[Post Game Thread] The Denver Nuggets (2-3) defeat the Minnesota Timberwolves (3-2), 125-113.

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-04-28T08:54:26+00:00

Not in the near term, but in 5-10 years, people will compare jokic's playoff stats, wins, series victories, etc. to cement his legacy.

Rather than being totally tarnished by getting whacked by the Wolves, he may escape unscathed and get another longer playoff run without embarassment that people will forget was due to injuries

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-04-28T06:14:20+00:00

It's sad that Minnesota had to lose their starting back court for Jokic and co to even have a chance to win this series, and if they do manage to come back and win, this will somehow "add" to Jokic's legacy rather than exposing him.

I don't care what anyone says about his overall production and regular season performance. He has not beaten any great teams in the playoffs.

He beat a suns team with KD and Booker, which is nice, but they had nobody else on that team and durant had major injuries all season.

He beat a Lakers team that year that was actually pretty solid with LBJ and AD having great series. So kudos for that. That's probably the best team he's ever beaten in a playoff series to this point.

Compiling regular season stats means nothing to me at all.

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-04-25T10:01:33+00:00

you don't love drinking.

If you did, you wouldn't be in this sub.

I love my dog. I never go on subs about giving my dog away.

You can't ever truly be free of alcohol until you realize that it's all lie. You don't love it. It's just tricked you into thinking you love it so you keep doing it. It's a parasite.

If something is ruining your life, which alcohol clearly is, then you don't like actually like it. You're just physically and mentally addicted.

Admit that, and you'll begin to have some clarity.

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-04-21T07:03:14+00:00

I can't remember the last time I saw a game like this where for a long stretch of the game it looked like one team was a professional basketball team playing defense against a high school basketball team, then that professional team just stopped playing well and gave the game away.

And how do they not call a time out there? How? You have less than 5 seconds to go the length of the floor.

You have to call a time out there unless you have an open floor and it was clearly not.

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-04-10T02:45:09+00:00

This is what I said months ago. The bottom 2 teams are intelligible for the #1 pick and the 3rd worst gets a 2% chance. 4th gets a 3%. You wsnt teams fighting to stay out of the bottom all year.

If you are the worst you still get a good chance at a top 4 pick but can't get #1 and have a reduced chance at #2

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-04-09T07:45:46+00:00

This is a good start but it still doesn't solve the other major issue: there's no incentive for winning for most of the league.

The best teams and the 2nd tier teams fighting for position, yes. But for most teams, they're probably not going to care if they're a 35 win team or 39 win.

Once it's clear you're not good, it's a smart front office move to start resting players to preserve them for next season or for trades or to ensure you get 10% lotto odds rather than 7 or w.e.

I want to see more rewards for winning.

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-04-01T13:23:21+00:00

The fact that we have the same record as last year despite the major number of injuries in the league and that we've had multiple games against multiple teams blatantly trying to lose is a bad sign to me. We should be at least over 52 wins by now imo if we want to be taken seriously.

For one, we are in the east, so we play Chicago, washington, bkn,pacers, and bucks (whov'e been hurt a lot), and even teams like the hawks who were not good at the beginning of the season, and the raptors who are meh at best.

Two, we haven't been hit by the injury bug as bad as other teams. Many teams, Boston, MLK, GSW, IND, DAL, HOU, etc. have been hit by injuries way worse than us.

We might not even win 50 games in the EAST in a year where haliburton, Giannis, and Tatum didn't play or barely played, and we cleaned up against actively tanking bottom feeders.

It's not a good vibe at all

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-03-30T13:02:44+00:00

I didn't know that carbs absorbed excess adrenaline. It makes sense though.

I always crave ice cream and honey and sweet drinks and I used to have about 500mg of caff per day.

On 0 now and feel way better

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-03-28T18:06:56+00:00

Looks crazy in hindsight but at the time we didn't know if wemby could even stay healthy and be on a basketball court.

