The NBA thread

[Stoney Mason]

High tops have been making a comeback dude.

Lots of awful things make comebacks. Let's not applaud it.

This comes from someone who rocked one in high school but now realizes how lame it was.

[Great Rumbler]

We left the 80's worship and are jumping straight into 90's worship, it was inevitable Stoney.

The 90's have always been awesome, though. Clinton Years

[Phoenix Dark]

High tops have been making a comeback dude.

http://gawker.com/avery-robinson/

Shumpert macking on the president's daughters

[Smooth Groove]

Lakers were in the game until Kobe tried to show he's on the King's level

I am almost certain that Bron guarding Kobe was a strategic ploy to bait Kobe into going solo

[Flannel Boy]

LeBron commenting on the Lakers' season. Dude is such a goddamn douchebag.

Woah, woah, woah! LeBron commented on the Lakers during a game against the Lakers. The nerve.

[Great Rumbler]

He hates LeBron but thinks Kobe is an okay dude why are people getting so worked up over him anyway he's just a hard worker who wants to win more than anybody else.

[TakingBackSunday]

LeBron commenting on the Lakers' season. Dude is such a goddamn douchebag.

oh get fucked shinobi

[Stoney Mason]

As opposed to all around good guy Kobe. 

Anyway.

James has now tied an NBA record, becoming one of three players in the history of the league to score 30-plus points in five straight games while shooting 60 percent or better from the field in each game. He is an unfathomable 55-of-77 from the field (71.4 percent) over those five games

[Mandark]

I figured AWESOME-O was joking, at least partially.

Kobe's not a dick --> he's a psychopath, but only because he's competitive --> sure he's a dick, but c'mon everyone's kind of a dick --> OMG LeBron is such a douche!!!

All in the space of two pages.  At least some of that has to be trolling/self-deprecating humor/performance art, right?

[Flannel Boy]

Really, Mandark, don't you have a copy of the DSM IV.

[Mandark]

Really, Mandark, don't you have a copy of the DSM IV.

 

The distinction being whether or not you play for the Lakers, I'm guessing.

Anyways, San Antonio's on the rodeo road trip whupping up on the Nets without Duncan or Ginobili.  Time for that bimonthly post remding us how good the Spurs are, Cormac!

[Stoney Mason]

You're making the mistake of assuming that dick and douche are synonymous.

Kobe is more of a dick; LeBron is more of a douche. IMO, dickishness is a far more excusable personality trait than douchiness.

Well rape is definitely more of a dick move so you may have a point...

I tease.

[Flannel Boy]

Need help filling out the list.
Dicks: Jordan, Bird, Kobe, KG, Rodman, Laimbeer, R. Barry
dickwads: Kemp, Sprewell, Marbury, Donald Sterling
pencil dicks: Dan Gilbert
Numbnuts: Nick Young, Javale McGee, Metta World Peace, Josh Howard
nipple dicks: ??
Douches: LeBron, KG, Thomas, Pitino, Rodman, K. Malone, Patterson
Pussies: Carter, Bargnani
assholes: Barkley, KG, Cuban, Sheed, Jackson, Rodman

[Mandark]

Man, that's already a good list.  Probably get a lot of mileage by adding coaches.  Also Sheed and Stephen Jackson.


edit: Cuban for the assholes list

[Mandark]

Numbnuts: Nick Young, Javale McGee, Metta World Peace

[TakingBackSunday]

Rapists: Kobe

[pilonv1]

Clowns: Dwight Howard

[benjipwns]

pedophiles: duckroll

Drummond noooooooo

Bah, sucks. I really think Drummond is gonna be craazy good

Worst part is they just got Calderon on the court.

Who is going insane even without him. A player who can actually handle and advance the ball up the court would have murdered with Andre.

[Smooth Groove]

a good article on Drummond from the always controversial WOW:

http://wagesofwins.com/2013/02/06/voters-write-down-andre-drummond-for-rookie-of-the-year-in-pen/

[Cormacaroni]

Really, Mandark, don't you have a copy of the DSM IV.

