Germany lead by Dennis Schröder new World Champion in Basketball!
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Looks like we have 4 so far for a fantasy league
Are we down on Fantasy so far?
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I’d still do it but we only had 4 at last check.
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Is anybody else bored of the NBA today like I am? It’s just awful basketball, hardly any defense and it’s become a three point shooting contest. It’s like everyone just wants to be like Steph and Klay.
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I disagree. The Minnesota/Denver series is already off to a hot start.
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Sure, but I just wish there was more posting up and proper defense throughout the league. Just because there lot of big men, but not all of em make for great 3pt shooters. Charles Barkley has a point all along. He’s like Jim Cornette in terms of today’s NBA and a lot of times hes right.
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Analytics for basketball are too good and too simple, once you’re talking about the best players in the world. Making 33% of your 3s is the same making 50% of your 2s. Other than that, just get defensive rebounds to your opponent only gets one shot per possession. And if a guy can’t score, his defense is only worth so much.
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I’m mostly just watching the west and there is a lot more variety. OKC is mostly a three jacking team with a super weird mix, but Denver, Minny and Dallas all run a lot of different offences.
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Let’s Go Mavs!
I really didn’t think it would take 13 years to get back to the second round of the playoffs. But I’m feeling pretty good about facing the Thunder after killing the Clippers in a couple of games.
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They talk about Analytics changing how basketball is played leaning toward a more three-point league in the latest Mind the Game episode. I love that show.
@jallonar4040 If you want defense, watch what the Wolves are doing with two bigs on Jokic. Minnesota is one of the best defensive teams in the league. OKC’s defense is pretty great as well, but I’m biased as a Supersonics-turned-Thunder supporter. I am well aware OKC’s defense is about to get cooked by Luka.
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Charles Barkley, man. Doesn’t hold back anything. 
It will truly be a sad day whenever these four retire. Greatest sports show ever.
@TheBenjamin @MJfromNJ @RaceyJaycee
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I don’t. LOL. Podcasts, the occasional YouTube video, and the Athletic’s NBA newsletter are how I keep up with basketball. I don’t have time to watch a full game live and being on the West Coast it’s harder. Most everything I do is audio and reading-based because that’s what I like and what works with my work life - I can always have stuff in the background - and I do very little passive watching. I don’t watch TV shows or movies either. Between work, life stuff, music, and fitness, I don’t have much time dedicated to sitting in front of a TV.
I “watched” Game 1 OKC vs Dallas on my second screen while working. I couldn’t tell you how the games in the East are going or with hockey at all for that matter. LOL. So, that’s how I keep up with hoops and motorsports: I don’t, I rely on audio and reading while doing almost no passive watching while the sport is live.
I’m still trying to get over the Magic blowing an 18 point lead in Game 7. Must be how it feels to be Leafs fan.
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@jamead Ok, if you want a like a meta-view on the NBA, the Athletic’s NBA show has/had a weekday morning recap show that is usually around 20-25 minutes long during the regular season. The Friday show - 1 hour - gives you the top five notes and stats from the week and they become fans of a team for one week, each show.
Right now, the Althetic’s NBA show is doing a nightly wrap-up of the games in about 25 minutes. Their my favorite podcast for going around the league and getting a wide perspective.
I’m really into “Mind the Game” right now. I love getting inside the game from that inside-the-game perspective. If you like JJ Redick - which I do, clearly, you might like “The Old Man and the Three.” Those episodes range from 30 minutes to 1.5 hours. I’ll give “The Dunker Spot” guys a shout here. You might dig them.
Those are my go-to hoop shows.
I can’t help much with individual team podcasts if that’s more your thing. I haven’t found a WNBA podcast that I like. Lol.
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The NBA is a bunch of guys walking with the ball and jacking threes until the end of the game where the refs decide who got fouled and should win the game.
Picking up on @jamead’s comment: NASCAR’s biggest argument against F1 has been that it’s predictable and procedural. Simply look at the stats of starting on the front row and winning an F1 Grand Prix, and you’ll find a high conversion rate. Conversely, unless on a road course, NASCAR is repeatedly and constantly turning left on various oval configurations for over three hours in cars that are very, very, very similar by technical mandate. That sounds something pretty predictable calling a rival predictable to me.
To avoid predictability, NASCAR has engineered its cars and racing rules to ensure a “full-contact,” almost spec-series sport featuring crashes, many yellow flags, restarts, and overtime periods. NASCAR’s last-minute excitement and dash to the checkered flag is often artificially generated through rules and not borne from on-track racing. This extends to NASCAR’s playoff structure: last year’s Cup Series champion, Ryan Blaney, shouldn’t have won the Cup Series Championship. If NASCAR was scored on the aggregate of the entire season like F1, William Byron should’ve been the Championship driver. But, NASCAR has engineered a playoff system, wherein a driver who had a middling regular season can put together a couple of decent races and jump from the 12th seed to Cup Series Champion in a handful of races.
Current F1 is boring if you are only paying attention to the “Main Event” scene (the front-runners). With the reliability and constantly narrowing field spread, we’re getting better racing than ever. That doesn’t stop Max Verstappen from being the best driver on the planet in the best car. We have the closest field spread - despite not being a spec-series - in F1 history and have one of the greatest drivers of all time demonstrating unbelievable greatness. Yet the discourse is focused on F1 being boring because the main event scene has little to no drama. That’s like saying the current wrestling world championship scene isn’t the best, so I don’t care about wrestling at all.
But reductive, simplistic takes on sports are key to sports, aren’t they? LOL 
In NBA terms, you can have takes like @Alex_Patel’s 
, which there is a lot of out there, or you can go a little more inside and understand how the high DHO or pick and roll (think Draymond and Steph), analytics, and better shooters have led to an increase in three-point attempts. Centers didn’t really shoot threes in the 90s, and now every team has plays designed for a big-man catch-and-shoot, corner three-point attempt. Does it suck when Dame walks the ball up the court and hits a pull-up three because his defender is 10 feet off the ball? Yeah, it’s not great for the spectacle of sport but the analytics and situation dictate he takes that shot 10 times out of 10.
The “the NBA is a bunch of guys walking the floor and shooting threes” is reductive as NASCAR is just turning left or F1 is boring and can do the same thing with wrestling. It’s all about the lenses you use to view and engage with the sport. It also required totally ignoring things like rule changes like the league-mandated, referring change around the All-Star break - the NBA’s problematic referring needs to be addressed, that let the players play more physically and competitively, which has led to better games, and helped bump up the on-court intensity after the lull from the in season tournament for the stretch to the play-in tournament. During this period the games got better. Even the Pistons were better.
The point is, the more inside any sport you get, the more nuanced an understanding you get, and those simplistic or reductive takes tend to fade away and fall flat.
The NBA will be boring for many even if Anthony Edwards does live up to some expert’s comparison to #23.
My suggestion from experience is to start watching college basketball. I think it’s a better game, overall.
But also, when you go back to watching the NBA, you realize just how damn talented those guys are. Give an NBA shooter an inch of breathing room, and he’s hitting 8-of-10 from beyond the arc. The reason they take these wild looking pull-ups and step-backs is because that’s all the defense will give them… and they’ll still hit 33% of them.
The biggest B.S. about the NBA is in the officiating. Because it’s not even the officials’ job to make the correct call. It’s to make sure that LeBron gets the same whistle as KD and Embiid and whoever else. And that counts as “fair”.
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Many of these officials, they dont do anything about flopping and not even calling travels half the time as well. And making stupid foul calls as well.
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SO HOW ABOUT THOSE RAPTORS?
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