Knicks vs. Wizards – Preseason Game 2

We’re back online and the Knicks are back to playing basketball, with their second preseason game against the same terrible team they beat in their first preaseason game!

Let’s see MSG show some love for RJ Barrett, Mitch and the other guys!

381 replies on “Knicks vs. Wizards – Preseason Game 2”

Starting 5: Payton, Barrett, Morris, Randle, Robinson
That might be the opening day starting 5.

bUt cAn ZiOn dO iT aGaInST NbA tAlEnT

I’m so glad KB is back. LET’S GO BOYS

it’s early but this is probably the best collection of ballhandlers and passers we’ve gotten since… i think the championship knick teams….

Barrett needs some work defending the pick and roll. He’s gotten eaten up on screens a few times already.

And Barrett’s jumper needs work. He’s overplaying Beal to the right too much giving Beal room to go left. But he needs to keep shooting and with communication he can get better weak side help.

the nuances of nba defense are really the last things to develop…. it took awhile for even a guy like lebron to sort of get it in that regard… rj probably will take even longer….

what you’re looking for at least is getting his hands on the ball… generating turnovers…. disrupting….

Barrett’s on-ball defense seems pretty solid. Effort is good and he has good body control.

u kno i’m not sure what’s gonna happen in a couple of years… but it’s nice having some actual pro’s on the floor making heads up plays and finishing when they’re supposed to….

Yep. His on-ball defense is energetic and he doesn’t seem to commit fouls. He committed 64 fouls in 34 games last year while averaging 34.9 mpg

Itā€™s so surreal watching a Knickā€™s game where the other team is calling time outs to reorganize and try and catch up to the Knicks. I canā€™t remember that happening much, if at all, last year.

I was pretty sure this site was destroyed by angry Chinese and/or Ukrainian hackers.
Welcome back

Somewhere, Strato must be smiling. Frank goes out of the game, and the Wiz promptly go on a monster run.

Payton is -16, Frank +7, so far.

Neither guy has hit a shot: Payton 0-5, Frank 0-1.

Well, in tonight’s game RJ is doing the thing he didn’t do in the first game, which is burning possessions taking high degree-of-difficulty shots. NYK in general not making the extra pass.

Very poor perimeter defense by this team as well, they look disorganized on the defensive end.

randle obviously decided to be mike sweetney for halloween.

if trier is out of the rotation in a preseason game against the wizards with knox, dsj and dotson hurt, where exactly is he on the depth chart?

JK47 – I don’t know if you follow Ken Tremendous on twitter, I imagine you do. But it brings back some FJM fun….

JK47 ā€“ I donā€™t know if you follow Ken Tremendous on twitter, I imagine you do. But it brings back some FJM funā€¦.

I don’t really do Twitter but that makes me want to get back into it

it’s important to panic in the preseason so it needs to be said that aside from a stellar first 90 seconds of game 1 mitch has been pretty bad

You know it’s bad when Payton needs to get some shooting tips from Frank.

wow, 37% on 2pa, 25% on 3pa, 65% on fta…yeah, that’s not good…well, at least they’re playing the worse team in league…

oh wait, maybe the wiz are playing the worst team in the league…

Ken Tremendous kind of sounds like a pro wrestler name. Like Mike Awesome, etc.
šŸ™‚

But is Mike Awesome a pension fund monitor at Fremulon Insurance?

Can’t watch this…

Payton is 0-8 and -25 in 25 minutes.

Frank is +7 in 3 minutes with 2 rebounds and a assist but is buried on the bench because he got 3 fouls all while they were killing us from 3 while he was out

Fizdale is not bad. Heā€™s brain damaged.

pelicans have a lot going for them besides zion. lonzo’s shot looks much better and alexander walker is obviously an nba player.

Also there is no offensive system

I had posted an interview w Knox in which he said twice ā€œcoach fix hasnā€™t given us no plays.ā€

How much longer can the charlatan keep it up? If youā€™re not working on a system now, youā€™re never going to.

If it makes anyone feel any better KP has looked like shit in his first two preseason games. Very robust sample.

not the best showing from the team…. also not gonna panic….. rj continues to show well and that’s good….

one other good part about rj’s game so far is that his shot distribution seems to be mirroring what he did at duke… meaning paint opportunities and 3s…. he’s gonna be inconsistent from the perimeter all year but it looks like he’s very viable on his drives which is a great great sign…. that’s all you need for now while the rest of the game develops….

frank has shown flashes… but from where he was and where he still is… it’s not nearly enough… i’ll be shocked if he sees major minutes this year….

Payton has played terribly so far. Bit itā€™s also hard to judge a point guard in Fizā€™s ā€œSystem.ā€

I just listened to part of the podcast with the scout Bryan Oringher mentioned above. He compares Frankā€™s progress to that of Thomas Satoransky. He didnā€™t say they were totally similar as players, but he said Satoransky was very bad his first two years, but has progressed to the point where he is a good player and recently got a big contract. He thought Frank could progress over a similar timeframe. I donā€™t know Satoransky at all. Does his point seem reasonable?

I was disappointed in Franksā€™s game last night. The offense looked better when he was on the court. The ball was moving better when he was on the court with good players.

However

Itā€™s not the 2-7 and 0-3 line that bothers me so much. Steph Curry starts some games off like that. Itā€™s that he passed up on one shot he should have taken and forced a couple of bad shots he shouldnā€™t have taken trying to be ā€œaggressiveā€. Heā€™s still like a rookie thatā€™s been told what heā€™s doing wrong, but still does know how and when to be aggressive. Itā€™s not intuitive yet. Until heā€™s decisive and itā€™s coming naturally, heā€™s going have bad shooting nights that should have been better.

He should have been 2-5 or 3-5 in limited minutes and you could come away from the game saying he did ā€œFrankā€. He played defense, made some plays, moved the ball, got a few boards, and scored OK on low usage.

The other disappointment was Robinson. He still looks like a one trick pony on both sides of the ball. Unfortunately the Knicks arenā€™t built to maximize his one offensive trick with great spacing and PG play. Without that, you have another piece on the court that can become irrelevant at times depending on matchups on what the defense is focusing on. And of course he got into foul trouble on the other end and became irrelevant on that side too.

Heā€™s not ready to be a starter on a decent team. Weā€™ll probably force it for development purposes, but I hope this is just a couple randomly weak games and not his limitations being exposed by teams that know what to expect better this year.

Frankā€™s handle and driving was not the problem for him on offense last night. He got to the rim fine twice and created another decent look off his handle. His problem is between his ears.

I don’t really understand how we can play 2 games against the same shitty team, and in the first one close out hard on shooters and generally play solid defense and in the second give up 19 3 pointers, mostly to wide open shooters.

I guess it was only having 3 days rest?

It’s just so obvious that Frank is not an NBA PG. Can’t believe anyone with a brain and two eyes can’t figure that out. If you want to force-feed him into a PG, he should be sent to the G-League until he dominates down there (which he won’t, probably ever.) Otherwise, he’s an undersized defensive wing with no offensive game.

Mitch was pressing and trying to do too much on defense, got into foul trouble almost immediately and never got untracked. Thatā€™ll happen when the defensive strategy is ā€œhey guys go out there and try to do stuffā€ which seemed to be Fizā€™s strategy.

Having some of the veteran glue guys around will probably paper over some of Fizdaleā€™s glaring shortcomings as a coach, but you have to be kind of concerned about the player development under this guy.

Does anyone here like the band Moe? I was having a few beers with their drummer last night, he’s a cool guy!

He got to the rim fine twice and created another decent look off his handle. His problem is between his ears.

lol

It’s been obvious for a while that most Zion-skepticism is just contrarianism for its own sake. That’s not to say he’s already the best version of himself, but the fact that he’s probably not just makes him even scarier. There’s really not much to say besides he’s a god damn generational player. Sigh.

Off-topic, but MLB really screwed me over with this 4:08 start time for game 3 of the ALCS. I had already bought tickets with some buddies and never considered the possibility it wouldn’t be a night game. I can still make it because I’m a student (will have to miss a class but oh well), but obviously all of my working friends had to back out and now I’m scrambling to find people who can go.

Payton is like a not-as-fat, better rebounding version of Ray Felton. He can dribble around and stuff but because heā€™s no threat to shoot or score on a drive, you donā€™t have to spend defensive resources to slow him down. Heā€™s better than how he played last night but heā€™s just another in a long string of mediocre Knick point guards.

I still think the guard play on this team sets a hard mid-20s win ceiling. I donā€™t see this team winning more than 27-ish games with this collection of guards.

Yeah, the 26.5 Vegas number is one of the best lines I can remember in a while.

Those Zion highlights are impressive. Made Gobert look 6’1.

Ja looking solid so far too, natch.

With his touch around the rim and his strength, Zion will be an and 1 machine from day one in the league. Alexander-Walker has looked pretty damn good so far too.

I really can’t believe we lost the lottery this year of all years. It hurts so bad. I would have nothing but optimism if we had Mitch, Zion and literally nothing else of value.

I didn’t watch much last night but Mitch looked pretty bad from what I saw. I still have no idea if we have a scheme on offense or defense.

I really canā€™t believe we lost the lottery this year of all years.

It’s painful enough not to get #1 after an all out tank, but then to watch the New Orleans Fucking Pelicans with the luckiest GM in sports history get it with their 10% chance. Excruciating,

I was at a lottery party, and when it went #6 Phoenix, #5 Cleveland #4 Lakers, at that point I think our odds were well over 50% to get #1. The place was going crazy, and then for some reason Mark Tatum rushes to announce the Knicks get #3. And it went from raucous to dead silent.

It really is true, Knicks fans can’t have nice things.

Yeah, the only thing that sours me a bit on watching Zion is realizing the damn Pelicans got rewarded him by wasting 7 years of the career of another transcendent talent. I’ll still watch the Pelicans a lot simply because they will be so fun and must watch basketball, but it will hurt for a long damn time.

KP is going to have a good year. KP’s numbers have been bad, but he’s taken 16 threes over 2 games. On the Knicks he took around 4. The Mavs know how to use him and they’re doing it right.

Looking at KP’s shooting splits is also informative. On the Knicks KP shot ~75% of his shots from 2 (thank you, mentor Melo) thru 2 preseason games KP has taken over 50% of his shots from three. The problem is he hasn’t been hitting those shots, but I think it’s reasonable to chalk that up to rust.

In short, prepare to have your soul crushed again. Go Knicks!!

KP is going to have a good year. KPā€™s numbers have been bad, but heā€™s taken 16 threes over 2 games. On the Knicks he took around 4. The Mavs know how to use him and theyā€™re doing it right.

I think KP is going to have a KP year. Below-average TS%, high usage, just north of Bargnani rebounding, and some highlight-reel blocks. And all of his averages will plummet after December.

Well, the owner for most of that time is dead and they have a new front office, so it’s not really the same Pelicans that squandered AD. And it’s not like the Knicks have done anything to deserve a special player like Zion.

@74
The Knicks may not deserve it, but we do! Problem is, James Dolan’s negative karma is way more powerful than the positive karma of all suffering Knicks fans combined. Thus, no #1 pick.

Dr Knick & Mr Shit
After the 2 preseason games vs Was i feel perplexed about our team status.
We started great but finished badly the first game. Same goes for game 2.
1st Q i felt we were rocking…. After that we played like crap.
Bad D, strange body language, Lots of things that need fixing and all these against Wiz players that aren’t exactly All Nba caliber.
After all that talk about ‘Respect the Garden’, ‘Take No shit’ i expected more consistency and passion from the players but….
(Ok its still preseason)
Lets see if they can bounce back after slaps.

I think KP is going to have a KP year. Below-average TS%, high usage, just north of Bargnani rebounding, and some highlight-reel blocks. And all of his averages will plummet after December.

If you learn something about basketball that’s not in a boxscore, it may be the first thing.

KP was coming off an 18 month layoff and he was the most impactful player on the court for Dallas in game 1 despite the mediocre shooting from 3. He may not even start to play his best basketball this year for a few months. It takes some time to get confidence in your body back after this injury.

I don’t expect “you” to ever understand his value assuming he stays healthy, but Bargnani? lmao

I had to share this here because no one else would appreciate it: was looking up notable alums from my kidsā€™ school district, and found out that Lance Thomas went there for a while (though he finished up at a catholic prep school). I… donā€™t know how to feel.

kp shooting more 3s is a bad sign… if the acl tear is causing him to move his shot distribution further out then he really will become the next bargnani….

@78 Alsep, was that Scotch Plains Fanwood High School by any chance? I taught there for a few years and also supervised the school store. Lance was a frequent customer and nothing but a polite and friendly kid.

That year the varsity team also had Derrick Caracter, who had a short NBA career with the Lakers and had incredible talent but zero work ethic. And the coach was so bad that they didn’t even make it to the state semis with 2 future NBA players on the team.

KP is a great player as long as he’s on your team.
Lance Thomas is a great guy as long as he’s on another team.

I love how the Knicks have had so many awesome non box score guys in the past few years, who contribute on the court for so much more than their stats show us, and yet our record in these years is kinda exactly what the box score tell us it should be.

Five thirty eight has predicted the Mavs should win 46 games this season. I think that’s very optimistic, but let’s see how it goes.

The Dallas Mavericks have Luka Doncic and Rick Carlisle so they have enough going for them that they can be a good team. I definitely believe Porzingisā€™ stamina issues limit the Mavsā€™ ability to be a serious contender in May and June, but I only care about Dallas in 2021 and 2023. What Luka and KP do have nothing to do with anything I care about even if the media wants me to care.

Re: we canā€™t have nice things, RJ Barrett and Mitchell Robinson are nice things.

