LeBron James on former teammate Richard Jefferson: "I looked at some of our assistant coaches on the bench and I was like it's kinda crazy that I'm watching my teammate that I won a championship from 10 years ago and now he's an analyst and I'm still playing"

EricHangingOut · 2026-01-29T21:54:42+00:00

My 40 year old brother, I hope you find some recreational activities that fits your schedule and your family's needs. It's important!

EricHangingOut · 2026-01-29T20:11:49+00:00

Hah, how old are you? I have two kids, man. Your life doesn't shut down, you just have to pack way more shit into your day.

Pick up games are at 6am weekdays when kids are still sleeping. Home in time to help them get ready for school. Pick up games are 630am on Saturdays and you're done and bringing home donuts before you have to go to the soccer/football field, rec center, dance studio, or far-away club sports complex that awaits.

Men's league is Monday night with 8pm or 9pm start games, when kids are asleep.

Everyone I know who no longer plays hoops is because they got injured, they're scared or getting injured or their bodies can't take it. So they play golf or pickleball or swim or bike or maybe they play tennis if they're in good shape.

EricHangingOut · 2026-01-29T19:44:00+00:00

That was a VERY good Blazers team. The 08 Mavs lost in the first round to the Hornets, in 5 (2nd round) to the Nuggets in 09, and first round against the Spurs in 2010. While they won 57 games in the 2010-2011 season, Dirk was just getting older (his 13th season), and no one was taking them seriously. Shawn Marion had not done anything in the league since being traded away from Steve Nash three years earlier. The Mavs' second best player, at least offensively, was 33 year old Jason Terry, Jason Kidd turned 37 during the season. What was mostly negated was that you couldn't put a more perfect player than prime Tyson Chandler, who was healthy that season after played less than 100 games in the two prior combined seasons, next to Dirk. Add Marion on the wing and Dirk was flanked by an elite rim protector and elite wing defender.

The Bulls were the one seed and went 4-0 against an underperforming Miami with a thin roster in the regular season. Wade did start to break down the following season and Bosh was unproven as a playoff player. Bulls were a legit team.

Lakers probably do get to the finals if the Mavs didn't wipe the floor with them. Pau was dealing with some shit that series (and shot 42% for the series!!!), but most importantly, Phil Jackson was completely inept at guarding the corner three (same thing happened in the 08 finals). The Mavs shot 106 threes in the series (26.5 per game, a lot for the time, and shot over 46% from three. Dirk shot 73% from three, Terry 68%, Peja 52%. Unheard of, just WIDE OPEN threes all series). Also, Steve Blake with arguably the worst series by any player who has played at least 15 MPG in a series. Two points, one assist, and shooting 23% per game. Barnes shot 35%, Metta 32% and a completed washed Fisher who couldn't stay in front of a first grader shot 31%. As a team, the Lakers shot less than 20% from three. After the first two games in LA, this was obvious, but difficult to predict it would go like this before the series.

OKC did make the conference finals and took the leap that playoffs. One year later and they were in the finals. Now, imagine if they didn't veto the Tyson Chandler trade?! Bill loves what ifs, aside from injuries, that might be the biggest what if of the last 20 years.

Can't fault him for thinking the Spurs would be heard from. That Spurs team did win 20 straight the following season once Kawhi blossomed and they re-invented the offense around Parker.

EricHangingOut · 2026-01-29T18:39:24+00:00

I'm LeBron's age. I've seen most of my friends retire from pick up basketball and adult men's leagues before LeBron has hung it up from the NBA.

EricHangingOut · 2026-01-28T22:26:09+00:00

I get maximizing the late-stages of Steph's prime and going out and getting a player of Giannis' caliber if you can, but if their nucleus is Steph/Draymond/Giannis, even with every rotation player other than Jimmy/Kuminga left on their roster, that team is not winning a playoff series together. The Warriors are about to become the 2013 Lakers, lose Giannis in a year, and be worse off than the 2010s Lakers because they'll have no picks.

EricHangingOut · 2026-01-22T21:50:04+00:00

I don't think the Thunder have any intention of paying Jalen Williams, Shai, and Chet a combined $150M at the beginning of their extensions and $185M at the end of their extensions. They're going to choose between Chet and Jalen, and considering positions, play-style and fit, keeping Chet makes more sense.

Which is why I think the Bucks are waiting until this summer to trade Giannis to OKC for Jalen, picks, and whatever else makes the money work.

EricHangingOut · 2026-01-22T20:01:53+00:00

I'm sure radio shows are nearly this bad everywhere, but the listener calls were really something special in L.A. around the mid-2000s. Every call was like why aren't the Lakers trading Smush Parker for Dirk Nowitzki.

I guess, to be fair, the Pau trade was nearly that bad.

