https://twitter.com/johnschuhmann/status/1603231999715598336?s=46&t=Iqr8b5kwizQtqO3hfGjTeA

It would be great to have an MVP caliber player in my adult life. Not sure Ewing was really in that category even but he was close enough.

The Knicks made a big push to re-sign him. He was irked at them for cutting him, so he took the Wizards’ slightly larger offer. I’m sure he knew he wasn’t going to play much either place, he was just irked that he turned down more money from another team before last season (I think the Spurs) for a straight two-year deal to take a non-guaranteed 1+1 from the Knicks and then they cut him and wanted him to come back with a pay-cut. It happens fairly frequently, where guys will make decisions out of pride.

Gibson barely plays for the Wizards, either. He was only playing tonight because of injuries.

at this stage all Taj most likely still wants to do is get out on the court and play, if he was here with us, that wouldn’t happen…

drose probably wishes he was on the wiz, or any other team where he could get time out on the court…

It’s so interesting how players sometimes put themselves into worse positions just sort of out of pride or whatever. Taj left the Knicks for what amounted to $300,000. You would think he’d have preferred to be here, but he was irked that they cut him and expected him to resign for the vet minimum, so he took $300,000 more than the vet minimum with Washington.

But living in Miami during those years there is probably no organization I hate more in professional sports than the Miami Heat.

Just to clarify, by “I don’t get the Bulls hate vibe anymore” I meant that I personally am not afflicted by it, not that I don’t understand it.

Oh, totally, I just mean that I think for people who saw those games when they were younger, it is harder to differentiate Jordan from the Bulls, ya know? If I didn’t grow up with Jordan always on the Bulls, it would surely hit me differently, like it does you. Like all NFL fans when the Patriots got good, it was hard to even give a shit for many years, because we had all spent decades of no one giving a shit about the Patriots (even when they made it to the Super Bowl twice!). Eventually the novelty of the Patriots suddenly being good was over. 😉

And I’m sure the Bulls were like that for you. Just another team before they got Jordan, while for me, they were always the Jordan Bulls.

Just to clarify, by “I don’t get the Bulls hate vibe anymore” I meant that I personally am not afflicted by it, not that I don’t understand it.

Oh, believe me, I was at a lot of those Jordan games and had my guts eviscerated a billion times, including the double-nickel game. But for me it was more about Jordan than the Bulls per se.

I hated the Heat, Pacers and Pistons with a passion as well.

But there is no team I actively root against in ANY sport more than the Celts, no matter what year or who they play or how good they are.

Which makes this year vary unsettling to me. We all know what a championship-level team looks like, and they have that look right now. The only hope is that the Bucks are healthy and knock them out in the ECFs, but even that is not a given.

And none of the WC teams looks particularly scary. I think whoever gets out of the EC wins, barring injury of course.