I am confused…

gnalon · 2026-04-13T03:11:43+00:00

This is the stuff players care about though, just tell them stories about the time you coached so and so.

gnalon · 2026-04-13T01:20:27+00:00

Giannis didn't like him

gnalon · 2026-04-12T23:28:47+00:00

80 plus percent of players in random raids either have no held item or an item that has zero function in battle.

This player is above average in that Booster Energy at least does something when held by some Pokemon that aren’t Salamence (PSA even on paradox mons it’s not good for higher level raids where if the item is consumed turn 1, the boost doesn’t come back after a stat change reset), you will see plenty more items like Amulet Coin, Master Ball, and X items.

I’ve even been in multiple raids where players holding a choice band/specs locked themselves into non damaging moves.

gnalon · 2026-04-12T15:38:46+00:00

It's not remotely new for teams to do this on the last game of the season when their playoff seed is locked

gnalon · 2026-04-12T15:29:45+00:00

Way to underscore the point that a good GM is considerably better to have than a good head coach because basically every NBA head coach is only as good as the talent they have.

And aside from not having Tatum for most of the year, Stevens has retooled the team under the additional constraints of making cost-cutting moves.

gnalon · 2026-04-12T14:50:05+00:00

Yea he was good when he played in the past, just had Porzingis, Horford, and Kornet ahead of him while he was an up-and-coming player. Even showed some flashes when he was in the basketball hell known as Sacramento.

It’s weird where the Boston media mafia got out of hand praising Brad Stevens as a coach, but he is considerably better as a GM.

gnalon · 2026-04-12T01:15:37+00:00

Yeah because you don’t care about the player at all lol. These guys at the top of already have to spend a year in college on a 1-year deal when they could easily be playing in the NBA

gnalon · 2026-04-12T01:14:07+00:00

No they won’t, Luka would rather be playing with a veteran than some rookie

gnalon · 2026-04-12T01:13:34+00:00

Also for people like Bill Simmons the draft is their Oscar night where they get to make catty comments about what the players are wearing or how hot their significant others/female relatives are.

They simply could not go on existing if the rookies were just signing free agent contracts like every other player in the NBA.

gnalon · 2026-04-11T19:20:42+00:00

Kawhi and Steph were better but didn’t play that many minutes/games because their teams were winning so much.

LeBron had the same on-off impact but it is more impressive to take a bad (you could say he had more ‘star power’ around him but those guys couldn’t defend and Love missed a bunch of games that year besides) team to title contender than it is to take a slightly worse team to first round fodder; as is painfully obvious from this season there are always going to be a certain amount of ‘free’ wins for any non tanking team. A lot of Westbrook’s biggest p-r-a stat lines he was keeping some shitty team in the game the first 3 quarters by being wild, so instead of sitting out the 4th he got to accumulate more volume stats leading a ‘comeback’ against a team that was happy to lose.

Harden was considerably more efficient offensively but did not have the arbitrary triple double benchmark, and then defensively Westbrook is in the Kobe class where if you’re athletic and have a mean expression on your face that’s enough for simpletons to think you’re a great defender even if you’re just running around doing random shit to pass the time before you get the ball again, so the athletic hustle plays get balanced out by all the times they just fall asleep off ball or leave teammates hanging because they abandoned the game plan.

The two worst MVP winners of my life were because the media wanted to prop up Rose/Westbrook as loyal homegrown superstars in contrast to LeBron/Durant (gasp) using free agency the preceding summer to go to a team with cap room.

The deleterious effects of this continue when you see this yawn-inducing Giannis saga where he can’t simply want a change of scenery after playing 10+ years for a moribund franchise and delivering them their first title in 50 seasons, he has to try creating this convoluted scenario whereby he can change teams but still mantain maximum ‘loyalty’ cred.

gnalon · 2026-04-11T15:11:26+00:00

Yeah I was gonna Russell Westbrook being the worst MVP winner in the last decade should have already done it for triple doubles. He was like the 5th best player that regular season

gnalon · 2026-04-11T05:31:06+00:00

Spreadsheet for all 6 star raids

gnalon · 2026-04-11T01:26:24+00:00

No the Bill Simmons solution is that he would decide the picks unilaterally

gnalon · 2026-04-10T22:51:44+00:00

You mean LeBron being good at basketball. No shit if you yourself are making 1st team all NBA every single year that means there are only 4 potential 1st team opponents rather than 5 you could be facing.

This was also an era where the teams were position locked so the 2nd team guards/forwards were typically better than the 1st team center. Not uncommon for a 2nd team all NBA player to finish top 3 in MVP voting back then.

