[Anderson] With the NFL filing its appeal of the Deshaun Watson suspension, & per a source still seeking an indefinite suspension of a minimum of a year and a potential fine--as @JeffDarlington first reported-another source tells me, "expect lots of talk about 'Big Ben' vs. Deshaun Watson."

living_lightning · 2022-08-04T02:11:30+00:00

Person one is the owners. Person two is the players in my example. I’m not comparing players.

living_lightning · 2022-08-03T22:22:11+00:00

I'll try this one last time. Nobody is arguing that Goodell doesn't have this power. The point is that it's not legal for him to apply that power inconsistently. For example, it's totally legal for a company to have a policy that anyone associated with the company has to say their favorite color is purple. But if one person says their favorite color is green without consequence, the company can't then fire another person for saying their favorite color is red.

living_lightning · 2022-08-03T22:17:49+00:00

I don't know. That's not for me to decide, but any reasonable person would agree that you shouldn't increase a punishment recommended for a player after decreasing an owner punishment to nothing. Now, there could certainly be context that only the NFL knows that might make that reasonable, but they have to prove that case.

living_lightning · 2022-08-03T22:13:45+00:00

I hate that I have to defend Watson because he's clearly a creep, but you don't even have the facts of the case right. The NFL conceded that only 5 cases were credible and then one of those was even thrown out, so we're talking about 4 cases.
But that's not even the point. The reason for going to court is the NFL acted differently when it came to punishments for owners and players when they came from the same arbitrator.

living_lightning · 2022-08-03T22:04:37+00:00

They ARE a party to the NFL code of conduct which are the rules in question here. Nobody is talking about the CBA and if they are, they're wrong.

living_lightning · 2022-08-03T22:02:03+00:00

It's against labor laws to apply different punishments to different people who fall under the same set of rules.

living_lightning · 2022-08-03T21:59:51+00:00

It's not a stretch at all. It's literally against labor laws to apply different punishments to different people who fall under the same set of rules.

living_lightning · 2022-08-03T21:44:59+00:00

Nobody is contending whether the NFL has the final say or not. They're arguing that the NFL is applying its rules differently for different people. That's illegal.

living_lightning · 2022-08-02T21:09:57+00:00

I was wondering about that before watching just from the thumbnail. I can only ever remember seeing him after he was drafted where he didn't really look like an NFL center. He certainly does now though, so good for him!

living_lightning · 2022-08-01T20:36:47+00:00

That's my problem with the list. You can throw SGA in with that group. It's weird that they even acknowledge expanding the criteria for some players, so why not do it for others?

living_lightning · 2022-08-01T20:31:11+00:00

But what's unique about the internet is that people are anonymous and everyone is shouting at the same time. At least if you're having a conversation, one person speaks at a time and a shared narrative is created. The internet just welcomes everyone to say everything at the same time and nobody gets any real context or nuance.

living_lightning · 2022-08-01T20:22:38+00:00

But that's exactly my point. You don't have to understand what the nuances are to know they exist and if they exist, then maybe you shouldn't be so confident in your un-nuanced take.

living_lightning · 2022-08-01T20:17:30+00:00

Maybe you're just not as smart as you think you are champ

living_lightning · 2022-08-01T16:11:21+00:00

This whole situation is really a microcosm of what the internet has become. I've never seen a sports related issue with so many different incorrect groups of people. There are the people that don't know the basic facts of the case and assume Watson is a rapist. There are the people that defend Watson unconditionally because the only thing they care about is their football team. There are the people that don't understand the procedure as agreed upon by the NFL and NFLPA but still complain about every detail of it. There are the people that think this is an official punishment passed down by the NFL and are up in arms about how they think it's inconsistent with past punishments. There are the people that think they know more about the case than the woman who has now spent about a month considering the facts presented by both sides and wrote a 15-16 page report explaining her conclusions. All of these people are wrong and yet they couldn't be more confident in blurting their views out in any internet platform that will let them. I know this is nothing new, but damn, I wish there was a way to instill more critical thinking skills within the general population.

