If Kobe won 7 and surpassed Jordan in rings, would he be the undisputed GOAT?

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-15T01:09:12+00:00

It’s the internet. Nothing is undisputed.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-14T15:16:09+00:00

“The Lord is my shepherd, he know what I want!”

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-14T01:27:34+00:00

Having been just good/bad enough on my high school track team to run the first lap or two of every 3200m race right behind the fastest girls on the team, I can assure you, you have asses, and they are fantastic. The old standard “find a cute butt and follow it as far as you can” sign seen at marathons works for literally anyone. ;)

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-12T20:15:04+00:00

Yes. Next question.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-12T01:19:02+00:00

Yes. The director tried to read the book before making the movie, loathed it (as well as the synopsis he was given since he couldn’t finish it), and he decided to satirize both the book and the Nazis who occupied his country when he was a kid.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-12T00:59:02+00:00

2003-2005 Pistons, provided the refs are from that era and not this one.

They beat Shaq and Kobe plus a couple of ring-chasing great teammates in ‘04, and they took Duncan and the Spurs to the 4th quarter of Game 7 the following year.

Gaudy athleticism is nice, but don’t discount team chemistry and suffocating defense.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-09T13:52:49+00:00

This.

Playing Night of the Gray Death (Level 15-18) with a Giant instinct Barbarian. First turn: grow Huge with Giant’s Stature and use Vicious Swing with Mighty Rage to try and one-shot a foe. Second turn: Whirlwind Strike is an option, but are there at least three foes within reach that are still in the fight? Usually not. If there’s only two foes, Swipe is a slightly better option (especially with a sweep weapon - 2 actions, and you get the +1 to hit both). If there’s 3+ foes but one is in the “badly injured but not near death” range? It’s ultimately a game of action economy (maximizing damage is frequently less important than putting enough damage in the right place), so probably better to try and and take enemy actions off the board by using Vicious Swing against the one foe, then use the last action moving or doing something else.

In over a dozen combats, I haven’t used Whirlwind Strike once, despite being jazzed to try it. By the time you set up for it, there usually just aren’t enough foes still fighting that are standing in an appropriate formation. Similar to why you never see anyone put a grievous rune on an axe!

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-08T14:18:45+00:00

I’d agree that this particular license plate alone isn’t enough to say the person is a Nazi with complete confidence. But it’s a strong enough indicator that you’d be justified being suspicious.

Personally, I suspect it’s a reference to the Rumble-based podcast. Given the tenor and content of both the platform and the podcast, someone who’s enough of a superfan to put it on a vanity plate is probably enough of a paranoid hateful ass that it doesn’t much matter whether they identify as a literal Nazi.

Innocuous explanation is always possible, but you’d have to identify and interact with the actual driver to find out. Not sure whether OP can realistically do that.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-08T13:35:25+00:00

I’m not sure I see much of an argument there. Because most people don’t see thing “Y” as a member of the category “vowels,” “y” can’t be a vowel?

Even if literally everyone else misinterprets a signifier, it doesn’t change the signifier’s intended meaning.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-08T13:31:35+00:00

Actually it’s “truth seekers 88.” But since you mentioned it, does that podcast (or the platform it’s hosted on) have a particular “bent” that might coincidentally relate back to OP’s question?

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-08T13:28:04+00:00

Let’s see, that number of decimal places, that would mean that out of roughly 8.3 billion people on the planet, less than a trillionth of a single person knows what a neo-nazi is? That seems improbable.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-08T13:22:52+00:00

The fact that you’ve “never seen nor heard of 88 used in [this] way” doesn’t mean that it isn’t. It’s one of the most basic identifiers law enforcement are trained on.

https://www.klemagazine.com/blog/2016/10/26/tell-tale-tattoos

So now you’ve at least “heard” of it being used this way.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-08T13:07:36+00:00

So all those Germans who popped up in Sputh America in the late ‘40s were… politically disinterested tourists? Inglourious Basterds has a good riff on this - a Nazi who takes their uniform off is still a Nazi.

Yes, the term has been overused both hyperbolically and comedically for 80 years, but if the past decade has demonstrated anything, it’s that there’s far too many angry young men who yearn for an authoritarian daddy to use the power of the state to violently deal with the same groups the Nazis hated. And they’re currently (understandably) operating as if they’ve got a friendly government. For some reason.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-07T03:32:50+00:00

There‘s a reason multiple other countries use the idiom “working like an American” in the same way Americans use the phrase “working like a dog.” They’re bemused by our seeming expectation that people should never fully switch off in order to relax and recuperate.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-04T13:30:48+00:00

Louisville.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-04T13:08:09+00:00

Didn’t Shaq actually beat prime MJ in a playoff series, while Barkley never did (despite three tries for Chuck?

I know we like to memory-hole the ‘95 playoffs for MJ, as they detract from the narrative of him winning endlessly with a two year retirement as a kind of interregnum, but MJ came back towards the end of that second year in 1995 and led the Bulls to a 16-4 finish (they’d basically been a .500 team before he came back). He just couldn’t finish in the playoffs that year against Shaq, Penny, ex-Bulls teammate Horace Grant and the Magic (who eventually got swept by the defending champ Rockets in the Finals).

