From Stefan Bondy:
Leon Rose might look to Philadelphia for his new right-hand man.
According to a league source, Elton Brand has been targeted by Rose as a candidate for Knicks GM. Brand, 41, is currently the Sixers GM and is under contract next season, complicating any designs of bringing him to New York. The source said Rose wanted to see if Brand was dismissed after the playoffs.
Since taking over as Philly’s GM in 2018, Brand tried to build a championship contender around Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid. He traded for Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris. Then after Butler left in free agency, Brand acquired Josh Richardson and Al Horford. The results have been mixed.
Philadelphia fell a Kawhi Leonard game-winner short of making the Eastern Conference Finals last year but has underwhelmed this season with a 39-26 record. The inconsistency has left coach Brett Brown on the hot seat.
I really don’t get this at ALL.
I don’t even hate Elton Brand as a GM, but he sure isn’t a guy I’d go out of my way to get. He’s just sort of “blah.” So why would you go out of your way to get him? Who ever watched the Sixers and said, “That’s a guy I’d love to see the Knicks target!”?
275 replies on “NY Daily News: Elton Brand a candidate for Knicks GM: source”
OMG a GM who loves big men for a team that has too many of them. Actually Philly’s roster has a lack of outside shooting just like NY’s does. Please no.
The same Elton Brand who traded for Jimmy Butler just to watch him walk for nothing, who gave Tobias Fucking Harris $180M and Al Horford a contract that will pay him $26.5M when he’s 36? Oh, okay. Sure. Yeah. Let’s do that. Sounds like a great idea.
Honestly, fuck James Dolan.
This is the general perspective of Brand as GM by high-powered agents:
https://www.inquirer.com/philly/sports/sixers/sixers-elton-brand-david-falk-gm-general-manager-agent-20180921.html
where would frank rank amongst this group?
4th, 5th – dead last?
**where would frank rank amongst this group?**
I suppose there is a lesson to be learned from the Dante Exum 3/$33,000,000. The Jazz gave him that contract after ending a large sample of terrible with a small sample of good. They then felt the need to attach two picks to his contract to dump him when he went back to being terrible. (The lesson is, don’t do that).
“Guys, I have made my decision. We are going after a GM in our division with a year left on his contract and a great rapport with players……“
This is pretty Knicksy, even for the Knicks. Maybe Barrett and Mitch are our Embiid and Simmons?
Why not give Perry and Miller a full season? If not Miller as coach, why not Atkinson? I don’t think Rose needs to be in a rush to make new hires- especially since they won’t matter as much for the upcoming season. Even if they don’t last the whole season, it will give Rose time to see what he has. I mean, he literally just got hired! At this point he’d be replacing Perry and Miller because they’re not “his guys”, not because they’re not good. At least he doesn’t know that yet.
But definitely no on Brand. No twice.
Yeah, Exum is at the bottom of that list and at that contract is a joke. But he has a bad injury and his rookie contract was less money than Frank’s. Some guys are overpaid, but everyone else on that list has played waaaay better than Frank.
Also..I remember a few days back, I said that if we don’t land at one to pick LaMelo, Edwards, or the rising Hayes- that it would be just as fortuitous to end up with Toppin and Haliburton with our 1st rounders. I foolishly left out Wiseman, and looking at projections- we may not be able to trade up for Haliburton. Cole Anthony looks like he’s sliding far enough to be had though. I wouldn’t mind that either. I think a lineup (at some point) of Mitch/Obi/Iggy/Barrett/ Anthony would be a young, hungry, and exciting group to build around. And then we’d still have young role players like Knox, Ntilikina, Trier, Dot, and Wooten to develop. Someone would have to develop into a star though, if we’re gonna win. Maybe we SHOULD go with Atkinson and hope Miller would want to stay on as a lead assistant and go that route or similar until we have a star.
>You can find these guys at the vet’s minimum any time you want. You can find better if you’re willing to pay a slight premium but less than Frank’s $5 mill per. I would take any pick in the top-40 even in a weak draft for Frank and consider it a fair deal.<
You can certainly find guys better than Frank for much less when they are older and have revealed their top, but we are still at the learning stage with Frank.
It keeps getting back to what I am saying about the draft.
When you draft 18-19 year olds in the lottery, a LOT of them are going to bad value contracts while you are waiting/hoping for them to develop. If you find a promising one, you may have to extend and overpay him on his potential. It's not as easy to find good value in the draft as it used to be unless you go older. Then you are less likely to hit a home run. That's just reality.
If you draft a known project like Frank, you are flat out saying right from the start "I am willing to overpay this project for several years because when I weigh the risk/reward I think the payoff at the end could more than compensate me for overpaying him and drafting a few busts like this along the way".
When you do things like this, you are never saying " I could get player X for less and he's already better".
Player x has already revealed his potential. That's why he's cheap.
We don't know exactly what the market was for Frank. We know we would never get back a top 10 pick, but there isn't a snowball's chance in hell I'd take a 2nd rounder for him. I think it's better than even money he turns out to be a net plus player. If he can average between 10-15 point per 36 with a TS% of 54%-55%, make some plays (which he already does) and play plus defense (which he already does), that's a really nice plus player. Our team (albeit bad) is already consistently better with him on the court.
Toppin is one of the more confusing prospects I can remember.
On one hand, there’s no denying he looks like he could be a legit 1A scorer in the NBA. His jumper is coming around, and at least in the NCAA he was a total beast in the paint. His second jump is Zion-esque.
On the other hand…that’s almost literally all you can say about him. Despite some cool blocks, he just doesn’t have the foot speed to be an impact defender. He doesn’t have the worst tunnel vision in the world, but he’s never going to be much of playmaker. I don’t think he’ll kill his team on the boards, but he doesn’t add much there either.
When you factor in that he is very old for a sophomore, my Knicksy alarms go off and I wouldn’t draft him barring a major lottery slip (and even then, there will likely be players on the board I’d prefer). I tend to not like prospects, at least not with high picks, that will have to be great scorers in order to be productive in the NBA. I view those kinds of guys as who you might want to grab with later second rounders/UDFA flyers e.g. Trier.
1) That’s…still a pretty unexciting, replaceable player. That’s below average usage, efficiency, and AST% if he’s a PG and brutally below average usage and efficiency if he’s a SG. You’re giving back a lot on offense with this hypothetical player.
2) I don’t see the point of saying how good a player can be if he starts posting lines that he’s never come particularly close to posting.
Frank makes less than everyone on the list and he’s younger and therefore expected to improve (by most people except for Knickerblogger posters). I don’t expect the players on that list to improve much if at all. That list supports my contention that his salary is fine.
Not that I have a magic formula for evaluating GMs, but off the top of my head if you asked me to name the worst GM in the NBA, Brand would have immediately popped into my head as a candidate.
He took a very good young team with a PG that can’t shoot and a C that does his best work in the post and around the basket that was screaming from the heavens that it needed more spacing so those 2 guys could excel together and created a team with even less spacing, I guess he’s a perfect fit for the Knicks. He doesn’t know anything about basketball or team building,
>Frank makes less than everyone on the list and he’s younger and therefore expected to improve (by most people except for Knickerblogger posters). I don’t expect the players on that list to improve much if a all. That list supports my contention that his salary is fine.<
For a blog that loves the draft and wants all young players, there's an amazing unwillingness to deal with reality. You often have to wait years for the payoff (5-6 years for some kids) and you'll be overpaying most of them until then.
How overpaid is Knox?
I'm not even sure Knox is an NBA caliber player at this stage. He's certainly not a rotation player. He's a negative on both sides.
We are overpaying him because he's a project that Mills/Perry/Fizdale thought would be worth the wait. Many of us disagreed with that gamble, but that's the gamble. They overpaid for a number of years because they think the payoff at the end will be worth it. If they didn't, they would have drafted Mikal Bridges.
Sorry, I should have said less than everyone except Ish Smith.
Jowles, while I certainly see your POV regarding Brand, I just want to throw this out there. I know nothing about Brand as a GM and he is not someone I would even consider to be honest. But I have a question to ask you.
Do you think Toronto was foolish to trade for Kawhi as a one year rental? I would guess you would say “no” since they ended up winning a championship. Even though Kawhi walked, for Toronto to win a championship kind of makes it all worth it, no?
Philadelphia lost to Toronto last year in the ECF in Game 7 off a Kawhi last second shot that got a lucky bounce and went in. If that shot doesn’t go in, Philly makes the NBA Finals for the first time since 2001. Golden State limped into the finals. Now maybe in an alternate universe if Philly makes it and not Toronto, Durant and Klay don’t go down and Golden State beats Philly, but Durant definitely came back too early and that is what cause him to get reinjured. And Klay? Well, playing in 5 straight NBA Finals does wear down the body, so maybe he gets hurt too in a Finals vs. Philly.
If PHilly gets to the Finals and wins, even if Butler leaves, isn’t it worth it? And who knows…Philly wins maybe Butler stays.
I guess my point in all of this is just that Philly went all in and that gamble didn’t pay off but they got damn close. One lucky bounce and they could be the champs right now. If that happens, then trading for Butler and signing Harris look smart.
Re: Brand, they may as well just promote Houston. I doubt either hire will happen, though.
Re: Frank, it’s funny that they seriously want to re-sign Harkless, who has an eerily similar profile to Frank, albeit from the small forward position. I think Frank will have a Harkless-type career trajectory if he sees the same kind of age-22 improvement Harkless did — nothing to write home about, but still a useful player.
At roughly 6 mil a year he’s fine because his perimeter defense is worth it, but you can’t match an Exum-type contract.
Knox, on the other hand, doesn’t have one standout skill — does he even have one league average skill? That draft pick alone is a fireable offense. He and DSJ are such wastes of roster spots.
Ess..you are probably right about Knox. Though I’m encouraged by his improved defensive EFFORT, he still looks more like a Big 3’er than an NBA’er more often than not lol. Maybe we can develop him into a somewhat of a sniper off the bench. His jumper is fluid. That’s a very bad look for a lottery pick, but hey- take em how we get em I guess lol
This is what’s so amazing about all of the hoopla over Frank on this board.
If the Frankophiles are 100% right about everything they say…the implications of that are pretty minor. You’re still looking at a dime-a-dozen player. We’re arguing about whether he’s a fringe/non-NBA player or a, what, decent 9th man in a rotation? Excuse me for thinking either outcome is pretty shitty for the 8th overall pick. It’s just not going to matter much to the Knicks whether he’s a complete and utter bust or a whopping top-300 player.
Harkless seems like something of a best case scenario Frank. Harkless had to be salary dumped with a first-round pick when he got paid real money, and then was used as salary filler. The consensus seems to be he can’t be a rotation player on a serious contender, at least not at any significant amount of money.
It’s useful to step back and put The Frank Wars in perspective. We should probably spend a lot more time talking about who the Knicks should draft, and not just with their first pick. The Clippers pick and the Charlotte pick will probably be more important to the Knicks’ future than Frank Ntilikina.
While I don’t want to give up on Knox or Frank, I definitely see the argument that we’d be in a much better position if we chose more polished players in the draft and didn’t try to draft such huge development projects.
It lines up with my thinking that outside of the top 3 or 4 picks, that the rest of the lottery picks have become sort of overvalued because the thinking is always to draft the 18 or 19 year old who has “potential” over the sophomore or junior who has “less of a ceiling.” Jowles talks about Clarke, we have Donovan Mitchell drafted later in the first round. It just seems like upper class men are undervalued by the NBA in general now. But when you draft a tantalizing project, you are in essence wasting that cheap rookie contract developing them and you may have to make a decision on them before they reach their potential. The more NBA ready player who is a year or two older can contribute more right away. Even if their theoretical ceiling is lower, which I think is also a suspect theory. Players don’t stop getting better at age 23. They can still improve into their mid to late 20’s.
Plus, you draft those higher floor, more ready players, if it helps your team improve, the better your team is, the higher value ALL of your players have in potential trades. Even a non playoff team that wins 30 games if its full of younger players those players will be more appealing in trades than a young team that wins less than 20 games. This kind of gets to the whole “tank or not” debate but I think there is no denying that the trade value of all players goes up the better the team is,
If there isn’t a Doncic or Lebron or even a Towns available when you pick in the lottery, I think trading down for more picks and picking an upperclassman is now going to be the smarter strategy.
On that note, here’s a hastily thrown together list of players I’d be varying degrees of happy with with each of our picks (not listed in any particular order):
Our own pick:
Hayes
Ball
Haliburton
Okongwu
Clippers pick:
Tyler Bey
Paul Reed
Kira Lewis Jr.