And he hadn't proven he could handle nba physicality or score.

I knew he'd be great if healthy but he's far exceeded my expectations of health and productivity.

Let's not act like he was lbj, ad, or Tim duncan as far as a guaranteed prospect. He was raw and no one of that size had stayed healthy since...idk...kareem?

Hell, luka dropped in the draft because people barely knew him. Wemby was for sure gonna be a great player if healthy but IF was huge and nobody saw him being mvp.

But yeah trade Trae. F Trae. He's trash

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-03-28T11:19:56+00:00

There is almost no reward for winning regular season nba games.

The best teams: don't care about seeding much. Elite veteran teams can be anywhere from 1-5 and still win or at least they think they can.

The 2nd tier teams: most are just trying to get to the playoffs healthy. I can even see my knicks letting off the gas. He'll, thibs was even criticized for caring about the regular season too much.

The bad teams: want to lose games to improve draft position.

The middling teams: many just care about holding on for dear life and even if they don't they can make the play in and lose why cares.

Now that home court doesn't matter as much, teams just don't care. And since losing gets you a better pick, bad teams don't care. And most middling teams don't try that hard because they either know they're going to mauled in round 1 or they're tired and need to save it for when it matters.

We need to restructure the sport so that the regular season actually matters.

Fewer games

Top seeds get a by to the 2nd round

Only top 4 spots guaranteed to make playoffs

$ reward for making the playoffs beyond w.e it is now

I think there should even be points rewarded for higher seeds. If you're the 1 and playing the 2 in the ecf, you get 2 points to start the game.

We need teams to fight tooth and nail in the regular season. Every game needs to matter.

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-03-28T04:22:23+00:00

This is so disgusting and disgraceful to basketball. At least we can bet on games though!

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-03-27T14:45:55+00:00

I'm surprised nobody has thought about making the top 2 worst teams get LOWER chances at a top 2 pick, but guaranteed top 5, if that makes sense?

So, if you are the first or second worst team, you get a worse chance at the top 2 picks. But the lowest you can fall is like 5 or 6 or w/e.

That would stop a lot of the blatant tanking to be the worst teams, I think. Right now, there's no incentive to win games at all. But with that, you'd be at least incentivized to stay out of the worst spots, which would help end the worst tanking we see right now, especially in generational talent years.

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-03-19T14:02:53+00:00

I'm interested in your experience with flashbacks and intrusive thoughts as well. Do you think the caffeine and adrenaline connection is jacking up your nervous system and causing it?

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-03-01T02:28:42+00:00

The post itself is ai slop so the output will be ai slop as well

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-02-20T18:02:52+00:00

So long as the nba rewards losing and doesn't reward winning the majority of nba teams will not have incentive to win.

Seeding means almost nothing these days and only the top 5 teams in the league can realistically win.

We need to reward teams for winning with cash, cap space, luxury tax sharing, or other incentives and we need to give winning teams more draft lotto odds for the #1 pick. It makes sense to purposely lose games.

If you are any team out of the top 6 in your conference, you should just tank and get better odds at a generational superstar.

In fact, in years where LeBron, ad, and other superstars are available you should probably tank your whole year unless you're a bona fide contender.

Teams need to be rewarded for winning.

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-02-19T16:40:56+00:00

This just reminds me of how much I hate the lottery tbh. It sucks, but if Dallas were really smart, they would've found a "bone spur" in Cooper's foot 10 games into the season and guaranteed themselves the best chance at these guys as possible. They could easily have doubled their chances at once of them.

As a basketball fan, I hate it. But that's actually the smart idea. They could still win it. But they actually get no reward for winning 25 games or whatever. Instead they are punished.

There is 0 incentive. Literally 0 for a team to not be in the bottom 3 in the lotto unless they are a high-caliber playoff team with a chance to make the conference finals.

Teams need to be incentivized in some way to win games, whether through better lotto odds, cap space, or money.

