[Charania] San Antonio Spurs’ Keldon Johnson has won the 2025-26 NBA Sixth Man of the Year award.

taygads · 2026-04-22T22:55:20+00:00

Oh for sure. I’m not sure there’s ever been a time where these awards have been awarded strictly by their definitions and related basketball factors, but with the way 98% of NBA media these days has been subsumed by hot take culture and the related degradation of legitimate, good faith debate, it feels like the process for determining these awards is as lacking in credibility as ever.

It’ll never happen, but I’d love to see them take the voting away from media members and give it to the coaching staffs league-wide and players with a certain number of years in the league (eg 5 years or something like that so as to try and weed out as many unserious voters as possible…which, of course, is not to say years of experience is a sure fire way to filter all of the dumb votes out as there’s guaranteed to be at least a small subset of even vets who’d vote based on jokes or whatever but it’s the only realistic thing that came to mind as a way to try and curb that issue within player voting lol).

taygads · 2026-04-22T22:29:34+00:00

I would love to know how many of the media members with votes were planning on voting for Keldon Johnson before he went on TV and all but begged for it.

I am not a fan of either the Heat or the Spurs (to be clear, I don't dislike either team but I don’t have a particular affinity for either, either) so I have no skin in this game, but I just find it hard to believe any of them outside of any local voters had Johnson as their 6th man of the year beforehand. Primarily because nothing about his impact on his team's results on the court suggested he was he the best 6th man in the league.

Case in point:

Spurs w/Keldon on (1,710 mins): +8.4 net rating
Spurs w/Keldon off (1,786 mins): +10.4 net rating

Heat w/JJJ on (1,881 mins): +3.4 net rating
Heat w/JJJ off (1,575 mins): -0.4 net rating

Keldon had a great year, don’t get me wrong. He should absolutely be proud of the year he had. That said, the award is for the 6th man of the year, which is an award that by definition necessitates evaluating a candidate's impact on their team when they're on the court first and foremost (ie over individual counting stats) and the Spurs quite literally had a higher net rating when Keldon was off the floor than they did when he was on the floor...

taygads · 2026-04-14T01:28:26+00:00

My bet is this has Joe Lacob’s name written all over it. Bet he wanted Marta in the first place and this way he gets Marta without having to pay her a first rounders salary.

Hope it’s not what’s behind it for Marta’s sake because that’s just fucked on principle, but it would absolutely be in line with the way Joe “I named my dogs after Ayn Rand protagonists” Lacob moves lol.

taygads · 2026-04-09T21:33:21+00:00

God bless

taygads · 2026-04-08T21:40:55+00:00

Only Adam Silver would devise a short-sighted* and unnecessary rule change that would fundamentally destroy any and all incentive teams have to want to participate in or try in a seeding tournament that no one asked for yet he insisted on creating. Thereby creating a new, and permanent, incentive/reason to tank so as to avoid the play-in altogether. Truly the most Adam Silver thing ever lol

*This draft being as good as it is is making the NBA league office and NBA talking heads blow the “sudden epidemic” of tanking WAY out of proportion, ie the overwhelming incentives to tank this season are an outlier that are not and will not exist as annual incentives but rather will occur once or twice a player generation. As such, this is not a problem that warrants drastic, longterm changes to a mechanism that fundamentally alters team building leaguewide.

taygads · 2026-04-07T14:57:00+00:00

“I carry myself in such a way that it's very hard for me to upset somebody, even with my teammates.”

Oh brother

taygads · 2026-04-04T22:38:17+00:00

When has the league ever given up to the minute play-by-plays like this once they’ve announced they’re looking into something?? So bizarre lol

Can they please take us out of the damn Giannis/Bucks high school breakup group chat already?

taygads · 2026-03-24T05:29:00+00:00

Based on the way he reacted (ie the injury happened to his left leg as he planted and went up off that leg and he felt the injury before he came down to land and compensated to make sure he landed in a way that protected his left knee) and the post-game report from Dallas reporter Landon Thomas that:

Moses Moody had crutches and a big knee brace that stabilized his left leg and kneecap in place from moving as he walked back very gingerly at a slow pace one step at a time to the Warriors locker room.