Patrick Williams
Tre Jones
Charlotte pick:
Devon Dotson
Carlos Alocen
Mason Jones
Skylar Mays
Trevelin Queen
It’s certainly possible that upperclassmen are undervalued in the draft. Teams are trying to hit a home run with every pick, but since even mid lottery picks have a 30% chance or so of being a bust, just getting a useful player with such a pick isn’t to be sneezed at.
I mean I get why they’re going for the star potential pick. Its a star driven league. Not counting the Fizdale reign of Terror, our team this season was a team with decent veterans but no stars and they still weren’t very good. But just imagine what would happen if you replaced Peyton with James Harden or (healthy) Steph Curry or even this year’s version of Chris Paul. Suddenly that’s a playoff team. So stars are important and if you draft one, you’re in an even better position to build a real contender. But SO many of these young players now are still years away from being good, let alone a star.
I actually think we got kind of lucky in that regard with RJ, even though we missed out on Zion and Ja. RJ seems to have all of the skills in place to be a very good player. All except shooting, which is huge of course, but not insurmountable.
***For a blog that loves the draft and wants all young players, there’s an amazing unwillingness to deal with reality. You often have to wait years for the payoff (5-6 years for some kids) and you’ll be overpaying most of them until then…We are overpaying him because he’s a project that Mills/Perry/Fizdale thought would be worth the wait. Many of us disagreed with that gamble, but that’s the gamble. They overpaid for a number of years because they think the payoff at the end will be worth it. If they didn’t, they would have drafted Mikal Bridges.***
Funny you would use the word “reality”.
Did you know that over the past 12 drafts there are over 20 players that didn’t last more than 5 years in the league? Most of these players simply weren’t good enough to play in the league and teams recognized that and stopped throwing money at them.
In fact, because of the salary system in place, it is vital for a player to take less than 4 years to show something. Almost no front office is on a 5-6 year development plan. In fact, I have pointed out that there are 20 examples that support my reality. Are there any examples that you can point to, where a team waits 5-6 years for a player to develop into a useful player? Because the reality I have seen is that yes, young players take time to develop, but if it takes more than 5 years, it is almost always with another team, not the team that drafted him.
(I’ll even do your job for you and point to Michael Kidd-Gilchist, who is pretty much the only player in the past 12 years to fit your example of reality, and he had to eventually be bought out of his contract because it was a mistake).
Wasn’t Brand a CAA player?
I’m not sure what this means…
***I’m not sure what this means…***
That’s because it doesn’t mean anything worthwhile at all!
Sorry, I meant to write over twenty LOTTERY PICKS that didn’t last more than five years in the league.
Yes there’s one example, the Knicks. That’s it.
How else do you explain drafting Frank & Knox at 19 yo?
No, especially since the big trade piece was DeRozan, a good but perennially overrated player whose game bears no resemblance to the modern NBA guard’s. (He is 15-75 on three pointers as a Spur, over 4700+ minutes.)
I have defended the Butler trade in the past, in part because I understand the win curve. And yes, if Kawhi doesn’t make that circus shot, there’s a good chance we’re calling them the 2019 NBA Champions. But the Bucks were an excellent team that was outscored by a total of six points over six games with Toronto, so there’s a solid chance they win the matchup, too. Doesn’t matter. All hypotheticals.
I would trade every available asset for win-now players if I had a 60-win core under contract. When you’re that close, you push the chips in. I still think the Tobias Harris trade was horrible (he’s not very good) and the supermax is even worse (sunk cost fallacy). Horford was a good player and the experiment has been a colossal failure, with three years left under contract. I just think Elton Brand is a starfucking ex-player GM, per usual.
This is pretty rich. I’d like to see a single player from the past year’s All-NBA team who hadn’t shown precipitous, measurable improvement (or at least sustained productivity) by the end of their rookie contract, to say nothing of a 6-year incubation period.
Of the 2019 All-NBA players who were 19 or younger in their rookie seasons, Giannis, Irving, Durant, Jokic, and LeBron were all meteoric in their rise.
Griffin, Kawhi, Jokic, Embiid, George, Harden and Westbrook were 20 during their rookie year (Griffin began playing at 21, Embiid at 22). Gobert and Curry began at 21, Lillard was 22.
Not one of them was a question (for production reasons, injuries aside) to receive a huge, deserved contract after their rookie contract. Hell, Gobert averaged 9.1 PPG in 2015-16 and still got rewarded with $102M in the fall of 2016.
Curry is the only “risk” on the list, taking a below-market contract due to (IIRC) some very nasty MRIs on his ankle, but everyone else got treated like a superstar very quickly.
Not very scientific, but I just don’t see your point about waiting for young players to develop. By the end of the rookie contract, you should know whether to cut bait or reward them. If you don’t, you’re lying to yourself, squinting to see what you want to see.
Friendly Reminder
Before Kawhi’s lucky bounces at the TOR-PHI 7th game the score was 90-90.
Shot missed don’t make the Sixers champs.
Let’s be realists.
They d have to beat Toronto first at the OT.
Before trying to beat MIL and then the GSW.
Really looooong way to the top.
I think its probably true a star won’t take 5 years to develop, the occasional Chauncey Billups aside.
But I think a decent to good player could take 5 plus years to develop especially if they come into the league at age 19 and their second season is basically lost because of injuries.
More Frank’s +
He ain’t selfish
He ain’t stupid
He ain’t lazy
He ain’t primadona
He ain’t whiner
Building on Mitch,RJ and Frank is the smartest decision LRose can take right now the way i see it.
If he could add an improved Knox and other youngsters or future draft picks and try to find High Character Big Dogs i think we’ll be sooner than later on our way.
Statfillers are fine but i think that building on high character bballers would be a much better strategy.
Jowles, by comparing Frank to members of the all star teams you are setting an impossible standard for someone considered a project on offense. If Frank had shown good offensive improvement in his first year, that would have been great but also amazingly lucky.
“This is pretty rich. I’d like to see a single player from the past year’s All-NBA team who hadn’t shown precipitous, measurable improvement (or at least sustained productivity) by the end of their rookie contract, to say nothing of a 6-year incubation period.”
Hmm, let’s see, the Lebron team were mostly somewhere between league average and the best player in the NBA by the time they were 21, with Booker being the one real exception. Kemba Walker sucked when he was 21, Pascal Siakim was in college, Kyle Lowry was pretty mediocre, Kris Middleton barely played, Rudy Gobert wasn’t good, Jimmy Butler was in college and Brandon Ingram was fairly lousy. So I guess we can say the chances of Frank ever playing for Lebron are not very good. I’d also be pretty shocked if Frank turned out to be an all-star, but most NBA players don’t turn out to be all-stars, even ones drafted 8th.
It’s interesting to see how different the two all-star teams were in career trajectory. I wonder if Giannis and Lebron are biased towards picking guys more like themselves somehow?
Soft bigotry of low expectations again. If we’re sitting here arguing about whether Frank will improve between age 21 and age 24, we’re being silly. Almost certainly he will, just like most players who stay in the league between their teens and their mid-twenties.
Right now, he’s a gaping hole in any offense, totally unskilled and ineffective with the ball in his hands, and a poor shooter otherwise (a jaw-dropping .450 TS% on just 16.4% USG). We shouldn’t be asking ourselves whether Ntilikina (or Barrett or Knox) is capable of improvement. We should be asking if he’s ever going to be good.
young guys don’t usually take a long time to show that they at least belong in the nba… they at least establish that they are nba viable pretty quickly…. for big men it’s the rookie year… for more perimeter oriented players it takes a lil bit longer…
for guards it can take a bit longer…. but it shouldn’t take long for certain skills to show themselves…. and those just happen to be the kind of skills that frank is deficient in…
Jowles just look at it this way-Frank was the most efficient offensive point guard on his team at the tender age of 21. He’s destined for greatness!
**but most NBA players don’t turn out to be all-stars, even ones drafted 8th.**
Since the inception of the lottery, only two #8 picks have ever been all-stars and there have been zero in the past 25 drafts. (Vin Baker ‘93, and Detlef Schrempf ‘85).
well fuck I’ll see y’all in a new thread
started walking to work this week..it’s only a half mile or so each way but it feels good – it helps to slow the flow of life, which is one of my primary focuses in life…
it’s funny, my laptop weighs about 8 lbs or so; however – every trip i’m loaded up on about 30 lbs of food and drink on my way there…it feels sometimes like i’m humping an 80 lb ruck…not that i ever did much real military stuff like carry a backpack, full of like military type shit…
oh yeah, so i’ve taken to rewarding myself with a smoke on the way home…been a rough day already between god son’s school work/torture and going shopping with god daughter…who would have guessed being in the house all day would result in so much food consumption…thank god we scored a couple of more rolls of tp…
after i finish this second glass of wine, think i’ll treat myself to a fine pre-roll on the walk to the office…
tell me, how is life treating you all?
Geo, you’re living the goddamn dream. I’m imagining you’re in a cheech and Chong movie written by cormac McCarthy.
In all my experience as a knicks fans, this rarely pays off.
***In all my experience as a knicks fans, this rarely pays off.***
Hahaha.
i’m getting an “F” on awareness though…despite ma’s strong urgings while growing up that: you should never show your ass in public – i seem completely and totally consumed with sharing my life’s confessions on many of my life’s behavioral flaws, both here and live…
there’s still about a half dozen or so folks in the warehouse working…after a dozen years together, folks are more like family/friends than co-workers…even the folks whom i may not have seen 100% eye to eye with in the past, we’ve found common ground over time…even the republicans…
of those six, i know two of them have a strong enough penchant towards faith that they might not appreciate the fine pungent aroma of sensimilla that surrounds me like pig pen’s cloud wherever i go after partaking in some flower (the pre-roll on the way to work listed a thc content of 82% – that’s a number i can get behind)…
so in my geniusy, dope fiend head i’m thinking – lucky for me everyone is pouring sanitizer all over themselves and spraying lysol around like it’s crazy…no one will ever suspect…
yeah, that didn’t work out so well…as soon as i walked in had to stop for a minute of humble brag to a buddy (they so happen to appreciate the finer aspects of a not so healthy amount of alcohol consumption) that i just enjoyed 3 glasses of wine for lunch…
after that i had the good sense to ask – hey i don’t smell like weed – do i?
note to all, if that question ever comes up in your mind to ask someone – chances are very good – you do in fact smell like weed…
yeah, they replied – that’s all i can smell right now…
oh yeah knick power rankings something something – what’s that avatar thing you’re using…since i’ve switched the setting to blacklight – on more than one occasion i’ve found myself staring helplessly at it for minutes on end, trying to figure out what the hell it is…
you know what, fuck it…let’s leave it a mystery…
@ge something something….. if you think its a mystery than, curiously enough, you’re actually on the right track.
The geo abides
you tease 🙂
Will provide information for gummies
Hopefully not Cormac McCarthy — his novels do not tend to end well. Maybe more like Hunter S. Thompson?
Fear and Loathing in the Big Lebowski: the geo Story
The geo abides. Take the ride.
🙂
seriously, these days you need a weed regime…breaking off a little of that mexican brick – just ain’t it no more…
it’s important to maintain a nice rotation of edibles, flower, and oil/vape…at the moment, i find myself in a rare (for me anyway) position where i’m also able to incorporate some pre-roll and kief usage in to that…i love kief, i believe i could bath in it…i know it’s the least healthy way to consume – but, occasionally i’ll also fire up a blunt (those occasions are one the rise)…something abut puffing on a finely ground flower stuffed tobacco wrapping to really mix nicely with an adult beverage of choice…
kicking the god kids out of the house for the weekend…sobriety will not be listed on the calendar…thankfully got a buddy a few blocks away with a nice patio that likes to drink and medicate a bit…
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
Some die with a name, some die nameless
🙂
i have a tremendous respect for sobriety…for some it’s crucial, for either their health or spirit…
i’ve been on a different path though since about the age of 13…hopefully as i age i can reap the rewards of moderate alcohol and other various “recreational” drug use as well as gain any possible medical benefit to maintaining as high a thc level as possible…and still function…somewhat normally…
shit if anything, hopefully i’m gone long before i even realize i’m gone…
so clash fan, i’m guessing – you have half a kitchen’s worth of cabinets installed – or, was the crew able to finish up?
i think you have that governor who just finally shut things down…as well as other human beings, i’m trying to limit my exposure to news at the moment…
trying to increase my physical activity by the week – z-man and mister pepper are inspiring me…hell sometime by the end of spring i might be able to drag myself along for a few miles of running…
it always feels good to be in decent enough shape and healthy enough to be able to run…
Hey, geo!