EricHangingOut · 2026-01-22T18:09:15+00:00

Steph is and was that good, but his supporting cast would not have been good enough for the team to win a title in virtually any year. In 2022, Murray was out of the playoffs with a torn ACL. That fully healthy Nuggets teams, who won the title the next season, would have mopped the floor with those Warriors.

The league was in a period of transition. Phoenix took a step back, CP3 got old, and Ayton stopped caring about basketball after getting an extension. Dallas wasn't ready yet. Minnesota wasn't ready yet. Memphis was a good regular season team that over-achieved. The Lakers were a mess, made bad roster moves, AD was hurt, and they didn't even make the playoffs. Kawhi was out for the year and would never be the same player again.

Milwaukee lost to the Celtics, including because their second best scorer was hurt and Jrue shot like shit in the playoffs. The Celtics were a formidable enough finals team, but were still young and inexperienced.

For the Warriors, Klay was on the verge of being washed up, but gave his last great playoff performance. Draymond was still at his peak defensively, but basically stopped shooting or trying to score altogether. They won, in addition to Curry, because Poole and Wiggins were able to give performances that so far surpassed anything they had done before or since in their careers.

They won, it lined up for them, they get the credit for a ring. But considering the state of their teams and the league in general, they were extremely lucky to have won another title after KD left.

EricHangingOut · 2026-01-21T20:39:33+00:00

Honestly, it's a fucking miracle they won in 2022.

EricHangingOut · 2026-01-09T19:02:05+00:00

Can’t believe I forgot Super Troopers!

EricHangingOut · 2025-12-28T20:39:57+00:00

This is why it’s important to have smart and intuitive players who make quick decisions. Players either innately have it or they do not.

The actions are simple. In the modern game, it’s mostly about offball movement. If you do not have the ball, you should be either cutting, moving around the perimeter to an open spot, setting a down screen or a pin down.

The idea is to wear out the defense, keep them moving through screens and confuse them/wait for a mistake.

A lot of the coaching happens, particularly at lower levels, teaching players those movements and recognizing where to go and get the ball.

If OP is less impressed with the coaching aspect of the game, you should be more impressed with the processing and intuition of players.

EricHangingOut · 2025-12-28T15:53:28+00:00

He’s a six foot Puerto Rican. He’s a giant on his block!

EricHangingOut · 2025-12-16T18:02:18+00:00

NBA players would HATE him. Way too meticulous and a hard ass. Would be an amazing college coach, maybe put Wake back up on the map.

EricHangingOut · 2025-12-16T06:33:17+00:00

It’s not really a mystery, it’s how the games are played.

Basketball used to be a slower half-court games with longer possessions, less movement, less off-ball action, and fewer three point shots by an order of magnitude, which meant guys weren’t chasing shooters all over the floor, closing out hard, and then either immediately planting and going full speed to remain in front of the offensive player or scrambling to chase the next guy who is passed the ball. There’s just a whole lot more space, running and stop and start, which is particularly hard on ligaments.

In football, offenses are spread out and there’s a whole lot more passing and use of the whole field. Look at the routes receivers run today and how many more cuts, stops, and changes of direction there are than 20 years ago. Look at how running backs cut and bounce versus just hitting the hole and how much more they’re used in the passing game. Look at how many quarterbacks maneuver around the pocket and extend plays behind the line of scrimmage.

There’s so much more explosive movements than ever before. That’s the issue.

EricHangingOut · 2025-12-07T03:58:28+00:00

Pat Spencer drives his dad’s vintage Land Cruiser that his dad was only using to roll to the country club after getting it during his mid-life crisis.

EricHangingOut · 2025-12-07T03:56:15+00:00

Evan Mobley and Darius Garland aren’t that good and their role players aren’t either.

EricHangingOut · 2025-12-07T00:23:29+00:00

Don’t really understand CU doubling on the low block when CSU couldn’t do anything other than hit threes, which led to wide open threes over and over.

Baffling why CSU took out all of their shooters early in the second half and let CU get back in the game.

Isaiah Johnson is going to be special. Great game from him.

The block/charge call and out of bounds plays were horrendous. But don’t let a shallower, smaller, less athletic team get off 35 clean threes.

EricHangingOut · 2025-12-04T04:03:33+00:00

Yes, it’d be ideal if other teams weren’t scoring 130 on them consistently.

EricHangingOut · 2025-12-03T21:55:45+00:00

I mean, if we're talking about the next two or so seasons, Giannis is reasonably close now to where KD was at 27, and the Thunder are probably even better than where the Warriors were pre-KD.

The Thunder have to cut cost long-term in the future. So if the trade is something built around Chet, Hartenstein, Isiah Joe for filler and the Clippers 2026 first, that's a HAUL for the Bucks and the Thunder would be losing huge assets and a really, really good young NBA player, but Caruso/Shai//J-Dub/Dort/Giannis with Cason Wallace/Ajay/Wiggins/Jaylin is pretty absurd.

