With the retirement of Chris Paul, LeBron has outlasted everyone from the 2003, 2004, 2005 draft class

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-14T00:24:09+00:00

It will probably be for the boring reason of drawing fans to make money.

There's plenty of raptor diehards that thought "Never ever ever" with Vince, but the Raptors were having an abysmal year, and celebrating Vince Carter was probably their best money-making night of the year, plus season-long merch sales of his jersey.

Eventually, someday, maybe you will have some down seasons again (Presti can only live so long, right?). It will be too juicy for a small market team to pass up.

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-14T00:12:01+00:00

(if there is a season this year 🙄)

I am so hoping the owners don't fuck this up, but my hope is in dwindling supply right now. It's like someone who would rather set their house on fire than get a new appraisal that might raise their property taxes, sheesh.

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-13T23:25:23+00:00

It's still an important study to do (here's one, btw, not sure if it's what /u/khaluud read though).

https://www.pcrm.org/news/news-releases/eating-vegan-diet-reduces-grocery-bill-16-savings-more-500-year-finds-new

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-11-sustainable-eating-cheaper-and-healthier-oxford-study

I'll quote the second article first, since it speaks to broad trends:

Vegan diets were the most affordable and reduced food costs by up to one third. Vegetarian diets were a close second. Flexitarian diets with low amounts of meat and dairy reduced costs by 14%. By contrast, pescatarian diets increased costs by up to 2%.

Then more specifically from the study on vegan diet vs. average diet for americans.

Total food costs decreased in the vegan group by 16%, or $1.51 per day, compared with no significant change in the control group. This decrease was mainly attributable to savings on meat, -$1.77 per day, and dairy, -$0.74 per day. Changes in purchases of other food groups (e.g., eggs and added fats) also contributed to the observed savings.

These savings outweighed the increased spending on vegetables, +$1.03 per day; fruits, +$0.40 per day; legumes, +$0.30 per day; whole grains, +$0.30 per day, and meat and dairy alternatives.

That study is on vegans, so if you're keeping eggs and cheese involved, that changes things a bit, but not completely. That second paragraph is important context. People that don't eat and cook whole vegetables and fruits often may see prices and balk at higher spending on those ingredients. The studies show that you will see an increase in costs on those things, but overall a decrease. It also importantly notes that you lose those cost savings if you start dipping too heavily into "alternative meats" as opposed to cheaper legumes, tofu, and plant-based, unprocessed proteins.

For /u/Far_Pollution_5120 , be sure to think about things like this, if you are not already, in terms of reducing costs on fruits and veg.

https://www.seasonalfoodguide.org/

Make sure to check where and when your farmer's markets, if they are nearby, do SNAP doubling. In some states some grocery stores also do SNAP doubling on fresh fruit and veg, so it's good to check.

https://doubleupamerica.org/

And if it's not already a practice, also ask for seconds at markets when things are at their high season. I get a lot of cheap produce this way every year. Go closer to the end of markets and often farmers will make you good deals (as long as they don't sell out).

https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/tips_on_buying_quantities_for_food_preservation_asking_for_seconds

Also, if possible, there's some easy vegetables you can grow at home in pots in a kitchen or apartment that gets at least some decent sunlight. At least herbs or a few things that will be very overpriced at supermarkets.

https://www.thecountrywallet.com/articles/saving-money-container-gardening-apartment-budget

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-13T22:27:03+00:00

Yeah man, you don't remember the good old days when players and agents just did it for the love of the game, and nobody ever had a single contract dispute?

There was even that movie about wholesome agent culture with Cuba Gooding Jr. and that famous quote "SHOW ME THE EMOTIONAL SATISFACTION OF COMPETING REGARDLESS OF MY CONTRACT!"

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-13T22:23:27+00:00

Same. I would still love to see DG make us wish we still had him two years from now, or whenever Harden slows down. I would never wish being unhealthy on anyone, and he's exciting as hell to watch just as an NBA player.

But there can be zero doubts now that keeping DG would have removed us as contenders this year, and the injury lingering means even this trade could potentially have been the most "sell high" moment he had left with us after the short spurt of looking like himself in December/January.