And it’s not like they’re good veterans anyway, so…

I think people are just saying there are hopes to see improvement from the young players, and so far that hasn’t happened, which is totally understandable albeit still sorta disappointing in a preseason way. So ultimately it doesnt matter and everybody knows it, but it’s the first Knicks thing we have to talk about in a long time so there will be commentary on it.

Regarding hopes for improvement in young players, Mitch has not looked better. But Ntilikina actually does look better, although still not good. We donā€™t know about DSJ, since he hasnā€™t played at all. Trier and Knox have played very little, but so far I would say Trier is the same, but Knox is more under control and could be better this year.

I wasn’t super high on RJ Barrett, and I still don’t think he has superstar ceiling, but it’s striking to see what a real NBA prospect looks like after a few years of squinting my eyes at Frankie Smokes and Dennis Smith and Kevin Knox. Most of the young players we have here are borderline prospects and aren’t super exciting.

RJ and Mitch are prospects. The rest of the young guys, meh. Should have committed to a more comprehensive rebuild and tried to convert that cap space into picks so we might have more than two legit prospects someday but whatareyougonnado.

The Dallas Mavericks have Luka Doncic and Rick Carlisle so they have enough going for them that they can be a good team.

You know how it takes the average NBA fan a few years to figure out that a once-great player has become actually pretty damn average? Yeah, the coaching version of that player is Rick Carlisle.

His 90-156 record over the last three years isn’t entirely his fault, but it’s not exactly a stretch to say that the guy who (fifteen years ago) helped engineer a defense that routinely held opponents to under 70 points just might not be all that relevant in the era of 130-125 scores at the end of regulation. Yeah, 2011, great. Remind me when Prime Dirk is raised from the dead and planted on the Mavs with guys like Jason Terry (0.6 BPM regular season, 4.8 postseason) and Jason Kidd (3.1, 5.9) and Shawn Marion (1.2, 3.1) playing out of their damn minds.

Anecdotally, yeah, sure, he’s fine. Better than Fizdale, I’m certain. But he’s not going to turn a shitty roster into a contender. The last three years are pretty goddamn clear on that.

After the game, my biggest takeaway is that KP is the 2nd best Latvian player in the NBA.

Julia Randle is not a franchise player. He canā€™t even be the 2nd best player on a contender. Canā€™t get a top 30 player on a 1yr deal. Have to hand out maxes and push the chips all in. Tinkering around the edges is equivalent to death by a thousand cuts.

Weā€™re running on a treadmill with this management team.

Are you all dejected because of a pre-season loss to a bad team? Jeeze. This team is going to be better than last year’s team but that doesn’t make the Knicks good. This is still a high lottery pick team. We have to reset some expectations. The ceiling for Ntilikina and Knox IMO us “NBA rotational player”, maybe, eventually, “legit starter”. No player on this team has been consistent enough to be called a star yet.

Not a Yankees fan but Boone does have a great rep in baseball. Lot of stuff in that story I donā€™t know or had forgotten, like the voided contract.

Itā€™s a little fluffy but pretty fair I think. Managers donā€™t matter that much but it does seem Boone is well above average.And his ā€œsavagesā€ rant was pretty amazing. One of the best you will ever hear.

Also, Cashman is not an idiot. I donā€™t think he picked Boone out of a hat. I actually came here to write a snarky comment about the Yankees picking up Gleyber Torres for a couple of months of Aroldis and how the Knicks should take a cue from him. Not as easy in basketball but it is incredible that the Yankees were able to use a down season so perfectly to retool.

The savages rant is an all-timer. It’s up there with “Playoffs?” and “Practice?” but the fact that it came out in-game is something really special.

That said, I found Passan’s bit about it showing empathy hilariously misguided. “I feel bad for you,” is the deepest, dankest shade.

That said, I found Passanā€™s bit about it showing empathy hilariously misguided. ā€œI feel bad for you,ā€ is the deepest, dankest shade.

Yeah, I had the same thought at the time. But listening to his postgame remarks made it seem much less mean-spirited than the way I initially took it.

Not as easy in basketball but it is incredible that the Yankees were able to use a down season so perfectly to retool.

When you have competent management and a seasons goes to shit you reformulate an effective strategy and pivot. Effective management isn’t hard for effective managers……but they didn’t do it in a half asses way.

Then make a great trade for Didi and Hicks and find quadrupleA guys who can actually play like Voit, Urshela and Tauchman and shrewd UFA signings like Britton, Ottavino and Le Mahieu who could have been afforded by most teams.

Since the Yankees are well managed they can get good players to come play for them on reasonable contracts.

There’s something to be said for being in the playoffs every year.

Yeah, Lemathieu especially wanted to be a Yankee. Success breeds more success. The opposite is true for our Knicks.

shrewd UFA signings like Britton, Ottavino and Le Mahieu who could have been afforded by most teams.

Very few teams can afford to pay a set-up man $13 million a year (like Britton) and then another $9 million a year for another set-up man (Ottavino). I liked those deals a lot, just noting that they were more about outspending other teams than being shrewd with their signings.

And can they speak to Aaron Booneā€™s character? This reads like the fluffiest fluff piece possible. Is Boone actually a great dude? Is this just a Passan thing?

Hmmmm….let’s see if we can bring some analytics to this. Boone is a guy whose personal integrity can’t be bought for $5,000,000 unlike the virtue signalers in the NBA and with two biological kids of his own he opens up his heart/family/life to two poor kids from a third world country just because he can.

Seems pretty legit to me….. no wonder Jowles can’t believe it nor relate to it…….

Also, Cashman is not an idiot. I donā€™t think he picked Boone out of a hat.

Boone’s there to be a pleasant mouthpiece for the Analytics department. He’s good at that, but baseball decisions are becoming more and more about the manager doing whatever the analytics department tells them to do and that’s clearly what Cashman wants out of his manager (and why he had to part ways with Girardi, who had a tendency to think on his own too much). It’s partially why manager salaries are all dropping, as well, because why pay Guy X a bunch of money when Guy Y can follow directions just as well?

but baseball decisions are becoming more and more about the manager doing whatever the analytics department tells them to do and thatā€™s clearly what Cashman wants out of his manager

Yesterday was a good example, as he was clearly ignoring what was plain to see because he’s told not to let a pitcher go through the order the third time. That’s getting a little ridiculous. It didn’t help them much, but Houston was thrilled he took Tanaka out after 6.

Very few teams can afford to pay a set-up man $13 million a year (like Britton) and then another $9 million a year for another set-up man (Ottavino).

Teams like the Mets and especially the Red Sox had the $$$$ for those players but not the foresight….

Teams like the Mets and especially the Red Sox had the $$$$ for those players but not the foresightā€¦.

The Red Sox’s downfall this past season was specifically that they didn’t have the money to spend on their bullpen. If it was in their budget, they definitely would have tried to sign one of Robertson, Britton and Ottavino. They didn’t want to go over the second luxury cap two years in a row.

Yesterday was a good example, as he was clearly ignoring what was plain to see because heā€™s told not to let a pitcher go through the order the third time. Thatā€™s getting a little ridiculous. It didnā€™t help them much, but Houston was thrilled he took Tanaka out after 6.

Yeah, that was clearly all analytics department.

This hasn’t been a good playoffs for leaving mediocre pitchers in for the third time through the order. See Wainwright, Adam and Schildt, Mike. The numbers are pretty conclusive. I can understand if you have the Nationals bullpen but the Yankees are stacked.

The Yankees also do a lot better with their bullpen spending than say, the Rockies, who had one offseason when they spent like 30 million per on relievers. Which of course forced them to let Ottavino go. The Yankees do spend a lot but they get value everywhere, kind of like the Dodgers. Again, not a Yankees fan but they run a good operation. Getting value from Voit, Tauchman, Urshela in the way they did is pretty impressive. Lucky yes but impressive.

Hmmmmā€¦.letā€™s see if we can bring some analytics to this. Boone is a guy whose personal integrity canā€™t be bought for $5,000,000 unlike the virtue signalers in the NBA and with two biological kids of his own he opens up his heart/family/life to two poor kids from a third world country just because he can.

Amazing how little will trigger you these days. Must be something in the air, perhaps redolent of borscht? And my post carried no claim that Boone is not living a virtuous life, nor that he’s undeserving of praise. My question to the board — not outright critique — was whether Boone had carried such a reputation to receive a hagiography of this sort. There’s no question that it is a fawning article if there ever was one.

I’m not going to tell you about my years of volunteering in Title 1 schools in an attempt to prove my worth to a person who praises Donald Trump as a paragon of civic virtue. You live in your own Breitbart-inspired reality, and I’m not willing to participate in today’s Two Minutes Hate with you. Like with accusations of identity politics (as though the American far-right were not experiencing its own paranoid, anti-Christian, anti-white self-victimization movement), accusations of “virtue signalling” is yet more hypocrisy totally unworthy of my time.

Jowles in mid season form.

Passan is Passan. I was actually going to use hagiographic at some point. The piece is obviously over the top but as I said Boone does have a good rep in baseball circles. He walks the fine line well between being a conduit for the stat monkeys and being a pedigreed baseball man who knows the culture of the game and can communicate with players.

Teams like the Mets and especially the Red Sox had the $$$$ for those players but not the foresightā€¦.

Itā€™s almost amazing how badly the Mets squandered every penny that wasnā€™t spent on rookie contract guys. The Cespedes, Lowrie, Cano, Familia, Lagares, Frazier and Ramos contracts were like $80M for something like 3 WAR. And they still won 86 games! Just some slight competence would have easily gotten them in the playoffs.

Amazing how little will trigger you these days

Pretty LOL tastic…. in a discussion of whether Boone is legit you outdid yourself raising strawmen in a single paragraph:

Donald Trump
Breitbart
American far rightparanoid
Anti-Christian and…….
Anti white self victimization

Congrats!!!

And the topper:

Iā€™m not going to tell you about my years of volunteering in Title 1 schools in an attempt to prove my worth to a person who

Well played Jowles…. methinks that’s precisely what you just did…. loooooooolllllllllllll…….

And back to the original discussion:

And can they speak to Aaron Booneā€™s character? This reads like the fluffiest fluff piece possible. Is Boone actually a great dude? Is this just a Passan thing?

It is completely understandable you cannot believe there are selfless people with personal integrity in this world…….

seriously bob.. you don’t get to talk about virtual signaling…. i would sit down…

I still want to know how itā€™s not a flagrant abuse of power to make military aid to a foreign power conditional on digging up fake InfoWars conspiracy bullshit on your political opponents. Iā€™d like to hear how this would have been totally copacetic if Barry HUSSEIN tried to pull this on Tagg Romney.

Iā€™m sure Neptune has a brilliant answer for all of that.

seriously bob.. you donā€™t get to talk about virtual signalingā€¦. i would sit downā€¦

Virtue signalling is when Kerr espouses ever left position in the world when it is comfortable but when asked a question about Hong Kong he demures and gives the lamest possible excuse…”I don’t know much about the Hong Kong issue and have to consult with my brother…” How gutless.

And i get to talk about anything I care to unless the owners say differently. Just because you may not care for my positions YOU don’t get to silence me.

I’m sorry Kerr’s dad was assassinated but he has less personal integrity than Boone in my opinion. Boone won’t lie for millions and Kerr will kowtow for millions. Nuff said.

I still want to know how itā€™s not a flagrant abuse of power to make military aid to a foreign power conditional on digging up fake InfoWars conspiracy bullshit on your political opponents. Iā€™d like to hear how this would have been totally copacetic if Barry HUSSEIN tried to pull this on Tagg Romney.

Iā€™m sure Neptune has a brilliant answer for all of that.

I think there are a few questions here.

Any time The House wants to vote on Impeachment they can call anything they like an impeachable offense. Fair enough…. have at it. But you have to go down on record.

You characterized the president’s actions as a flagrant abuse of power. Fine.

Others might look upon the same action as asking the government of the Ukraine to get to the truth of what happened in 2016 which directly led to the failed Mueller investigation.

As to young Romney… everyone knows good Mormon boys aren’t even allowed to break wind, let alone snort blow in the NAVY.

I am quite sure you fellows have convinced yourselves the Ukrainians put Hunter on the dole for his well known expertise in the natural gas industry and not to curry favor with old senile pops. I’m also sure the Chinese Banks invested 1.5 B in his expertise too…..

This is almost too funny to actually argue……

And i get to talk about anything I care to unless the owners say differently. Just because you may not care for my positions YOU donā€™t get to silence me.

you can say whatever you want but you’re not exactly an authority on moral consistency….. so i would kindly tell you to sit down on this topic….

Just because you can say something doesn’t mean you should say something, so yeah, I’m with djphan on this one.

I always hated calls of hypocrisy on public figures because it always comes down to one of two things: they’re either hypocritical in itself, as I would strongly argue everyone is at the very least hypocritical in some small way; or it becomes a way to simply call into question someone for morality reasons that are, in itself, a problem for me, as I do not believe morality is or should be universal.

Demanding moral consistency is very often just a way to ignore that people change and work differently depending on different contexts and different time periods, so it always feels like a cheap shot for me. I have my own set of ethical guidelines that I follow and that I think are true to me, but I don’t care much about morality or the lack of it. Just don’t be a piece of shit and I’m generally fine with you.

On another note, is everyone out there still convinced that Dan Jones is headed for the HOF and Sam Darnold is a bust?

I wouldn’t silence boburanus. He’s the Washington Generals of KB political commentary.

I mean sure, Hunter Biden’s gig for the gas company was a nepotism hire. That’s regular old garden variety nepotism.

