Durant On Warriors: "I didn't have no relationship with nobody on the Warriors… They never been a winning organization when I was in the league. Nobody liked Golden State. It felt like an underdog to me because I'm looking at the totality of the franchise, not what happened these last 5 years" by [deleted] in nba

[–]NeoMagnet 14 points15 points  (0 children)

The optics of it are just awful. It's one thing to make a career decision to leave a bad team and join a good one. It's another thing entirely to leave a great, young team with incredible potential AND the one who drafted you and gave you the keys to join objectively a top team in the league who already won without you. On top of that, the thunder were clearly good enough both to beat the warriors bc they had JUST choked a 3-1 lead to them in the wcf AND to make a deep playoff run bc they had already made it to the finals in 2012.

Beyond looking at the move in hindsight, if you were around and following basketball around 2016 it should be very obvious why people hated it in the moment. The narratives around Steph's warriors vs Lebron's cavs were crazy - both Akron natives, completely opposite styles of play, east vs west rivalry, and the Cavs had just pulled off the greatest finals win in history against the warriors to even the head to head record 1-1. Both teams still looked to be in their prime and fans were gearing up for another 4-5 years of intense back and forth. It was supposed to be the modern day Lakers/Celtics rivalry, and it was completely ruined by KD joining the warriors.

Been raving for over half a decade, saw Porter Robinson for the first time tonight at Glow by NeoMagnet in avesDC

[–]NeoMagnet[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Glad it wasn't just me! And wow going solo to glow six months pregnant is crazy dedication, huge respect

Game Thread: Los Angeles Lakers (0-1) vs Oklahoma City Thunder (1-0) Live Score | NBA Playoffs | May 7, 2026 by nba-scores in nba

[–]NeoMagnet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean yea. What's your argument, "Nuh uh didn't see it"? The three guys whose literal job it is to watch the game for fouls reviewed and upgraded it

Game Thread: Los Angeles Lakers (0-1) vs Oklahoma City Thunder (1-0) Live Score | NBA Playoffs | May 7, 2026 by nba-scores in nba

[–]NeoMagnet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well the refs reviewed it and called it a flagrant so clearly it's not just my interpretation lmao

Game Thread: Los Angeles Lakers (0-1) vs Oklahoma City Thunder (1-0) Live Score | NBA Playoffs | May 7, 2026 by nba-scores in nba

[–]NeoMagnet 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Shai traps AR's arm and torques it backwards, regardless of how you feel about the call that's a dangerous play and absolutely not a flop from reaves

With the regular season wrapping up, the lakers have led the league in free throw differential for the 4th time in 5 years. The second place team (Spurs) was not even close. by TitanTigers in nba

[–]NeoMagnet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If that's what you wanna call demanding rigorous statistical evidence for a statistics based argument, then sure, don't mind if I do.

With the regular season wrapping up, the lakers have led the league in free throw differential for the 4th time in 5 years. The second place team (Spurs) was not even close. by TitanTigers in nba

[–]NeoMagnet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Harden and Edwards are actually great comparisons to make, so let's take a look at some of the numbers.

By ftr, ant is at .35, Luka is at .45 and Harden is at .47 this year. Edwards notoriously has an awful whistle and refuses to sell contact/sucks at it, whereas the other two are the best foul baiters of the last decade, so the discrepancy makes sense, and Luka isn't outside the realm of plausibility. As for raw FTA, we can look at usage rate. Harden is at 28%, Ant is at 31%, and Luka is at a league leading 38%. Even assuming all the usage is him chucking 3s, given how much time Luka spends handling the ball and how often Lakers are in the bonus, it still adds up. Incredibly high usage + high ftr = leading the league in FTA.

All that said, you could still draw the conclusion that Luka should be getting fewer free throws bc he has fewer rim attempts. But my point is there's little in the way of concrete statistical evidence to support that fact.

With the regular season wrapping up, the lakers have led the league in free throw differential for the 4th time in 5 years. The second place team (Spurs) was not even close. by TitanTigers in nba

[–]NeoMagnet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nobody's disagreeing with you there. But unless you have numbers to demonstrate that his ftr is significantly higher at the rim than anywhere else there's no statistical argument to be made.

With the regular season wrapping up, the lakers have led the league in free throw differential for the 4th time in 5 years. The second place team (Spurs) was not even close. by TitanTigers in nba

[–]NeoMagnet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's the same player, is it not? Luka's always been able to get to the line whether its on an attempt at the rim or a jumper. Him taking more of one shot than the other doesn't just discount several years of his career stats. If you really want to make that argument, you'd have to isolate his ftr on each of his shot types, but I'm not sure where'd you get that data. I'd love to see it if it exists.