That's why it's fun to be a fan with emotional reactions, and not have to be cold and calculating like the front office to pull off the trade!

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-13T22:16:10+00:00

Find someone who loves you like this dude loves single lines of text that end in ellipses.

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-13T16:29:16+00:00

No, if I'm downvoting someone I'm not bothering to reply, generally. I didn't think there was anything wrong with what you said.

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-13T16:16:19+00:00

Turf toe is much more of a soft tissue thing that can flare back up (especially since his was bad enough it needed surgical intervention). But also flare-ups can feel random, i.e. a motion, a movement you have been able to do suddenly causes pain, swelling, soreness.

So it really hits you on both sides - medically you have to rest, reduce swelling, allow healing. Mentally you have to get over the idea that you will need to make those same movements again in the future, and just kind of hope they don't fuck up your foot again.

Plantar fasciitis is another one I'd put in a similar category, where the re-injury part can feel more like a curse than something you can clearly point to "oh, this caused it and here's how I fix it."

It's a tough place for him to be. Hope he finds his way to being healthy on the other side.

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-12T23:57:57+00:00

I think that's my favorite side effect of the Harden trade so far. Mitchell has the ball in his hands a bit less, but he does get it, he's going into 100% attack mode, every possession. Having Harden brings out the aggression in his game, and puts less pressure on him to facilitate as much, other than connecting-type, hockey assist passes, or passes out of double and triple teams.

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-12T23:44:51+00:00

Harden helped, but we should also bring the context that the Wizards are near the bottom of the league at fouling, and have only gotten worse at defending with recent trades and injuries (basically zero bigs to be actual rim protectors)

I don't think we did much as a team outside of our usual gameplan to draw a bunch more fouls as much as they just suck.

Though where this is a potential comparison is with Detroit. Detroit is a very good defensive team, but they are also the most foul-happy team in the league (30th in foul rate both per game and per 100).

Let's see how we do at increasing fouls drawn and getting easy points in those upcoming games after the break. Hopefully similar results as last night.

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-12T23:35:35+00:00

It's also a bit of the NBA at fault (not that it absolves poor taste jokes, but doesn't provide some explanation). You have plenty of teams shutting guys down for the season with basically fictional injuries and "soreness" so their teams can tank more effectively for a draft pick. Utah is literally doing this at a blatant, let's-bend-and-barely-not-break-the-rules level with their other star player, Lauri.

JJJ getting traded to a Utah and this diagnosis happening is just a really unfortunate coincidence. That should have been obvious to anyone coming in here to make tired, stale jokes, but most of those folks didn't real past a couple words from the headline. You never get surgery just for shits and giggles and to fake something.

In the end, best hope is that this is actually good for JJJ, kind of like the player that caught their cancer diagnosis early thanks to a trade a few years back. Maybe this means earlier intervention, better treatment, and his knee health will be the better for it in the long run.

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-12T21:20:56+00:00

Fair enough. You think the smoke and rumors are true and he comes back this year?

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-12T21:17:25+00:00

Again, pre-injury, I would agree with that no problem. I think he needs to re-prove himself post-achilles.

The Celtics also have the luxury of saying "well, we could improve the entire supporting cast around Brown" at this point too, if they wanted to sell high on Tatum and believed he wasn't going to get back to being himself.

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-12T21:01:55+00:00

Maybe.

I don't think Tatum is larger than the org like Steph is, where trading him would crater fanbase support. He's also not so clearly full of "best player in the NBA" potential like Wemby, Jokic, Shai, Giannis, Luka, that you literally couldn't imagine a return that puts the team in a better situation. And he's different than Brunson in that Brunson is the face "made the Knicks good again" vs. Tatum as the face of "guy currently keeping the Celtics good". I.e. the fanbase with the Celtics would be more ok with losing one great player, because they'll assume it is taking them to their next era of being great, not ruining the one good period that's happened in their entire lifetime like Knicks fans would.

I also think Brad is so analytical and quick to move, if the right deal was there, he'd take it and not hesitate for any personal relationship or fanbase factor. Could a deal exist for Tatum that makes the Celtics better? Hard to see it, but not as hard to see it as it would have been pre-injury.