You know, the sort of things that Trump’s kids benefit from all the fucking time, including White House Senior Adviser Ivanka Trump, best known before this for making uggo clothes.

it’s very very clear he’s looking for a fight… so i would try to show some restraint and not actually give in to a troll… as hard as that might be…..

On the subject of virtue: Z-man, I know what you recently did on behalf of disadvantaged inner city kids and I want you to know that I respect and admire you for it. No matter how wrong you are about the roundball, you deserve and have my gratitude. When our paths finally do cross, we’re drinking Lagavulin on my dime.

On another note, is everyone out there still convinced that Dan Jones is headed for the HOF and Sam Darnold is a bust?

You think this a faithful representation of the arguments youā€™ve read here?

On basketball related topics, Zion is averaging 23 ppg with a 74% ts in the preseason. Oh man. I’m trying not to overvalue preseason but he’s not making it easy.

@122

On another note, is everyone out there still convinced that Dan Jones is headed for the HOF and Sam Darnold is a bust?

I really really REALLY hope that Joe Douglas has the stones to draft OL in the first three rounds of the 2020 NFL draft. Build around Darnold, please. LT, C, and then the best G/T on the board. Macc went with vet retread JAGs year after year after year on the OL.

with the way zion was challenging and finishing over someone like rudy gobert… i think it’s safe to assume the rest of the nba doesn’t really have much of a chance either….

giannis and kawhi might have a couple years on top .. but zion is gonna be taking over the league very very soon….

You think this a faithful representation of the arguments youā€™ve read here?

Are you accusing me of being the horrible, dishonest, corrupt, left wing fake news media?

Yes definitely. Their performance on Colbert the other night was fantastic.

I always say, when you are starting an indie band, start with an amazing female singer who was raised in a cult.

If Zion is healthy and plays enough games, he will make an All-NBA team this season.

A bad night for him is going to be something like shooting 4-12 with a handful of turnovers.

It’s premature to talk about Zion winning the MVP award. It’s preseason. He’s a rookie. Yup, no way we can be talking about Zion Williamson winning the MVP yet. He can’t shoot. He looks kinda fat. He might injure himself. No MVP talk. None at all.

Zion is inhuman.

Jowels can I drink lagavulin on your dime for the 5k I’m going to raise for my Lions Club Tuesday? :^)

I’d seriously would love to get together with everyone at some point in NYC sometime just to see if we all love or hate each other in person.

Sorry b, but Z-man and I have a richer history. Good on you for the 5k, though. But if it were in a private establishment wherein I could bring my own bottle, yeah, I’d pour 16-year for the crowd. I’ve been here long enough.

Can’t complain about a post-Verlander battle of the bullpens. I really like how Boone has managed this game.

What do you think about pulling Green, though? Can’t blame Boone for Ottavino serving up a first-pitch meatball, but Green was cruising.

No love Jowles. Kidding. I really do want to have KB meetup sometime though. That would be epic.

Yankees going to lose though I bet.

I’d love to give everyone a nice round of Balvenie Caribbean Cask myself for the record.

Glad Sanchez got out there. Would have been a huge controversy if he got on after that missed call.

Just because the truth should actually matter…

I still want to know how itā€™s not a flagrant abuse of power to make military aid to a foreign power conditional on digging up fake InfoWars conspiracy bullshit on your political opponents.

THAT. DID. NOT. HAPPEN. There is zero evidence at this time that ANY pressure was used or even threatened on the matter of Hunter Biden and Ukraine. I’m not sure anyone even tries to imply otherswise any more.

It doesn’t really matter, of course, because people just went from claiming Trump pressured Ukraine to claiming that even asking to investigate possible corruption is wrong if it potentially involves a political rival. But it would be nice if folks around here could at least be up to date on the latest two-minutes hate.

Mike

Of course it happened. Something like thirty people were listening to the call and at least two made whistleblower complaint ms. What world are you living in?

@146

The text messages between Volker, Sondland and Taylor lay out the quid pro quo in pretty clear terms for anybody who isn’t a deluded red-hatted fool.

Volker, to Sondland:
“The president really wants the deliverable”

Gee, what’s that deliverable?

Taylor, to Sondland:
“Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?”
“Call me.”

In other words, don’t talk about this quid pro quo shit over text messages.

Week later.

Taylor, to Sondland again:
“As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”

(Four hours go by)

“Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind. The President is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency and reforms that President Zelensky promised during his campaign.”

Blatant CYA statement. Sondland, who apparently doesn’t feel like licking Donald Trump’s nuts anymore, is about to testify that Trump directly told him to send that text to Wilson.

And by the way, signing your name at the end of your posts doesn’t lend them more gravitas, it makes you look like a guy who can’t be trusted with the TV remote.

I really like how Boone has managed this game.

Itā€™s not his fault his team is built this way, but I think weā€™re taking the bullpen stuff too far. I donā€™t see how you can win a 7 games series pulling starters so early every single game. Bullpens are volatile and batters adjust to relievers.

The quick hook on Paxton was probably the right move but yesterdayā€™s call to pull Tanaka after 68 pitches hurt them today bc Britton wasnā€™t available for multiple innings and Springer looked like he figured Ottavino in his AB the day before.

Mike Pompeo fucked up when he appointed Bill Taylor to that diplomatic position in Ukraine. He knew Taylor from West Point and figured that Taylor would just be a guy who would shut up, follow orders and do what he was told. He was wrong.

It turns out Bill Taylor is actually a man of honor. Bad news for this bunch of corrupt thugs. It’s not gonna be a happy day for these schmucks when Bill Taylor testifies.

I’m a little late to this, but I finally got around to watching that abomination of a second preseason game (Actually it was really just the 2nd quarter that was terrible).

Brief thoughts
– Portis and Payton both stink. WTF did we not take their $23MM and either sit on it to facilitate trades later or be a salary dumping ground. Payton I think is fine, but $15MM on Portis is just awful. No I don’t think 1 preseason game for Portis is too small a sample lol

– Barrett looks pretty good. I mean, not anywhere like Zion good but all things considered, 16/7/2 on slightly below average efficiency and very few turnovers + acceptable defense is better than I expected.

– Wayne Ellington should play more.

The players I would like to see play significant minutes:
DSJ, Frank, Ellington, Dotson, Trier, Barrett, Knox, Morris, Randle, Mitch, Gibson

The players I would never want to see on the court: Payton, Portis

TBD: Iggy, Bullock

Meanwhile what happened to Kadeem Allen?

The Ukraine stuff is overblown. Every single President uses the leverage the behemoth of a country the US gives them to get stuff done.

Trump is literally the top cop in the country. If he wants to investigate Joe Biden’s son getting free money for having the last name Biden, I think that’s in his wheelhouse.

Leverage is used all the time in investigations. It’s used in making trade deals. People are just upset because it has to do with Uncle Joe. It wouldn’t even have been news for 2 seconds if it was one of us, but here are people reacting because it’s being done to another piece of shit that’s famous.

Fuck all of them.

Trump is literally the top cop in the country. If he wants to investigate Joe Bidenā€™s son getting free money for having the last name Biden, I think thatā€™s in his wheelhouse.

He is in charge of the Justice Department (and every other executive-branch agency), which could receive his referral and decide through legal channels whether the complaint were credible. Instead, he purposely withheld aid to a foreign government to create an investigation into his political rival based on far-right conspiracy theories that probably originated on 4chan. Do you see how that’s different?

You’re out of your element, here. You do not understand the issues at play, as is clear in your facile description of “top cop” Donald Trump. And no, every single President does not withhold foreign aid to have another government investigate his political enemies. Fucking wrong.

And if you said, “Well, he can’t trust the entirety of the FBI!” then congratulations, you bought another banana-republic conspiracy theory hook, line and sinker.

Pretty sober analysis by a card carrying member of the vast right wing conspiracy:

Nah, but to you? Probably looks just fine. Because you’ve been programmed well by Breitbart.

I’d love to hear your opinions on QAnon.

Iā€™d love to hear your opinions on QAnon.

I’ve heard the term but I’d have to google it to have any cursory opinion…..

I am also curious if you actually believe going something something BREITBART…. something something QANON….. something something RACIST is an actual intellectual argument????

Ah, the old ā€œeven this liberal agrees with meā€ trick.

Want me to post about 1,000 articles by conservatives and former Republican officials who think Trumpā€™s abuse of power here is egregious? Because I could!

Of course theyā€™re all ā€œformerā€ officials because Republicans who are currently in power ainā€™t gonna buck Donny Cut N Run lest he tweet mean things about them. Profiles in courage. I think Mitt furrowed his brow for a second, that was the most principled and forceful response Iā€™ve seen.

Meanwhile, our “commander-in-chief” is busy tweeting this morning about “looking into” the tourist murder in Anguilla and encouraging people to vote for “good guy” Sean Spicer on Dancing With the Stars.

I guess I should cut him some slack, though, it is Columbus Day so he’s entitled to some “executive time”

Is there no hope of returning this to a basketball blog with comments about basketball?

The offseason is one thing – when there’s nothing to talk about I have no problem with off-topicblogger and since there’s no Knicks news anyway it’s easy enough to just look the other way if you’re not interested in descending into the muck, but there is actual basketball happening now and you guys are burying the actual basketball comments in a deluge of off-topic griping that is quite clearly going nowhere productive. Can’t you take all this somewhere else? Maybe just exchange emails and fight with each other directly?

Well, thereā€™s not THAT much basketball happening just yet. Soon enough weā€™ll be back to talking about how that layup Frank missed in the second quarter was actually a really positive sign.

i don’t think kp is looking all that good… if he’s really gonna be attempting this many 3s then that means he’s gonna be even softer than he was on both ends of the floor… and that’s the danger coming off an acl tear…

this happened to amare too but he was already banging down low at a pretty high clip and moving further out to the perimeter augmented his game for awhile…. kp wasn’t quite like that….

we’ll see once the games count but these early looks at him would make me very concerned if i was a mavs fan…

Nah, but to you?

Just for the record…. Nah…. isn’t much of a compelling argument , either……although in Portland it may be the highest level of intellectual inquiry…..

Young Taibbi is a card carrying lib who happens to make a cogent argument that there has been an unholy cabal to remove this president without good cause since before he took office and kind of gives a road map even for the most obtuse among his landsmen.

But Nah…. rebuts his arguments very well…….

And the argument that the war mongerers like Bill Kristol and others of his ilk wish Trump dead is sort of a red badge of courage.

Any Yankee fans out there have luck replacing the River Ave Blues gap in their october internet consumption habits? I’m struggling to find quality content.

What does it take to get Fiz fired? Does 5-15 do it? Judging from the 2nd Wizards game there’s not much talent on the roster, but the way they stand around on offense waiting for someone to go one on one is sickening.

nah

What does it take to get Fiz fired? Does 5-15 do it? Judging from the 2nd Wizards game thereā€™s not much talent on the roster, but the way they stand around on offense waiting for someone to go one on one is sickening.

They’ll give him the entire season unless it ends up like the 7-59 Bobcats squat or if he totally botches his relationship with the players and media. I just can’t see this team losing 60 games even though the cupboard is pretty bare. Randle and Mitch will plant this team around 30 wins and that’ll be enough to get his checks cashed through April. After that, not sure.

What do you think about pulling Green, though? Canā€™t blame Boone for Ottavino serving up a first-pitch meatball, but Green was cruising.

I can’t blame Boone for removing a reliever after 2 IP and 26 innings, and putting in who should theoretically be his best righty-on-righty matchup guy. Ottavino served up a meatball, but I would’ve been much more angry with Green getting in trouble after all that work. Sometimes you make the right move and still take an L.

i think there is a merely-moderately-unlikely path to fiz getting fired this year. just take a prosaic 25 win season and sprinkle on a stream of minor player mutiny headlines. our roster is a bit of a powder keg for a head coach whose tony robbins charisma might be a little more effective the first time or two through the batting order.

the new york non guaranteeds have just a weirdly deep reservoir of similarly mediocre players, most of whom are at major career economic inflection points. the three relevant players with the least $ on the line this year are there guys who will probably play a lot no matter what (randle, mitch, RJ). otherwise it’s just a shit ton of basically commodity mouths to feed, and come january at 12-28 trier or portis or payton or morris or dsj or frank (well, frank’s agent) or even taj or dotson are going to care about one thing and one thing only and that’s papering the file with minutes and counting stats.

injuries or, more usefully, trades could mitigate this, but the latter isn’t really our strong suit. despite making every conceivable attempt to publicly humiliate himself dolan is still absurdly sensitive to headlines and president steve is impressively sensitive to dolan’s neck temp, so it wouldn’t take much in the way of media noise for a head to roll.

Randle is not that good, Mitch is very raw, Portis and Payton are below average and uninspiring as hell, Ellington and Morris are blah, and RJ whom I think can be a good player, maybe very good, is a rookie. Give them a good coach and maybe they get 30 wins. But with a system that has “plays” such as Randle bringing the ball up court and stopping two steps out of the 3 point line to survey the landscape I don’t see it.

It would be good to be in the high lottery again but watching stupid basketball sucks. I hope they replace him.

Yeah, if the veterans turn on Fizdale there’s a chance he gets fired. It’s a sort of a double edged sword for him, they justified that the team sucked last year because it was a rebuild focusing on young guys, then they went and signed a lot of mediocre veterans. If they’re on pace to win something like 23-25 games and there’s talk of people unhappy about minutes, etc, Fizdale might be in danger.

Its pretty clear that the management team isn’t expecting much from this team, which is justified by the short contracts they gave to everyone, but even so I’m sure they’ll want to win at least 30 games or something like that.

It’s early in the preseason and there are like a million new players so I’m not ready to write off Fiz as a coach just yet. It’s probably not reasonable to expect this team to have gelled already.