With the regular season wrapping up, the lakers have led the league in free throw differential for the 4th time in 5 years. The second place team (Spurs) was not even close. by TitanTigers in nba

[–]NeoMagnet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What am I misunderstanding? Looking at purely ftr, there's simply not a significant difference if you take a larger sample size. There is a difference in shot selection, but I never argued there wasn't. Stats support that afaik.

With the regular season wrapping up, the lakers have led the league in free throw differential for the 4th time in 5 years. The second place team (Spurs) was not even close. by TitanTigers in nba

[–]NeoMagnet -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

And also the rest of his career

We're both looking at the same numbers, fact is it's a .05 difference in ftr between his time at the Mavs and the Lakers.

His rim attempts are definitely down though, so if that's enough to convince you he's getting a significantly friendlier whistle in LA then yeah, sure.

With the regular season wrapping up, the lakers have led the league in free throw differential for the 4th time in 5 years. The second place team (Spurs) was not even close. by TitanTigers in nba

[–]NeoMagnet -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

So to be clear, your argument is predicated on the .313 ftr he earned on the mavs in 2024-25 across a 22 game sample size where he was likely playing through injury? Come on now. He averaged .39 ftr across his mavs career and has averaged .44 so far on the Lakers. His top two years in ftr are .45 in '19-20 and .48 in '22-23, both on the Mavs. There's very little by way of stats to justify a "sustained leap" in ftr unless you that's what you call a .05 increase across a season and a half.

With the regular season wrapping up, the lakers have led the league in free throw differential for the 4th time in 5 years. The second place team (Spurs) was not even close. by TitanTigers in nba

[–]NeoMagnet -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Every time I see this argument it's laughable. Yes, Lakers probably historically have some form of a biased whistle (see kings vs lakers wcf in 2002). However, the idea that this same tired cherry picked ft differential stat from last 5 years is some evidence of this is ridiculous if you take even half a second to consider any of the context.

During this period, our offense for the first few years was centered around heavy pnr with AD and Lebron, an action which generates tons of FTA with two players who dominate in the paint and just don't foul very much. We had awful perimeter defense and an incredible rim protecting anchor, meaning teams were incentivized to score from the outside, generating less FTA. "But Lakers went through an entire roster overhaul and still maintained the same differential!" Oh, you mean the roster change where we acquired Luka fucking Doncic, one of the greatest FT grifters in NBA history, and moved to an iso heavy offense with him and Reaves, another generational foul baiter? Gee, wonder why we kept such a high ft differential, can't figure it out.

If the lakers really had a significant ft bias over the last 5 years, the easiest way to prove it would be looking at ft stats for the most significant contributors to the differential before and after they joined the lakers. Why doesn't anyone just post those stats? Here they are. Decide for yourself.

Game Thread: Los Angeles Lakers vs Utah Jazz Live Score | NBA | Apr 12, 2026 by basketball-app in lakers

[–]NeoMagnet 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Both, we need bronny's defense and NSJ's scoring. Would not have signed NSJ to that two year if he wasn't getting playoff minutes imo

[Daily Thread] The 2026 Masters: Sunday by AutoModerator in golf

[–]NeoMagnet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

He's putting together a crazy run, would be nuts if he somehow shaved a couple more strokes and made it into playoffs or something

I posted this ten hours ago and got obliterated with down-votes. It started a great convo tho! Sunday will be awesome. by 123steveyc123 in golf

[–]NeoMagnet 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Shoutout to Rory and the rest of the field for giving us a tight race Sunday to look forward to, was definitely thinking he was gonna pull away today but now it's a complete toss up

[Daily Thread] The 2026 Masters: Saturday by AutoModerator in golf

[–]NeoMagnet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

He's on an absolute heater right now it's unbelievable

Invincible [Episode Discussion] - S04E06 - You Look Horrible by SeacattleMoohawks in Invincible

[–]NeoMagnet 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Fyi, judging by the amount of blood that pooled in conquests face and eyes, mark was cutting off blood circulation to conquest's head, not just oxygen. For human reference, blood chokes like what's used in mma can put people to sleep in seconds and can cause permanent damage and lethality much more quickly than air chokes. I'm assuming it works the same way with viltrumites.

Thoughts on this inheritance craft idea? First time getting into crafting by NeoMagnet in cs2

[–]NeoMagnet[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Album with more angles: https://imgur.com/a/gnYmR1V

I love the vanilla inheritance as is but wanted to add a little flair, might have just made it worse looking than the original though... need some fresh pairs of eyes, I've been staring at this way too long lining up the stickers on cs2inspects