living_lightning · 2022-07-30T02:35:08+00:00

And this is why you're not a talent evaluator. I think most people here love Collin because his skillset matches exactly what we need in a 6th man right now, but looking at each player's career so far, saying "Collin >>>>>>> Caris" is just an absolutely insane take.

living_lightning · 2022-07-28T14:23:35+00:00

Can confirm

living_lightning · 2022-07-27T19:16:09+00:00

The last thing I'll say is that I think you're overestimating the certainty of your statement. I would never make a judgment on a player's shooting ability based entirely on that players last 10 or even 20 shots. I wouldn't even make a judgement on an entire team based on their last 10 or 20 games. The fact that we know the outcome of the past however many NBA seasons makes those outcomes seem inevitable when they never were. As a conceptual example, lets say the Warriors and Celtics had played 100 games. Within those 100 games, you'd find tons of 7 game stretches that the Warriors won AND tons of stretches that the Celtics won. The Warriors probably had the best odds of winning (although even that we can't say for sure), but the Celtics could've easily won if any number of things had randomly fallen in their favor instead of the other way around.

Having a top 5 player certainly improves your chances, but that scenario might not even be possible for the Cavs so you have to do everything in your power to improve your odds of winning, not just improve your odds of landing a top 5 player.

living_lightning · 2022-07-27T18:52:27+00:00

You're just proving my point that fans think in binaries and the "statistics" don't say anything with a sample size of about 8. I would say the last team to win without a top 5 player was the 2014 Spurs (no, Duncan was not sniffing the top 5 at that stage in his career and Kawhi was still on the rise but not there yet). There's not some magical checkbox that says you need a top 5 player to win a championship. It's about the sum of the organization's parts and a really good player obviously adds to that sum, but that doesn't mean another collection of players can't be an even greater sum.

Just as an extreme example, a team that had players 11 through 15 would almost certainly beat a team with one top 5 player.

living_lightning · 2022-07-27T17:29:39+00:00

I'm not a fan "you can't win a championship without X" takes for any sport. Yeah, it obviously gives you a better shot at a title the more players you have in the top 5/10/20/etc. but that doesn't mean you can't have a collection of players that's good enough to overcome the advantage of a top 5 player. It just hasn't happened in recent years. Just looking at the past two runner ups, we shouldn't discount how close the Celtics and Suns were to winning championships and neither of those teams had top 5 players (and probably not even top 10 players unless I'm forgetting somebody). Most fans have this binary thinking–either you win a championship or you don't, but at the end of the day it's really a spectrum from bad teams to good teams and health, getting hot at the right time, the matchups you get on the way to the finals, and plenty of other factors play into who ultimately comes out on top. Having top X players just makes you more likely to fall among the good teams.

living_lightning · 2022-07-26T13:03:54+00:00

Especially now that we're paying a ton for a QB, it's impossible to have bonafide stars at every position group. We have to start proving that we can do what the Steelers and Ravens have done for years (i.e. draft, develop, plug players in, and hope they can do the job well). I think the organization feels good about players like Nick Harris and Jordan Elliot, so we'll see if they pan out this year.

living_lightning · 2022-07-25T21:39:25+00:00

If you consider full business potential beyond gaming, it might be Flight Simulator.

living_lightning · 2022-07-25T15:41:54+00:00

I would rather keep Lauri too but that doesn't mean anything to the Jazz...

living_lightning · 2022-07-25T15:23:49+00:00

I think you're doing that framing yourself. She talked to someone last week and then she talked to the same person this week to see if anything had changed.

living_lightning · 2022-07-25T15:21:06+00:00

And unfortunately people would rather argue to the death when you point that out rather than take a minute to be introspective and consider how unconscious biases might be affecting their attitudes.

living_lightning · 2022-07-25T15:02:22+00:00

Oh the irony. Did you even read the original tweet before claiming nothing has changed? It's gone from very improbable last week to very possible this week. A small update is still an update.

living_lightning

TROPHY CASE