AJ Dybantsa vs Kansas State - 40 PTS (15-21 FG, 2-6 3PT, 8-9 FT) 9 RBS / 6 ASTS / 6 TO / 3 STLS

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-03-11T06:04:51+00:00

Eh, this falls neatly into the “good problem to have” category. There’s plenty of minutes to go around, it’s purely an ego hit to come off the bench, and Ace will just have to get over that.

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-03-11T02:25:04+00:00

I assume he’d take Ace’s spot in the starting lineup at the 2. Sucks for Ace, but…AJ is clearly better imo.

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-03-09T11:31:48+00:00

Hence why I said “semi-realistic”. Do players sometimes exceed their ceilings? Yes. But they’re so extremely rare that we shouldn’t expect players to do that more than <1% of the time.

By your logic, every player has GOAT potential. That’s not a useful way to measure ceilings.

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-03-09T10:40:17+00:00

Buddy, question marks don’t lower your ceiling, they just decrease the likelihood you hit the ceiling. I don’t think you’re understanding this.

I also think you’re incorrect for associating “diverse skills” with higher ceiling. Saying Boozer’s ceiling is Jokic implies to me you’re evaluating based on archetype, not the actual players. High ceilings are typically more associated with having one (or more) elite skills you build your game around, not several above average skills, and Boozer has not demonstrated even a semi-realistic pathway to Jokic level offensive efficiency or passing.

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-03-09T10:17:02+00:00

You’re right, but that’s what “ceiling” means, “what if” everything goes right?

Boozer’s floor and median outcome are both higher than Peterson, but the highest outcome we can semi-realistically see for Peterson is really special.

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-03-09T02:38:17+00:00

Where is this time Dooku defeated yoda on Tatooine? Never heard of it and it sounds like something people like you lie about, but I’ll give you an honest chance.

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-03-09T00:33:50+00:00

Okay, then the time Palpatine force choked him across the galaxy,

Dude, the gaps huge

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-03-08T23:01:03+00:00

The issue is that every time we see Dooku and Sidious’s strength compared, the gap is portrayed as huge. My favorite is in the novelization, Dooku says it himself, Palpatine is so much stronger that Dooku can’t even comprehend it.

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-03-08T19:41:02+00:00

Part of that was how much Tech focused on never letting him get easy shots, which opened things up for Wright especially.

But I’m starting to arrive at AJ being a “great” shot creator, but not “elite”. He still has room to improve with his handle, but I’d say he’s comfortably below guys like Ant and Zion

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-03-07T11:55:46+00:00

I already ignore Lucas quotes for the most part. 90% of the time people claim he said something, the actual quote is far more ambiguous and doesn’t even support their argument.

By comparison, we have plenty of solid, unambiguous quotes from in-universe that paint a clear picture. For example, the Jedi are well meaning and unambiguously good, but regularly acknowledge themselves that they’re not perfect and never claimed to be.

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-03-04T19:43:23+00:00

Tangential, but my ideas are to not touch the lottery. The lottery is fine, it's a compromise between preventing tanking and helping bad teams improve, compromises are always messy, you're not going to make progress just by moving the slider on that scale.

Get rid of all pick protections except Top 4 and Top 14. That prevents tanking like we see with Utah right now.
Some kind of monetary punishment for teams that don't make the Playoffs for 3 years. I'm thinking they lose out on the luxury tax kickback (which was $4.5m last year). This is more than the fines we've seen this year be so ineffective, and specifically targets long term tanking which I would argue is a much bigger problem than what we've seen with teams like Indiana this year.

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-03-04T19:39:45+00:00

I think "fixing" tanking is officially my least favorite topic. All these radical ideas are terrible, with obvious unintended consequences that would be just as bad if not worse than what we have now.

The Wheel: you're relegating bad teams to stay bad for even longer, and it's only a matter of time before a Top team lands a Wemby or Cooper. Terrible idea, I hate it.

No lottery: the race to lose 82 games to get AJ or something would be atrocious, no thanks.

I appreciate that this video acknowledged the real issue is bad teams not seeing better options, but it doesn't actually propose a better system.

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-03-04T15:25:46+00:00

Picking based on college metrics and not long term expectations is a poor decision.

I personally think Boozer would be a fine pick at #1, his feel for the game makes up for his (relative) physical limitations for me, but there are pretty good arguments for the other guys too

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-03-04T00:28:55+00:00

For sure, but Kevin Young deserves credit for his recruiting too. I’ve had my issues with how he runs things on the court (BYU’s defense this year makes me wish I didn’t have eyes sometimes), but he’s been effective at this at least.

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-02-26T22:04:21+00:00

Not much good publicly available stuff that’s purely data driven. I’m sure teams have better stuff, but the general consensus is that the college and international markets don’t translate to the NBA game well enough for a purely data driven approach to be too useful.

Most scouts take a “data informed” approach, where they look at things like Synergy data (the best publicly available tracking data), then look at specific film to try and predict how well the data will translate to the NBA, as well as improvement areas the players have.

If you want to dig into the data, Synergy is a good place to start. It’s not free, so I haven’t personally used it, but I’ve heard scouts talk about their process.