Cabinets were delivered today. Installation supposedly starts tomorrow and will last 2-3 days. The final of 3 days of electrical upgrades will hopefully be next Wednesday, then floors Thursday and Friday. Counters and sink are looking like 2-3 weeks from now.
The Republican governor has pretty much done nothing until today, but our female liberal environmentalist mayor of Knoxville took action some time ago, and the city seems to be generally taking the virus seriously. Nonetheless, we’ve had our first deaths and the confirmed cases is climbing near 100.
Keep walking and running, geo! I walk/jog/bike pretty much everyday for at least 45 minutes…
dang, ya’ll some smart and healthy folks….you guys are all way overachieving in life 🙂
oh yeah, treat everyone like they’re carrying the plague…they ain’t your friends…hell, my own mom didn’t want me to visit today…
i was kind of bummed, cuz i had planned on visiting the grocery store close to her house…i’m in a decent area, but, her grocery store has a really bomb deli and bakery inside…best i could get out of mine today was a couple of pounds of greasy chicken wings…it didn’t occur to me until later the lady wasn’t even wearing gloves…ma’s store had every employee geared up…she’s right though…i need to cut down my trips outside my home…
trust no one clash fan!!!
spray them in the face with the lysol if they ain’t gloved and masked up…shit, they need to spray themselves anyway…
Geo, yeah, we’re taking precautions. We have plastic sheeting up isolating the kitchen and dining room from the rest of the house.
After each contractor does their work, I’m wiping down the fridge, which is pretty much the only thing in those rooms at this time. I wash my hands regularly and keep a distance from the workers. I’ve listened for any sounds of coughing or sneezing from them. None so far. We stay out of those rooms most of the day.
FWIW, my wife and son have all been mildly ill on and off for about a month. Headaches, congestion, coughing — normal seasonal cold stuff. No chills, fever, or breathing problems. Probably just a combination of allergies, the crazy up and down temperatures, and a cold bug we’re passing around. Who knows, maybe we’ve had the virus already, but probably not…
Ok Jowles, get the bookmark ready. The best player in this draft, by a country mile, is LaMelo Ball. I would do whatever it takes within reason to get him. He is going to be an incredibly exciting player…anywhere from a floor of a top-10 PG to a ceiling of a generational player. The kid has so much court vision and awareness, and is so fluid. He’s spoiled and his jumper needs work but he has the underlying hand-eye coordination that bodes well for development…mch better than Lonzo. There are reports that GS would pass on him, that would be as stupid as passing on Doncic (not that LaMelo is as good, only that this draft has so few sure things.)
If we go #2, I’d nab Wiseman. I like Edwards but worry that he’s a high-volume, low-efficiency highlight reel kind of player. Wiseman will have enormous trade value if you hit the high…i.e. draft him with the idea of trading him (or Mitch if Wiseman is the real deal).
Jared Kushner is a gormless putz. Dude is acting like he’s gonna disrupt the coronavirus or something.
Gormless, yes. But putz doesn’t cover it. Think of it as if every pointless spin in the lane by Randle that results in a turnover leads to the death of thousands. There’s probably a word for it, but I’m at a loss.
“oh yeah, treat everyone like they’re carrying the plague…they ain’t your friends…hell, my own mom didn’t want me to visit today…”
Your mom is a very smart lady…. it IS the plague for people around 65+ or if they are obese of virtually any age over 30.
“Jared Kushner is a gormless putz. Dude is acting like he’s gonna disrupt the coronavirus or something.”
He might be a putz but he certainly isn’t gormless.
Or let me put it another way…. he was certainly smarter than Ms. Clinton’s Greek Phalanx of self proclaimed genius tech experts when it came to targeting just enough deplorables using tech to get his father-in-law just enough votes in certain swing counties to become President of these United States.
Reality fellas…. reality.
Jared makes up with ambition what he lacks in intelligence.
I don’t have a good feeling about LaMelo.
Any particular reason, other than his dad and his penchant for not paying for ray-bans?
LaMelo is all flash, no substance. He’s DSJr turned up to 11.
>Your mom is a very smart lady…. it IS the plague for people around 65 or if they are obese of virtually any age over 30.<
One of the things that's pissing me off about the data I've seen is that they give you the risk by age and the risk if you have various serious health issues, but they don't give you some combinations.
There is a risk if you are 61 (like me), but way more people that are 61 are overweight, have diabetes, have some heart issues, very high blood pressure etc… than young people. So how much of the risk for the early 60s category is the age and how much is that the sample of 60 years olds tends to be less healthy than let's say 30-40 years olds.
I'd like to see:
60-70 no significant health issues.
30-40 overweight
30-40 diabetic
30-40 smoker
30-40 high blood pressure
30-40 1-3 combinations
It may be that age is less of a factor than we think and health is more of a factor.
We are getting the boxscore model. I'm looking for on/off, lineup data, and adjusted plus minus, system, coach etc… 🙂
>We shouldn’t be asking ourselves whether Ntilikina (or Barrett or Knox) is capable of improvement. We should be asking if he’s ever going to be good.<
That is the correct question, but the entire answer is not in the boxscore and unless people realize that, we'll be arguing past each other 5 years after they all retire.
Same with looking at Frank's lifetime TS% instead of assuming what we saw on the court this year reflected actual improvement in handle, strength, etc… and focusing on this year's TS% and saying that's more accurate give or take a little.
I read recently that the higher death rate they are seeing in New Orleans (reportedly 10 times that in NYC) may be largely attributed to victims being obese. Still, all this is so new that trying to draw any definitive conclusions still seems a bit premature.
I don’t know. The tape I have seen hasn’t seemed all that impressive. There isn’t any hard data backing up the pick. And yeah, all the Big Baller crap I find kind of noxious.
But this is, I must admit, a totally subjective impression. Just a gut feeling. I watched RJ Barrett suck at Duke, I felt confident in saying he would struggle for a long time in the NBA at a minimum. I haven’t been watching the Illawara Hawks.
We shall see. Maybe people will pick better this year without all the private 3×3 workouts.
Neptune has his tongue so far up Trump’s asshole he’s gonna pretend it’s appropriate for Trump’s nepotism hire son-in-law to be responsible for the response to the worst health crisis in the country’s history despite the fact that he has no background in public health and has never succeeded at a thing in his life. Because Hillary Clinton something something.
What flavor McNugget sauce did Trump have with his dinner McNuggets last night? You got that tongue waaaaay up that asshole; so tell us. Barbecue? Probably not sweet and sour, that’s too “ethnic.”
UH HE OWNS AN APARTMENT BUILDING I THINK HE KNOWS A THING OR TWO ABOUT SUCCESS, SONNY
I give Jared some credit. He’s honestly not that smart.
Yet he has still managed to do an enormous amount of damage. I find that kind of impressive.
Bob I consider you smart enough not to buy media narratives hook, line, and sinker. You’re never one to merely plagiarize untested conventional thinking and pass it off as certifiable fact.
So I am very surprised to see you regurgitating fake news from a Forbes puff piece that was so obviously written by a PR firm and paid for by Kushner himself. That story was horse shit, and Jared Kushner is an imbecile.
lmao BUT HILLARY
Hubert, he watches Tucker Carlson voluntarily and in earnest. Don’t expect too much, there. Fox News is brain bleach and he enjoys more than a quaff of it.
The cold that Lady J and I had upon return from our trip to Arches was crushing. Aches and chills, followed by extreme nasal congestion (the kind that wakes you up in the middle of the night and dares you to sleep while breathing exclusively through your mouth), followed by the hazy “am I awake” feeling with some tunnel vision, followed by a dry cough that turned wet in a hurry. Took about three weeks before I felt normal again. Symptoms were severe for about a week.
Sure, why not? There’s no Doncic, Zion, Clarke or Davis in this draft. Your guess is as good as mine.
“Took about three weeks before I felt normal again. Symptoms were severe for about a week.”
I got the real flu for the first time three winter’s ago. I honestly doubted any such thing as the flu existed before that. Basically had filed it under rumor and legend.
It was horrific. I had about a week where I basically just lay in bed, alternating between drenching sweats and chills that forced me to grab every blanket I could find. There were a couple of days I crawled to the toilet because I was afraid I would fall over. I would walk around my apartment with my hands on the walls.
It took me about 5 weeks to fully recover.
I was 39 at that point. It’s possible Jared is young enough to never have caught a real flu bug. “Just the flu” is something I easily could have said in my early 30s.
RIP Bill Withers
I think it was Super Bowl weekend 2006 that I got a real flu for the first time. It was one of those flus where you can’t keep liquids down, so dehydrated that I was delirious — I burst into my parents’ room in the middle of the night weeping and raving about potatoes floating in the corners of my room.
Have we discussed the news that we were apparently contemplating trading Randle, DSJ and a first for Terry Rozier and Malik Monk? I guess the theory was that we had too many mediocre forwards and didn’t have enough mediocre guards?
That trade would have been a big whatever without a draft pick but with a pick that’s a fireable offense. When you take on more salary the idea is the other team should have to pay you for it.
I’m not as worried about the Ball circus if we draft LaMelo. It seems like the dad has kind of calmed down a bit after his fist son got traded from The Lakers and hasn’t really turned into a start yet. But Dolan and Lonzo could be deadly (or really fun?)
My worry with LaMelo is the shooting, mainly because we all ready have a team of youngsters who can’t shoot. I know we shouldn’t draft for fit but damn it would be nice to get a young guard who can drain 3’s. I honestly think this is one of the biggest things holding this team back from respectability right now.
But then again, if he is the best pure PG in the draft with the vision/passing to be a true floor general, that will make the shots other players get easier/more open shots they will be more likely to make. And if we’re developing anyways, why not get the best PG prospect out there? We just need a REAL shooting coach.
Bob is correct. Kushner’s role here is not to stem the spread of the virus and prevent death on a mass scale. Just as, earlier on, it was not to “bring peace to the middle east.” The man knows as much about epidemiology as he does about statecraft. Which is to say, nothing. Kushner is, first and foremost, a political operative and everything he does – or has done – in this administration should be viewed through that lens. It’s hard to ascribe his handling of the response solely to rank incompetence after he let this slip from the podium yesterday:
“The notion of the federal stockpile is that it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use.”
That’s one huge fucking tell. Who exactly is this “our” that he referred to? Well, whoever that “our” is, it clearly does not include NY, CA, WA, MI or any of the other blue states whose governors have been clamoring for supplies for weeks. Not much political upside in sending resources there. Maybe the red states will fare better when shit hits their fans or maybe they’ll find themselves victims of the same cynical calculus on account of their electoral votes being already in the bag, no matter what happens.
At the risk of sounding like an unhinged conspiracy nut, methinks “our” stockpile is being held in reserve for use in the 5-6 states who will decide the election come November. Will federal resources be spared when the hospitals of Florida, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin begin to get overwhelmed? Somehow, I tend to doubt it. They will be released, all the while accompanied by a loud and glorious fanfare.
It’s incredibly difficult to know what to make of LaMelo Ball’s stats because the entire sample is 375 minutes in a league that’s kind of a black box.
Having said that, I would say the numbers that do exist are more positive than negative. His per-36 line was 19.6/8.7/7.9/1.8 in a league where I’m pretty sure he was one of the youngest players. His shooting percentages were mostly terrible, but that stuff matters less than people think when it comes to NBA translation and his 2PT% wasn’t horrific (46%, 55/120 attempts).
Overall I’d be happy to have him simply because, like Lonzo, I think his diverse skill profile makes him bust-proof. After the Knoxilitikina experience, it would be nice to be able to trot out some draft picks who we can confidently claim are not the worst players in the NBA. Baby steps!
Man it sure sucks to have President who doesn’t allow us to dismiss this kind of thing out of hand. In the age of Trump, it’s hard to imagine how far someone would have to go before I said “you’re ascribing too much malevolence to the executive branch.”
At the risk of looking foolish down the line, I’m pretty out on Wiseman. Sadly the bar for big man production is simply insanely high these days if you’re investing a lot in them (money and/or a high pick) and I don’t see AD/Towns level upside.
He seems more similar to Ayton, and while it’s wild that that’s some kind of slight (Ayton’s numbers are perfectly good), it’s just hard to justify the investment when you can sign Enes Kanter for $5M or whatever. This is all exacerbated by the fact that center is the one position we can somewhat confidently say we have “covered” going forward.
Maybe he’ll be a much better defender than I’ve seen/heard and that could justify the pick.