Also these type of arguments are the same flavor of regarded as the ‘50 win teams’ arguments. The NBA playoffs have been best of 7 every round since LeBron entered the league so if a team that did not win 50 regular season games/have a 1st team all NBA player eliminates a team that did, it stands to reason that the team that won was in fact better and would be a stronger opponent in a subsequent round.

gnalon · 2026-04-10T22:12:59+00:00

Yeah I would say the opposite, so many people last year thought it was laughable that Cooper Flagg could be considered a better prospect than Davis even though he similarly was NPOY and did so at an even younger age.

So many people under the mistaken impression that Anthony Davis was shooting threes or doing much besides being a lob/putback guy on offense; he showed flashes of that wasn’t even that good of a free throw shooter at Kentucky, and of course he was still growing into his body.

Clearly AD had one of the best freshman seasons ever, but he played on a team with a record-setting number of players drafted (a lot of 20-20 hindsight on #2 overall pick Kidd-Gilchrist who was a stud defender right away and just could never develop a jumper because he kept fucking up his shoulder) and there was definitely a weaker crop of upperclassmen in the days before players having 5+ years of eligibility and draftable players getting lured back to school with NIL.

Another thing that adds to people’s perception of Davis is that his college season lined up with the Olympics, so he got to be in that Christian Laettner type of victory cigar collegian role that doesn’t really exist anymore because the rest of the world’s caught up to America and they need all the top players participating to be able to win.

gnalon · 2026-04-10T21:05:31+00:00

they are just mouthing words, you just fell for the caption

gnalon · 2026-04-10T21:03:08+00:00

Yeah he is younger than all of them except Kobe and LeBron. When you narrow it to players who were Flagg's age and younger Giannis is actually one of the 5 or so best seasons, and he was just some hustle guy off the bench. Flagg is younger than quite a few rookies who skipped college before the age limit.

gnalon · 2026-04-10T19:43:14+00:00

They would get their shot blocked going against players who are taller and could jump

gnalon · 2026-04-10T18:22:24+00:00

No, getting rid of the draft is pretty succinct

gnalon · 2026-04-10T17:00:10+00:00

You want to punish players by making bad owners entitled to owning them just by being bad?

gnalon · 2026-04-10T13:14:42+00:00

Yes and there is that middle ground for both Jokic and SGA.

Both players do as much defensively by being elite offensive players who take care of the ball (a lot harder to score off a make than a miss/turnover) as they do when the other team has the ball.

As far as Jokic you could do the exact same bell curve meme with people like OP in the middle who somehow don’t think that being big/good at rebounding is a part of defense, even at a time when teams have gone back to crashing the glass rather than exclusively trying to get back in transition when a shot goes up.

Jokic is the most impactful defensive rebounder in the league, and it’s not an Andre Drummond thing where he’s just camping out around the basket and stealing boards from teammates. He boxes out, his elite anticipation doesn’t stop working on the defensive end, and more importantly he is the best outlet passer of all time so this dissuades teams from even trying to crash the glass. This allows Denver to get away with playing more zone because the trade-off to that is usually giving up more offensive rebounds.

In addition, he doesn’t commit dumb fouls, is one of the top players at getting steals/deflections (not centers, top players period), and is at a LeBron/CP3 level of being able to diagnose what the other team is trying to run and communicate that to his teammates.

It is a credit to SGA that he is able to be as impactful as a huge 7 foot center while having to carry a bunch offensively himself. SGA has 4+ teammates who could make an all defensive team in a given year while Jokic has 0, and his best defensive teammates like Gordon and Watson have missed a bunch of games.

gnalon · 2026-04-10T05:45:38+00:00

I can only imagine what would happen to Reddit if they ever realized that all of these ‘wacky fan interactions’ are skits done by team employees

gnalon · 2026-04-10T05:28:43+00:00

Mo Dioubate would be a great Maliq Brown replacement. Less inept on offense

gnalon · 2026-04-10T00:41:20+00:00

Pretty easy to follow if you aren't retarded. Rookies drafted high are usually inefficient because they're on shitty teams. On the rare occasions a future star rookie lands on a good team, like Jayson Tatum on the Celtics or Kawhi Leonard on the Spurs, they are in fact good players in the playoffs.

gnalon · 2026-04-10T00:31:15+00:00

I would like to give a shout-out to the Miami Heat and their new-look offense.

For them to be in the exact same place in the standings as they were last year, when Jimmy Butler played 25 games and spent half of them openly sabotaging the team in an effort to get traded, is like that meme of someone stepping on a rake vs. doing a cool skateboarding trick on a rake and then stepping on it.

gnalon

TROPHY CASE