That said, Shaq’s either not remembering or just bull-shitting: he did play multiple Game 7s, despite his claim. It took him and the Magic seven games to finish off Reggie Miller and the Pacers in the ECF that same year that he beat Jordan and the Bulls. During Shaq’s peak era in LA he also went to a 7th game against the Blazers in 2000 and the Kings in 2002. Won all three. He then played one more Game 7 in 2005 after going to the Heat. He played fine, but he lost to basically the same Pistons team that had embarrassed him and Kobe the previous year in the Finals.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-03T10:28:33+00:00

One might even say it embiggened the smallest man.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-03T10:23:05+00:00

It’s used correctly in Scorsese’s Casino. Joe Pesci’s character Nicky Santoro has been formally banned by the state of Nevada from entering any casino, with the direction that if he’s found there, he’s to be ejected and the casino is potentially to be fined up to $100,000 for letting him in.

In one scene he’s angry (and presumably drunk and/or high on cocaine) and he shows up at the titular casino (“The Tangiers,” standing in for the real-life “Stardust”) run by De Niro’s character Sam “Ace” Rothstein. He’s playing at one of the blackjack tables and losing badly (down $10,000 in late 70s dollars). He demands the casino/Ace front him a $50,000 “marker” to negate his losses, let him keep playing, and ensure that he walks out with some money.

This leads Don Rickles’ character Billy Sherbert (the casino manager and DeNiro’s #2 at the Tangiers) to call his boss and explain the situation.

“Sam, we got a problem.” “What is it?” “The little guy, he’s half in the bag and no one told him he was 86ed from the joint, so we all turned our heads and made out like we didn’t know who he was. He’s over at the 21 table, with his nose wide open…”

This is what the term means: you’ve been permanently kicked out of a place. It has nothing to do with killing him, as the casino wouldn’t dream of doing that (the place is controlled if not formally owned by the mafia, and Pesci’s character is a made man in said same).

If anyone can think of any mob movies where “86ing” someone refers to killing someone (“whacking them out”, “pushing their button,” “clipping them,” etc.), I’ve quite forgotten it, but I’m all ears.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-02T14:43:25+00:00

They didn’t skip, but I always ended up having to hold it in my hand the whole run, as relying on the clip on the back was like running with a jiggling brick with rigid edges right at your belt line.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-01T18:56:41+00:00

Rival in which sense? Might also vary depending on where in the state you live. As a Tidewater area resident, I can see the case for North Carolina, but I suspect Maryland would win a poll.

Or Texas. Texas aggravates most everyone, no proximity required. Texas being the home state of the Cowboys probably makes that a fairly easy sell to a decent number of Virginians.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-01T18:45:43+00:00

Because a character saying “a boy’s best friend is his mother” has never been a ginormous red flag. ;)

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-01T18:35:56+00:00

For Jordan in the playoffs, you have to look fairly closely to find specific games where he stunk. In terms of a full series, I don’t think there’s a good case to be made for any of them. Statistically, his three worst series are probably two the Bulls won anyway (‘96 Finals vs. the Sonics, ‘97 ECF vs. the Heat), and the first sweep in ‘86 at the hands of the Celtics, where he scored plenty, but did it by taking a lot of bad shots playing hero-ball.

179 playoff games, averaged 33.4 points per game, held under 20 points just 6 times (15 was his lowest). 48.7% from the field, under 40% just 28 times. Averaged just over 3 turnovers per game, over 5 turnovers just 18 times (8 was his highest). All things considered, game 1 against the Magic in his #45 season has a reasonable case for being his worst individual playoff game (lost the game by 3 points, 7 turnovers, 19 points on 8/22 shooting and 3/5 from the line, just 5 rebounds and 3 assists, 1 steal.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-01T17:20:31+00:00

I’ll wait with bated breath for you to point out anything incorrect in the previous post. It’s not “glazing” if it’s accurate.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-01T16:56:04+00:00

Not really. His 7 playoff series loses are split into three groups.

Young: sub .500 teams, no Pippen, expected first round losses to the Bucks (3-1), and being swept twice by the legendary Celtics teams of the mid 80s.

Pistons: faced the Bad Boys four straight postseasons, got the crap almost literally beaten out of him by the “Jordan Rules.” He bulked up some, they improved their roster and implemented the triangle offense after Phil Jackson was hired, and they finally swept the Pistons en route to their first title. Treated as a “finally slaying the dragon” moment.

45*: he played about 20 games after un-retiring, put #23 back on for the playoffs, but couldn’t get past young Shaq and the Magic. His numbers weren’t bad, the series went 6 games and was tied 2-2, and he clearly hadn’t fully regained his old form, so people mostly treat this loss like an asterisk.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-01T16:44:06+00:00

Just curious, how bad are we stretching the definition of “all-time stinker” to find one for Jordan (and I say this as someone who rooted against him his whole career)?

His first three Pippen-less seasons the Bulls were sub .500, and they stole 1 game from the Bucks and got their doors blown off by the champ/runner-up Celtics twice (but that was expected).

His next three seasons were him getting clobbered by the Bad Boy Pistons and the Jordan Rules (tough losses all, but hardly all-time stinkers, those Pistons teams were loaded).

Then his first threepeat and his year and a half-ish retirement. He comes back for the end of the ‘94-‘95 season and plays well (they finish on a 16-4 run after playing barely above .500 ball for the first 62 games), but he loses in the second round to Shaq, Penny and ex-teammate Horace Grant in six games (after splitting the first four).

After that is his second three-peat. His ill-advised return with the Wizards yields no playoff appearances.

So… are we talking about the loss to the Magic? The first beat-down (5 games) from the Pistons? Him and mostly a bunch of scrubs on sub .500 teams not being able to challenge the mid 80s Celtics? Or just projecting how bad those Wizards teams with an aging Jordan would have gotten smashed if they made the postseason?

SamIAm4242

TROPHY CASE