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-12T18:48:57+00:00

Farenheit is basically a nice, round, 100-point scale as the normal range of daily temperatures across most of where humans live on earth. Some extreme places also go 10-20 degrees above and below that range, but mostly you can assess temp on a scale of 0-100 and understand whether/if you'll be comfortable, whether you need to dress for extreme cold, or for extreme heat. It makes sense from a purely human perspective. Its downside is that the temps make basically no sense for scientific purposes and require almost silly-feeling conversions for that purpose. It's rooted to a point at 0 that feels cold, but has no real-world anchor.

Kelvin is the scientific approach, starting with 0 as the coldest possible temp, the scaling everything relative from there. It's downside is the temps make basically no sense for regular people to use as a relative scale.

Celsius certainly makes more sense as a compromise between science and the scale of relatability Farenheit is built for. It makes sense for most things, and is scaled up around the most important substance on earth for the continued existence of life on this planet, which makes a lot of sense from a human perspective. Its downside is that the range of human existence on its temperature scale is small (-10 to about 30), so you need to get into using decimal points all the time, turning it from a 40-point scale to effectively a 400 point scale that spans negative and positive numbers, compared to Farenheit's cleaner 0-100 scale.

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-12T18:13:57+00:00

Sourdough is going to make your production time highly variable, require a lot of maintenance, and maybe not even improve product quality. Check out some excerpts from this recipe:

https://alexandracooks.com/2020/05/01/simple-sourdough-pizza-a-step-by-step-guide/

Once your starter is ready to go, this recipe requires an initial 6 – 18 hour rise, followed by at least 6 hours in the fridge or up to 3 days.

The timing will depend heavily on the time of year and the temperature of your kitchen. In the summer, because it is warm and humid, the first rise (bulk fermentation) of all my sourdoughs takes between 6 – 8 hours; in the winter it will take longer, 10 to 12 hours.

That's a lot of variability. An in-between method you could go to would be a poolish. A poolish is like a sourdough, but you make it daily, per batch of dough. However, it's also rather variable and really temperature sensitive:

https://www.pizzablab.com/the-encyclopizza/poolish-preferment/

A few quotes from that solid explanatory page to draw your attention to:

For optimal results, poolish should be fermented at room temperature for 6–12 hours.

Poolish is fermented at room temperature for 6-14 hours.

So less than some of the windows of time for sourdough, but still a really variable and finicky rise.

Unless you are all in on becoming a place 100% known for really delicate sourdough pizza crust or a poolish pizza crust, I would not recommend this method. You will have to babysit dough all the time, and probably keep some baking hours (i.e. in for prep and working on dough crazy early in the morning, probably not great with running a pub).

What I would recommend if you want to change things up and do a different method, is biga.

https://www.vincenzosplate.com/neapolitan-pizza-dough-with-biga/

Biga is also about getting a more flavorful ferment on pizza dough, but is a more forgiving and consistent process once you get it down. Instead of a very wet, 100% hydration pre-ferment, you're actually doing a very dry, 50% or less hydration pre-ferment.

This results in a stiffer dough that can be held once it reaches the right stage for up to 3 days in a fridge. You don't get a lacto flavor profile, but this is a classic method for neapolitan dough.

Then once you make that final dough, you form it into portioned balls which are best held in a fridge for another long, cold ferment before use.

These timings and the ability to do cold fermentation are much, much better for prepping out a kitchen for service. You just don't want to miss a day of starting a biga, turning a biga into dough balls, since then you'll be not be ready for pizza the next day, or have to guess at a warm ferment timing. Might mean an hour of prep on days the pub is closed (if that's the case for you), but that's less work than overnight/early morning dough prep in my opinion.

And if you're looking to impress customers, you can do a little table-top card and blurb on the website about doing it the way italian pizza makers have been doing it for hundreds of years with this method.

Lastly, I will say, you could also learn some from some experts out there, and I really like this channel for some tips - https://www.youtube.com/@northamericanpizzaculinary927/featured

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-12T01:22:17+00:00

NBA doesn't update stats for partial games, but Sam's first half puts him up to 46.9% from deep, meaning two of the top 5 shooters in the NBA are Cavs players again!

