NBA Thread Presented by KIA
 

If you don't like basketball stay the fuck away from here i don't want to hear shit about "thugs" run the league (they really never did, the Jailblazer teams of the late 90s have exactly 0 championships ditto for iverson but a little thug never hurt nobody: CAP'N JACK, BABY) or how the college game is "better" since it's got the zone or whatever SPPUNK I AM TALKING DIRECTLY TO YOU

anyway i have collected a children's treasury of underappreciated, under the radar big white people that i consider to be the heirs of Matt Bonner's throne of the under appreciated, three hitting, big white stiff.

And first and foremost of them is Jorts.



boy it would be something if jorts stuck with miami. get a fistful of rings to punch calapari in the face with.

Jonas Jerebko.

This guy here could be something weird and wonderful. One of those true tweeners, too slow to be a wing, too small to be a big...BUT he's got steals (!), can shoot pretty fuckin well, and rebounds like a champ. Again these guys are both probably better than bonner who is merely good at shooting a 3point 45% of the time for 10 years (which is remarkable still) and gets by everywhere else by playing as hard as he possibly can imagine but then again he did play for billy donovan's florida teams and was recruited there from new fucking hampshite so who knows maybe bonner's a lot better than i gave him credit for but his peak is well past (he's 33) and really the only ever notable thing about him even from the start was his all around shooting. Florida's leading scorer, i think still.

also the spurs are the best team in american sports, tim duncan is the best center in the history of basketball and gregg popovich is the only person in sports that should be called a genius.

That fine that Stern doled out for the Spurs was BS. Punished for strategy.

New Orleans Pelicans

Yeah, heard about this on the radio this morning. I was like :erm:

i fucking love it, absolutely fucking love it

LOOK AT THA PELICAN FLY

THE PELICANS AND THE UNIBROW

it's stuff like this that makes me grow ever fonder of the spurs

they are dominant, they are ever present, they are consistently successful. they won 50 games 10 years in a row, and they only had 60 to do it in last year. just stupid how good they are. but everyone hates them, there's no bandwagon, i have to read about how fucking boring they are by people who supposedly watch basketball but they still think this is the mid aughties when shaq ruled the universe and basketball frankly sucked. but it never changes, they're probably the least popular dominant team in the history of pro sports and for someone who loves underdogs it's like having your cake and eating it too.

if you don't get any joy out of watching the spurs dismantle people with punishing defense and lights out three point shooting then you're not really a true hoop fan. they bored me back in the day, these last few years have been a revelation. the offense opened up, they added way more speed and athletic talent all over the place. how is tony parker not exciting? how is Manu, made out of elbows, with the improbably beautiful ugly game not exciting? STEPHEN. FUCKIN. JACKSON. Have you seen Kawhi Leonard rock that fuckin rim? SPURS BABY.

also i'd like to point out how successful the spurs are in making players better. phil jackson never really made anyone better, he had a gift for getting disparate personalities to function as a cohesive whole.

but all the shit they have, they have more picks then they know what to do with. Luis Scola, Leandro Barbosa, Goran Dragic, all drafted by san antonio. incredible foreign scouting before anyone even really considered how important it was. that's how SPURS ended up with dudes like manu and tony way way late in the draft, and the other thing is that the staff really improves players. Look at Kawhi Leonard's corner threes, as if he was tutored by Bowen himself, Bowen if you recall couldn't make a shot anywhere on the court even at the stripe was trained to hit the corner three by pop & the coaching staff. Danny Green went from unheralded bench warmer to full time starter? why? because they teach these guys how to play man to man and i guess their methodology is just better than everyone else's. I mean if you think about it, almost every single player you get in the draft has no goddamn idea how to play man-to-man defense anymore it's all zone zone zone zone zone zone because the talent is diluted, so basically every single prospect (except maybe overseas, that weird lane doesn't lead me to believe that they allow zone that much but i have no idea) that comes out of american high school and college basketball has been trained for 8 years to play in a zone system and now they're expected to man up on kobe? shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii t.

george hill is currently probably playing a career year so far in indiana, and this is a guy that came out of IUPUI in the bottom half of the draft and came up through the spurs. that shit isn't accidental. just look at nba drafts, they're almost always consistently hilarious because of how many boners and flameouts there are, especially in the bottom half of the draft but for some reason how come the spurs always get these guys and make them better ? genius that's why. being a spur is like going to basketball academy.

Hate Bowen

The nets I used to root for could have drafted Kobe but his agent lied that h wouldn't play for them

I now like the raptors which is another model franchise

so sean why would you jump the nets boat just when they actually look like a legitimate team and not some kind of mickey mouse expansion horseshit

he is only for us to love

how abotu layups guys? they are pretty good.

they jumped out of new jersey
the devils are my only home team now
new jersey sucks, it's nice to have teams to cheer for

shaq isn't as funny as he thinks he is so he bombs on inside the nba

the funniest thing he did was say "i don't give a shit" after he said the f word on a broadcast and the guy said "shaq we're live"

i dont give a shit

Celtics played zone at times in the ECF last year and it was fairly successful.

shq is p. funny sean what is ur beef with him #superman #idontgiveashit

but seriously that guy was awesome when he was young and broke backboards at will. good feet for a big man.

why do duncan and garnett hate being called centers so much
i mean i'd put them behind such as kareem and maybe russell i guess

i do like them being power fowards just in that we have at least two guys to rank ahead of malone in that discussion. none of these guys would touch big george mikan in a 1 on 1 though
if you ask me

I think it's out of respect for Bill Russell, Chamberlain etc.

i know ur takin the piss but my boy tony does the best layups

yeah but you got to remember, college programs base their entire defense around zones because the overall talent is lower and there's no 3 second violations so you can camp, say Andre Drummond out directly under the basket and he just stays there. NBA players are faster and more disciplined and can generally pick that shit apart unless you throw it out there like a special pitch like teams who use it effectively do.

It was illegal in the NBA up until the late 90s or 2000s or something i don't remember why they allowed it, it's really employed so rarely it barely matters. I think they said it would kill isolation but i think just regular improvements in strategy and the death of shaq made isolation less relied upon although you wouldn't be able to tell watching del negro's clips

i can't look at tony parker without thinking of catherine wheel

is it really tim and kg that personally don't like it ? i read that great SI piece on Tim last year and there's an excerpt where a reporter asks who are you starting at center? and pop cranks back "The same guy we've had there for 10 plus years."

i also liked finding out tim duncan and kevin garnett are rivals and tim practically detests him. i'm sure it's because of KG's theatricality (which i personally find amusing)

i mean does that face say "this fuckin idiot" or what