I’m not optimistic because Fiz does not seem like he really gets it, but I’m not writing off the possibility that maybe this team plays coherent if mediocre ball.

THAT. DID. NOT. HAPPEN. There is zero evidence at this time that ANY pressure was used or even threatened on the matter of Hunter Biden and Ukraine. Iā€™m not sure anyone even tries to imply otherswise any more.

Being a Trump supporter seems so exhausting to me. If you’re not an idiot, you have to pretend to be an idiot.

Ntilikina interrupts his 5/17 from the field (1/7 3PM), 6:5 AST/TO dynamo preseason with a groin injury. We might have our own Greg Oden situation, folks.

@JK47

Big Thief is so good.

Anyone go through 538’s new acronym basketball stat I haven’t read up on it yet?

@164 Hubert, a group of former RAB writers formed Views from 314 Feet which has much of the same formats and is an RAB lite.

I haven’t found a substitute as comprehensive and polished as RAB, though. That site was a part of daily routine for like twelve years. It taught me analytics and shaped my worldview as a baseball fan. And although they closed comments a few years before the site ended, the comments section from 07 to 09, when I was active, was the place to be.

This season, Jomboy Media has filled the spot RAB used to occupy. It’s different. Jomboy’s video analysis is excellent and has brought new dimensions to my appreciation of baseball, but it’s from a fan’s perspective instead of an analytics perspective so of course the experience is different. The vibe’s changed. It’s more fun-loving, irreverent, and flashier. Not as smart, but still entertaining.

I was going to recommend Views from 314 Feet. I also subscribe to RAB’s patreon for a few bucks a month and they produce RAB-quality content fairly frequently.

trying hard to think of something knick related to write – i got nothing…listening to some big thief now – good music suggestion, keep em coming šŸ™‚

On the subject of virtue: Z-man, I know what you recently did on behalf of disadvantaged inner city kids and I want you to know that I respect and admire you for it.

if it’s not too private z-man, i’d like to hear about what you did…always good to read about folks doing right…

Being a Trump supporter seems so exhausting to me.

i don’t know about that – i believe supporting him is a source of pride for many…i listened to a bunch of that minnesota rally…seems like a closed circle with a whole lot of us versus them – if you’re already in, the logic is solid and very believable…when it comes to manipulation, he’s on another level…i would not underestimate his ability to inspire/incite…

he may not be smart, but, he’s very clever…

it was weird – every time he called out to the audience to highlight the “redshirt” supporters – all i could think about was adolf’s brownshirts…

I was gonna mention that Mike Axisa does a RAB Patreon for 3 bucks a month, well worth it. Posts twice a week during the regular season but he has posted alot more frequently during the postseason.

Also since I’m known for my Yankee stuff here I have to chime in and say I don’t blame Boone at all for how he managed the bullpen last night. I’m very impressed with how much he has improved this year compared to last year. Although I agree that I think he pulled Tanaka way too early in Game 1 especially after they went up 5-0 in the top of the 7th, it forced Boone to use both Otto and Britton which might’ve hurt Otto last night facing the exact same hitters again and Britton not being available for 2 innings. Chapman needing 25 pitches for his 1 inning hurt too cause that removed him from throwing a 2nd inning.

Really hope Stanton can play tomorrow, even at DH. Get Hicks back in CF, Gardy in LF, DH Stanton and put EE at 1b and DJ at 3b or even bench EE and keep Gio at 3b. Either way this series is going back to Houston, no way I see either team sweeping the 3 games in NY. Last night was a huge missed opportunity for the Yankees unfortunately.

As reported by smarter people than me, the matchup looks as tight as can be. The Yanks have no room for error. They can get mashed a couple games, but you can’t sink that Astros lineup with luck. They’re so aggressive and capitalize on mistakes like few modern teams can. That might work both ways, though.

@180 Jowles did some deep state sluthing and up popped some stuff regarding my support for a controversial diversity initiative in nyc public schools. I guess it’s better than finding out that I was a Guliani associate (which believe it or not I was in the early ’90s…we briefly worked at the same law firm)

way cool z-man…starting to do some reading on the subject – interesting and crazy complex stuff…wow, i can only imagine the hurdles currently in place…not always so easy to move from the present to a better (for the majority) future…especially when the minority has a great deal of control on the present (and a proposal to enact a policy or process that may negatively impact that minority group’s children comes up)…

i can’t imagine too many folks possibly sacrificing their own children’s future for the betterment of all…

man, i bet those are some intense meetings when this subject is discussed…

Not for nefarious purposes, I assure you. Just good at Google. You are the man, Z-man.

Brandon Clarke has 10 and 10 on 6 FGA in 14 minutes.

I can blame luck for the Zion miss, but I can’t forgive passing on Clarke.

man, i bet those are some intense meetings when this subject is discussedā€¦

understatement of the year!

Zionā€™s stats so far are like heā€™s still at Duke. He gets to the basket just as easy in the NBA preseason and it will be the same in regular games. Porzingis is huge and looks great. With a little luck and competent management/coaching, we could have had both. That would have been magic. I am ashamed to say I am now rooting against both of them. I am still loyal to a team that has no good players, a recruiter who canā€™t coach and imbecillic management and ownership. Why?
Also, Brandon Clarke will be a poor manā€™s Rodman.

Porzingis’ preseason – .346 FG%, 28% on 3 pointers

But once the defenses start ramping up for the regular season, there’s no way he continues his hot shooting.

Not to mention he has 4 fta in 3 games…he couldn’t draw a foul with a 64-box of crayons

@191…and, then in true knick fashion – to add a little salt to the wound, there was at least a good few weeks this spring when I really felt like we had a chance to add a healthy kd and kyrie…

what a fool believes…

Iā€™ve been convinced by many good arguments here that KP maybe isnā€™t a max player or wonā€™t be a superstar but itā€™s super suspect to rag on his stat line from a few preseason games after heā€™s missed over a season of live basketball. Do you honestly expect him to not have any rust after so much time off?

interesting words from lebron reference the morey tweet…pretty much just called him stupid…

he tried to clean it up afterwards and tried to imply he meant the timing of the tweet (and how it would affect the teams getting ready to travel to china)…

still hmmmmmm…interesting that most players (and kerr) aren’t siding with the folks in hong kong…

I’m gravely disappointed in Lebron. As a Chinese American, it’s galling that he’d repeat the CCCP party line that China is too unfathomably sophisticated to ever be criticized by non-Chinese. I thought he was more socially conscious than that. He’s done well using his voice to advocate for justice for Black Americans, and I liked that he called Trump a bum, etc. But it sucks that he’s not using applying his lens for racial justice issues to the struggle for human rights in Hong Kong.

Youā€™re out of your element, here. You do not understand the issues at play, as is clear in your facile description of ā€œtop copā€ Donald Trump. And no, every single President does not withhold foreign aid to have another government investigate his political enemies. Fucking wrong.

Yeah, like Biden threatened to do on video to fire a prosecutor in Ukraine?

Honestly I don’t give a shit about it, but let’s not be hypocritical about the situation.

I think the NBA may be more favorable to Zion. Due to the 3 seconds rule, you can’t plant Tacko Fall in the paint the whole game. That, and having teammates who can shoot and aren’t Cam Reddish will help a lot.

@197…seemed a lot like a flashback to jordan’s “republicans buy shoes too” comment…

although it almost sounded more like lebron was pissed about having to endure a couple of weeks of being in an uncomfortable situation…

and, he blames morey for it…yeah, forget the fact that your chinese fans are afraid to even show their face on camera…

I lost all respect to LeBron over this. What a loser. The people fighting for their freedom in Hong Kong deserve better.

Iā€™m gravely disappointed in Lebron. As a Chinese American, itā€™s galling that heā€™d repeat the CCCP party line that China is too unfathomably sophisticated to ever be criticized by non-Chinese. I thought he was more socially conscious than that. Heā€™s done well using his voice to advocate for justice for Black Americans, and I liked that he called Trump a bum, etc. But it sucks that heā€™s not using applying his lens for racial justice issues to the struggle for human rights in Hong Kong.

Breaking news here… most filthy rich guys are primarily are most concerned about eeeeking every possible penny out of the lemon as they can.

What balls Morey had to stand up to the Chinese Gubmint and risk 10% of my 45 million a year!!!! The funny thing is LeBron is too stupid to realize Hong Kong is just the proverbial canary in the mine
shaft and he and his kids are going to feel the wrath of the CCP monolith here if someone doesn’t wake up soon. They already have “veto” power over content in movies here and the hiring and firing practices of Marriot . You libs used to be interested in free speech and used to be very wary of the FBI/CIA. What happened?

Morey is the only person who gets it here……

Zionā€™s stats so far are like heā€™s still at Duke. He gets to the basket just as easy in the NBA preseason and it will be the same in regular games. Porzingis is huge and looks great. With a little luck and competent management/coaching, we could have had both.

There was a moment before KD tore his Achilles’ that it truly seemed there was a 14% chance of this team rolling out Kyrie, KD, Zion, and Mitch in the starting lineup this year.

Instead it’s DSJ, Knox, and Barrett. Oh well. This is life as a Knicks fan.

I can blame luck for the Zion miss, but I canā€™t forgive passing on Clarke.

Jowles are you taking Clarke over Barrette? I know there were trade down opportunities but I’m curious what would you do in a one for one situation right now. I haven’t seen Clarke play a whole game yet, so I can’t form a strong opinion. I do like Barrette.

I would have taken the Atlanta haul, but yes, Clarke is a stud and Barrett is all upside. Clarke is Ken Faried with defense and a better inside game.

Cool. This should be a great debate for the rest of the year.

Based on the very limited (non existent?) sample size Atlanta’s 8 & 10, which could bring Clarke and Alexander-Walker, would be a very nice package.

Interesting article on the effects of the NBA grind on sleep and health…

My favorite quote:

“Based on the weight of probably now about 10,000 empirical scientific studies, the number of people who can survive on six hours of sleep or less without showing any impairment, rounded to a whole number and expressed as a percent of the population, is zero.”

Well, OK, sure, but I’m still tryna prove ya wrong…

Here is Big Thief on Colbert…

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/big-thief-not-two-hands-colbert-897768/

So funny, I was just going to write a post about how Clarke is Faried with defense and then I got bogged down reading an article about Faried at Morehead State.

I wouldn’t have wanted to pay the #3 cap number for Clarke when we could have gotten him for much less. But I would rather have him also. His floor seems to be well above average role player and his ceiling seems at least as high as Barrett’s. Could be wrong though, will be an interesting one to track. I think it will end up being a debate where no one ends up changing their minds and just thinks what they thought watching them in college.

All this China stuff really does bring Jordan’s “Republicans buy sneakers” line to mind. I am all for HK and freedom but the NBA is in a very difficult position here. It’s a huge chunk of their revenue and I don’t really see what the detractors expect them to do. It’s not like the rest of America isn’t just as complicit.

LeBron basically told Morey to shut up and spreadsheet.

I love how at first people thought he meant “not educated on the situation in China”, when he clearly meant “not educated about how much money he’d cost us”.

It’s a lose lose situation but they cannot surrender to a state, any state, the way they did. They could have said that the league doesn’t mix sports and politics, and would like it to stay this way, but that any individual can say whatever they like because we believe in freedom of speech.

What will they do next? Ban Kanter because Erdogan doesn’t like him? Ban Iranian players from the league? Remove Eastern European players if they say something against Putin?

It’s pretty fascinating to me how fast we’ve come to the point where it’s now not just an expectation but basically a requirement that Lebron will offer a China/HK “take”. It was quite literally just a few years ago that pretty much everyone was running the Jordan “Republicans buy sneakers too” playbook.

So I sympathize a bit with Lebron who is seriously between a rock and a hard place – he can’t no comment without it unleashing a massive backlash; there’s some chance (I’m not enough of an expert on the situation to say exactly how big a chance) that supporting HK would literally cost the league hundreds of millions of dollars along with whatever it does for his personal finances; and to top it all off, while he’s clearly a smart, thoughtful guy it’s pretty unlikely that he has anything more than a cursory understanding of the issues at play here (and frankly many of the people criticizing him are probably in the same boat.

It seemed like he tried to thread the needle with a statement that was more about the NBA’s place in all of this than saying anything specific about the China/HK situation itself, missed the mark badly on that (with calling Morey “misinformed” being a particularly inartful word choice) and now is getting (rightfully) dragged. I guess my question is what could Lebron have said that wouldn’t have led to him getting dragged? “Free HK” I guess, but that would have quite possibly a league-trajectory altering moment and an international incident, so…I feel for the position he’s in I guess is what I’m saying.

Also since Iā€™m known for my Yankee stuff here I have to chime in and say I donā€™t blame Boone at all for how he managed the bullpen last night. Iā€™m very impressed with how much he has improved this year compared to last year. Although I agree that I think he pulled Tanaka way too early in Game 1 especially after they went up 5-0 in the top of the 7th, it forced Boone to use both Otto and Britton which mightā€™ve hurt Otto last night facing the exact same hitters again and Britton not being available for 2 innings. Chapman needing 25 pitches for his 1 inning hurt too cause that removed him from throwing a 2nd inning.

I think Boone handled game 2 as close to perfect as possible. I really can’t get mad at him for Ottavino hanging a slider. His micro management (i.e. one game) is getting better, but I’m concerned about his macro management (i.e. how is he going to get through the whole series).

We got a guy tonight who probably can’t go more than 4 innings*, and tomorrow is supposed to be a bullpen game. And we just basically had a bullpen game. I think he has to think a little more long term. If your starter is cruising, save the bullpen for when you need it.

