NBA 2017 Topic

[SMiLE Brian]

Beer summit between cap and ORR?

[SurfRiderHawaii]

Beer summit between cap and ORR?

We're good now via PM. If we were closer, absolutely! Drown our Trump sorrows!

[the captain]

Malcolm Brogdon seems promising.

[SMiLE Brian]

The Bulls' three alphas turned into the three assholes thanks to Rondo's meddling in the locker room.

[the captain]

As much as I have turned against Rondo since his final year or two in Boston, I disagree about that. I think Wade and Butler were out of line by publicly calling out teammates without privately calling out teammates. I think Rondo's response to their bullshit was right on, especially for someone like Wade who admittedly has been taking off games and practices. He's aging, OK ... but KG, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen (for example) weren't? What about some older role player, does he take time off? No. It's prima donna bullshit from Wade especially.

The Bulls' struggles are because their front office made an absurd Frankenstein's monster in the name of ticket sales. Big Three, my ass. You've got a coach committed to a style of play that requires a spaced floor and versatile players who can all shoot, pass, and drive. You've got a front office that chose to sign an over-the-hill Rajon Rondo who could never shoot and barely finish drives, and an over-the-hill Dwyane Wade, who could never shoot and is less effective on his drives. This to pair with Jimmy Butler, who is the best Hoiberg fit of the three, but isn't a knockdown shooter. You then acquire Jerian Grant, who has shot horribly in the NBA. You then acquire MCW, who can't shoot. You have about half a dozen power forwards. And then you have one real shooter, McDermott, whose effectiveness will be limited because defenses can focus on him.

It's the ownership and the front office who are to blame there. You could see it coming.

[SMiLE Brian]

Agreed on the ownership, they drove a great coach in Thibs out of town over ego issues.  John Paxton and Gar Forman are the worst management in the league due to thinking they know the game better than the coach. Sound familiar to what Jerry Krause did to Phil Jackson and hiring an Iowa state coach?

[SMiLE Brian]

Rondo might have appeared right on the surface to the media but it's always a game with him in the locker room. He is pissed that he doesn't start games anymore and does his usual divide the locker room stuff by making the Wade/Butler situation that much worse.

[the captain]

That's entirely correct, too. I don't dispute that. But it still points back to ownership and management because that's no secret. Didn't we know who Rondo was? If the casual fan did (which I think s/he did), how could management and ownership not? Rondo has been playing this kind of game since the Boston rebuild began, simple as that. To expect anything else from him was naieve.

[SMiLE Brian]

My fellow fans were trashing the move in October knowing the potential mess he would cause but the management wanted to sell tickets like you said. They need a rebuild but Gar/Pax are too stupid or arrogant to do so. Wolves still want Jimmy Butler?           My cousin was his banker in Chicago and says he is a great guy! (Back when he  was a rookie at least)

[the captain]

I'd take Jimmy Butler in a heartbeat, even after his somewhat sanctimonious comments to the media, and if the Bulls prioritized anyone else on that roster over him, wow. That would be a mistake and a huge rebuild. (What would I give up for Butler? That I'm not so sure about. Obviously not KAT. Wiggins or LaVine? Oooof, very tough to do, just because of the attractiveness of the potential. (Let's not be stupid, reality trumps--make that tops, I don't care for that other word anymore--potential. How many guys with "potential" end up living up to more than a fraction of it? Not many.)

[SMiLE Brian]

You never know with gar/Pax these days! I want them gone  from running the team but Jerry Reinsdorf seems to have lost all interest in the team once Jordan retired.

[SMiLE Brian]

Captain, you go to any wolves games this year?

[the captain]

I haven't. Honestly I am not a big fan of attending games in person, at least at the professional or major-college scale. The circus and hassles that surround the games damage the games themselves for me. Blaring "Welcome to the Jungle" and other apparently required stadium listening, stupid timeout/halftime stunts, dance teams, overpriced booze, annoying crowds ... not my favorite. I do love attending games when I can get good seats, or on a smaller scale: high school games are great, and smaller colleges, too. But the basketball-industrial complex should die!

[SMiLE Brian]

I gotcha on that, I saw my local college team Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) win big last week! Plus had a hell of time in that college atmosphere that reminded me of the fun in the game.


I can't wait it stick it to the basketball-industrial complex in Washington DC by wearing my Bullets gear to the Wizards game!

