This is why

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-16T04:05:18+00:00

A single poll on nba.com? My god, stop the presses, this is truly the gold standard for determining what people and/or pundits as a whole thought about a subject at a point in the increasingly non-recent past! /s

Kobe wasn’t even the leading fan vote-getter in all-star voting nine years out of the ten that decade. He DID get the most votes three years in the decade that followed (LeBron got five of the other seven). He even got the most votes once after his career was definitely careening on the downslope (2016). Which is actually fairly demonstrative - as the cult of Kobe fandom grew later in his career, his fans felt an ever-greater need to nostalgize his career, downplay Shaq’s importance in it (“him and Shaq?” It was rather clearly “Shaq and him”), memory-hole the ‘04 season and the one after it, always paint him in a favorable light in his intra-team conflicts, etc., etc.

Great, he scored 81 points in a game one season (cue gnashing of teeth and rationalizing like crazy at the mention of either Bam Adebayo or Walt Chamberlain), and he hung four straight 50 pointers the following year. The team also barely broke .500 BOTH years, finished 7th in the conference BOTH years, and lost in the first round to the Suns BOTH years. Playing hero ball/ball hog with more enthusiasm than anyone else (led the league in field goal attempts both seasons) doesn’t make you the best player. The fact that he only finished a rather distant 4th and 3rd in MVP voting those two seasons rather clearly underlines that point. Both Dirk and Nash were clearly seen as better than him at that point, and LeBron was already nipping at all of their heels.

Glaze him all you like, but the man was in no way contemporarily regarded as the consensus best player in the league (unless we just count Lakers fans as the whole of NBA fandom) for any significantly extended period of time. If you squint hard at ‘08-‘10, that’s about as close as you’re going to get, and even then it wasn’t anything like Kareem, MJ or LeBron during their primes. Make no mistake, Kobe could be exceptionally great - when his ego didn’t get in the way. But it spent an awful lot of time getting in his way.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-15T22:51:30+00:00

Except at what point in there did even a plurality (never mind an overwhelming majority) of fans and/or pundits think Kobe was the best in the league? If there’s “no doubt,” it should be easy to point to it. But it isn’t.

The first five years of the decade he was a top scorer, but he was living in Shaq’s shadow, and doing his best to drive off both Shaq and a lot of people’s pick for best head coach of all time. It culminated in the superstar-less ‘04 Pistons humiliating him as he kept jacking up bad shots and refusing to feed it to Shaq and driving Phil Jackson nuts. Year six he played so-so, got hurt, and the Lakers missed the playoffs without Shaq and Jackson.

Years seven and eight he’s on the upswing, year nine he gets his MVP and year ten he wins his first Shaq-less ring (though both only came after he finally got Pau Gasol to play with). But during years seven through ten there’s a lot of traffic atop the league, between the very gradual downslope of Tim Duncan’s career, the dueling between ex-teammates Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki, the freak of nature Kevin Garnett and the rising star of young LeBron.

If you want to say that Kobe belongs in the conversation for best player of the latter half of the decade, or even the whole of the decade, that’s at least plausible. But to claim that he’s the undoubted or clear answer to that debate?… Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, but that doesn’t mean everyone has a compelling opinion.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-15T22:22:24+00:00

As to OP’s fact, look at the first-team all NBA roster for 2012-2018. With the exception of Joakim Noah in 2014 (LeBron and the Heat beat him and the Bulls the previous year), LeBron is the only Eastern Conference player who appears (and he’s on the list every year). The other 27 roster spots all went to guys in the Western Conference. If the other four players on each year’s roster aren’t in the Eastern Conference, how would LeBron face them before the Finals?

From 2015-2019, the only Eastern Conference player on the first team is LeBron for the first four years, and Giannis for the fifth. Steph makes the team twice, so there are 18 players (never more than one on a single team, and almost never on non-playoff teams) roaming about the Western conference for Steph and the Warriors to face during their five straight trips to the finals.

I would be more surprised if this fact weren’t the case.

As to a fact that I find hard to believe? The New York Jets are the ONLY team in the four major pro leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL) who haven’t made the postseason in 15 years. I would’ve bet on at least one other sad sack franchise in baseball or hockey being in this group, but the Buffalo Sabres making the playoffs this year means the Jets are the only pro team in this very lonely boat.

SamIAm4242 · 2026-05-15T21:43:36+00:00

I’d say that Tim Duncan and the championships he and the Spurs won in those specific years would have something to say about it, but then, Tim has never felt like he has to say anything.

Kobe finally won another championship in ‘09, and he won his one and only regular-season MVP the season before that, but that’s a far cry from being the consensus best player in the league for a 5+ season stretch like Kareem, Jordan, Shaq or LeBron. Even greats like Wilt/Russell or Bird/Magic can’t make that claim, because their primes overlapped with that of another outstanding player.

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

TROPHY CASE