I also don’t think it’s proper use of analytics. There are two sets of data:

– how much worse starters fare when facing a lineup the third time
– how much worse relievers fare when they’re overused and batters can adjust to them

How about paying attention to both and balancing them? I don’t know if that’s all on him, though. Seems to be an organizational oversight.

Things just seem so backwards when we expect our entertainers to be conducting international diplomacy and our gov’t diplomats to be conducting personal business for the President.

What will they do next? Ban Kanter because Erdogan doesnā€™t like him? Ban Iranian players from the league? Remove Eastern European players if they say something against Putin?

Let’s be honest, if Turkey had 1.4 billion people who loved the NBA, Kanter either would not be tweeting about Erdogan or he would not be an NBA player.

It’s a little harsh to single out the NBA, though. China presents moral dilemmas for everyone, and we don’t always handle them with the same consistency we’d like to imagine we apply.

How do we have another day to go before we have another preseason game to complain about?

I know. I need Mitch to get right. This vague feeling that he is going to have a sophomore slump is among the things getting me down.

No one sees LeBron as being annoyed that is physically in China and has to deal with the fallout from Morey’s tweet, whereas Morey is back home wherever that may be. Otherwise the NBA is all about chasing money: China, gambling (oops I mean DraftKings et. al.) irrespective of the underlying morality of the partners.

I read LeBron as saying Morey did not think about how his tweet would affect the NBA and especially the players physically in China. Not sure if he was worried about the $$ or safety but either way I think he has a point.

@164 Hubert, a group of former RAB writers formed Views from 314 Feet which has much of the same formats and is an RAB lite.

Many thanks!

I was gonna mention that Mike Axisa does a RAB Patreon for 3 bucks a month, well worth it. Posts twice a week during the regular season but he has posted alot more frequently during the postseason.

Ditto!

Well, if the players’ safety in China can be compromised by a single, unremarkable tweet then the NBA should not being sending players to China, ever.

I hope the NBA can avoid becoming just like FIFA.

I love how at first people thought he meant ā€œnot educated on the situation in Chinaā€, when he clearly meant ā€œnot educated about how much money heā€™d cost usā€.

Yeah…. I’m sure the GM of the Houston Rockets… the team most ensconced with China has no idea how much $$$ it could potentially cost them. Fucking Morey has spread sheets measuring down to the Yuan how much they make from China…. Nice hot take!

If LeBron wasn’t such a gutless phony he would have said something like, ” It was rude of Morey to post that exactly when China was graciously hosting us but in America we pray for the freedom of all people everywhere at all times.”

Or he could have just tweeted the first sentence from the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence and STFU!

Things just seem so backwards when we expect our entertainers to be conducting international diplomacy and our govā€™t diplomats to be conducting personal business for the President.

This.

I’m disappointed in LeBron’s response for sure, but it sure is rich seeing a bunch of Trump chuds jump down his throat. For the record, here are some things the President of the United States (you know, the person with the most power in the world to actually affect positive change) has had to say about China:

“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength…That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak…as being spit on by the rest of the world.”–March, 1990

ā€œWe discussed Hong Kong and I think great progress has been made by China in Hong Kong, and Iā€™ve been watching and I actually told the vice premier it really has toned down a lot from the initial days of a number of months ago when I saw a lot of people, and I see far fewer now.ā€–October 11th, 2019

You can nitpick me all you want for posting a quote from before his time as President, as if he’s demonstrated a scintilla of personal growth since then. Regardless, the second quote is from 4 days ago and is exponentially worse than anything LeBron had to say on the matter, coming from the person best positioned to actually do something.

So yeah, I’m disappointed in LeBron, but you’ll have to excuse me if I think there’s, um, something else motivating a lot of the most vitriolic responses to him.

I have Barrett’s ceiling as higher than Clarke’s for the record. His floor is also lower than Clarke’s. But RJ is the upside play, and one for one I would go with him over Clarke. As for trading down, it’s not really a fair comparison as you couldn’t be sure who would be there and worse who the knicks would pick. But yes it was 100% possible to get more expected value out of the #3 pick than Barrett can be reasonably expected to deliver.

I read LeBron as saying Morey did not think about how his tweet would affect the NBA and especially the players physically in China. Not sure if he was worried about the $$ or safety but either way I think he has a point.

He just gets dumber with every back tracking statement. China is probably the least likely place on earth with their “social credit score” system of having a riot against NBA players. The government of China certainly doesn’t want an incident where any NBA player is harmed or threatened.

Ya know, I’ve heard they have a pretty effective police force in China!

That couldn’t be a dumber statement if LeBron actually said it.

Iā€™m sure the GM of the Houston Rocketsā€¦ the team most ensconced with China has no idea how much $$$ it could potentially cost them. Fucking Morey has spread sheets measuring down to the Yuan how much they make from Chinaā€¦. Nice hot take!

Jesus, dude, read more carefully. In no way whatsoever is that my take. I was implying it’s part of what LeBron is pissed about.

Reminder: LeBron, not me, is the one who said “Morey needs to be more educated”.

@225
yes you are right it would take a riot to jeopardize player safety. all those knife attacks in schools clearly show there are no crazy people in china, the government has complete control of its people…

President of the United States: sounds like a rapidly disintegrating, flailing moron every single day, multiple times a day.

Conservatives: you’re just not understanding his secret genius!

LeBron James: makes a single, admittedly piss-poor, comment about something totally unrelated to his job.

Conservatives: HAHAHAHAHAHA WHAT DUMBASS SELLOUT GUESS ALL THAT ACTIVISM STUFF WAS FAKE #MAGA

Guys…you’re really giving away the game here. Sit this one out.

lebron could have demurred. it really doesn’t matter what he meant by misinformed. he really really doesn’t have to criticize someone whose pro freedom speech was stifled by the economic power of a murderous regime. steve kerr couldn’t get away with silence but lebron could have.

So yeah, Iā€™m disappointed in LeBron, but youā€™ll have to excuse me if I think thereā€™s, um, something else motivating a lot of the most vitriolic responses to him.

Yes there is… he has no problem criticizing everything in this country yet he kowtows to China. Just be consistent. You want “social justice” (however you might define that)…. then be for it for everyone ….. even if it is going to cost you from 45 million to 41 million in salary.

Morey is the only one looking good here…. and that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. He’s usually the smartest guy in the room. Don’t you think he knew he was stirring a hornet’s nest and had to think there was at least a small chance it might cost him his job and get him blackballed by the owners?

But he did what he though was right and that puts him higher on my list than his prowess with analytics.

Morey obviously knows the ins and outs of the NBA’s relationship with China but I’m certainly in agreement with Lebron that he didn’t realize how much of an incident he was going to set off with the tweet. I mean he immediately deleted the tweet, he apologized, and then he’s basically gone into hiding. If that looks to you like Morey considering every angle and then deciding that he supports HK regardless of the cost I don’t know what to tell you. Looks a lot more like an impulsive decision where he didn’t recognize the extent to which China would take umbrage. If Morey could do it all over again does anyone think he sends the tweet?

Yes there isā€¦ he has no problem criticizing everything in this country yet he kowtows to China. Just be consistent. You want ā€œsocial justiceā€ (however you might define that)ā€¦. then be for it for everyone ā€¦.. even if it is going to cost you from 45 million to 41 million in salary.

It’s definitely a bad look for LeBron James that he had no problem running his Presidential campaign based on a theme of this country completely falling apart with him being the only one who can fix it, while agreeing to not criticize China for economic reasons. Can’t argue with you there. That was a bad thing that LeBron James did.

us domestic policy issues are one thing… the nba primarily resides in the us and its politics are front and center.. its players and coaches are citizens just like the rest of us.. things like police brutality and gun violence its players/coaches either have first hand personal experience with or at least exposed to it..

world politics are another.. and the game of basketball.. or any sport for that matter… is supposed to transcend all those politics by having people share a common joy.. the us and russia can share a court together during the cold war and be civilized enough to follow the rules of a game without killing each other.. no matter who you think is good or bad.. there are differences which historically get resolved over a pile of bodies..

that’s one of the things the globalization of the game is hoping to achieve.. there’s of course the profit motive but there are ancillary benefits which can be a net good.. sharing simple joys.. finding common ground.. but there are issues much much bigger than the game.. and its not really the nba’s place to try to triage all the world’s atrocities.. rocky didn’t end the cold war.. and nba players and coaches aren’t even chinese or hk citizens… that doesn’t mean they’re not allowed to or should care.. but this is not something they have a ton of exposure to.. and at the end of the day china has sovereignty over hk which adds a ton of complications..

ppl on this blog and social media can afford to look at it from an idealogical pov.. i share that.. but the nba and its ppl are stuck in this crossfire which it shouldn’t really be in.. i don’t agree with lebron’s choice of words but i can empathize with the sentiment.. if you change this whole situation and replace china with the middle east and change hk to israel/palestine.. ppl are likely gonna die because of it.. sports in the realm of world politics is a demilitarized zone.. and making comments that endanger that is in a way irresponsible…

Anyway, maybe it’s actually kind of good that conservatives recognize that there are legitimately higher standards for LeBron James than there are for the President of the United States. I agree with them on that front! I just wish they’d be a little more explicit about how that’s what they’re actually saying in this case, ya know?

Looks a lot more like an impulsive decision where he didnā€™t recognize the extent to which China would take umbrage.

Yeah…. I’m sure Morey wasn’t aware China forced the Marriot Corporation to fire an individual employee over a tweet. And I’m also sure Morey doesn’t realize Chinese sensors exercise de-facto editorial control over any movie that wants to be shown in China

https://www.wsj.com/articles/marriott-employee-roy-jones-hit-like-then-china-got-mad-1520094910

Morey would have the moral high ground you claim for him if he was tweeting from China (or even HK) instead of letting other people take the fallout for him. It’s easy to kick a hornet’s nest when you’re an ocean away and it’s other people who are going to get stung.

Bob you seem to be confused, China is a different country, not the united states. They make their own rules and have a different form of government even. The things that are important to you or me might not be important to them.

and that’s what so tonedeaf about the whole consistency issues…. being citizens of a country you reside in where the game has its primary sphere of influence… is entirely relevant… going into someone’s backyard.. no matter how right you think you are… those ppl are not going to appreciate that..

and you might not care about it or disagree with the nba going into china entirely …. but if they are inviting you to play basketball and you go in as what they perceive as inciting war.. then you probably shouldn’t venture outside the scope of your duties…

here in the us… they are citizens… and speaking out about issues they care about is WELL within their rights and duties as US citizens… so anybody questioning consistency should just stfu….

Yeahā€¦. Iā€™m sure Morey wasnā€™t aware China forced the Marriot Corporation to fire an individual employee over a tweet. And Iā€™m also sure Morey doesnā€™t realize Chinese sensors exercise de-facto editorial control over any movie that wants to be shown in China

Okay so in your angle the hero of this story fearlessly tweets “Free Hong Kong”, damn the consequences… then immediately deletes it and apologizes and then goes into hiding leaving everyone else to deal with the fallout and hoping this will blow over so he doesn’t lose his job.

china with the middle east and change hk to israel/palestine

My God this is a turrble analogy….. Any Hong Kong residents have their kids strap on explosive vests and detonate them in a crowd in the Forbidden City? Any Hong Kong residents tunnel under the straights and come up firing on the Chinese Army with automatic weapons. Do the Hong Kong residents periodically lob a couple of thousand missiles at the Mainland???

Plz go to analogy school……

This meltdown of yours wouldn’t have been complete without some anti-Palestinian racism, so good job making sure you checked that off.

@ bob
interesting that you read that analogy as HK = Palestine and not HK = israel/palestine which is what was actually written. Maybe you need to go to reading school?

bob… if you care to understand… it’s just a comparison of world issues that don’t involve the US… that might have a much more violent response if you declare a side going as representatives from a western powerhouse…

if you choose to misunderstand…. you can interpret how you wish to… try to see it as i intend…

and you go in as what they perceive as inciting war.

When you guys debate each other does this sort of over the top hyperbole get over often. I’m fairly certain the PLA isn’t quavering over the thought of unarmed Hong Kong residents coming over the parapets with a full frontal assault.

The citizens of Hong Kong just want to not be subject to being dragged in front of a kangaroo court in the Mainland. They want to be left the bleep alone. China is the one agitating against the status quo.

It would be cool if all of these conservatives criticizing Lebron for not supporting the HK protests also felt the same way about freedom for Palestinians and the people of Yemen. Smells a bit opportunistic ngl.

CPC must have a much less effective lobbying operation compared to the Saudis.

This meltdown of yours wouldnā€™t have been complete without some anti-Palestinian racism, so good job making sure you checked that off.

If you are asking me who occupies the moral high ground in that conflict, I’m pretty sure which side I’m with…..

without some anti-Palestinian racism

Palestinians aren’t a race last time I checked. But if you are asking me if I believe the Palestinian leadership has let them down, I agree.

One of these days they’ll realize they aren’t ever re-occupying Haifa again and maybe then they can get on with their lives.

On a Knicksy note 538’s new stat has Kevin Knox as only the second worst player on a total production level, behind Collin Sexton who took the historic crown last year. On a rate basis both Sexton and 2015 Zach Levine both edged him out.

Hey Bob, check out Our Boys, it’s a good series about the investigation of the settlers who burned a Palestinien kid a few years ago. You’ll love it.

Normally I feel bad about bringing up baseball or football but if y’all are going to take an NBA topic and make it about Trump and Palestine….

Predictions for the game tonight?

Pregame nervousness is my thing, unfortunately. Trying not to freak out there. But this reminds me a lot of the 2010 ALCS v Texas where we split the first two and faced Cliff Lee in game 3.