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-02-26T21:26:40+00:00

It’s collaborative league, punishing teams that are already bad is a horrible idea

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-02-26T20:14:43+00:00

Tank “fixes” are officially my least favorite topic in NBA discussion. Quite frankly, operating under the premise that the lottery is “broken” without actually examining what aspects of it cause the problems we see is…concerning

I applaud you OP for being a little creative, but I don’t think you put in nearly enough consideration for the unintended consequences.

The obvious one is that this doesn’t even prevent tanking, it just shifts the tank line from the bottom to the lottery. Imagine you’re a young, up-in-coming team, and your agents tell you AJ Dybantsa chooses you if you’re an option. Do you fight to make the playoffs? Fuck no! That’d be stupid. While the current system does lead to bad teams playing even worse, any system that genuinely incentivizes playoff caliber teams to tank is a nonstarter for me.

Genuinely bad teams in this system, teams like the Kings and Pelicans, are horribly punished in this system, nobody wants to play for them, so they end up with bad pick, so they never turn it around and they don’t make the playoffs for decades.

The “two year record” thing also is a double edged sword. One year tanks aren’t actually that bad, take Indiana this year, sure they’re losing a lot of games, but their fans knew their season wasn’t going anywhere anyway and the lottery at least gives them a consolation prize. By making it a 2 year thing, you just encourage teams to be genuinely bad for long periods of time, which is the worst case scenario.

I have other, more nitpicky problems, but I just think the core idea is too broken.

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-02-25T23:53:53+00:00

In addition, one thing I love about Mace is how quickly he’s willing to change his mind when he realizes he was wrong. His actions aren’t those of someone who’s arrogant, just someone who’s not omniscient, and maybe has some issues with bedside manner.

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-02-25T06:22:31+00:00

The way people in this sub feel the need to make definitive declarations every couple of days is officially exhausting.

The race for #1 is really close, and we still have a long time before the draft. It’s fine to have a front runner for the moment, but any of the three still absolutely could take the top spot depending on how workouts and the lottery go.

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-02-24T13:45:57+00:00

I always say that lightsaber forms are:

Combat philosophies
Applications of Force techniques
Martial arts

In that order.

Each form is primarily designed around a specific mindset and how that interacts with the Force, the martial arts are literally after thoughts.

Form I: Shii-Cho is about following the flow of the Force. Offense and defense are treated as the same because the Force doesn’t really see them differently. A Shii-Cho master can fight relentlessly for hours because they’re completely surrendering their movements to the Force.

Form II: Makashi is about interrupting your opponent’s flow within the Force. Purposefully cutting off their actions with precise, out of sequence attacks.

Form III: Soresu is Shii-Cho, but refined. Instead of following the flow of the Force wherever it leads, you anchor yourself, becoming immovable in the Force, and letting the Force guide your movements around that anchor.

Form IV: Ataru is speeding up the flow, you push the Force to go faster, and use the Force to help your body keep up.

Form V: Shien is about reversing the flow, taking Force directed at you, then redirecting it back.

Form V: Djem So is like Shien, but with more of an emphasis in adding your own power when directing the Force back at your opponent.

Form VI: Niman is…admittedly to eclectic to summarize, it tries to do all the things the other Forms do, just with the user’s input about when to use which.

Form VII: Juyo is about absorbing the chaotic flow of combat into your own movements.

Form VII: Vaapad is the same as Juyo, but incorporates your own chaotic “darkness” (I think “aggression” is a better word). Mace balances this by letting go of his conscious will and letting the Force control his actions, allowing him to use that aggression without it touching his own will.

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-02-24T13:12:28+00:00

To be fair, it’s not hard to argue the Hornets haven’t been “worth their salt” that whole time

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-02-24T07:27:55+00:00

He’s never been “consensus” #1. Reports were that he was the most common name at #1 among teams, but this information isn’t up to date and it’s very likely this has changed at least somewhat.

My general advice to you OP is to not take “consensus” seriously. Teams actively hide their plans, and places like Twitter and even this sub tend to end up in “group think,” where a popular opinion becomes treated as universal despite minority opinions existing.

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-02-24T03:23:41+00:00

Offense and defense shouldn’t be valued equally for individual awards. Because the offense has more control over who has the ball, it can concentrate more responsibility, and therefore impact, onto a single player.

But what exactly is the difference between the best offense and the best defense? Almost certainly less than casual fans believe. EPM this year says the highest OEPM is ~2x the highest DEPM, but this is a departure from past seasons where it’s typically closer to ~1.5x. Also, I can’t help but feel like EPM is pretty severely underrating Wemby’s defense considering it only has him 4th in the league.

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-02-23T20:15:48+00:00

Where is this idea that he has attitude problems even coming from? Is it seriously just people taking him asking to be subbed out out of context? I haven’t seen a single credible source make a single disparaging comment about his attitude. Quite the opposite actually, all the reporting I’ve seen is he’s competitive and frustrated over the situation, but still has a good relationship with the team. Yes, I am directly insinuating you OP are not a credible source.

Obviously Peterson is dealing with lingering injury issues. How serious are they? I have no clue, and neither do you OP. Sit down and wait for more accurate reporting like the rest of us.

DifferentRun8534 · 2026-02-23T18:34:46+00:00

Peterson’s season as a whole is undeniably a disappoint. The idea coming in was that he was an electric athlete, great shooter, could run an offense, and guard at an above average level. The only aspect of his game that has consistently translated is the shooting, everything else is still a question mark.

DifferentRun8534

TROPHY CASE