[the captain]

I have no choice but to hate VCU for giving us shamed former athletic director Norwood Teague, who resigned after sexually harassing the Minneapolis Star Tribune's Gophers basketball beat writer, among others. Slimy piece of sh*t. Some held out hope that he could lure Shaka Smart to UMN after Tubby Smith, but that pipe dream was bludgeoned and replaced by Baby Pitino.

[SMiLE Brian]

Jesus, I didn't know that happened. Though the program started to change for the worse once they thought they were "hot stuff" after the miracle final four run. The new coach Will Wade has the program back on track to what its supposed to be.

[the captain]

Luckily the VCU program didn't have to suffer with the downsides he brought here. Historically I'm actually a fan of the ol' Rams, whether back in my HS days when Kendrick Warren was an intriguing pro prospect, or under Anthony Grant, or Shaka Smart, or now. Some nice players have come through, and even more good teams.

[SMiLE Brian]

Mo Alie Cox is great guy who stayed all four year rocking the floor for the team. I will miss him when he graduates in May!

[SMiLE Brian]

f***...
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2690626-jimmy-butler-reportedly-among-bulls-players-concerned-with-front-office-spying

[the captain]

Mr Verlander might be a happy man, but I am really disappointed that the Wolves gave Jon Leuer and Marcus Morris career highs in points en route to losing the game to Detroit. Disappointing for a lot of reasons:

 - Those forwards should be relatively easy to guard: neither is especially good off the dribble or athletic--they are mostly (streak) shooters.
 - Our forwards are theoretically among our best defenders: since before he played an NBA game, Wiggins has been called a potential stopper, and Dieng's bread and butter is defense.
 - We have diverse secondary options, ranging from the smaller (Baz) to bigger (KAT) to just another look (Bjelly).
 - Coming off an embarrassing loss to Cleveland, up against a relatively evenly matched team, we should have taken advantage of the opportunity.
 
Yet we give up 60 points to two role-playing near-journeymen.

[Mr. Verlander]

I came back just for you!

I'll take what I can get, as far as the Pistons go. One of the most disappointing teams in the NBA this year. I'm pretty sure that Reggie Jackson is going to be gone either by the trade deadline, or in the off season. They don't play well with him, for whatever reason. Either he isn't the same guy he was before he got hurt, or he's just gonna be a guy who has terrible shot selection, who knows? There's been a lot of grumbling though. It will be interesting to see what happens next. I'd rather they make some mega deal for someone like (forgive me) Demarcus Cousins. This team isn't going to contend for anything. The worst thing that can happen to a team is they end up like Atlanta; good enough for a 6-8 seed, and not bad enough to get a high draft pick. Then you're stuck in limbo.

Just read that Lavine is done for the year. Ouch.

[the captain]

By the way, I'm a Jon Leuer fan, so I admit to some mixed feelings. He is Minnesotan, after all. We have to cheer for our guys, since there are relatively few in the league.*

I agree that things just aren't coming together in Detroit the way everyone thought they might. And Jackson, who had seemed like such a surprisingly good fit after the trade to the point that I was eating crow, seems like old Reggie Jackson again, the guy who pouted himself out of town in OKC, resenting that Russell Westbrook was the man in that backcourt.


*Off the top of my head, Leuer, Kris Humphries, Tyus Jones, Rashad Vaughn, Cole Aldrich, Alan Anderson, Mike Muscala ... I think that's it, with Nate Wolters, Royce White, and maybe Trent Lockett hanging around the periphery.

[the captain]

Oh, and re LaVine ... talk about depressing. The Wolves really can never seem to catch a break, injury-wise. I can't recall the last season when we didn't have one or more of our top couple players miss really substantial time. In the past few years, it's been Pekovic, Rubio, Garnett, Love, Martin, Kirilenko, Roy, Budinger, Barea, Howard, Webster, Johnson, Ellington...there have been individual games when we've had six or seven of our top ten guys all miss a game. This year has been really good on that front, really with only Rubio missing a handful of games, and now this. Very depressing.

The question will be, do we try to make a deal for somebody to take his place? Or does Baz or Brandon Rush move into the starting lineup, or even Bjelly into the SF spot with Wiggins going to SG, and those guard and wing reserves just play heavier minutes to compensate?

[the captain]

Despite having complained about going to games earlier in the thread, I will be in attendance to watch the Bulls hopefully get destroyed this afternoon. It's unusual to have the visiting team be more dysfunctional than Minnesota, in my experience, so that will be fun.

[SMiLE Brian]

Wearing a Starter tracksuit and Isaiah Rider champion jersey?