***It may be that age is less of a factor than we think and health is more of a factor.
We are getting the boxscore model. I’m looking for on/off, lineup data, and adjusted plus minus, system, coach etc… :-)***
I know we are a data driven community, but like Owen with his hunch about LaMelo, I am going to forego waiting for conclusive data to tell Strat and anybody else who asks that smoking is a factor regardless of age. There appears to be a significant gender gap to this, and the countries where the bulk of the available data comes from have countries that are not only behind the curve on smoking, but where men smoke more than women.
In fact, I was going to suggest this last night to geo but forgot, so here goes: Geo— you may want to stick to edibles and cupboard the vale pen for the time being!
Bo Nateman:
RIP Bill Withers
A great one.
LaMelo’s rep seems to be, outstanding frame, great passer, projectable, but can’t shoot and likes to shoot.
Just not my genre. Maybe at 5-7 its fine. I can see upside.
But basically every prospect has a lot of upside if they figure out how to shoot.
As a young 18yo, LaMelo played 31 mpg in 12 games (including a 21 minute outlier) which is about 1/3 of a college season, all against teams that would be high-level NCAA teams at worst. Per-36 stats of 20, 9 and 8, even on sub-optimal efficiency, is nothing to sneeze at. The 3-pt shot is a question mark, but everything else screams future. superstar. He also got to the line pretty well (.235 FTr, 72%) and rebounded for a string bean in a man’s league.
And he was pretty consistent in his stats, at least 5 rebounds in 11 of 12 games with a high of 12, at least 5 assists in 10 of 12 games, none over 13, at least one steal in 11 of 12 games. He has 3 or less turnovers in 9 of 12 games. His best effort was in his 11th game against Cairns, a 32-pt triple-double with 2 turnovers. Cairns featured Scott Machado, who played 40 minutes in the NBA and other former NCAA studs who went undrafted like D.J. Newbill. Given how he stepped onto a court vs. very physical Aussie teams and played like an all-star in that league, LaMelo would surely have been a destructive force in the NCAA.
LaMelo’s shooting was terrible-he shot sub 50% from 2 and obviously he can’t shoot 3s. Unlike his brother he does seem to be able to shoot free throws, and you can probably explain some of his bad 2 point shooting because he’s a kid trying to finish against men. He does seem to have some of his brothers gifts and seems more mobile on the court-I’d be happy with him in this draft. I’d certainly roll the dice on him before someone like Cole Anthony or that kid from Georgia.
Mike Schmitz is my favorite draft analyst out there, and here’s what he had to say about LaMelo.
As a college freshman, Kawhi Leonard shot .204 from the shorter college 3 on 78 attempts from a shorter line. Sure, lots of guys don’t improve, but if that’s the only obvious hole in his game, I’d live with that risk.
I posted this before, but here’s a breakdown of LaMelo’s shooting mechanics which sounds promising to me.
That’s interesting, I don’t see Ayton at all. He seems like a much more willing and able rim protector and less of a elbow jumper kid of player. For me, it comes down to whether he can defend like Mitch out on the perimeter. I’d have to take a long look at his offensive game before drafting him at #2 or 3, but superficially he seems like he has a high floor and high ceiling.
I thought so too, but then there’s this:
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Michigan
Either Trump’s team has simply forgotten that just ~5,500 people in Michigan were the difference between 0 and 16 electoral votes, or he’s bitter that the governor’s chair and two House seats were flipped in 2018.
“I read recently that the higher death rate they are seeing in New Orleans (reportedly 10 times that in NYC) may be largely attributed to victims being obese. Still, all this is so new that trying to draw any definitive conclusions still seems a bit premature.”
Without all the data everything is partially conjecture but half the patients in ICU’s in France are under 60.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/487888-more-than-half-of-french-icu-patients-with
I saw some epidemiologist a day or two ago that a BMI >30 was as strong a risk factor as being >65.
As far as Louisiana is concerned, someone is going to really have to convince me that a couple of hundred thousand drunks partying elbow to elbow at Mardi Grass on 2/25 weeks after the first “known” C/V19 case in America didn’t have a big part of their troubles today.
you’re 100% right donnie…breathing hot ashy smoke into your lungs is never a recipe for long term health success…vaping has it’s own chemical dangers…staying healthy is even more important now than ever…it’s just not a good time to get hurt or sick…
people always talk about how benign weed is – but, it’s still smoke in your lungs…speaking of which – one of the odder things i’ve ever seen was my dad get high…it happened much later in my life, and not cuz he was my dad or anything, but, because when he took a hit – nothing ever came out…the smoke literally disappeared somewhere in his body…
never saw anything before or since like that…he was a chain smoker with cigarettes, so, i guess that had something to do with it…but, even if you swallow the smoke, it’ll usually come out a bit…he would inhale, and the smoke was never to be seen again…i know right, weird on so many different levels 🙂
LaMelo’s shot selection worries me — that’s something few high-profile prospects seem to be able to shake. I like his passing and defensive awareness, but he could easily become just another Elfrid Payton. I prefer the efficiency that Hayes showed in an arguably better league at the same age.
“It was horrific. I had about a week where I basically just lay in bed, alternating between drenching sweats and chills that forced me to grab every blanket I could find. There were a couple of days I crawled to the toilet because I was afraid I would fall over. I would walk around my apartment with my hands on the walls.”
I had the flu one time in 2006. I developed Vertigo and literally could not sit up without my brain telling my body I was listing to the port beam and forcing me horizontal. I couldn’t walk to the bathroom I had to literally crawl 6 inches off the ground. The worst 2 days of my entire life. By far…..
I’m fine drafting LaMelo, because this draft sucks, but PGs need to score now. LaMelo can’t score and can’t play defense. And how good is the Australian league anyways??
Maybe he’ll be good in 5-7 years, which seems to be the Knick rookie timeline
That link to video made me want to get Lámelo ball.
Me too. Hayes may wind up being #1 overall on my big board.
Having said that, it’s tough to know what to make of LaMelo’s shot selection on a team he now literally owns.
“The notion of the federal stockpile is that it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use.”
That’s one huge fucking tell. Who exactly is this “our” that he referred to? Well, whoever that “our” is, it clearly does not include NY, CA, WA, MI or any of the other blue states whose governors have been clamoring for supplies for weeks. Not much political upside in sending resources there. Maybe the red states will fare better when shit hits their fans or maybe they’ll find themselves victims of the same cynical calculus on account of their electoral votes being already in the bag, no matter what happens.
Such complete bullshit.
The national stockpile of about 15,000 machines is to be used as back up, not the primary sourse for ALL THE 50 STATES in the time of crisis, not just to cover up Governor Cuomo’s lack of foresight.
NY has already received 4,400 machines from the feds. Michigan (which is far more integral to Trump’s reelection ) 500. It has received one of the 2 mobile hospital assets Cali the other, so there goes your conspiracy theory, again), over 3,000 new hospital beds (Javit’s Canter) from Trump.
Is Trump supposed to be the President of the entire USA or NYC Health Commissioner.
Also, maybe Cuomo should have bought 16,000 ventilators 5 years ago rather than spending that money on a bankrupt woke solar factory…
https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/30/its-not-the-federal-governments-fault-new-york-doesnt-have-more-ventilators-its-andrew-cuomos/
Bob, does Trump lie?
Bake the flower for 30-40 minutes at 250 degrees. Put it in a large mason jar with grain alcohol and pop it in the freezer for 2 weeks, shaking once a day. Self-titrate until you get a ratio that makes sense to you.
Smoking is terrible for you, no matter what you’re inhaling. I’d much rather take a fraction of an oz. of grain alcohol than have several-hundred degree ash coating my insides.
LaMelo obviously had carte blanche to shoot whenever he felt like it for that last-place team. My worry (if you want to call it that) is that he becomes bad Russell Westbrook…an uber-talented savant with a low b-ball IQ. I don’t see the comparisons to Payton, who has a hopelessly broken shot with zero arc. LaMelo’s form is funky but not broken, and his issues seem more about selection than anything else. His 2-pt % and FT% aren’t terrible and the Aussie 3-pt line is legit.
But he is unquestionably the most talented all-around player in this draft. That’s Schmitz saying that, not me.
I’m tired of drafting/acquiring players who can’t shoot for shit but has athleticism and does other things or whatever. John Schuhmann had a tweet today that says it all: the Knicks this season were outscored at the 3pt line by 11 ppg, the 2nd worst rate by a team in the history of the 3pt line (41 seasons). The Knicks were the only team this season in the bottom 5 in not just 3pt FGA per game and 3pt % on offense BUT on defense as well. That is fucking insane in today’s NBA to be one of the 5 worst 3pt shooting teams AND one of the 5 worst teams at defending the 3pt line.
This team needs a completely new strategy in terms of the players they acquire and the system they play in but that has been the case since 2013.
And the fact that his team came in last ISN’T a red flag?
His shot certainly doesn’t look broken, but he’s also not the physical specimen that Westbrook is. Maybe he’ll be more of a taller Jason Williams — a decent enough player, but not a number one pick. If we didn’t have Mitch, I would definitely consider Wiseman at number one.
I think it’s the players we have, not the system that’s making our three point stats do horrible. If the Knicks had used a three point heavy system they would have been worse because, with a couple of exceptions, they can’t shoot them.
LaMelo terrifies me a little (okay, the virus and economic collapse terrifies me, LaMelo makes me nervous). I actually get the Elfrid comparison — IF you think of what everyone hoped Elf would become (and what he has shown flashes of being for a couple of games here and there), a decent floor leader who can do everything but shoot. I suspect Ball has “good” (arguably imaginary) Elfrid as his basic floor; I worry that’s also his ceiling. Not a bad player to have, but I also worry that he’d be an overall negative unless you surrounded him with three great 3-pt shooters and Mitch. And we only have Mitch, and as Al intimates, there’s no sense that the org actually gets that 3-pt shooters are a good thing.
I get all the concerns. I just think what LaMelo did on a shitty team in a pretty good league at age 18 with little comparable experience (e.g. Doncic played in the best Euro league for years and was used to that level of competition) is pretty remarkable. He was 17th in the league in ppg, 2nd in apg, 8th in rpg, and 2nd in steals per game.
***I actually get the Elfrid comparison — IF you think of what everyone hoped Elf would become (and what he has shown flashes of being for a couple of games here and there), a decent floor leader who can do everything but shoot.***
Speaking of Elf comparisons, Payton just completed year 6 of his 5-6 year development plan that has now visited 4 different cities. Orlando, realizing that a 5-6 year development plan isn’t actually part of nba “reality”, traded him for nothing but the 41st pick in the draft. And he wasn’t even all that bad in Orlando. He just couldn’t shoot very well, and management realized that investing long term in a guard that can’t shoot isn’t time and/or money well spent. Not in the 21st century NBA. (I don’t think they have lived to regret that move.)
LaMelo shot slightly below 38% overall and just 25% from the 3pt line. Don’t give me he can improve his shot as he gets older and improves his shot election, again I’m tired of acquiring players with this exact profile.
Bro, The Federalist is not a reputable news or analysis source. It’s a hard-right platform with strong bias.
“I get all the concerns. I just think what LaMelo did on a shitty team in a pretty good league at age 18 with little comparable experience (e.g. Doncic played in the best Euro league for years and was used to that level of competition) is pretty remarkable. He was 17th in the league in ppg, 2nd in apg, 8th in rpg, and 2nd in steals per game.”
Pretty good league?????
We are getting the ,”He played with growd ass men,” argument again?
Besides Joe Ingles… what is the list of NBA players that made their bones playing pro ball in OZ? Most of the current NBA Aussies went the NCAA route…..
In a world of blind men, the one eyed man is king…….
I’ve never seen LaMelo play a single second but the level of competition is concerning and his families proclivity for what can we call it…. Unorthodoxy…. raises questions.
tall pg’s like lamelo should scare some folks… his #s look ok but the australian league is where prospects go to hide…. so i wouldn’t really too much credence in them… and he was hardly all that dominant despite playing as though he was on the harlem globetrotter’s all the time…
he’s a carbon copy of his brother…. except a little taller…. he wasn’t all that great coming out of high school…. and he’s gotten a lot of that tall pg hype that some prospect gets every year….
lamelo’s a landmine… don’t fall for it…
It’s probably something like the G-league.
bro…. that argument only works in your college dorm. In the big boy world outside of you little cliques of likeminded rubes facts rule. Dispute the facts at hand…. don’t shoot the messenger…. this isn’t an opinion piece…. it if full of demonstrable facts.:
Does the governor have control over procurement in hospitals and the construction of hospitals in 35 states (NY included)….