I thought Boone and the pitching staff did a great job giving us a chance to win game 2. The bats really needed to come through.

That makes this game everything, I think. If we lose this game, best case scenario is we go to Houston up 3-2 against Verlander and Cole, and I won’t like my chances. We need tonight.

“It would be cool if all of these conservatives criticizing Lebron for not supporting the HK protests also felt the same way about freedom for Palestinians and the people of Yemen.”

I’m sorry, is there something CONSERVATIVE about being disgusted with a multi-millionaire who feels he can casually insult the President of the United States but quakes like a little boy afraid of daddy coming home when it comes to the Communist dictators in China? This kind of behavior is a-okay with liberals?

On the other hand, you’re pretty much right about Yemen.

On the gripping hand, the Palestinians could get all the freedom they want if they would…you know…accept the existence Israel and stop dreaming about driving the Jews into the sea.

Mike

I often forget that I have but 2,000 characters per post to express my positions, but Sean Hannity et al. have been drilling their lies into a select few of this here e-audience for years on end.

And so: nah

The worst thing that could happen tonight is we burn 5-6 of our best pitchers in a 2-1 loss. That’s what’s got me the most nervous right now.

a multi-millionaire who feels he can casually insult the President of the United States but quakes like a little boy afraid of daddy coming home when it comes to the Communist dictators in China

Take out “Communist dictators in China” and replace it with “Putin and Erdogan” and you just perfectly described Donald J

The worst thing that could happen tonight is we burn 5-6 of our best pitchers in a 2-1 loss. Thatā€™s whatā€™s got me the most nervous right now.

What a weird thing that early blowout losses are not the worst thing to happen to a team in the bullpen analytics era.

Boy, how badly do MLB and the networks wish they could switch the times of today’s 2 playoff games?

Also noteworthy:

there is currently a 100% chance of rain tomorrow evening.

That changes the complexion of the series a bit. You’d probably get Tanaka vs Greinke in Game 4 and Paxton vs Verlander in game 5 at Yankee Stadium. Game 6 in Houston would turn into the bullpen game many expected game 4 to be.

I kinda feel like that favors the Yanks a little. Winning all three games at YS is going to be tough. Winning 2 out of 3 and then facing the Astros bullpen in game 6 is a lot more attractive than winning 2 out of 3 and facing Verlander and Cole in Houston.

But Verlander pitching in New York makes winning two out of three in New York a lot harder.

How do we have another day to go before we have another preseason game to complain about?

It’s crazy, right?

But Verlander pitching in New York makes winning two out of three in New York a lot harder.

I was thinking that, too.

But here’s the rub: I thinking winning game 7 in Houston against Cole is a situation you have to completely avoid. So you need to beat Verlander. And I think we have a better chance of beating him at home than in Houston. So I’d take that trade.

I was thinking that, too.

But hereā€™s the rub: I thinking winning game 7 in Houston against Cole is a situation you have to completely avoid. So you need to beat Verlander. And I think we have a better chance of beating him at home than in Houston. So Iā€™d take that trade.

But if they somehow beat Cole today, like, 2-1, then they could possibly win out without having to face Verlander again at all!

But yeah, they’re screwed either way, so I guess it’s sort of six of one/half dozen of the other.

I think we all can agree that if whoever wins the ALCS gets blown out in the World Series, it’s going to be really hard to explain.

I think we all can agree that if whoever wins the ALCS gets blown out in the World Series, itā€™s going to be really hard to explain.

i don’t know mister jowles – the nats are absolutely rolling right now with their starting pitching…good chance they’ll be all rested up and waiting for whomever survives the alcs…

Since the best-of-seven format was adopted in 1985, the team that has won Game 2 of the ALCS has advanced to the World Series 28 times in 34 series (82%), including 19 of the last 21.

As a huge Yankee fan, I was asked “Who do you want to see in the ALCS”. My answer was “It really doesn’t matter”. Throw all stats and records out the window in the playoffs. Games don’t work out the way you expect them to. I have 100% confidence in the Yankees…they are NOT the Knicks!

i donā€™t know mister jowles ā€“ the nats are absolutely rolling right now with their starting pitchingā€¦good chance theyā€™ll be all rested up and waiting for whomever survives the alcsā€¦

They remind me of other mediocre teams that got hot, looked like a buzzsaw in the LCS, and then got squashed when they faced a superior team in the World Series: the ’98 Padres, the ’07 Rockies, the ’15 Mets, all those Tigers teams that beat the Yanks.

That number makes sense, since it doesn’t account for which team won Game 1. It’s basically saying, “How often does a team win a series that’s either tied 1-1 or in which they’re down 0-2?” It’s a tautology, but the better team (by definition) is more likely to be 2-0 or 1-1 in the first place, so the series outcome makes sense.

They remind me of other mediocre teams that got hot, looked like a buzzsaw in the LCS, and then got squashed when they faced a superior team in the World Series: the ā€™98 Padres, the ā€™07 Rockies, the ā€™15 Mets, all those Tigers teams that beat the Yanks.

That number makes sense, since it doesnā€™t account for which team won Game 1. Itā€™s basically saying, ā€œHow often does a team win a series thatā€™s either tied 1-1 or in which theyā€™re down 0-2?ā€ Itā€™s a tautology, but the better team (by definition) is more likely to be 2-0 or 1-1 in the first place, so the series outcome makes sense.

yeah that’s right…everything is gonna be just fine…kind of glad i’m busy at work today (yes, and i can stop posting at any time) so i don’t have to watch/not watch the game at home…

So Fizdale now says RJ may play some “PG”. That is the most sensible thing he’s said in a while. RJ’s had some nice off-ball stuff but he’s not a shooter and is best with the ball in his hands. He’s the #3 pick, probably highest ballhandler ceiling in the club. Give him the ball and let him do stuff. That also gives more room for Frank to play next to him in the Mario Chalmers role.

Stanton still out.

And for some reason Encarnacion is batting ahead of Torres. I have a feeling Houston is going to be very grateful for that.

That’s a big mistake, Aaron. You don’t drop your MVP down in the order for a guy hitting .000 through the first two games.

Now please make this post age terribly.

It’s not the choice I would make either but it’s just mathematically inaccurate to call any minor lineup shuffling a big mistake. Lineup ordering is a minor effect over the course of a season – in a single game you might as well worry about the butterflies flapping their wings in China.

It only took one inning, too.

I donā€™t know what youā€™re smoking in @272. This ainā€™t 162 games. This is one game against the best pitcher on the planet. You want your best hitters to get the most ABs tonight. Period. I bet that wonā€™t be the last time encarnacion bails Houston out of a jam while Torres watches helplessly on deck.

Not sure why you think this being a single game makes the math mean less. The math is the math and lineup construction just doesn’t matter very much despite people loving to obsess over it. Cashman/the analytics team write the lineups anway (because after all it is their job to chase even the smallest fraction of a percentage point), you can count on that, so if you want to be mad for no reason you might as well at least be mad for no reason at the right people.

So Fizdale now says RJ may play some ā€œPGā€

This is soo annoying to me because it signals unpreparedness at best and making up garbage as he goes along at worst. Why is it that after two preseason games he changes his role on offense? Why not do what most coaches do, define his role on offense and give him 15-20 games to learn how to do it well.
How does RJ’s current skill set enable him to play PG in his system? What is the PGs specific role on offense and how will this effect RJs development and psychology?
Better yet, does Fiz actually have an offensive system that he believes can win in this league? Did he share this with Perry/Mills before they went shopping in July?

My belief in Fiz is diminishing at an increasing rate when, with the season two weeks away, I learn that our highest draft pick since Ewing doesn’t have specific role on team offense or personal development hierarchy of goals within it.

Last season we saw the Knox development plan and gave a pass because we were tanking…

I don’t know. Team optimist and all but to me Fiz saying that about RJ shows that RJ is really impressing both in the games and in practice and Fiz feels like he could be the best PG on the roster. I think its exciting that RJ might be taking on these responsibilities. We know he’s a good passer and not a great shooter (now at least), so this could be the best way to utilize him and if he can take on that responsibility, it shows a lot of poise and maturity.

Team optimist and all but to me Fiz saying that about RJ shows that RJ is really impressing both in the games and in practice and Fiz feels like he could be the best PG on the roster.

or, the other three point guards on the roster suck so badly – fiz trusts a rookie (who doesn’t normally play pg) to run his team…

or, fiz really has no clue what he’s doing…

i’m not even sure anymore what it means to be “optimistic” about the knicks future…

aim low sheriff, they’re riding shetlands

Someone convince me that “Gerrit” is not a terrible thing to name a kid

Is RJ as point guard a crazy idea? I don’t know. It does seem like he could play SOME lead guard, and then that solves the problem of not having to put the other dumpster fire point guards on the floor. I mean RJ Barrett damn sure has a better handle than the French guy, I’ll tell you that.

RJ-Ellington-Morris-Randle-Robinson might be one of the better lineups you can put together with this team.

the good – cole is up to 70 pitches through 4 innings…the not so good – yanks have left 7 on base…

Why is it that after two preseason games he changes his role on offense?

Because it’s preseason? “Assign everyone a role and stick with it for a quarter of the season before seeing how they play together” seems like a suboptimal plan.

LeBron, Kerr, Silver and the rest of the NBA handled this poorly but the CCP comes off way worse. I get that they see any criticism as an existential threat but seriously, who freaks out over a single tweet like that from a non-politician? Twitter’s banned in China anyway.

How many times does the top of the order need to own Ottavino before Boone figures out that heā€™s not the specialist for Springer and Altuve?

Thatā€™s gotta be it for Cole. This team can score 5 runs in 2 innings against that bullpen.

Kinda feels like Houston is just organizationally a head above us, though, and they deserve this.

The math is the math and lineup construction just doesnā€™t matter very much despite people loving to obsess over it.

Dude, there is absolutely no math that says in one game it doesnā€™t matter where your hitters hit.

After hitting his 3rd HR of the postseason, Gleyber Torres is now batting .417 (10-for-24) with 4 doubles and 10 RBI in 6 games.

yeah, let’s bat that dude fifth…

Minor griping aside, this 2-1 deficit isnā€™t bc of where Boone hit Torres or even bc Ottavinoā€™s been shit.

The pitchers have done a very good job. Boone has been good.

The hitters need to hit good pitching. Thatā€™s all there is to it. So far, other than Gleyber (and Judge, once) they havenā€™t done that.

Dude, there is absolutely no math that says in one game it doesnā€™t matter where your hitters hit

Batting order optimization is worth ~10 runs over 162 games. And going Gardner, EE, Torres instead of Torres, EE, Gardner is a far smaller effect. Iā€™ll leave the math on a single game for you. Itā€™s a rounding error.

Got it. So when, in the first inning, our two best OBP players got on base, and instead of it being Gleyber Torres with 1st & 2nd no out, it was Gardner and EE… that didnā€™t matter? Having your best hitter up in that situation would have had a 0% impact on whether or not we scored a run in that inning?

Or the bottom of the third, where Torres would have led off. Instead he batted with the bases empty and two outs. Having your best hitter lead off the inning would have had a 0% impact on scoring?

Or how about if LaMahieu or Judge had reached base in the 9th and the game had ended with Torres getting one less AB than Gardner and EE? That would have a 0% impact on win probability?

I know what youā€™re referring to, but the generic lineup math over 162 games does not prove that itā€™s meaningless to drop your best hitter to 5th in one game against the best pitcher on the planet.0

Hubert – There is something called The Book by TangoTiger. I haven’t read it but apparently it’s quite convincing on this topic. I buy that if there is a difference in expectation it’s tiny.

But yeah, Torres is pretty smoking hot right now…

Thatā€™s the book that says you should bat your three best hitters 1st, 2nd, and 5th. It doesnā€™t say lineup order doesnā€™t matter.

My issue with that study is itā€™s based on analyzing mountains of data in which the best hitters have traditionally hit 3rd and 4th. They say the best hitters should bat 5th bc there are more opportunities at that spot. But isnā€™t it logical to assume that there are more opportunities at that spot bc the best hitters are traditionally batting 3rd and 4th? Itā€™s kind of a chicken or the egg thing.

I mean sometimes the #3 hitter ends up with the more important at bats and sometimes, like 99.9% as often, the #5 hitter ends up with the more important at bats. And the expected difference between EE and Torres in a single game is very small, regardless of the fact that one is slumping and one is hot coming into the game. So on average, the difference is a fraction of a fraction of a run. Thatā€™s just a stone cold fact. The math is the math. You canā€™t argue your way around it by inventing hypotheticals.

Has anyone watched the spurs preseason? I see they’re 0-3 but I also can’t imagine pop cares about pre season

Well, I haven’t read it. But I reads Fangraphs every day and all the smart guys there agree with what thenamestsam said. The difference is super super marginal. Maybe they want Gardner in there as a lefty. I don’t think there is much to choose between Torres and Encarnacion as hitters and Judge and Lemathieu are pretty solid as well.

Good problem to have for sure….

Either way, they didnā€™t lose bc of where Torres hit. These guys need to beat great pitching. All teams that win World Series do. These guys havenā€™t done that yet. Going to have to if they want to win this.

That was an amazing at-bat for DeJong. I can’t imagine the nerves of battling back from a two-strike count with patience.

I have great seats to the Knicks-Hawks game tonight, taking my casual fan 22-yo daughter. Hopefully it won’t be a dud, she has scoffed at my loyalty to this train wreck of a team for years!

I have great seats to the Knicks-Hawks game tonight, taking my casual fan 22-yo daughter. Hopefully it wonā€™t be a dud, she has scoffed at my loyalty to this train wreck of a team for years!

