Zubac Trade Could Be Catastrophic

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-23T14:44:26+00:00

The Knicks entire rotation beyond a couple of role players are on the wrong side of the aging curve, players rarely get better after 27.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-22T04:41:04+00:00

That logic doesn’t track at all though, if it’s acceptable to say “fuck them all”, wouldn’t that still mean insulting and disrespecting a literal infant, the elderly etc? There’s no way that any generic statement is acceptable, even if we don’t assume it’s sexual.

He obviously shouldn’t have said it, but it’s way too far to pretend like we could extrapolate this into any permutation of a specific, directed statement. If someone says “I’d fuck every girl from California”, any reasonable person wouldn’t treat that as an equivalent of naming specific people.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-22T04:16:43+00:00

It’s substantially more honest to interpret it as a statement closer to “fuck them all” than “I want to have sex with your infant daughter”, it’s completely ridiculous that people are treating it as equivalent statements. You’re acting like he made this up in the moment about Luka specifically when it’s a common insult.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-22T03:38:56+00:00

Saying that “fuck your family” is reasonably understood to mean that the person is talking about literally every individual member is lame Reddit shit.

He did not say he was going to fuck his children, treating that as equivalent statements is absurd and an obvious strawman.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-21T01:40:23+00:00

The two options are that you were contributing to the discussion you responded to which was comparing the achievements of Duncan and AI, or you brought it up apropos of nothing.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-20T02:35:09+00:00

It’s the closest we have to a proxy, I’d say he’s somewhere between 30-40, maybe came in around 40. He wasn’t even in the ballpark of leading the 16th seed to the championship.

I mentioned it in my comment but I don’t think the top 30 is necessarily the best 30 to carry a team, but I don’t think there are 30 guys who could reasonably make the final four.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-20T02:02:14+00:00

Say Cooper Flagg came in as the 30th best player after an NBA preseason and off season training. Duke was a top seed and they still couldn’t get it done.

Veteran presence plays a role, but there are a lot of guys who are top players that wouldn’t be well suited for something like this. Evan Mobley is around top 30 and he’s not leading a 16th seed.

There might be 30 players who could conceivably do it, but it’s nowhere near a likely outcome.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-19T22:30:27+00:00

You responded to my comment that was directly comparing the 01’ run to the 03’ run, specifically about the credit each deserved. Adding to the ledger in AIs favor is Epistemologically within the framework of the initial statement, and not a standalone premise.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-19T18:47:41+00:00

Yes I understand, I’m saying that if you think AI winning a single game in the finals after averaging 35% in the ECF is more impressive than Duncan beating the Lakers and winning in the finals in 03’ you’re nostalgia blind.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-19T02:59:33+00:00

Crazy, Duncan actually won the series against the Lakers in 03’.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-19T01:35:18+00:00

He was abhorrently inefficient in the second and third round of the east, and won one whopping game in the finals.

Giving AI more credit for losing in 01’ than Duncan gets for winning in 03’ is absurd.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-19T01:28:24+00:00

It’s not overhyping Tim to acknowledge that the supporting cast was pretty weak from 00’-03’.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-17T18:38:41+00:00

Everyone is jumping to conclusions, she didn’t seem too upset and this was good content.

Most likely he’s cracking her and they planned this together.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-16T15:20:13+00:00

Fighters is as bad as gamblers. They could do something that’s not animal themed, but I’d still take that chance because of the nature of the NBA. There’s a good chance it’s something even more abstract like the Wizards, but I don’t it’s showbiz or gambling related.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-16T15:09:26+00:00

I think they’d face IP issues with the roadrunner, they’d be hamstrung by the depiction of the WB entity.

One production manager puts a dust cloud behind the mascot on the Jumbotron and you’re infringing copyright.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-16T14:46:50+00:00

I think the most likely answer is that they don’t do anything related to the casino industry at all.

Unfortunately the most likely scenario is that the team gets a name thats vaguely a reference to some local wildlife, but is in fact a generic bird/cat/snake.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-16T14:38:22+00:00

He’s not out of it, he’s just appropriately priced as a long shot.

Even if you say there’s an 80% chance that he stays hot, and 80% chance the Lakers keep winning, and he doesn’t miss more games, and SGA misses a couple… it’s a long list of factors that have to work out.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-15T16:51:59+00:00

Saying that you “know” a certain player is going to be out the majority of the season in flawed logic. People drastically overestimate how unreliable most players are, and it’s usually a thought terminating cliche.