Did the Governor decide it was more prudent to finance a solar power factory for about 900 million rather than buy the 16,000 ventilators at $36,000 a head that he was told IN 2015 were needed for PRECISELY THIS SORT OF CRISIS.
Inquiring minds want to know……
I agree, but I would absolutely sign up for this outcome in this particular draft. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that we’re likely not getting our future best player with this pick. I just don’t see what you can say about LaMelo that isn’t true of other prospects as well (outside of Hayes and Okongwu).
Anthony Edwards seems just like RJ Barrett to me. Wiseman plays the same position as our best player and might be an antiquated archetype. Haliburton scored 8 PPG as a freshman and has his own jump shot concerns. I don’t think Avdija would be ranked this high in most drafts and I have no idea what he purports to do well. Toppin is 22 and doesn’t do anything but score against people mostly younger than him.
It’s probably something like the G-league.
Citation? Seriously you are pulling that directly out of your posterior. And the G-league is full of terrific NCAA players.
Hey… I have no idea if Lamelo is the next Magic Johnson, but assuming the NBL competition is analogous to good NCAA basketball or even G-league play is a blind reach. there is nothing to back it up and its not like he looked like a standout superstar by dominating in limited play.
7 time NBL MVP Andrew Gaze couldn’t play 200 minutes in the NBA at 29.
Mitch Robinson proves their are black swans the occasionally burst into the NBA without playing against any level of competition, but it’s certainly buying on the come.
WTF is a backup for is we’re not using it during a crisis? That’s exactly why you have a backup. Are we waiting on a worse virus than corona to use them?
NYC has almost the same number of people as the entire state of Michigan, not even counting the suburbs. Moreover, the density of NYC makes transmission significantly easier.
NY has 102,000 cases of coronavirus, Michigan has 12,000. How are these two state comparable???
I’m sorry you quoted a hit piece on big government that’s… *wait for it*… advocating for the government to spend more money?? Makes total sense. But that’s the level of analysis you get from the Federalist that runs opinion pieces from a literal community college student. Nothing wrong with community college, but it usually helps to avoid contradicting yourself.
Having gone on record as saying Kushner is an imbecile, I think the backlash over that comment is manufactured rage about nothing.
New York hasn’t run out of supplies. A federal stockpile is for states that run out of supplies. What he meant clearly was you don’t get to use our stockpile to build your own stockpile. You use our stockpile when you run out.
He’s still a piece of shit who should not be involved in our government, but that made absolutely perfect sense and all the news outlets that are acting like it doesn’t are garbage for doing so.
“WTF is a backup for is we’re not using it during a crisis?”
According to every model we are not close to the peak of this crisis. There needs to be some held in reserve for the 315,000,000 Americans that don’t live in NYS. If there is a short fall in ventilators in NYC in 2 weeks it is primarily Cuomo’s fault, not the federal government, as he lorded over procurement for 3 terms.
Trump can’t empty the quiver into NYS now and tell the rest of the country to fuck off when things get worse. Next time vote for a Governor that prioritized public health over “green” technology. The chicken’s are coming home to roost to quote reverend Wright.
And of course so far today California with double the population and just as much international travel has 12 dead today and NYS 397. Why….. Governor Newsome locked Cali down a week or so before NYC and the citizenry took it more seriously than the so, so smart people in NYC.
NY has 2,939 deaths up to the minute and Michigan has 479 so the 4400/500 allocation of respirators from the federal inventory seems perfectly reasonable to everyone except my neighbors on 10th and University…
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
i think this draft is weak but it’s ok from where we’re likely to pick… we’ll have a shot at someone decent and i do think guys like edwards, hayes, okongwu, wiseman, nesmith are good gets…
the guys being hyped aren’t really matched with reality which is the problem… but there’s an opportunity to get someone decent if we look hard enough….
I was touting Ant-Man a little bit ago, but then his numbers starting declining. Now I wouldn’t pick him before #5. To be frank, this draft sucks. I’d say there’s 4 real prospects in this draft, in order of how much I like them:
1. Okongwu
2. Hayes
3. Hali
4. Wiseman
(maybe Deni Avdija? I have no handle on how good his numbers are)
None of these players project to be amazing, but Okongwu is so athletic and bouncy that he’s going to be a terrific rim runner and defender, and there’s some prospect of developing some outside shooting (not a three point shot though) given his FT%. Hayes looks all-around polished. Haliburton has real concerns about his FTA but all of his other stats scream “starter”, even if he isn’t star material without a big jump in FTR. Wiseman’s stats in 3 games were great but 1. small sample theater and 2. the tape on him doesn’t reflect the stats–he has an extremely slow load up, which will be a big issue in the NBA. Pretty much the opposite of Okongwu in the bounce department. And If you’re not shooting 3s, you should look more athletic than Wiseman does, I think, though of course there’s so little data that I can’t say for sure.
I think Toppin is a risky prospect because of his age and meh ast/stocks. I guess Hayes or Okongwu would be my #1. In agreement that LaMelo is a carbon copy of his brother, but actually worse–Lonzo could shoot 3s in the NCAA, and he actually played terrific D (and still does in the NBA). LaMelo does neither. I’d avoid the younger Ball.
Whatever the case, do not touch Cole Anthony. He’s Knox levels of bad.
Sorry, meant 5 real prospects. Ant-Man is #5.
Isn’t this the perfect draft to trade down for two picks?
Bobneptune,
You’re right. Those ventilators should be saved for swing states that can get Trump re-elected. Why waste them on liberals in NYC who won’t vote for Trump and determine the next election.
If the peak is in a few weeks, they can afford to send some more to NYC now. Gives them a few weeks to get more manufactured, right?
That’s fucking rich from a Trump sycophant. Laughing here, Bob. Laughing out loud, and not with you.
In hindsight, this would have worked out in 2017, 2018 and 2019. What’s one more year of wasted opportunity?
>The Federalist is not a reputable news or analysis source. It’s a hard-right platform with strong bias.<
Should we make a list of the trash coming from the other side or would it exceed the character limit on a post?
To be clear, I think virtually the entire media (except some financial sources that limit themselves to their area of expertise) is made up of incompetents, bought and paid for scumbags, and people that are so consumed with anger and hate they couldn't find balance and truth no matter how hard they tried.
If you aren't out there looking for primary source data and information and trying to understand it yourself, you almost certainly have a delusional view of reality even though you don't know it. If you are trying, you may be mistaken, but at least you aren't being purposely mislead by the swine and imbeciles in the mainstream or those clearly on one side or the other.
I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this model, but it gives you US and state by state projections for cases, all beds, ICU beds, ventilators with dates for when each is supposed to peak (with a plus minus range).
I highly recommend at least browsing a few states to see what they are projecting.
https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections
I’m telling you that bleach is toxic and you want to talk about the harm of ammonia. Do you see me over here posting articles from Palmer Report and MoveOn? ThinkProgress? No? Then fuck off.
Dunning fucking Kruger over here
>Then fuck off.<
I know it's tough for you, but at least try to read the entirety of what was said. I made a very generalized comment about the ENTIRE media in that post. Stop being a difficult asshole as tough as that may be for you.
Obviously this depends on where exactly we land and what the offer is, but generally speaking I would say no. The top of the draft is weaker than usual…but the middle/end of the first round in this draft is absolutely brutal in terms of upside. There are some guys I like in that range, but not as anything more than solid role player types.
We also already have an extra late first and early second, so at a certain point you hit a roster spot question.
I should go ahead and add Jalen Smith to the list of guys I’d be happy with one of our later picks. His combination of shot blocking and shooting is pretty rare if it’s for real.
***And of course so far today California with double the population and just as much international travel has 12 dead today and NYS 397. Why….. Governor Newsome locked Cali down a week or so before NYC and the citizenry took it more seriously than the so, so smart people in NYC.***
It’s not quite apples to apples. CA cities don’t have nearly the population density of NYC. Crediting Newsome because his constituents have more space at their disposal is as unfair as blaming Cuomo for the MTA being a corona-machine.
And, investing in solar power has nothing to do with this argument, either, as Newsome has also embraced solar power and all the other hoodoo liberal stuff the Federalist disapproves of.
The basic fact is, NYC needs more resource because of its population density, and should therefore receive the resources that are available. They shouldn’t have to fight the US government for it. It’s absurd.
My prediction remains that we spend a ton of time discussing the intricacies of various prospects here only to watch the team draft Cole Anthony because he’s from New York and is a ruff rydah.
-Intermission-
Playing chess while listening to Chopin preludes is nice.
Even if you’re being destroyed & humiliated by the computer!
Play on Lichess.org instead. No reason to play against the computer.
Computer is patient.
Cole Anthony misses a lot of shots. He will fit in perfect here.
i’m stressed enough…only occasionally peeking in on cnn or espn now…when i’m out walking i imagine to myself that people are just trying to get healthy and that’s why i see so many more bikes and walkers/joggers than cars about…
it is hard though to forget about the health care workers, unemployed and sick though…it’s very hard…
personal space is gonna make a big comeback this decade…
the few minutes I saw North Carolina play this year…convinced me that Cole Anthony sucks and that he will be in a Knick uniform next season..
I learned to play chess at a very early age along with the other kids of my neighborhood since there weren’t a lot of games during the early 80s.
We played just for fun.
A few years ago a co-worker of mine challenged me to play against him.
He was bragging that he was a member of a local chess club and that he knew many moves and systems and that he had read many books about chess….
He asked me how many moves beyond i could see.
I told him that i hadn’t played the game for over 20years…
I concentrated and gave my best.
I still remember the look on his face after i beat him! Shocked!
It was hilarious.
We played one more game where i wasn’t focused enough and i lost.
We never played again.
He never talked about his chess prowess again.
The Monday morning quarterbacking on government spending is impressive. You know things are bad when conservative wingnuts advocate for more spending.
And hey, if it’s not Trump’s fault who really cares how many people die?? It’s not like he could also have stockpiled more ventilators instead of, you know, disbanding the pandemic response team.
Anyone on the chess time app want to throw down? Nothing crazy 1 move every 2 days — you know… baby stuff.
“Bobneptune,
You’re right. Those ventilators should be saved for swing states that can get Trump re-elected. Why waste them on liberals in NYC who won’t vote for Trump and determine the next election.
If the peak is in a few weeks, they can afford to send some more to NYC now. Gives them a few weeks to get more manufactured, right?”
Um…. he already gave the short sighted Cuomo 35% of their total inventory while they represent 5% of the population…. yeah Trump is really screwing NY.
And everyone in the rest of the country should just die so you oh so special short sighted New Yorkers can live. Got IT!
Next time spend some money on preparedness and not solar technology that is doomed to fail.
Do you have any idea how that sounds to anyone west of the Hudson River.
Cole Anthony is destined to be a Knicks draft bust.
“The Monday morning quarterbacking on government spending is impressive. You know things are bad when conservative wingnuts advocate for more spending.”
nahhhhh…. just advocating spending on preparedness rather than some half baked solar company that couldn’t possibly compete with available cheaper energy alternatives. But I’m sure it got Cuomo some votes from the woke crowd…. I wonder how he thinks about that decision today? But it is all Drumf’s fault, amiright?
I am sure the Italians, the French, the Spaniards and the Brits are probably wishing they spent a little more on preparedness to.
You guys are pretty funny, ya know…..
i know i shouldn’t, but, just out of curiosity, can you define:
who is that exactly?
i wonder, i’m awake, but, am i woke…
“You guys are pretty funny, ya know”
you’re pretty douchey…ya know…
Dude Trump disbanded the pandemic team to save a few bucks and spent a bunch of money on a wall that can be climbed with a ladder or sawed through with a $30 saw. The wind blew part of it over. Priorities!
If you want to play the game about the “woke” solar power investment we can do this the other way too. “Trump disbanded the pandemic team and wasted money on his ‘own the libs’ wall.” There.
***Dude Trump disbanded the pandemic team to save a few bucks and spent a bunch of money on a wall that can be climbed with a ladder or sawed through with a $30 saw. The wind blew part of it over. Priorities!
If you want to play the game about the “woke” solar power investment we can do this the other way too. “Trump disbanded the pandemic team and wasted money on his ‘own the libs’ wall.” There.***
Exactly. Bob defending Trump is the new ruruland and Melo. He has his skin in the game with a inferior product and can’t let it go. He is going to twist and turn, flip and flop, holler and howl about how we are all wrong and he’s right and we are idiots for not realizing it and for being self-righteous and smug, blah blah blah.