 

The distinction being whether or not you play for the Lakers, I'm guessing.

Anyways, San Antonio's on the rodeo road trip whupping up on the Nets without Duncan or Ginobili.  Time for that bimonthly post remding us how good the Spurs are, Cormac!

Unfortunately just as I got a few people on that bandwagon last season, OKC happened to them   But again, they're doing all the right things - resting the stars (or getting by without them due to injury), bringing up the bench guys, destroying everyone with execution....

[Smooth Groove]

http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nba/story/_/id/8935100/los-angeles-lakers-compared-miami-heat

the nobility and courage of a warrior going into an impossible fight

I'm misting up

[Flannel Boy]

In Gay's first five games with the Raptors, he's averaging 23.4 points on 21.4 shots. That efficiency.

[Stoney Mason]

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2013/feb/10/tayshaun-prince-fan-lives-his-dream-at-grizzlies/

[Stoney Mason]

Another fun factoid.

In the past two decades, only two players have shot 56+ pct from the floor on 18+ attempts per game: Shaq and LeBron.

[Phoenix Dark]

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2013/feb/10/tayshaun-prince-fan-lives-his-dream-at-grizzlies/

ha that's awesome. Prince is one of the nicest NBA guys I've ever met

[TakingBackSunday]

Another fun factoid.

In the past two decades, only two players have shot 56+ pct from the floor on 18+ attempts per game: Shaq and LeBron.

that's fucking insane, holy shit

lebron is god-tier

[Mandark]

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/miamiheat/post/_/id/16858/anatomy-of-lebron-james-last-65-shots

MIAMI -- With 9:24 left in the fourth quarter in last Sunday’s game in Toronto, LeBron James took a fadeaway jumper off the left wing and it missed off the back iron.

He has gone 49-of-65 since.

Repeat: 49-of-65.

When alerted of those numbers after Miami Heat's win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday, James did a double-take in front of his locker.

“Forty-nine what, makes?” James asked.

Yeah, makes.

“Forty-nine of what?”

Forty-nine of last 65.

“S---, that’s pretty good,” James said.

Pretty good, indeed. But how exactly do we put 49-of-65 in proper perspective? Teammate Shane Battier said that task is impossible.

“You can’t, at least historically,” Battier said. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s like blowing up a no-hitter.”

We’ll save that superstition for Battier because this streak is too remarkable to leave it be.

James is shooting 75.4 percent since that missed jumper in Toronto. He finished 4-of-4 that game and then shot 13-of-14 against Charlotte, 11-of-18 against Houston, 9-of-11 against the Los Angeles Clippers and, finally, 12-of-18 against the Lakers on Sunday.

What a douche.

[Flannel Boy]

If he were a good teammate, he'd miss some shots to allow his teammates to get some offensive boards. In this sense, Kobe looked out for Shaq.

[Cormacaroni]

We're at the interesting bit of LeBron's career, where everyone can see the utter terrorism he is about to inflict over the next 3-4 years of his projected 'peak' but no-one dare mouth the words 'better than MJ'. Someone will eventually break and say it on ESPN or wherever, but probably 2 years or so late. I mean, he's a better shooter than MJ in terms of % (and pretty much everybody else not a center), he's way better from 3pt territory, he's a significantly better distributor (not that MJ couldn't excel, but it wasn't usually his job), he's a better post player (again, MJ was great there but he wasn't doing it against 270lb'ers so have to give LeBron the edge), he's had a surfeit of big moments and dramatic finishes, he's a better rebounder, a better dunker, bigger better faster more basically. And he's doing it all against far tougher and more complex defenses than Jordan faced (yes, I know about the Jordan Rules but MJ still got to go one-on-one all night long).