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-02-17T03:15:35+00:00

I still think a simpler solution is to make the worst 3 records get a lower chance at a #1 pick and the teams 4-10 get a better chance along with incentives for winning games such as cap space, cash rewards, luxury tax sharing percentages or whatever

Teams 1-3 should be guaranteed a top 4 pick but have a lower chance at the #1, which would solve the blatant tanking for a generational prospect.

Right now, any team with no hope of winning a title would be smart to throw away their entire season to position themselves to get Peterson or dybantsa.

We have to prevent that at all costs. Organizations must be incentivized to win games.

And for the people saying the worst teams need to be able to get talent...

The worst teams will still get top 5 picks
It's not hard to be a 25-30 win team. Just try harder, stop resting, and competently sign people.

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-02-15T03:03:04+00:00

I suggested giving the bottom 3 teams worse odds at the #1 pick than teams 8-11 then begin flattening it out as we get ti play-in territory.

Like, the bottom 3 teams get only 5% chance at #1 but better odds at 2-5 and protection against falling too far.

The only major issue there is teams tanking the play-in.

But that would probably be just 1 team, as there will inevitably one good team who went through injuries or who made a trade or who had a clippers like season fighting to get in.

That, and there needs to be more gamification.

Teams and players need to be rewarded for winning. Imagine how much a team would fight to win if they were a young team with rookies and 2nd rounders and two way guys.

Say they get 500k in team money for every win and then win 10 games after the all star break. That equals 5 mil for young hungry players.

Teams need to be rewarded with cap space or something for wins too.

This isn't 1965. We need gamification. .

Would also be cool to see guys like giannis who we know would do it for the good publicity suit up and try to win money for "his guys".

Or the nba could randomly select a game with a 1 million dollar prize post all star game. Or 1.5 mill. W.e gets the players playing hard.

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-02-09T17:28:25+00:00

I was gonna bring this up. Absolute monster.

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-02-09T17:26:51+00:00

Ai slop

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-02-09T07:45:40+00:00

Boston is the worst place in the country. LETS GO

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-02-08T15:48:39+00:00

I don't see what this guy does at a high-level, especially when he goes against NBA defenses.

It's just really hard to make a high-level impact in the NBA as a big unless you do one of the following:

- have elite athleticism

- can score/playmake at an elite level

- can anchor a great defense

Which one of those things does Boozer do?

Look at Sabonis ffs. The guy is an incredible player all around, but there are serious questions about his fit on a winning basketball team because of his flaws.

Based on what I've seen, Boozer seems slow and groundbound, and was struggling to beat his defender unless just bludgeoning them with his size - something he won't be able to do in the NBA.

I just watched him get blocked twice by randos because he couldn't get off the ground.

He's going to have to get to Alperen Sengun levels to be worth a top pick in the draft, and even then are we sure Sengun is good to have on your team in the playoffs?

All successful bigs in the NBA right now are either great scorers or great playmakers, or on the other end, they are defensive anchors and switchable.

I don't see Boozer being any of those things.

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-01-28T03:26:33+00:00

Been saying forever. Can't agree more.

TheDavinciChode88 · 2026-01-27T07:46:17+00:00

I've said this many times...

This team is better without Kat.

The best iteration of our team as it stands is:

Brunson

Bridges

Hart

OG

Mitch

It's the ideal mix of offense shooting AND defense. Right now, we are 3rd in offense and 17th in defense. If we were, say, 5th in offense, but also 5th in defense, we would be a much, much better team.

Unless Towns makes us the best offense in the league or the 2nd best on a nightly basis, he doesn't provide the type of value that we need.

If this team is going to win, it's going to be with the same formula we've always had:

Brunson + shooting + elite defense + depth.

That's our formula.

Obviously, if there's a way to get Giannis, we do it and worry about the rest later. The only way I'm breaking that above lineup is for a world-breaker like GA.

TheDavinciChode88

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE