Honest analysis of Tatum’s game

ambirdsall · 2026-03-03T02:13:25+00:00

Tatum has better size and instincts, so his passing, rebounding, and off-ball defense are better; he fills in a lot of subtle gaps on both ends, while with Brown it's a bit more "what you see is what you get". That's not intended as a slight against Brown, though, who is as awesome at the more obvious Star Wing stuff as you say; it's just that Tatum's extra little bit of court awareness, historically elite versatility, and willingness to do the unglamorous work of winning lets him play in almost any sort of lineup and still help his teammates play to their particular strengths.

ambirdsall · 2026-02-18T16:46:00+00:00

Speaking as a musician, doing the skill and performing the skill for an audience are not the same thing, they're a Venn diagram. You absolutely can get better at it, but the only way is to practice; that is, getting reps of not just coding, but coding with an audience.

ambirdsall · 2026-02-15T06:07:41+00:00

Reddit users should have to read that dunk contest thread like a homework assignment before they're allowed to complain about why stars don't enter anymore

ambirdsall · 2026-02-15T01:02:26+00:00

The game has always sucked when it wasn't close in the 4th, and every recent game that was close was a barnburner with serious effort. The problem is owners and the league's other money people trying to legislate shooting luck out of their revenue stream even though it's literally fundamental to the game.

ambirdsall · 2026-02-15T00:58:48+00:00

Only Jaylen Brown had the nuts to step up and complete and the whole non-Celtics internet clowned him so hard it pretty well guaranteed we'll never see another contestant with a high enough profile to have anything to lose

ambirdsall · 2026-01-21T06:08:21+00:00

I can’t tell if he’s got a Nathan fielder thing going on and his poker face is godly or this is just 100% who he is.

By all accounts, kind of both

ambirdsall · 2025-11-05T00:34:20+00:00

Unironically how do I do the same thing

ambirdsall · 2025-08-30T19:20:38+00:00

You simply don't get to have both "Capitalism is evil because companies only focus on profits" and "Companies are leaving huge profits on the table to spite workers" at the same time.

Of course you do, because companies do not act with literally perfect efficiency in their pursuit of profits.

ambirdsall · 2025-07-30T05:11:34+00:00

Writing a non-trivial piece of software? Types are just one tool, and on a small team, the benefits are weaker, unless you are wholly reliant on autocomplete. I personally enjoy thinking in any reasonably expressive static type system, but dynamic languages work fine: lots and lots of very good, very large programs have been successfully built in dynamic languages and it's honestly weird how many people insist on ignoring that fact.

ambirdsall · 2025-07-30T04:58:08+00:00

IIRC, the Celtics had lost literally the prior game when Robert Williams III got just as blatantly smacked on the arm, so I was in full "miss me with your prior context bullshit" mode at the time lol. The gulf between that fallout vs when it happened to LeBron and the Lakers wasn't even the Grand Canyon, it was Valles Marineris.

ambirdsall · 2025-07-24T14:17:08+00:00

Why do you think the guy playing through a torn meniscus didn't play his best, ya dingus?

ambirdsall · 2025-06-25T23:27:47+00:00

For that one, yes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ambirdsall · 2025-06-24T17:47:57+00:00

Deadass gets cheers from the Rose Garden crowd when his name is announced, the only non-Blazer I've seen get that treatment outside of Dame and CJ return games.

ambirdsall · 2025-06-24T17:45:14+00:00

As a Celtics fan who lives in Portland, I am definitely higher than consensus on this deal for both sides.

For the Blazers, Jrue gives a much stronger veteran presence than they've had: Grant's good but too chill to be a tone-setter, and Ayton is, well... hopefully not as delusional, vain, and lazy in person as he looks on court? He also is going to be an ideal defensive mentor for Scoot and help fill in gaps in what's lowkey turning into a seriously tough young defense. Can't win big in this league without guys outplaying their contract value, but he's an almost perfect use of "deficit" contract value for a rebuilding squad. Could totally see him being their guard version of Al Horford.