So you'll hear a lot about rings and winning but at some point LeBron will likely have 3 or 4 rings himself and opinion will shift. At this point MJ is still comfortably ahead obviously, and as the first real global basketball phenomenon, he has a huge incumbent's advantage...but if we're talking trajectories and reasonable assumptions, I see no real reason why LeBron won't retire as the GOAT. Except maybe that Durant kid. (and incidentally? Better than any of MJ's competition at his position by far. Probably better than any of MJ's competition other than Barkley in fact).

[Cormacaroni]

You can also pencil him in for better career scoring, rebounding, and assist stats as well, which have a decent impact in the court of public opinion. (with the caveat that no-one ever mentions Kareem as the GOAT, somewhat unfairly perhaps). He'll almost certainly play more years than MJ too, and be seen by even more people than MJ was due to a bigger global fanbase (China, Europe) now....

[Mandark]

Pump your brakes a bit.  Jordan was a much deadlier shooter than LeBron from midrange (I don't think any of the fancy shot-tracking services were around at that point, but FT% should attest to this).  I don't think it's clear that LeBron's a lot better from 3, either.  Remember, when Jordan came into the league the 3-point shot was still a bit of a novelty and his career stats are hurt by the first four years when he wasn't taking the shot much and was in the teens, percentage-wise.  From '88 to '97 he shot .365, a percentage that Bron hasn't managed to match during a full season yet.  Plus he took better care of the ball and surprisingly got more offensive rebounds than Bron.

It shouldn't be surprising that MJ has some statistical advantages.  They match up pretty evenly in PER so some categories have to balance the others.  I do think that LeBron's the only player to hit Jordanesque levels of production, and he might yet make another leap forward, but he hasn't clearly surpassed Jordan's individual contributions by any means.  If LeBron gets a handful of rings it'll be one of the great barbershop debates of all time, but for now I gotta award the tie to the guy whose whose championships aren't mostly hypothetical.

[Cormacaroni]

For now I do too?

This is all assuming that we are just now seeing what LeBron's peak is (but then again, given the improvement we've seen since 2010, he could yet get better. It's just hard to see where).

Being good at mid-range shooting is the flipside of the '3pt shot was not important back then' argument. The mid-range shot is justly reviled today as inefficient so being good at it is a 'world's tallest dwarf'-type achievement. LeBron is best at what the modern game demands, and there is no reason to think that someone with his height, elevation and accuracy from deep would not beat Jordan in mid-range shooting if that's what he'd worked on instead of getting to the rim and getting open corner 3s for teammates. Again, he's still 27, and HIS career %s were dragged down by playing a man's game at 18, while Jordan was in college.

[Mandark]

I think that Bron's persistently lower FT% is an indication that MJ was just going to be better from that range.

Also, the Jordan Rules weren't just "hit him really hard, but otherwise let him go 1 on 1."

[Cormacaroni]

ok, let's talk PER. MJ leads LeBron by a fraction of a % right now, which is actually pretty significant at that level of PER. But still, he is by far the post-MJ king of PER, and only MJ is even a hair in front of him. MJ has 4 30+ PER seasons, which are the seasons people are really talking about in GOAT discussions, rather than the 'amazing for anybody else, average for MJ' seasons.

but LeBron has 3 of those ALREADY, before his supposed peak years (which are arguable, given he started early. but anyway. It's tough to be sure because he is so durable, and gives the impression he will never age or get hurt). So isn't a total of 6-7 30+ PER seasons on the cards here? Sure, it's theoretical but we are only a few posts away from someone bringing up MJ's theoretical performance during the baseball years

[Mandark]

In Jordan's "off" year he saved the planet Earth by beating a team of 8 foot tall, roided-up aliens, carrying a roster so thin that Daffy Duck and Bill Murray both got significant minutes.

[Cormacaroni]

....


alright defend his fashion choices then i dare you

[TakingBackSunday]

but lebron's a douche so who cares

[Phoenix Dark]

fucking nerds...