Your daughter in the MENSA Society , correct šŸ™‚

If nothing else Trae Young is probably a really cool player to see live.

I really don’t know what to make of the Hawks. I wouldn’t have done the Doncic trade but I understood what they were trying to do and it was intriguing to see if they could pull it off, but with their moves this off season it looks like they’re heading towards blowing it. Trading up for Deandre Hunter and then especially drafting Cam Reddish make me think they’re trying to be too clever.

@307 lol, this lucky apple fell like a country mile from the tree!

@308 yeah, but I still like what the Hawks are doing. I expected them to be the worst team in the NBA last year and they surprised me, as did Trae, so I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt for now.

Was interested to see Kevin Durant going back and forth with Hardwood Paroxysm on Twitter. Itā€™s amazing this stuff happens.

“who the fuck wants to look at graphs while having a hoops convo” – kevin durant

rj as pg is probably not gonna end well…. he’s a guy that can pass but not a guy that actually is gonna be the best passer on the team…. payton and smith should be much much better at it…

Durant is the best nba superstar at twitter because he’s just a messy idiot online like a normal person

@309

The collective hysteria around the internet on the reaction to this is one of the most insane things I’ve seen lately.

The NBA reddit has been filled for days with crazy reactions and people brigading against LeBron while yelling fuck China, free Hong Kong, etc. to the point where it’s become impossible to separate the people who actually care about the situation from the racists just finding an opportunity to call LeBron out or let out their own feelings about China.

Like, now people suddenly deeply care about the fate of the Uighur people, who they probably didn’t know even existed 2 weeks before, and people like Max fucking Kellerman are suddenly paragons of justice.

I thought maybe the most interesting part of the back and forth with Durant was the part where KD said Harden has never shot midrange jumpers, some random guy jumped in with the shot distribution showing that, in fact, Harden used to shoot more than 10x more frequently from the midrange than he does now, and KD both accepted that he was wrong, and praised the use of numbers for this purpose.

I think a big “come to Jesus” moment for many in the acceptance of analytics is the realization that your personal eye-test doesn’t actually work as well as you think it does. You don’t see all the things you think you see, and even when you see things your memory doesn’t store and categorize that information as faithfully as you think it does. I mean KD was on his team at tha time, actually playing in those games, and he doesn’t have a faithful recollection of how Harden played at the time. That’s why you need stats.

LeBron is basically just playing the “free speech doesn’t mean you scream fire in a crowded movie theater” card, after him and his team got trampled in a crowded theater bc Morey yelled fire.

And yeah, it’s about the money. So what? They were on a business trip, and Morey fucked with everyone’s business. Did he really do it for the people of Hong Kong? Or is he just another egomaniac calling attention to himself on twitter. Thenamestam, I might not agree with you on lineups, but I thought you were spot on about Morey yesterday.

And worth adding:

HOW THE FUCK DID JOSEPH TSAI SKATE FOR *HIS* COMMENTS ABOUT THE SITUATION???

That guy basically let Xi Jinping ghost write his statement and literally advanced communist propaganda in the US. But LeBron is the villain here?

The NBA reddit has been filled for days with crazy reactions and people brigading against LeBron while yelling fuck China, free Hong Kong, etc. to the point where itā€™s become impossible to separate the people who actually care about the situation from the racists just finding an opportunity to call LeBron out or let out their own feelings about China.

Like, now people suddenly deeply care about the fate of the Uighur people, who they probably didnā€™t know even existed 2 weeks before, and people like Max fucking Kellerman are suddenly paragons of justice.

Everyone who believes guys like LeBron and Kerr are hypocrites because they espouse what one could colloquially call social justice positions at home yet Kowtow when their wallet might be influenced by a rounding error aren’t racists. There may be some, but LeBron, Kerr, et al’s positions are pretty hypocritical on their faces.

Anyone who doesn’t understand that the CCP has been the worst regime over the past 70 years as far as human rights are concerned doesn’t have a brain. The Uighur madness is only its most recent manifestation.

It’s fairly certain LeBron’s latest foray into kowtowing is a function of CYA as far as Space Jam II is concerned. I’m sure Maverick Carter told him….”Pssst…. Bron….. you better get out in front of this …. the Chinese sensors are more important than domestic public opinion here!”

Jesus if you can get Ted Cruz and AOC to agree the NBA is way off base here, I don’t know what else one needs.

Muhammad Ali was loved in this country because besides being a wonderful fighter he actually put his ass and career on the line for his principles…. LeBron….. not so much……

This is the only time I will ever agree with neptune, so savor it.

Muhammad Ali is beloved now but during his career he was probably the most hated man in America.

But your underlying point is correct. LeBron ainā€™t no Muhammad Ali.

The other thing with the NBA and China is it’s not just individual player A that stands to lose money if he speaks up-in theory at least it’s the whole league, so it’s the player, his bosses, his teammates, his friends, everyone. Personally I think the league could pretty easily tell China to go watch college basketball if they’re so upset but it could be more complicated than “Player doesn’t want to lose his money”.

Americans saying that someone else has been the worst regime in the last 70 years will never cease to amuse me as a Latin American, I’m sorry hahahahah.

I guess when you just directly help guatemalans kill themselves your hands are super clean afterwards!

I don’t know that LeBron and Kerr belong in the same bag just because they speak their minds.

I personally can’t stand Kerr. And yeah, for a guy who has an opinion on absolutely everything, it was extremely hypocritical for him to stay silent on this. Actually, he didn’t even stay silent. He used the pulpit to express his opinions on gun control. That guy is plainly pandering to everyone who espouses a far left political agenda. He’s spineless. He fights battles where he knows he has support.

As for LeBron, I don’t see any hypocrisy in amorally running your business while having opinions and causes. Yeah, he’s probably pissed off that he lost a lot of money over this. I don’t blame him.

The other thing with the NBA and China is itā€™s not just individual player A that stands to lose money if he speaks up-in theory at least itā€™s the whole league, so itā€™s the player, his bosses, his teammates, his friends, everyone. Personally I think the league could pretty easily tell China to go watch college basketball if theyā€™re so upset but it could be more complicated than ā€œPlayer doesnā€™t want to lose his moneyā€.

This is the thing I keep coming back to. Lebron has so much influence he could in all seriousness jeapordize the NBA’s entire relationship with China if he came out swinging like some people clearly want him to. While it would certainly be brave, is that really an appropriate choice for him to unilaterally make?

Because of the way China is clearly holding the whole league hostage for the comments of individuals on this (starting with the initial Morey tweet), nobody can really claim to be speaking just for themselves on this issue the way Lebron, Kerr etc. have been able to on domestic political issues. Everyone who speaks is being treated as a spokesperson for the whole league in a sense, and the bigger the platform the more that’s the case (and Lebron’s is probably the biggest). That’s a thorny situation; really the league (and maybe seperately the player’s association) need to decide where they stand on this and act collectively because otherwise you’re putting all these individuals in really untenable situations.

Lebron should just go crazy and nuke the billions and billions of value built up over decades of work in China, which has been a consistent human rights abuser the entire time. Just finally incinerate the relationship, destroy Nike and Reebok in the process, halve the valuations of NBA teams, chop player salaries 33%.

I would definitely watch that show.

Just want to remind my haters that I said Carsen Edwards was a baller

the ppl who think lebron is a hypocrite got some explaining to do when soccer players call out racism yet share playing fields with countries like north korea… iran and china….

how is that we can have the olympics playing with literal nazis? are we calling jesse owens a hypocrite also?

if you try to expand your scope of thought beyond your immediate emotional reaction you can understand how all of this outrage is a bit manufactured….

Based on last year, I don’t have much faith in Fixdale’s ability to identify his best players and lineups, but I hope he tries the Frank/Dennis Smith Jr combination a little because we didn’t get to see it last year.

If he’s serious about defense and Dennis Smith Jr is not looking like a break out player, I hope he uses the Frank, Barrett, Morris, Randle, and Robinson lineup a lot and if he’s very serious about defense and winning I hope he takes a good look at the Frank, Barrett, Morris, Randle, and Taj Gibson lineup.

The Olympics were always supposed to be about putting politics and other controversial issues aside for a short period of time so the whole world could enjoy the spirit of great competition among the greatest athletes from around the world. Things never work the way they are supposed to, but that’s why there was so much controversy during the 80 and 84 Olympics.

Tonight’s game at Yankee Stadium is officially postponed. PSA: that usually floods the secondary ticket market. By this time tomorrow, you’re going to find some deals.

As for the series, I’m actually of the opinion this will work out well for the Yanks if Verlander ends up pitching game 5, as expected. They need to beat him to win this series. Better off trying at home than in Houston.

The article about Melo from ESPN is worth a read.

the ppl who think lebron is a hypocrite got some explaining to do when soccer players call out racism yet share playing fields with countries like north koreaā€¦ iran and chinaā€¦.

If I followed the sport where pretending you got shot in the neck is a primo move, then I might have an opinion…. but alas…. I do not.

how is that we can have the olympics playing with literal nazis? are we calling jesse owens a hypocrite also?

Back to analogy school…. No one ever intimated LeBron had to boycott the games…. just not Kowtow to the most virulent form of restriction of civil rights the world has ever known while criticizing where his wallet isn’t exposed a bit.

He could have easily have kept the high ground and said I think Morey is out of line but in America we defend to the death the right of people to say what they believe…. but the Space Jam censors probably would like that much.

He could have kept silent but thought it necessary to lick Xi’s taint so his movie would be OK’ed.

That is a hypocrite……

I’m fairly certain Owens was pretty amped up to shove it up Hitler’s ass with his master race tripe….. just guessing.

The article about Melo from ESPN is worth a read.

In particular, the passage about how Dolan insisted on Melo playing small forward even after the coaching staff and front office figured out he was better was a stretch 4 is a reminder of just how often our idiot owner has screwed up this team.

you guys have lost your minds with some of these analogies. there is a subset of disappointed people who wish lebron had said something less or something different. that subset isn’t expecting lebron to boycott all games against authoritarian regimes or wear a be water headband. the bar is much lower.

the espn article, for me at least, made it worse, not better. it’s easy to empathize with the players in china. why the fuck is this big mouth spouting off on some arcane (to them) issue he should know will affect hundreds of league employees, especially them? we know in fact that lebron’s initial reaction to silver was all but identical to his public quote days later. why isn’t this dipshit being punished like players do whenever we say the ref sucked? and silver told him: it’s just not the same thing and players do not in fact get punished for their political statements (cf. the nfl). this is a big deal. at least to me. lebron can be mad at morey privately but it is really provincial to have his one public statement focus on how morey made a mistake of ignorance.

there are no easy answers in where we choose to expect people to draw the line in their business dealings. is it pinochet or suharto or duterte or bolsonaro or maduro or mugabe or bolsonaro or xi? i’m not going to pretend the lines i draw aren’t somewhat arbitrary, botj for myself and for others. but when a big brother semi-dictatorial party running the first or second largest economy in the world successfully muzzles a member of your organization from speaking a nonviolent political opinion, you should not be fucking focused on how pissed you are at him. at a minimum just say nothing about the topic and reiterate that you believe no government should be able to intimidate nba employees into shutting up about freedom. or at least say nothing at all. you had plenty of time to realize this issue wasn’t just about the nba.

If I followed the sport where pretending you got shot in the neck is a primo move, then I might have an opinionā€¦. but alasā€¦. I do not.

Presumably you have not seen James Harden play

Lebron should just go crazy and nuke the billions and billions of value built up over decades of work in China, which has been a consistent human rights abuser the entire time. Just finally incinerate the relationship, destroy Nike and Reebok in the process, halve the valuations of NBA teams, chop player salaries 33%.

The world would likely be a better place if Nike was swallowed up by a black hole.

It would be pretty hard to lose 33% of revenues since China represents 10% of NBA revenue.***

I’m really sure Washington, Jefferson and Adams looked at a bigger picture than their family resources…..

***

The NBA doesnā€™t break out what the Chinese market is worth for professional basketball. But it does make up at least 10% of the leagueā€™s current revenue, according to David Carter, executive director of the USC Sports Business Institute. And China is expected to contribute even more than that over the next decade, perhaps reaching 20% of the leagueā€™s revenue by 2030.

https://wtkr.com/2019/10/09/no-win-situation-in-china-heres-what-the-nba-stands-to-lose-after-houston-gms-hong-kong-tweet/

Presumably you have not seen James Harden play

I have and I’ve seen Gallo play to but they are nothing like the futbol players who go down the the ground like you clubbed them with an ax and then bounce up an rejoin the play the second the opponent gets booked. You don’t really want to argue any similarity in orders of magnitude.

Americans saying that someone else has been the worst regime in the last 70 years will never cease to amuse me as a Latin American, Iā€™m sorry hahahahah.

Did “America” kill 42.5 Million Central Americans…. I think not. Learn history please.

It is probably fair to say, then, that Mao was responsible for about 1.5 million deaths during the Cultural Revolution, another million for the other campaigns, and between 35 million and 45 million for the Great Leap Famine. Taking a middle number for the famine, 40 million, thatā€™s about 42.5 million deaths.

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/02/05/who-killed-more-hitler-stalin-or-mao/

Presumably you have not seen James Harden play

That got a hearty guffaw

Bob you truly are the purest of the pure. Bravo.

you guys have lost your minds with some of these analogies.

I’ll make one more then.

Let’s say China inexplicably wanted to import knickerblogger bc it loved hearing us argue. They offered a billion dollars to Mike K and all us regulars. Let’s pretend Mike K accepted the money. And he told us: I’m not going to force any of you to do this, but I’m going down this route to make money, and you can come with me if you want.