And the ironic thing is that Bob used to hate it when ruruland did this.
Wait, but Trump stopped all those flights coming in from China (except for Americans and the virus was already here)
He saved MILLIONS of lives, so just be thankful k?
Yeah, because we don’t have to prepare for global warming… can’t wait for you to hindsight that one too.
And I guess we didn’t need to prepare for a pandemic when Trump fired those experts or when he didn’t stockpile more ventilators. But Cuomo, he should have prepared. You don’t see the bias here?
Keep tilting at those windmills Bob
And another episode of Bob Neptune vs. the Knickerblogger Board continues…
I checked out Strato’s site for TN. Hmm. They’re projecting we’ll only have 1/4 the ICU beds needed on the peak day of April 19. Also 3422 deaths by August 4th. We’ll see. I hope the actual numbers turn out to be much less.
My buddy got in a screaming fight with his mother in law about how many lives Trump saved by banning travel from China. To me that’s like making a good substitution halfway through the first quarter.
That said, it’s no use trying to change MAGA types. They have gone well beyond Ruru. They don’t care if Donald takes the max. They want him to.
Just beat Computer on level 5 (ELO 1352)
I feel like Frank after a nasty dunk!
Kasparov I’m coming to get you bitch!
Did you chess buffs see the thing where Magnus Carlssen gets drunk then goes and demolishes grandmasters in online speed chess under a pseudonym?
My favorite vision is of Bob sitting in the basement of his little house in Patriarshiye Prudy, sipping his vodka and chuckling as he lines up another post…
Who’s Magnus Carlssen ?
(To be honest i had seen his name here and there but didn’t know who he was till yesterday when i googled to see wtf is ELO !)
He’s the reigning champ, best player in the world, probably best player of all time.
So, I just came in from some outdoor time in the drivewayI playing 3-on-1 with my middle-school aged daughters. We used a WNBA ball and I played left handed. I lost 11-9, but, more importantly, now I know what it feels like to be James Harden.
Just watched a 10min game of MCarlssen from 2012.
These mfkrs are FAST as FUCK !!!!
If you want to watch really fast chess, try this link and related links. The players are grandmasters and they have to talk and play at the same time. The talking part is thought to make it much harder for them to cheat. It’s called banter blitz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjyTPPnR9Sc
And boy are they fast.
was it hack a dad time 🙂
Aaaah u suck!
I am officially sexually abused on level 6 by the computer.
(ELO 1435)
“My favorite vision is of Bob sitting in the basement of his little house in Patriarshiye Prudy, sipping his vodka and chuckling as he lines up another post…”
Nahhhhh… try The Polo Club in Boca Raton…. its very nice here…..
If you think blitz is fast, wait until you find GMs playing ultrabullet.
Blitz is my favorite to watch because the middlegames are explosive and creative. Classical chess is insufferable to follow since games don’t “start” until twenty or thirty moves in. Everything has been theorized (and now brute-force calculated) with near-perfect precision so there’s not much room to grow. Fischer variant chess (960) is the closest you can get to an analytical/creative showdown anymore, with much of what we have in traditional chess a memorization contest.
Hey Bob, why don’t you tell us the company line on Michael Atkinson
bob, what in the heck are you doing out partying at some club…go home, be safe…
woo hoo, the kids are all gone…lord knows I love them…oh but it feels so good to have the house to myself for bit…
just made dinner – while naked…
found out that a bunch of the premium channels (hbo, showtime and epix) have free previews going on right now…
got overlord (wanted to catch it in the theater but never did), annihilation and a bowie doc queued up and ready to go…
veggie time…
Geo, if you haven’t yet… smoke a joint and watch under the silver lake. I think it’s streaming on amazon prime.
Hey Bob, why don’t you tell us the company line on Michael Atkinson
I’m guessing he hopes Adam Schiffless impeaches him again so he can get another 3 point pop in the polling……..
Man all these bumps in the polling, he must be at like 128% approval by now
I was watching one of the HBO channels the other night and “13 Days” was on. As I watched it I was thinking to myself can you imagine Trump and his administration trying to handle something like the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Interesting bit on ESPN. It seems like Jordan’s team is the obvious choice, no? Lebron is amazing, but come on, even if you say Lebron is one of the three best players of all-time, Kareem and Jordan are probably the other two. And then you add in Magic, Bird and Hakeem!
I agree.
Would an all-’60s team have a chance if you played ’60s rules (no 3-pt line)? I’d go with Wilt-Russell-Elgin-Oscar-West.
I think the more apt conclusion is “can you imagine Hollywood ever glorifying an idiot like trump the way it loves to glorify an idiot like Kennedy.” Let me guess, the movie left out the bay of pigs fiasco that started the whole crisis and almost got millions of Americans nuked?
Kennedy was Trump before Trump. He was every bit the constant threat to national security, the complete narcissist, and the spoiled brat who would have turned out to be nothing without his father. Hell Russia even tried to help them both get elected. He looked better and had proper diction at his rallies, though.
Also I don’t know what the plot of that movie was but Khrushchev basically slapped JFK on both sides of his face with his cock during that crisis and it only ended when he got everything he wanted in the first place out of it.
Have we heard from Farfa lately?
JFK was a lot of things, many of them negative, but comparing him to Trump is ridiculous.
Kennedy is certainly romanticized to a ridiculous degree. He was also one hundred times smarter and more thoughtful than Trump on his worst day, and happy to defer to people who knew more than him on various topics.
Seriously, you’re comparing someone who visited Martin Luther King Jr. in jail to Donald Trump. Cut it out.
Hearing reports that some Knicks players were frustrated by Julius Randle over dribbling.
“A lot of players felt like that with the exception of Elfrid Payton,’’ one NBA source told The Post.
can’t say I really understand that quote, but I do get being frustrated with the way Julius was used.
I was just wondering that myself. I hope him and the other guy from Italy that was posting about the situation there are okay. You guys out there?
I’ll admit that I’m not well read about Kennedy, but wasn’t the Bay of Pigs fiasco largely the result of him deferring to the CIA too much early on in his presidency? Or is that just “left-wing fake news lib” propaganda?
I’m worried about Farfa too. Farfa, I hope you are ok.
Too much credit, or a misunderstanding. It’s always personal with him. So Florida, congrats Bob, has been getting all of their requests filled completely. Other places get a fraction, and also get the supplies they’ve secured independently taken by the feds*. This has happened to a long list of states, including Kentucky and Michigan. What those states have in common are Dem govs or Rep govs who criticized Trump. You have to kiss the ring to get supplies. Trump has already run ads featuring Dem govs who praised his handling of the pandemic in order to get supplies. Suck his dick in public, or watch your citizens die.
*This is fun because it’s not just that Trump is telling the states to go get their own and then outbidding them, the Feds have straight-up stolen supplies that we’re already bought and paid for from both states and from allied governments. The cruelty is the point.
“bob, what are your thoughts on Trump firing the ICIG at 9 PM on a Friday and circumventing the 30-day delay by placing him on administrative leave?”
“something something Adam Schiff”
Bob “Easy Mark” Neptune
That sentiment only exists bc of how his deplorable family is portrayed. If you look directly at primary sources, they’re extremely similar, equally unqualified, and both a danger to their country. I’ll grant you Trump is a 10 and JFK a 9. It’s how the message gets filtered. This is why cuomo, who is every bit as covered in blame here as Trump, is somehow a national hero now even tho he waited til March fucking 22 to shut the city down.
Oh you think that wasn’t a blatant political move. Ok. And I’m sure Trump pardoned Alice Johnson bc of his dedication to righting the wrongs of past racist crime bills.
I suppose this is why Fox exists. Nonsense needs balance.
Hubert, how do you figure? Kennedy was a decorated war veteran, served six years in the House, and then as a Senator. He was young but hardly inexperienced. He certainly was not naive. He’d been preparing his whole life for public service.
I mean, does “the best and brightest” sound like the approach Trump has used to staff the federal government?
Obviously, Halberstam used that mostly ironically. But one can’t deny that a major part of the Kennedy appeal was that he at least wanted to make the government work better for more people. It may not have worked out well but the intention was far far different than that of our current administration.
And yes, all the health stuff is crazy. The fact he was on painkiller cocktails that may have impacted his judgment is totally fair for criticism obviously. But he at least had relatively good judgment most of the time and worked cooperatively with other people to arrive at decisions rather than just shitposting on Twitter on impulse.
Dumb argument to have I know.
I was born a long time after JFK died, so don’t have a bias one way or the other about him. He seemed to have not been the greatest president, and there does seem to be a cult of personality around him, instilled more by his death than by his life. But though I understand the point you are TRYING to make, I think it’s pretty far off base. Kennedy served in WWII, was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. He served in the House. He served in the Senate. There is no way you can say, with a straight face, that Kennedy was as unqualified to be president as Donald Trump, who had never served anybody but himself up until the day he took office. But, really, this is a ridiculous thing to be discussing here, even when there’s no basketball to be played. Even if the comparison wasn’t wrong, it would still be pointless.
(EDIT- Sorry, some of this is redundant, now that I’ve seen what Owen posted a few minutes ago. Apologies)
I won’t bother weighing in on the ludicrous comparison of Trump to Kennedy. Let’s go back to reasonable comparisons, like Frank Ntilikina to Michael Jordan.
Yeah I didn’t mention the movie trying to glorify JFK’s presidency. I wasn’t close to being born during his presidency and even though I’ve done alot of reading and research on him I understand he was and still is a very polarizing figure. My point was watching what the country was going thru and the decisions the administration had to make during that time I can’t imagine having any faith and confidence whatsoever in Trump and his administration being able to handle a situation like that.
“I mean, does “the best and brightest” sound like the approach Trump has used to staff the federal government?”
Yup…. the “best and the brightest” headed by Sec. of State Dean Rusk and Sec. of Defense Robert Mc Namarra had some terrific 1000 days:
Bay of Pigs Fiasco
Building of the Berlin Wall
Cuban Missile Crisis
Assassination of the President of South Viet Nam
Increased “advisors” in Viet Nam from 900 to 13,000
And pleeeezzzze don’t tell me Kennedy’s limp-dicked performance at his 1961 Vienna Summit with Khrushchev didn’t directly lead to the erection of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis….
Yeah… the combination of Jack Kennedy with the “Best and Brightest” certainly had an “unblemished” record….
Did i use the word “unblemished?”
I’d agree hiring a bunch of technocrats didn’t work out that well. I said that above. I am just making the point that putting the head of Ford Motor Company in charge of the Department of Defense is a lot different from putting Jared Kushner in charge of the coronavirus response.
In fact, the entire reason it’s such a well-known episode is precisely because the politics of it were unclear at best.
It was in the immediate run up to the 1960 election, and while the Dixiecrat-induced defection from Democrats in the South had begun, it wasn’t anywhere near finished. JFK still had to do very, very well in the South if he was going to beat Nixon. He wound up winning Texas, Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama, Missouri, and Mississippi, mostly by very thin margins.
The election in general was one of the closest in history when it came to the popular vote (many think Nixon actually won and JFK called in some connections, I haven’t looked into the theory much but I believe it’s somewhat credible) so any crack in that Southern firewall would’ve doomed Kennedy and the Democrats in general.
This is a weird position for me to be in because like I said I agree with you that this country has a bizarre, irrational Kennedy fetish, and particularly when it comes to Jack. But Donald Trump is in a god damn class of his own when it comes to incompetence and narcissism and it’s an enormous oversimplification to pretend JFK was somehow identical because he too had flaws.
I usually try to stay away from politics but I guess I struck a nerve bringing up JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis! Blame HBO for showing that movie the other night.
Let me try to bring it back to basketball, currently NBATV is showing Game 7 vs the Pacers from 1995 after showing Game 7 from 1994. I know the style of play at times made it tough to watch but God damn how can you not love watching the intensity from the players and the crowd during those games.
Regardless of your definition of “great”, every “great” president had a polarizing downside. Was Lincoln a great president? Did he have (and does he still have) many detractors? Did he make huge blunders? Did Ronald Reagan?
Kennedy was one of the most popular presidents ever, and had a way of connecting with people that transcended politics and the decisions that he made. He fucked up Viet Nam (as did Ike before him and Johnson and Nixon after him) and had some unsavory players in his cabinet. But he was incredibly beloved by ghe vast majority of the country. Many older Trump voters LOVED Kennedy at that time. He would have won re-election in a Reaganesque landslide.