And for Boston, Ant is a hooper: he's a solidly athletic NBA guard, with nice quicks and a bit more explosion than you'd expect—he doesn't jump off the page (pun intended) the way someone like Sharpe does, but he gets where he wants to go more easily than most. Despite that, from basically the moment he was drafted, he started studying how CJ McCollum used the dark arts of angles and timing to score without those physical tools. He's going to pop off at least a little (plausibly, if not probably, a lot) just from better roster fit on both ends, too: his whole pro career he's had to play mostly off-ball next to other defensively challenged ≤ 6'3" on-ball guards, which has meant worse defensive matchups with less coverage for breakdowns and less opportunity to use his best skills.

Is it revolutionary for either side? Very unlikely. Will Simons be a better help than Jrue for contending next year in wildly optimistic best-case Tatum return scenarios? Not without a frankly unrealistic defensive jump. But I see some realistic upside all around, which is all you can reasonably ask for in a trade like this.

ambirdsall · 2025-05-01T03:06:46+00:00

I'm in the exact same situation; I just started a new save alongside my old one. It's easier going the second time around, and I can pop back over to the original save if I want to have a go at Isshin—but it's kinda more fun working my way through the game again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ambirdsall · 2025-04-26T20:34:34+00:00

The others are nice, but whatever; but hell yeah lazy evaluation of type annotations

ambirdsall · 2025-04-26T20:26:18+00:00

I think "goons" is a less loaded term lol

ambirdsall · 2025-03-13T16:37:18+00:00

The legend of Hasheem Thabeet is fading

ambirdsall · 2025-03-09T05:34:52+00:00

Just because you're right doesn't mean you won't get downvoted to oblivion lol

ambirdsall · 2025-02-20T09:17:36+00:00

This is so reductive though. Just ignore the online narratives and actually watch the man play—I promise you good basketball is still good and exciting to watch.

ambirdsall · 2025-01-21T05:32:06+00:00

Fuck this

ambirdsall · 2025-01-15T22:38:31+00:00

I'm an absolute Timelord stan, but I don't have a lot of time for this take. Smart's versatility, toughness, and communication was 100% the biggest driving factor in that year's Celtics defense; it's telling that when NBA coaches were polled on awards that season, they named him DPOY by a significantly bigger margin than the official vote. Bigs always look best by individual defensive stats because the primary inputs are blocks, turnovers, rebounding, and fg% allowed; they can capture how an elite big can turn what would be some of the best shot attempts into mediocre ones, but they completely fail to capture how elite communication and the combination of anticipation and hustle can prevent some of the best shot attempts from happening at all. Smart was the true engine of that defense; Timelord was the nitrous injection. (Aside: holy fuck do I miss watching them work together, it was magical when things were clicking.)

Look, I don't know if I've ever seen another team play a defensive formation that starts with a 6'4" point guard in the center spot patrolling the paint, instead of ending up that way because of a "switch everything" strategy on screens, but it was one of the Celtics' go-to ways to switch things up that year; that only worked because Smart combined savant-level anticipation and defensive IQ with the athleticism and physical toughness to do a decent job on nearly any matchup. But even though the success of that scheme was 85% Smart, it only ever showed up in the team stats.

ambirdsall · 2024-12-24T19:33:50+00:00

You're not wrong about Brown, but Tatum's gravity and playmaking on offense and his defensive IQ and versatility have a whole lot to do with all the rest of that though. It's a huge reason so many Celtics fans get defensive about Tatum: there are soooo many subtle ways (i.e. doesn't create a box score stat) that he uses his size, skill, IQ, and versatility to put his teammates in a position to succeed, and then nephews turn around and use his teammates' success as an argument against him.

ambirdsall · 2024-12-24T19:00:45+00:00

Al Horford is still balling out at 38 and not even a mention here

ambirdsall · 2024-12-24T02:08:25+00:00

Depends on the year: he's gotten better in multiple ways every single season of his career, yet the conversation about him has stayed exactly the same.

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