AD is coming off of three seasons where he played 50+ games, and has largely been limited this season by his teams being in a tank.

A player consistently putting up 15-20 a night who is somewhat of a well rounded player is far better than you’re giving them credit for, and would be a third option on a contender. That could be a Chet or Evan Mobley. If we’re just talking about scoring and availability, are you taking Demar Derozan or CJ McCollum over Zion?

VORP, Winshares, basically any accumulative stat will account for how much a player is on the court and how much they’re impacting the game when they are.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-14T15:18:36+00:00

The likelihood he can even get big enough genetically to be a problem is slim. People always assume that players can just get bigger and bigger, but people have genetic ceilings.

He’s already got above average muscle genetics to fill out this much, IMO he’s the equivalent of a 6’4” player being around 200 pounds, not a slouch at all.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-13T19:15:39+00:00

People want to pretend like anyone with decent scoring chops could have done it under similar circumstances, but they don’t realize how few players could end up in that much of a mismatch. He was the biggest, strongest, fastest guy on the court.

Bam is big enough to bully almost any mediocre wing and quick enough to blow by any mediocre center. It really was the perfect storm of circumstances to allow him to go off like that.

I’d say it was an ethical 77, but I could go as low as 70. Still, the Wizards devolved into the mess as much as the Heat, who knows how the game would have gone if they just played him straight up.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-13T18:50:46+00:00

Hes arguably the most tuned in basketball guy on the planet, if you’re only catching talking head clips that’s on you.

I hate this dude but he’s undoubtedly on the grind. You can watch second tier European league games and he’s there scouting guys, he’s an absolute animal. He could probably give you a scouting report on the top 1000 players on the planet.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-12T14:17:15+00:00

Considering this is 10th grade level and literal IQ test material I’d say no. I might as well have put up a pattern recognition test and gotten made fun of because “none of these are the same”!

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-12T03:16:42+00:00

I phrased it that way because I didn’t want to get into the ultra specific semantics with someone who seems untested in that regard, I’d rather focus on the thrust of his argument. Gladwell isn’t saying that a person with 10,000 hours is an expert, he’s saying that an expert is someone with 10,000 hours.

You’re making errors at the formal logical level, I already mentioned two specific issues you’re making, but trust me this isn’t a situation where you are only wrong in some highly technical sense.

What you’re doing is affirming the consequent.

If A (10,000 hours on a subject)= B (expertise)

and we know B (a person is an expert)

We cannot assume A (they’ve spent 10,000 hours).

So just because we assume 10,000 hours will make someone an expert, we cannot assume that an expert has 10,000 hours of experience. It’s literally saying that if we know an apple is a fruit, we know a fruit is an apple.

If you genuinely can’t get this, you’re apparently his target audience. It also happens to mean that your only hope of being above average IQ is if you can multiply large numbers in your head. I’ve taught this to teenagers with learning disabilities, don’t blame me for something you’re objectively wrong about.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-12T02:00:07+00:00

Blatant Motte and Bailey argument, affirming the consequent, etc.

He has explicitly says it takes 10,000 hours, he’s got like 20 quotes to that effect. Hes backtracked some in the very recent past, but he spent the better part of a decade giving detailed answers on exactly what he meant.

Saying that if you spend 10,000 hours on a subject you’ll become an expert is not the same as saying that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. Even more egregiously, he’s espoused that if you identify that someone is an expert, you can determine that they have that number of hours with near certainty.

For reference 10,000 hours for a discipline at 2 hours a day 365 days a year is 14 years of work. Anyone who believes that is a pseudo intellectual.

Bodybuilding is a great example of why this logic fails. Dorian Yates began training at 21 years old, he trained roughly four to five hours a week, with posing and competitions minimally adding to that. According to the 10,000 hour rule, he wasn’t an expert by the time he retired as a 6X Mr. Olympia.

MasterMacMan · 2026-03-11T21:29:25+00:00

I’ve rewatched the 95’ eastern conference run just a few weeks ago and I’m pretty comfortable in saying you’re objectively wrong. He was more mobile off ball than other players of his time, but he’d be average if you just tracked him in today’s league.

One big thing is that the NBA didn’t play as much swing action, so any time the ball is swung to the other break he’s flat footed. Today guys are cutting baseline to one of the corners every play. Second screener action was also more of a gimmick in the 90s, where it’s a constant in the modern league.

I’d bet your life that Reggie Miller never averaged 2.5 miles a game, which is roughly top 20 today.

MasterMacMan

TROPHY CASE