dad… that’s an auto delete from me……

cool to see that jackie mac came thru the hoop collective postgame pod tho. heard her name mentioned i think on their last pod re an old story she had written and i was like, damn all this celtics talk and jackie mac is a ghost, at least nationally. didn’t feel right to me

not sure if anything is going on w/her other than taking retirement seriously but i miss her a lot for sure

for some reason i remember thinking that her split from espn seemed somewhat acrimonious but reading back about it now it seems like she just wanted to quit working. shoutout to her

Hopefully she’s perfected her Embiid impression.

i listened to jackie’s bit of the pod, apparently she’s been doing some local tv

thats a nice part time retirement job

that was a good pod nice freewheeling style

so many ladies in the background getting their pictures taken throwing confetti into the air

Just filed for the final time with @ShotDrJr. Tomorrow’s Tier 1 is sadly my last for @TheAthleticNBA. It’s been a great 5 years, first 2 full time and last 3 as a contributor.

Had great times working not just with Rob, but the GOAT @thatgonzalez

1/x

— Anchorage Man (@SethPartnow) June 21, 2024

damn we’re losing partnow

Tbh, he’s kind of annoying. I get tired of him dunking on randos on X because he’s smarter than them.

ESPN's opening bid for Stephen A is $18 million per year. He wants more. @Ourand_Puck https://t.co/pk6L14zQkX

— Bryan Curtis (@bryancurtis) June 21, 2024

18 million a year huh

lmao let him go to fox, jesus

ESPN getting rid of Jeff Van Gundy after being concerned he would jump back into coaching, only to replace him with Doc Rivers and JJ Redick, who both left within months for coaching jobs, is hilarious.

— Moneybagg Yo(hannes) 🇪🇷 (@AronYohannes) June 20, 2024

I’m old enough to remember when we needed to protect ‘inside’ because it was better than the alternative NBA product…but now that I think of it there are some big stephen A boosters within our quarters as well

it has been so long since inside was good, im starting to doubt it was good in the first place. there were definitely fewer hot takes and the shenanigans weren’t all in bold capital blinking letters.

it's only good now when Charles says something goofy and makes Shaq giggle not really for hoops