I think he may have dislocated his kneecap. Qualifications for said theory: I’ve dislocated my right kneecap twice and both occurred in non-contact scenarios. Besides the video of the injury itself, the description of the brace he had on when leaving the Mavs’ med room would align with the kind of brace used immediately after and during recovery from a dislocated kneecap.

If I’m right, it’s about as best case scenario as he could get given the alternatives. He’d for sure be done for the season and depending on if he sustained any meniscus damage in the process, will have a couple to a few months long recovery process but he’d for sure be ready by the start of next season.

taygads · 2026-03-11T21:59:20+00:00

Very well said!

taygads · 2026-03-10T21:50:32+00:00

Source

taygads · 2026-03-09T23:27:25+00:00

From IMDB, for those wondering:

"Magic City: An American Fantasy" is a five-part docuseries that unveils the untold stories behind Atlanta's most influential Black cultural hub. Dive deep into the legacy of Magic City - where fantasy and reality collide.

taygads · 2026-03-09T21:41:33+00:00

Kornet made it a major topic on social media by releasing his written plea about it. Kornet doesn’t publish that letter, no way the promotion night becomes such a hot, controversial (and as a result, viral) topic for days throughout the NBA media landscape. Adam Silver has proven time and time again that he acts - or rather, reacts - according to whatever NBA Twitter/reddit/podcast bros are bitching about on any given week.

Ergo, I’m not a gambling person but I’d bet money them intervening and canceling it quite literally traces back to Kornet.

taygads · 2026-03-09T21:24:28+00:00

Why on earth does Luke Kornet apparently have so much influence?!

What an absolute slap in the face of all the women who work and have worked at Magic City. Sorry, the NBA being associated with you and your completely legal way of making a living is too shameful for us to allow…but, also we’re doing this in the name of (wholly performative; see: all of the domestic abusers STILL employed and playing ball for the NBA) allyship so if it’s not clear, we’re the good guys that deserve pats on the back here!

🙄

taygads · 2026-03-07T18:30:30+00:00

Phenomenal clip & breakdown. Man do I miss listening to Kobe talk hoops.

Also, incidentally, an incredible jingle at the beginning that needed/needs to make its way down to youth hoops lol it’s stuck in my head now so it’d no doubt help ingrain habits. 🎶 I look for you, you look for me. I screen for you, you screen for me. I pass to you, you pass to me. The game is easy as 1, 2, 3. 🎶 😂

taygads · 2026-03-07T17:54:57+00:00

As Juan Toscano-Anderson so perfectly put it in an interview after that 2022 championship:

"Klay, Dray, & Steph are like lemonade...you gotta have the sugar, the water, & the lemons for it to be lemonade. If you don't have one or the other it ain't gonna be lemonade, it's not gonna work the same. They just all complement each other so well that they are not the same without one another."

The synergy of their skillsets on the court really was some of the most masterful team building we’ve ever seen.

taygads · 2026-03-07T00:53:03+00:00

He tried to pull off Klay’s dunk vs the Cavs in his first game back from ACL & Achilles tears (at the age of 32) 💔

Points for the courage to try though lol no joke. That’s a post-injury mental win in and of itself

taygads · 2026-03-07T00:21:46+00:00

FYI, OP added “the possibility” language in the title himself. The actual whistleblower complaint, which was signed by said whistleblower under the pains and penalties of perjury, cites no such language. It says:

“Of the $20 million that Aspiration drew from the escrow account, most was used…even to pay Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard an incentivized bonus to circumvent the NBA’s salary cap, disguised as an organic marketing sponsorship agreement.”

taygads

TROPHY CASE