Now imagine those of us who went along with him, by choice, spent 9-10 years working on getting paid. And one of us — presumably reub — decided that on the eve of all of us getting paid, he’d send a self-aggrandizing tweet that he didn’t even have the balls to keep posted, and that tweet ruined the last decade of work we’d all put in.

I would want to hang that guy. No questions asked. That’s where LeBron seems to be coming from.

Just want to remind my haters that I said Carsen Edwards was a baller

Jowles, have to call you out here. I’m too lazy to look it up, but a few weeks ago your entire response to a poster raving about a preseason performance was:

Preseason

Ok, I’ve heard a learn history from BOBNEPTUNE, that’s when I’ll take my leave.

If you think the current CCP is exactly the same as the Mao regimen, you’re already stupid enough that I don’t have to engage you anymore. Good luck fighting the good fight for freedom!

if you want to criticize over the use of analogies go ahead… but don’t put words where it didn’t exist…

i didn’t mention anything about boycotts…. jesse owens didn’t speak out against the nazis or hitler while playing in the games…. he stayed silent… is he a hypocrite when speaking out aganst civil rights issues when he said shit when playing in front of hitler?

soccers players speak out against racism as its a big issue for them as fans taunt the opposition without any sort of boundaries…. this is a regular thing…. or at least used to… yet these guys play against and sometimes in territory with not so great regimes… iran.. north korea… and yes china too… is their failure to speak out when facing these nations hypocritical when they choose to speak out against racism at home?

they are also going to be playing in qatar for the next world cup… are they going to be hypocrites too if they remain silent on the slave labor used to build all those stadiums while playing there? does it minimize all the things they’ve said about racism also? are they also morally inconsistent?

Lots of panic from fellow Bomber-buddies.

This was not going to be a cakewalk series.

The Yankees are NOT fucked. They lost the game on the first pitch. That 1 run lead, for Hou, with Cole on the mound was huge.

I do agree with bunching up the “hot” hitters and would have hit Gleyber 4th yesterday. But Sanchez, Gregorious and Encarnacion need to start hitting again. Sevy pitched well enough to win. One hit, one more yard on that Didi fly and we’ld be singing a different tune. Cole is NOT unbeatable.

The Astros are doing the Yankees a potential favor. As lined up currently, game 7 for the Astros is a “bullpen day”. Curious.

As for my Knicks, I’m looking forward to seeing DSJr and Dotson play tonight. 2-3 of our guards are going to be disappointed in their lack of playing time. This becomes a crucial game for some.

GoNYGoNYGo,

No panic yet here. I actually like our chances to run the table in the next 3. I would revamp the lineup, though. I am not a big Encarnacion guy. He’s 36 years old and he really looks it this october. We keep hearing about how poorly the Yankees are doing with RISP. Well that’s because EE is hitting .083 and is in the middle of the lineup! Hopefully Stanton can take over DH. If not, this guy needs to be hitting a lot lower in the lineup. Especially with Hicks back.

Gary Sanchez is another problem. But I’d just let him ride.

As lined up currently, game 7 for the Astros is a ā€œbullpen dayā€. Curious.

I think you’re mistaken. Game 6 would be their bullpen day. Game 7 is Cole.

And now my commentary about LeBron.

It is my belief (not shared by all – especially not conservatives) that the USA and our brand of democracy has been a beacon of light for the world. Over the past century the USA was the greatest nation in the world because we took the moral high ground and had the economic clout to do so. We protected the weak and innocent. When Ronald Reagan said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” in Berlin, we truly became the greatest nation.

But when some asswipe decided to “Make America Great Again” he did the exact opposite. We no longer sit in that seat of power and respect. We’ve lost all credibility in the world. We handed that title over to Russia but China is competing for it. So now, after Morey’s tweet, China is no longer trying to get into the American market. They know that they have the upper hand in many ways and we can no longer dictate ethics and morals to them.

The right thing to do is say Fuck You to China and just cut bait. But all that would happen is that the NBA would lose a shit ton of revenue and a huge market. We’ll be stuck waving our morality flag while they laugh at us.

In summary, I don’t blame LeBron for his appeasement statement. We no longer have the clout to be moral flag wavers. If that changes, then sure. Not today.

@352 – On Maggie and Bart at lunchtime, Maggie said that the Astros were planning on pitching
G4: Greinke
G5: Verlander
G6: Cole
G7: TBD/Bullpen

Over the past century the USA was the greatest nation in the world because we took the moral high ground and had the economic clout to do so. We protected the weak and innocent.

i’m not so sure that’s true…i can’t imagine any nation with a “clean” sheet, but, “greatest” nation, moral “high ground”…i don’t know, been a while since i’ve spent time focusing on history – but, i have no doubt that the good ‘ol U S of A has more than our fair share of skeletons in the closet…

the issue with lebron’s statement that triggered so many was that he was clearly putting his own self interests (and that of his fellow employees) above the “greater” good – a bunch of folks trying to make sure they don’t end up somewhere on the back of a milk carton should they want to speak aloud their beliefs and opinions…

i mean i get it – we all love us some me…but, to put it out there like that was about as clueless as “the decision”…

no, athletes don’t have to speak up – but, if you do, don’t start spouting off how your personal comfort or finances has been affected…people will just compare your situation to the situation of the folks going through truly difficult times (insert serious issue here)…

hmmmm, after re-reading the post – i’m wondering if i might be able to squeeze in a few more of these: ” “…

you guys are starting to infiltrate my mind and behaviors…actually watched some of the debate last night…i’m liking me some mayor pete…klobuchar was making some good sense too…

good for bernie for being there and fighting…

it’s one thing though to be the smartest guy/gal in the room (that seems to be you miss warren), but to lead and inspire is a whole other thing…

i gotta say though – trump does kill it when it comes to nicknames…sleepy joe isn’t just sleepy – he’s also dazed and confused…

i must be bored, lately i’ve taken to flipping through all the news channels (cnn, msnbc, cnbc, bloomberg, fox, bbc (wow, there is even more fucked up shit going on around the world), oan ( i remember the first time i saw the oan channel was at some fast food place on i-40 years ago – i thought it was some snl skit, truly)…

all and all it seems like the number one consumer product pushed by news corps is fear…

After some thinking & soul searching i came up with that:
Whining about losing money on situations concerning Life, Freedom and Justice is Unethical.
If you can’t help those who are fighting for these Basic Human Rights just SHUT UP.

Lebron is in a weird situation compared to the average NBA player. Hopefully we hear some vocal Hong Kong support from the other players. Lebron is probably one of only a handful of players at risk of huge financial loss from Chinese interference. Lebron likely makes bucket loads from endorsements and merchandise in China, the average NBA player likely does not. It would be nice to hear more NBA players condemn Lebron’s condemnation.

thanks doug…it’s weird, on the one hand – shit likes this is really interesting to me (i’ll set up a free account w/ the nyt to get access)…on the other hand though – it does make me wonder why the heck would something so morbid and horrific would draw my interest…

over the years i’ve become a little more sensitive to certain subjects (warfare being one of them) – i understand the ability to commit atrocities is part pf our dna, and, human behavior (good and bad) is fascinating…my tolerance though for injecting human suffering in to my psyche seems to be waning a bit over the years…

i wholeheartedly love my country warts and all; but, to imagine that america has been on the moral high road the whole way, at all times – is just not very realistic…just in my time: vietnam, homelessness, latin america, the growth of the drug and sex trade industries, the middle east, domestic civil rights exclusions…dang, if i actually spent some time and searched around a bit – i’d probably reach the character limit way before i ran out of different low points to list…

iā€™m not so sure thatā€™s trueā€¦i canā€™t imagine any nation with a ā€œcleanā€ sheet, but, ā€œgreatestā€ nation, moral ā€œhigh groundā€ā€¦i donā€™t know, been a while since iā€™ve spent time focusing on history ā€“ but, i have no doubt that the good ā€˜ol U S of A has more than our fair share of skeletons in the closetā€¦

“Greatest” is subjective, of course. Like who’s the GOAT? LeBron or Jordan? It’s a matter of perception by the world. In the eyes of the world, since WWII, the USA was considered 1a with the USSR 1b. After the Soviet Union collapsed, that left the US as the only “superpower”. Without recapping the entire Trump regime, I’ll just say that’s no longer the case.

@358 – I was a Biden supporter, but much as I hate to say it, he’s definitely losing it. Right now I’m leaning Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar. I loved one comment, actually a criticism of Mayor Pete by an MSNBC pundit who complained that “Buttigieg spoke in fully formed paragraphs”. He didn’t know how that “tactic” would go over with Americans. Personally, I like voting for the smartest non-scumbucket running for office.

Early B the problem is the salary cap is determined by league income, and the league makes hundreds of millions of dollars from deals with China. So you’re right that LeBron has a lot more to lose personally than say Elfrid Payton, Elfrid Payton also doesn’t want the salary cap going down.

By the Civil War, ā€œthe combined value of enslaved people exceeded that of all the railroads and factories in the nation.ā€

Yeah human beings were the most valuable capital in antebellum America. Every President before Lincoln but the Adams boys and 32 days of William Harrion was either a slaveholder or the advocate of slaveholders and the oversimplified reason for that is that slaveholders as a class were the richest people in the country. Because post-war history it’s easy to think of the North as the richest part of the country but the 12 wealthiest counties in antebellum America and most of the richest Americans were south of the mason dixon line.

hmmmmm, I wonder what jeremy lin would have to say about all of this – oh yeah, he ain’t saying shit cuz he’s getting buckets for the ducks…

@DRed – LeBron has a lot more than his salary riding on China. His $1B Nike deal is a big factor as well as his other major endorsements. 16% of Nike’s business is China.

NY Post article about LeBron

Shouldnā€™t we be discussing the breakout game DSJ is clearly going to have tonight?

Now imagine those of us who went along with him, by choice, spent 9-10 years working on getting paid. And one of us ā€” presumably reub ā€” decided that on the eve of all of us getting paid, heā€™d send a self-aggrandizing tweet that he didnā€™t even have the balls to keep posted, and that tweet ruined the last decade of work weā€™d all put in.

I would want to hang that guy. No questions asked. Thatā€™s where LeBron seems to be coming from.

That’s certainly the spin he’s putting on it now.

I’m in the minority on this stuff as usual. Most likely that’s because I’m older. I am so jaded at this point I think almost everyone is an idiot or full of shit except Frank. I’d listen to whatever Franks says. He is a good player and wonderful human being. šŸ™‚

I’m not as extreme as “shut up and dribble”. But I think athletes, business leaders, entertainers etc.. should only speak out on subjects that they are EXPERTS about. Expert does not mean you read a few newspaper and magazine articles, looked it up on wikipedia, and saw a few discussions on politically motivated TV shows. It means you studied the issue for many years formerly in school and have advanced degrees or you have many years of work experience at high levels.

I also have no issue with people talking about “their personal experiences”.

Famous and successful minorities in the US should definitely talk about growing up as a minority in the US. Who would know better? Just don’t start quoting stats from politically motivate pundits on the subject or applying your experience to everyone. The pundits are all full of crap idiots and not everyone has the same experiences in life. Talk about yourself. Your community etc.. That actually educates people.

The goal should always be TRUTH, not your side wining the debate.

I can’t wait for tonight’s game just to see if Fizdale’s lineups force me to take an extra .25 Xanax by halftime just to hold off an anxiety attack or insomnia tonight.

Mitch is our best player but he hasnā€™t done himself any favors in pre season. Itā€™s too early to say I hate it, but I know for sure I donā€™t like it.

Well, Portis is starting at center tonight, so thatā€™s something. Maybe Mitch loses that starting slot if heā€™s not careful…

i’m not too worried about mitch…. he’s been experimenting with some range on his shot which i don’t think he should really be continuing but the first game was fine other than that…. second game he had foul trouble…

doing what he does… there’s low volatility… unless he regularly starts taking 15 footers.. and missing… then he’ll be roughly what he was last year with some regression in his blocking and shooting…

Mitch is still for the most part getting by on unearthly athleticism rather than instinct for the game. He should absolutely be starting in the regular season ā€” Fiz claims Portis is in there tonight to see if his spacing the floor opens things up for the guards ā€” but I can envision a scenario where he doesnā€™t improve much this year at understanding basic defensive fundamentals. Heā€™ll get away with that on many nights because heā€™s insanely talented, but smart teams will be able to scheme around him.

Mitch taking 15-footers is the dumbest shit I’ve heard since it was suggested that prime Chandler should take 15-footers

new thread…
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Early B the problem is the salary cap is determined by league income, and the league makes hundreds of millions of dollars from deals with China. So youā€™re right that LeBron has a lot more to lose personally than say Elfrid Payton, Elfrid Payton also doesnā€™t want the salary cap going down.

Yeah, but the difference is $500 million (I read this number form one source) from China gets spread out over 450 NBA players for ~$1.1 million per player. Of course that doesn’t count the league taking their cut, the owners taking their cut, or the cost of merchandise and operations. Even assuming the money goes straight to the players, the incentive to pay stars allocates most of the ~$1.1 mill average to star players like Lebron.

Elfrid Payton makes a small fraction of his money from China. Lebron can or does make multiples of his NBA salary from China. Nike, Sprite, and Space Jam 2 (with ancillary merch and endorsement opportunities) will probably cover his yearly NBA salary from China alone.

Portis and Randle playing well together may be the worst thing that could happen to this team. It’s the only real chance that Mitch gets his playing time significantly cut. Randle hasn’t exactly been dominating out there with Mitch in the starting lineup.

LeBron should have just stayed silent like everyone else in the NBA.

And no this is not Maoā€™s China, but itā€™s not Dengā€™s either. It doesnā€™t bode well for their economy if political correctness is so much more important than making money.

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