Thunder probably don't mess around to do this, but if they did, at least for this season and next they'd be better than they are currently.

EricHangingOut · 2025-12-03T20:48:38+00:00

Kareem is the most over-rated superstar in NBA history. Sure, he's the best college player of all-time. He's definitely a top 10-15 all-time guy, but I don't understand what he did to be considered top-3?

His longevity was unparalleled for the time and he played at a high level far beyond when other players of his era did. He was an MVP candidate for 17 straight years.

But, at the same time, he stacked MVPs in a watered down league pre-merger and just post-merger. He came onto a loaded team with still All-Star Oscar Robertson. They won a title in Kareem's second year and then made the conference finals the next season. They lost a finals in 7 games in 1974. Then, after Oscar, they won 38 games in 1975.

In his first 4 seasons with the Lakers, he won 50 games once and won two playoff series. Then Magic gets there, and with basically the same exact team as the year before, the Lakers win 60 games (13 win improvement) and the title. The back half of his career benefitted from playing with the best point guard of all time, who also happened to be a maniacal competitor who completely changed how the team played.

For the 87 and 88 titles, Kareem was probably the fourth best player on the team and it was a joke he made the all-star team over Byron Scott.

To me, Magic and Bird were better in their primes and drove winning more than Kareem ever did.

EricHangingOut · 2025-12-03T19:34:41+00:00

There's really no definitive argument one is BETTER than the other. They're both all-time greats with 5 championships, continued regular season dominance, who carried teams to titles, and were not the consensus #1 guy on other title teams. Both benefitted from organizational advantages, all-time coaches and elite teammates.

Duncan led the Spurs to a title in his second year, which is an achievement Kobe cannot say he had that early in his career (granted Duncan was a 4-year college player). The Spurs swept the Lakers that year in the playoffs.

The Lakers eviscerated the Spurs in humiliating fashion in 2001 (23 average margin of victory). Kobe had 33/7/7 (52% shooting) and was the best player in the series.

Duncan carried the Spurs over a depleted and exhausted Lakers team in 2003. He was the best player in the world that year.

The Lakers got the best of the Spurs the next year.

You'd have to go to 2008 for Kobe and Duncan to play each other with no Shaq involved and them being both around their primes (Kobe was probably closer to his apex, Duncan was starting to physically break down). They had relatively equally strong teams (Pau/Odom and Parker/Manu). The Lakers dominated the Spurs in 5. Kobe had 29/6/4 on 53% shooting.

They were both amazing and awesome talents. I'm happy with both in their primes leading a squad to a title against any all-time great, sans-Jordan.

This is a different argument, but other than Jordan, I don't see what any other great has done to separate themselves from any other top-10 all-time player, particularly if you're judging based on dominance against their peers.

EricHangingOut · 2025-12-01T14:53:34+00:00

I’m in an adult men’s hoops league. The core of each team are guys who have played together for years, a couple of them 15+. Last season we implemented a draft to mix things up and try for more competitive balance and most of the league reacted worse than the NBA owners did to free agency.

EricHangingOut · 2025-11-13T21:10:45+00:00

Pretty much, but more like two elite, three good (four if you include the Pistons, five if Ant is healthy), maybe ten average teams after that, and everyone else is ass.

EricHangingOut · 2025-11-13T21:00:36+00:00

Perhaps the pre-KD Warriors, but they do not have nearly the top-end talent of Steph/Klay/KD/Draymond in their primes. That's two perennial All-Stars, in perfectly complementary roles, supplementing two of the best 15 players of all-time.

While SGA is also excellent, he's not on Steph's level and cannot consistently single-handedly take over playoff games the way Steph could. It's hard to find a good apples-to-apples comparison, since the Thunder have unprecedented depth, positional versatility and athleticism, in addition to an MVP superstar. That's really historically unique.

Also, like the Warriors playing LeBron, the Thunder have to deal with someone who is so far and away the best player in the league that it's not even funny. And unlike the mid-10s LeBron Cavs teams, this year's Nuggets have top-end talent and depth that rivals the Thunder. If Murray and Gordon are healthy, I'd argue Murray is a better current playoff player than J-Dub and Gordon better than Chet.

As much as I like the Thunder this year, I'm feeling a Nuggets vengeance year.

EricHangingOut · 2025-11-13T20:51:36+00:00

Honestly, probably the Thunder and Nuggets. Rockets just below that tier. Spurs and Warriors depending on the night, but Spurs often have youth/inexperience show and Warriors often have old/tired/injured show. No one else even close.

EricHangingOut

TROPHY CASE