I could watch that brand of basketball all day.
the similarities are eerie…it is cool to see how FN’s competitive fire has grown this year,,,particularly on the defensive side of the ball – him and mitch fire up the team and the crowd…
“Did i use the word “unblemished?”
Owen … I wasn’t directly responding to you…I was responding to the Greek Chorus waxing rhapsodical about JFK vs Trump as far as foreign policy.
I understand the hate for our Orange Overlord is strong here, but Kennedy’s foreign policy was an abject failure everywhere and Trump has managed to pump up the military and interestingly hardly use it.
Other than vanquishing the JV team as a functioning major entity (a semi nation), getting the Euros to pay a bit more of the bill for their own defense and lobbing enough cruise missiles at Assad to get him to back off gassing his own people I can’t see much objectionable in his foreign policy.
Where are his fuck-ups that would elicit negative comparisons with JFK’s total ineptitude?
“I usually try to stay away from politics but I guess I struck a nerve bringing up JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis! Blame HBO for showing that movie the other night.”
If you are interested in a great “cold war” movie, watch “Fail Safe” with Henry Fonda (1964). It is a great and quite realistic movie. As an added bonus you get to see Dom De Luise in a brief dramatic role!!!
From Wikipedia, which it is fairly objective in presenting both sides of Kennedy’s foreign policy:
Here’s an interesting article about what might have transpired had Kennedy not been assassinated, and where his foreign policy may have been headed.
The long and short of it (if you don’t have your head stuck up your ass) is that Kennedy had both foreign policy successes and failures, and seemed to be in the process of changing course on the things that were not working and the folks that were manipulating him in those directions. He wasn’t obtuse, narcissistic and vindictive like the the current occupant of the White house. Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis will stain his legacy forever, just like Bay of Pigs stained JFK’s.
Just beat the Computer at Level 6 by revising only 6 moves ! (ELO 1435)
Feels like i’m Magnum Carlsberg !
It would be real therapeutic to smash you at chess right now.
Yo bob, how many Bill O’Reilly “Killing _______” books have you read?
well… trump’s handling of nk and china are prime examples of negotiating against oneself and losing….
Dead Kennedys were an obvious influence on the name of a greek underground band called “Nekroi Bakoyannides” (Dead Bakoyannises)
*Paulos Bakoyannis was a politician and the husband of the daughter(Dora Bakoyanni) of our ex prime minister Kostas Mitsotakis (father of our current prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis)
He was assassinated by the ’17November’ terriorist group during 1989.
Only if you cheat.
Otherwise I’ll lock you down like Frank on high volume scorers!
***Owen … I wasn’t directly responding to you…I was responding to the Greek Chorus waxing rhapsodical about JFK vs Trump as far as foreign policy.***
There you go again, railing against the Greek Choruses in your head.
Please name one person on this thread that waxed rhapsodical about JFK at all. Cause I just re-read the thread, and it’s a Greek Chorus of zero.
Honestly, I have a hard time understanding what you get out of reading this blog. In all your years here’ the only thing you’ve ever agreed with anybody about is how to cook lentils.
The 80s guys, though, played much of their career with effectively no three point shooting, so I think they’d adjust fine.
Here’s something I’ve always wondered about Russell. Let’s say he was born 18 years ago. Would 2020 Bill Russell be a decent outside shooter? I think yes. I think if he had grown up in the modern game, he would have added an outside shot. It’s purely theoretical, of course, but I really think it would be true.
Considering for his career Russell shot 44% from the field and 56% from the FT line I’m not so sure. TBH looking at his stats he seems to be pretty overrated. I know they didn’t keep blocks as stats back then and he was a great rebounder but he seems to be more like Dikembe Mutombo than someone like Ewing/Hakeem/Robinson/Shaq. I mean how is there an actual argument about who was better between Wilt and Russell?? Wilt is a legit legend and is someone I’d love to have seen play modern times.
Oh, sure, based on his stats, it wouldn’t fit, but it was all based on the era. For instance, Michael Jordan didn’t shoot a lot of threes, right? But if Michael Jordan was coming up now, he’d be shooting threes like crazy. Similarly, Russell would have to change his game.
It’s hard to say, but I would say probably not based on his poor FT%.
It’s kind of irrelevant. Russell was Rodman on steroids (a world-class track and field athlete) and a genius at basketball and at leadership. He’d be 20 lbs heavier and would have all that space to operate, That would translate to any era.
I hate when people who were born later than 1970 have such little appreciation for the players in the past. Jerry West knows all about today’s game and it’s players. Ask him about Russell and how he compares to Mutombo. It’s such a bad comparison on a billion levels. He won 5 MVP’s in a league with Chamberlain, Baylor, Oscar, West, and many other sensational players.
Again, the best comparison is a bigger, better passing, as good or better rebounding and defending, better offensive version of Rodman. At the end of the day, basketball is largely a matter of what’s between the ears and what’s in the chest. He would be a superstar in today’s game for sure.
I mean how is there an actual argument about who was better between Wilt and Russell??
Count the rings.
Wilt lost a lot. I don’t know why but with the numbers he put up it’s hard to understand why he didn’t win more. With his loss to the Knicks being maybe the quintessential example. How the heck did the Knicks without Willis REed pull that off?
People forget that back in the day, if a big handled the ball or took a jumper from the time he was a little kid to the NBA, he’s be benched. Very few players over 6-7 shot long jumpers or handled the ball. The first that I recall doing that was Jerry Lucas. Willis Reed would bring it out to about 18 feet but that’s it.
It wasn’t until the 3-pt line came into vogue in 1980 that little kids of all sizes began heaving 3 -pointers from the time they picked up the ball. No one knows whether the old-time guys would have been good ball-handlers or shooters if they grew up today practicing Michael Jordan moves and shooting 3’s. It wasn’t until Connie Hawkins that any kind of flashy dunking was even allowed (a guard coming down the lane and dunking on a big man would fear for his life. The geniuses of the game like Wilt, Russell, West, Baylor, Oscar, etc. would have figured it out today, especially advanced coaching and training and medicine and equipment and 36 mpg and load management.
Did you know that Wilt sat out nearly that entire season with a ruptured patellar tendon? How many players today come back from that injury in the same season?
Comparing players from different eras with different rules, skillsets, nutrition, way of transportation, working out and even shoes or basket balls is like comparing apples to oranges.
Imo You mainly have to take into consideration the impact of each player in the game and the level of competition and not just their stas or the trophies.
Also, it was really Wilt, West, the carcass of Baylor and a bunch of role players. The Knicks were a much more cohesive team.
Wilt should have won more, but he also was not on great teams. The two championships he won were on teams with several all-star players.
Russell was the quintessential “he makes the guys around him better” player. Read up about him. See what guys like Cousy, Havlicek, Sam Jones, Heinson, Sanders, etc. thought of him.
***I hate when people who were born later than 1970 have such little appreciation for the players in the past…. At the end of the day, basketball is largely a matter of what’s between the ears and what’s in the chest. He would be a superstar in today’s game for sure.***
Like with JFK, I’m too young to appreciate just how bad Bill Russell was compared to the great players of today. Or something like that.
This from a guy who just got his b-ballin’ ass kicked by some little girls…
Did you know that Wilt sat out nearly that entire season with a ruptured patellar tendon? How many players today come back from that injury in the same season?
Did not know that! Surprisingly doesn’t feature in many Knicks-centric accounts of the event.
Hey young guys, next time you go out there for your weekend full-court run, do it in a pair of Chuck Taylor’s and see how you feel afterwards. Then think about Wilt playing every minute in all 5 games of a back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back, including 2 overtime games. (January 17-21 1962)
(btw he averaged well over 50 points and well over 20 rebounds in those 5 games and shot 77FTs)
Wilt’s accomplishments in the bed room/hotel rooms was far more impressive. Or so he said.
Trump’s ridiculous handling of North Korea alone gets him a foreign policy “F.”
When I think of what a complete joke that whole episode is I hear “Yakety Sax” in my head. That should be the official USA/North Korea diplomacy theme song until somebody competent takes office again.
You’re kinda making my point for me Z-Man. Look at how efficient Wilt and the other bigs during the 60’s were compared to Russell. I know FG% were much lower back then, during the late 50’s even with his bad FG%’s Russell was in the Top 5 in that category but once the 1960’s came around and you started having much better players in the entire decade he finished in the Top 20 once and even that season he was 14th in FG%. Wilt lead the league 7 times and finished 2nd twice!! Not to mention he did so leading the league in FGA almost every year so for the time he was basically leading the league in USAGE and FG%. His problem was FT shooting but as bad as he was he was only a few % points worse than Russell.
I can only imagine the MVP debates on Twitter back in the 1960’s cause there is no way Russell deserved any of his MVP awards that decade. Like I said I’m not shitting on the older players compared to today’s players. Wilt and Oscar absolutely dominated that decade and statistically it shows not only by the raw numbers but by their FG%’s as well. Would’ve loved to have seen those 2 play. I’m sorry but Russell’s numbers don’t really add up and the fact you compared him to Rodman basically backs up my point. Rodman was a great player, a HOFer. But he wasn’t Barkley or Karl Malone.
Man I’ve started debates on JFK and Bill Russell which is weird cause I wasn’t even born until 1980 lol.
“Trump’s ridiculous handling of North Korea alone gets him a foreign policy “F.”
Other than recovering some American remains, exactly what negative of consequence has happened vis a vis N Korea???? Was N Korea handled better by Clinton, Bush or Obama…. pray tell! Exhibit “A” of the Greek Chorus
And your equal grading of Trump’s handling of N. Korea … how does that compare with the Bay of Pigs, The rise of the Berlin Wall, the complete bollixing of the Vienna Summit, et al MR. Fair Grader???????????????????????????
Or to Obama’s slick handling of the Arab Spring and the rise of ISIS pray tell…………….
Russell’s biggest attribute, though, was his brain, and I think that brain would have told him that in the modern game, he’d need an outside shot to be the same sort of dominant player he was in his day. I agree that he would excel no matter what, a Hall of Fame talent like Rodman, easily, but for him to be the same sort of difference-maker he was in his day, I think he’d need the shot and I bet if he grew up knowing that, he’d have made the adjustment to at least be a Draymond Green-esque shooter. He’d basically be like Draymond Green only to the Nth degree.
” I’m sorry but Russell’s numbers don’t really add up and the fact you compared him to Rodman basically backs up my point. Rodman was a great player, a HOFer. But he wasn’t Barkley or Karl Malone.”
If you never saw Bill Russell play imagine Mitch Robinson’s lithe athleticism with Derek Jeter’s sports IQ and Michael Jordan’s drive for excellence. You could not shoot the ball within 8 feet of the basket with him on the floor.
Judging by the numbers Russell couldn’t shoot from within 8 feet of the basket either. I kid, I kid. Sort of 🙂
I’m back in ‘rape mode’ on level 6.
I’m getting serious beating.
Still can’t believe how the fuck did i won one game!
Some here have argued that Rodman is vastly underrated in terms of his impact on winning. Rodman had very few blocked shots (0.7 per 36 for his career) and steals (0.8 per 36 for his career) for a 2-time DPOY. He also averaged very few assists (2.0 per 36). And he had zero leadership ability. Russell was a much more complete player than Rodman and an unparalleled leader.
Barkley and Malone had better offensive stats for sure. But the questions are : 1) how would Barkley and Malone have fared if guarded by Russell (my guess is that they would have had their worst games, especially in the playoffs, forcing others to pick up the slack; that’s what he did with Wilt) and 2) How would the Sixers/Suns/Rockets have done with Russell instead of Barkley and how would the Jazz have done with Russell instead of Malone? We’ll never have answers to these questions, but I think Russell makes those teams better by sheer genius, leadership ability, and an ability to cause the best player on the other team to have his worst games.
I’m never sure what to make of the old timers shooting percentages vs modern players. Some of it seems to me like arguing dead ball players had no power because they were rarely cracking double digit HRs. The Russell era players were probably not playing with the same caliber basketballs, nor lighting or floor conditions, some of those arenas were probably semi smoke filled.
For people who saw them both play, who was better Bill Russell or D’Andre Jordan?
More generally, he would have done whatever he needed to for his team to win.
Maybe he wouldn’t be in the GOAT discussion if he played today, but certainly would be a no-brainer HOF-level player.
I dunno, who’s better, Jerry West or Klay Thompson?
And look, Mitch just broke Wilt’s record, he must already be better than him!