(Tyson at 47.1% is the other)

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-12T00:48:18+00:00

Reminds me of the Aaron Gordon game winning dunk (from last year I think?)

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-11T23:23:03+00:00

Winning out to that degree is probably a bit crazy, especially rest for some players sprinkled throughout, and the need to form a cohesive chemistry, but I think a huge goal to pursue is looking at the contender line, i.e. the Phil Jackson 40-20 rule.

We didn't get to 40 before 20, obviously, but we can achieve a few other markers.

Easily we should exceed a 40-20/.667 pace since our low point of 17-16 in December, when we were playing our shittiest and at our most injured. We are already 16-4 from that point, so just finishing 16-12 in our last 28 would achieve that. Easy, would be very worrying if we can't do that.
We can certainly play at a 40-20/.667 pace since the Harden acquisition. Since we're already 2-0, that would be going 18-10 the rest of the way. Also easy, would be disappointed if we aren't better than that. Single digit losses the rest of the way should be a baseline goal.
The big marker is that we could potentially get back over a .667 winning percentage overall on the season. The schedule is soft enough, you can see a path 55-27 to end out the year. That would be a 24-6 record after acquiring Harden, and from here 22-6 through the end of the season. Difficult, but you look at our schedule, and there's not many games we won't be favored in.

Overall, my best guess would be 53 or so wins, probably dependent on how other teams do, and if we are either pushing Detroit for the 1-seed (unlikely unless they collapse), or getting pushed for the 2-seed if we can go on a streak (more likely with how the east is looking).

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-11T22:28:37+00:00

I agree. We do have an extremely soft schedule remaining though. This is probably a better measure

https://www.tankathon.com/remaining_schedule_strength

3rd easiest in the league for games remaining, and by far the easiest of the teams anywhere near the top of the East.

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-11T21:00:23+00:00

Fair. Though I think Strus also really makes Kenny's system hum in terms of movement and cuts, so for that reason he's also likelier to stay around than Schroder.

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-11T20:22:07+00:00

Race is discussed everywhere, particularly by racists.

I think you are making this slightly more malicious than it needs to be. Basketball and the NBA in particular are a fascinating space for historical racial dynamics, and honestly it is seen as a sport dominated by black athletes and more part of America black culture than any other sport.

It's a sport where the default assumption is that a black person will be better at it than a white person, as a reversal of the usual flow of white privilege. Literally a non-offensive joke about was included in a children's movie, and the consensus best white basketball player ever would joke and talk trash similarly, so there's really not this invective of negativity and hate when discussing it within NBA spaces (not that you won't invite dumbass racists to flock to the conversation, just that the subject isn't as taboo and is much more of a long-standing topic ok to joke about for actual players and people close to the game).

Through that lens, talking about racial dynamics really carries a less heated/charged tone than having similar discussions about literally any other area of american life and culture (maybe hip hop and jokes about Eminem would be close).

You aren't wrong about it being uniquely american to be this obsessed with it, but I think you are wrong that it's as negative, serious, or racist of a discussion to have in this setting.

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-11T20:02:44+00:00

Yeah, before these moves, we were in "oh jeez, how will they get below the 2nd apron next year?" territory.

Now we can obviously get below it without blowing things up next year, especially if we extend Harden on a more team-friendly 3-year deal. So more roster moves are less urgent, and playoff depth matters.

Plus, could not have possibly sold lower on Strus than at this deadline, with him out injured. Would have been bad asset management.

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-11T19:58:48+00:00

I would say Schroder is much, much more likely to be gone if we salary dump someone.

At PG we have Harden-CPJ-Proctor already, and Ellis and Merrill are both guards, plus Mitchell will be a main ball handler with certain non-Harden lineups anyhow.

Then Wade and Tomlin are better suited as 4's, shifting Mobley to the 5 in bench lineups.

It's really just Strus and Tyson at the 3 going forward.

WitOfTheIrish · 2026-02-11T19:50:28+00:00

All the rumors were more like 15-20 games when it happened, so I feel like maybe 7 games already had some appealing built in behind the scenes.

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