[Cormacaroni]

fucking nerds...

sorry if we interrupted your SCII tournament livestream with our sports talk there

[Phoenix Dark]

touche

I'd need to see LeBron dominate in the playoffs, specifically the finals, more before contemplating him being better than Jordan.

[Cormacaroni]

you might want to watch this thing called 'television'in June then

[Cormacaroni]

I do think it's fair to hold LeBron's no-shows against Boston and Dallas against him. Even if the former was motivated by wanting out of the Cavs, it is a black mark against him in any GOAT discussions. Vs Dallas, I think the Heat were mostly just tired and out-coached. It was still a below-par outing for LeBron for sure. But would be SHOCKED if that is repeated any time soon.

[TakingBackSunday]

Maurice, just youtube some of the highlights of Lebron in the playoffs last year.  He dominated almost every single game he played.

[Mandark]

touche

I'd need to see LeBron dominate in the playoffs, specifically the finals, more before contemplating him being better than Jordan.

Either you're posting from the past or I'm posting from the future.

[Cormacaroni]

how soon we forget

[TakingBackSunday]

Mandark...I fucking knew it!!!

[TakingBackSunday]

dammit that was LITERALLY the game highlights I was just about to link

[Cormacaroni]

i attribute my success to my superior implementation of the paleo diet and my strict fitness routine

[Cormacaroni]

and being a better person

[Flannel Boy]

We're at the interesting bit of LeBron's career, where everyone can see the utter terrorism he is about to inflict over the next 3-4 years of his projected 'peak'

Most players peak somewhere around 26, at least according to PER (Malone is a major exception). Pretty sure I made a post about it years ago on this forum.
RE: PER and Jordan. He missed two of his near-prime seasons (PER before and after his baseball stint was at 29). In his late 30s (38-40) he had two seasons in which his PER was around 20, eight below his career average. Though, in fairness, LeBron had a PER of 18.3 as a teen rookie.

1.    Wilt Chamberlain*   31.84    1962-63    SFW
2.    Wilt Chamberlain*   31.76    1961-62    PHW
3.    Michael Jordan*   31.71    1987-88    CHI
4.    LeBron James   31.67    2008-09    CLE
5.    Wilt Chamberlain*   31.64    1963-64    SFW
6.    Michael Jordan*   31.63    1990-91    CHI
7.    Michael Jordan*   31.19    1989-90    CHI
8.    Michael Jordan*   31.14    1988-89    CHI
9.    LeBron James   31.11    2009-10    CLE
10.    LeBron James   30.74    2011-12    MIA

[TakingBackSunday]

You'll get no disagreement there from me cormac!

[benjipwns]

When you launch something as innovative as this -- that will change the way the players look on the court and the way the fans support the team forever -- why not launch it in the most innovative part of the United States?

"We didn't do this for the sales," Welts said. "This is all about the image of the franchise and being forward."

[TakingBackSunday]

I like it.  Too close to lakers colors but I like the design a lot.  I wonder how comfortable that is.

[Cormacaroni]

covers up more tatts!

also, you guys didn't disappoint on bringing up Jordan's theoretical baseball years PER

[Beezy]

Jersey t-shirts. GTFO

[Mandark]

You've already given LeBron a bunch of theoretical championships!

[Cormacaroni]

well, i'm assuming them. You can certainly discount them if you have a better theory about who is gonna win them with him playing like this!

[Stoney Mason]

I think that jersey looks awful. I think the shoulders look on an nba jersey looks really lame.

[benjipwns]

Another ding to LeBron's legacy will be when someone signs Norris Cole to a multi-year contract.

[Mandark]

By that logic, who woulda beat Jordan?

And I expect LeBron to collect more rings, but I wouldn't be shocked if he falls short of that.  Championships are hard, and last year's Heat were down 2-1 to the Pacers and 3-2 to the Celtics.  I hope folks appreciate what LeBron did last year for its own merit rather than think of it as having to be the first step into greatness.