Right Nick but then why did Wilt and Oscar shoot FG%’s comparable to today’s game and Russell didn’t?? That’s kinda my point, Russell is considered a legend and the best player of his era yet other great players during that time, like Wilt and Oscar, put up much more efficient numbers while taking more shots. I mean I get it, Russell has the rings argument and is considered a great defensive player and rebounder (even though Wilt rebounded better too) but it’s still interesting to me.
Hey George Mikan was considered the original best player in NBA history and he shot 40% from the floor for his career! At least he was a 78% FT shooter.
It’s all about
1 Skill set of each era
2 Endurance and
3 Will to Excel
Damn I’m really piling on Russell now but since I’m bored I started looking at all his Celtics teams and not only did he never lead his team in scoring but he was usually 3rd and at times 4th on his team in scoring. I mean shit I get it pointz isn’t everything but not scoring and not being efficient is a helluva combo for someone in the GOAT discussion!!
Also damn there were only 8 total teams in the NBA in most of Russell’s career. Sometimes I forget how short a history the NBA has considering MLB’s history. I need to log off basketballreference.com for awhile….
Fair point BBA. I guess Russell’s equivalent of OPS+ would pale in comparison to Wilt’s or Oscar’s. It has to come down to defense and intangibles.
In another 40 years, BBA III will be arguing about whether Scottie Pippen”s game would translate to the 2060’s. Career TS% .536, Career 3pt% .326.
Hey Pippen was one of the best defensive players I’ve ever seen but his offense was always questionable. C’mon now we all watched those 90’s Bulls-Knicks playoff series and don’t tell me you didn’t feel better when Pippen had the ball and not MJ!! Hell Phil drew up the play for Kukoc in 1994 and not Pippen!! I never worried too much about Pippen scoring, he was a pain in the ass defensively and handling the ball. He would grab a rebound and dribble all the way himself and often found someone on the break to finish. Excellent defender and ball handler but definitely not a great scorer. A definite HOFer though and I sure wished we had him instead of Chicago during all those playoff battles.
For Me Pippen is the best SF I’ve ever seen after only Larry the Legend. Fuck Lebron!
” I mean shit I get it pointz isn’t everything but not scoring and not being efficient is a helluva combo for someone in the GOAT discussion!!”
You can wreck a game from the defensive side of the ball just as easily as from the offensive side….. just fewer people can do it.
He led the league in defensive win shares 11 of his 13 NBA seasons.
He averaged 22.5 rebounds for his entire career.
He blocked a bazillion shots and that stat was never kept…. Imagine how many extra possessions he gave his team every night.
He virtually never blocked a ball out of bounds… mostly deflected them towards KC, Sam and Cousy which ignited a plethora of EZ buckets the other way.
The guys WS/48 for his entire career = .193 and they never gave him credit for a single blocked shot.
He had 38 rebounds in a game 23 times….. 7 times in playoff games!
“Comparing players from different eras with different rules, skillsets, nutrition, way of transportation, working out and even shoes or basket balls is like comparing apples to oranges.
Imo You mainly have to take into consideration the impact of each player in the game and the level of competition and not just their stas or the trophies.”
As far as I can tell, evolution hasn’t changed much about human beings in the last 50-60 years. If it has, it seems to have made them mentally and psychologically weaker. The positive differences in athletics are related to the benefits each generation has in learning the from prior one, scientific and training advances, and larger population to draw the best athletes from,
The Russell of his era would still be a very good player in this era because he’d still be a lock down defender, great rebounder, team player, great leader etc.. but f he was born 20 years ago instead, he have way more skills now and be in better condition.
Obviously rule changes also matter to the stats.
>Wilt lost a lot. I don’t know why but with the numbers he put up it’s hard to understand why he didn’t win more. With his loss to the Knicks being maybe the quintessential example. How the heck did the Knicks without Willis REed pull that off?<
It's way easier for a great defense to slow down a single dominant player than it is to slow down a TEAM of players willing to play together to exploit whatever advantageous matchups or schemes they have that night. Players moving around and moving the ball a lot creates better shots and is harder to defend.
If you guys want to hold on to your delusions about the son of a [rhymes with minimal] who was so dumb that he spent a decent portion of his presidency high on meth bc he bought into Max Jacobson’s quackery, I’m not going to stand in your way. I’ve found in life there is no point arguing with creationists or anyone that thinks one of these two parties is actually good.
Farfa? Please say hi here.
>>> it’s an enormous oversimplification to pretend JFK was somehow identical because he too had flaws<<<
I wouldn't say "identical" (and I granted Trump was a 10 to Kennedy's 9). I would say they're cut from the same cloth, though.
Rather than compare the two directly, I was more interested in discussing the prisms through which we view them, and how mutually tainted they both are.
I was triggered by the knowledge of a movie that portrays the Kennedy administration as performing at a high (or even competent) level during the Cuban missile crisis. That's some non-historical bullshit.
Obviously neither you nor Owen determine your opinions on kennedy based on movies, but I'm sure there are some that do. Just like there are some who get all their beliefs from Fox. (I never saw Fox as a reasonable counter to real news institutions, but it is a fair counter to propaganda delivery arms like movies and the new breed of comedian that explains the news. And by "fair counter", I mean they both hold an equal position in the gutter.)
Anyway… Most of the differences you and Owen ascribed to the two strike me as being attributable to differences of the era. Back then you had to serve your country to qualify for president. If Joe Kennedy wanted to turn an unqualified son of his into a president today, he most definitely wouldn't have sent him to Iraq.
There's a good chance JFK would have had to satisfy his narcissism and constant need for approval the same way Trump did: as a TV star. He would certainly hold rallies. Oh, God, would that guy love to hold rallies.
It's worth pointing out that to 40% of the country right now *is* Camelot. That gets to the point about perspective and filters I was really trying to make. When you remove them, the similarities I see become more apparent. And it's worth thinking about how you might view JFK through the same prism you view Trump. Just imagine stories of a doctor visiting the white house 60 something times to get our current president high. Or a bay of pigs fiasco with North Korea and China instead of Cuba and Russia. If those things happened today, you would not defend this man at all.
“Comparing players from different eras with different rules, skillsets, nutrition, way of transportation,”
A funny story…. When I was going to the University of Utah in 72 or 73 I got on a Delta flight from NYC to Salt Lake one day and as we boarded the plane there was a sign “Welcome to the Utah Stars!”
Yes… they flew commercial back then and not only commercial but coach and they were in the very back of the plane. It was funny as hell seeing a scrunched up balding Zelmo Beatty sitting in coach seat in the aisle across from me . He was a very nice and chatty guy by the way.
Fun times… ABA games were excellent back in the day and a college student could afford nice seats in the lower bowl of the Salt Palace any time you wanted to see a game. The Salt Lake Golden Eagles were the Oakland Seals NHL top affiliate so you could see good cheap hockey anytime , too.
Wilt was every bit the athlete that Russell was. He also did track and field, was a great volleyball player, and some YouTube Harlem Globetrotter videos show the capacity to have a decent handle. Besides the lack of great teammates, a theory for Wilt’s lack of winning relative to Russell was that he did not assert himself against physically inferior opponents. IIRC correctly, he did not want to be viewed as a bully because of his massive physical superiority to his opponents( I once saw him pick up and throw Willis Reed out of a fight as if Reed was a ragdoll).When Reed went down in the ’69 series, Wilt should have dominated. Initially he did destroying Nate Bowman and Bill Hosket. The Knicks then guarded Wilt with DeBusshere and Stallworth, also double teaming him. Wilt still should have dominated, but he seemed to shrink from that game. Shaq would have demanded the ball in the situation. Some of the fault lies with LA’s coach ( Joe Mullaney, who replaced Butch Van Breda Kolff), but Wilt did not assert himself except in game 6, which the Lakers won handily.
>Players moving around and moving the ball a lot creates better shots and is harder to defend.<
By the way, this is the argument for adding high IQ team oriented players (instead of all shot creators) and having multiple play makers on the floor at the same time instead of the current trend of a ball dominant scoring PG playing a lot of P&R.
In the modern game if you have a guard (cough cough Frank) or scheme that can take that dominant PG out of the game or at least slow him down, you can really damage their offense.
If you are running an offense like the triangle or with triangle qualities like the Warriors and Spurs with a lot of player and ball movement, several play makers etc.. it becomes almost unstoppable. But you need multiple high IQ play makers and a PG that's willing to be less of a quarterback putting up big numbers and more of team oriented thinker.
Same goes for the modern development of Point Forwards or even Point Centers (Jokic). It works great until you play a team that can slow that guy down, he gets hurts, he gets in foul trouble etc.. and the team falls apart because it so hard to have a second player like that off the bench to take over the play making role from a non traditional position.
Rodman would not be my first choice if I were drafting an all-timer starting five to beat any other modern-era team, but he’d certainly be in the lineup. He is complementary with just about anyone. Put him next to Shaq and watch him collect 20 boards a night while they try to double the big fella. Put him next to a chucker like Iverson to clean up all of the ill-advised shots. Put him next to Jordan and Pippen to win 72.
Rodman is simply going to amplify the value of any elite scorer by giving them more chances. That’s why the ’96 Bulls were so goddamn dangerous.
Are those bagels Jowles?
Hubert – My father had some brief contacts with Kennedy as a student and knew a lot of people that were part of his circle. The things I have always heard about Kennedy as a person from people who knew him are as far removed from Trump as you could possibly be. Which makes sense because Trump is one of a kind.
People who knew Kennedy say he was charming, elegant, and genuinely interested in other people, – and not just if they were beautiful and 19. He was not send only. He was far from a textbook narcissist like Trump.
He was also elite. Also, not a good thing but Donald Trump has never been elite. He’s never been taken seriously in New York, which explains a lot.
And as I mentioned, failing by trying to be too smart as Kennedy did is as diametrically opposed to Trumpstyle as you can be.
If the comparison is that they were both bad presidents with cult-like followings, fine. Even there though, it s a hard comparison to make. Kennedy was a lot of things but he wasn’t a racist demagogue.
We need a new thread….
So are high IQ team oriented players rare and hard to find or are they more common but coaches often put in a system revolving around one playmaker?
Farfa, per favore facci sapere che stai bene.
What do those of you follow draft prospects think of this guy:
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/28997201/french-guard-theo-maledon-files-enter-nba-draft
***What do those of you follow draft prospects think of this guy***
I haven’t seen him play, but French guards tend to fit our 5-6 year development plan.
All of that said, Rodman did not drive the bus, he just went along for the ride.
There is no team ever assembled on which Russell would not be the alpha dog. Russell would probably tolerate Michael but if anything Michael did was inconsistent with winning a championship, Russell would either put him in his place or get his ass kicked trying. Nobody in NBA history had the ability to lead that he had, that’s just a fact. Russell never gave two shits about individual accomplishment, and I pity the fool on his team who put himself and his touches or stats above putting the team in the best position to win on every single possession. Russell knew his players and tendencies, and his opponents players and tendencies inside and out (made harder by poor film quality but easier by familiarity…teams played each other far more frequently, there were fewer teams to study, and much less player movement.) There have been other guys like this…Magic, Bird, Willis, I guess Michael, etc…but Russell was in a class by himself.
One very underrated leader (who i despised!) was Bill Laimbeer, at least that’s the way I felt after watching the 30 for 30 Bad Boys documentary.
Frank 2.0…paltry stats, great size.
Just a small point, not sure that Shaq would need to be doubled more than anyone else in a game solely composed of all-time great players…
That was one of the great parts of old-time basketball…the intriguing mano-a-mano matchups. The closest I’ve seen recently (in much smaller doses) is LeBron vs. Kawhi…maybe Steph vs. Kyrie…
i think this quite startlingly bagelee article deserves a new thread:
my god, just imagine the ramifications of it all…
Anyone seen Ashton Hagans play much at KY?
SEC DPOY last year and Naismith DPOY finalist this year led the SEC in assists and ast% by a bunch this season.
81% ft shooter who apparently isn’t a good shooter. It seems he played well against Mr. Edwards of Georgia twice.
Efficiency clearly not his strong suit but I like a guy who can D up….
Others of Knicks lore:
Ewing vs. Hakeem 🙁
Starks vs. MJ 🙁
Starks vs. Reggie :-\
X-man vs. Pippen 🙂
Van Gundy vs. Zo 😀
OMFG I thought I was the only one with a fetish for X-Man terrorizing Pippen. Okay fetish may be an awkward choice of words. But man I was pissed when they let X-Man go while they flirted with Harvey Grant.
Nah man, that was da bomb! He also terrorized the Pistons in the first round…I was at the deciding game. Ewing, Oak, X-Man, and Mase off the bench…that was a mfer of a front line.