NBA Playoffs Thread

[pwaldo]

Luka Doncic is unbelievable.

Yeah I was a skeptic and didn't quite get the hype for the guy last year but I can't really say anything bad about him. I mean what more does anybody else want him to do right now?

[WilyWestbrook0]

Giannis is the one I was wrong on. He and the Bucks still need some bigger playoff performances, but I was skeptical he would even be a star in the league a few years ago when people were saying he was the next big thing. I figured he'd be better than Wiggins (who I correctly predicted wouldn't be near as good as the 2014 hype made him out to be), but I definitely didn't think Giannis would be an MVP level player.

[pwaldo]

Yeah the majority of these guys who are hyped either don't pan out or get injured and become a shell of themselves (Rose, Blake etc) so I'm always skeptical of a guy being propped up as the next big thing. I've been hearing that since Harold Minor and 99% of them become duds.

[WilyWestbrook0]

All Wednesday games have been postponed. The Bucks boycotted to protest the recent police shooting in of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, and the NBA went ahead and postponed the other two games scheduled as well:

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/...cision-boycott

I'm sure there are 937,572 opinions about this, but the NBA is a league with many minorities, and this is the general sentiment right now, so I'm not surprised. Whether we like it or not, it's not the 1990s anymore -- it's more like the 1960s -- and this stuff is happening. It will be interesting to see how long the boycott lasts, and if it affects the Finals and any potential 2020 championship status. This may be the first year we don't have a title -- it's certainly possible the way things are looking now.

[WilyWestbrook0]

Playoffs will resume Saturday after strong debate:

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/...esume-saturday

Reportedly Udonis Haslem helped sway George Hill, and LeBron James, who ultimately flip flopped on his original position:

https://clutchpoints.com/nba-news-ud...esday-meeting/

Michael Jordan also played a key role in mediating:

https://www.blazersedge.com/2020/8/2...owners-meeting

Draymond Green, whom I normally don't care much for or agree with, had an interesting point:

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/warri...players-strike

"'The notion that athletes should just stop working but no one else in the world should stop is baffling to me,' he continued. 'Why stop doing the very thing that offers you the biggest platform to speak for those that look like me/a lot of us.'"

Seems to me that above all else, money and power talk. Boycott too long, and the players obviously lose both. I appreciate Draymond's common sense on the issue. And I like that we continue to have the option to watch or not watch basketball. I do love this game, but as with church, I'm starting to wonder how much patience I have left for the politics and divisions of today. This year of pandemic and unrest has been a wake-up call to all of us Americans as we all evaluate the many problems in our country and world: what do we do?

It will be interesting to see how the playoffs play out after all this. As with church, I'm wondering if I will be a spectator.

[pwaldo]

Playoffs will resume Saturday after strong debate:

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/...esume-saturday

Reportedly Udonis Haslem helped sway George Hill, and LeBron James, who ultimately flip flopped on his original position:

https://clutchpoints.com/nba-news-ud...esday-meeting/

Michael Jordan also played a key role in mediating:

https://www.blazersedge.com/2020/8/2...owners-meeting

Draymond Green, whom I normally don't care much for or agree with, had an interesting point:

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/warri...players-strike

"'The notion that athletes should just stop working but no one else in the world should stop is baffling to me,' he continued. 'Why stop doing the very thing that offers you the biggest platform to speak for those that look like me/a lot of us.'"

Seems to me that above all else, money and power talk. Boycott too long, and the players obviously lose both. I appreciate Draymond's common sense on the issue. And I like that we continue to have the option to watch or not watch basketball. I do love this game, but as with church, I'm starting to wonder how much patience I have left for the politics and divisions of today. This year of pandemic and unrest has been a wake-up call to all of us Americans as we all evaluate the many problems in our country and world: what do we do?

It will be interesting to see how the playoffs play out after all this. As with church, I'm wondering if I will be a spectator.

Translation

Owners said you can boycott the playoffs but you will lose 25% of your salary this season and the players stopped larping as SJWs and instead went back to being the money grubbing obsessed people they are.

Funny enough I know Lebron and Curry all are all in for Biden but Biden is the guy who bragged about the 1994 crime bill that we are seeing the effects of now. And his VP pick Kamala Harris had to apologize after she laughed about all the black men she put in jail during her time in California. So I don't really need to hear the NBA players pushing a candidate who was VP for 8 years with Obama and did nothing about this problem. And matter of fact if this problem is so big and goes back for decades why didn't Lebron or Curry bring that up when they went to the White House? They were SILENT along with everyone else during that time. Utter lemmings who can't even give you a position or solve a problem. Weren't these guys just saying last year to stop the guy violence by not owning a gun and instead call the police when there is a problem? What do they have to say about that now?

And I won't even touch on how bad the league and players look now after the whole China thing. Guess politics with sports is OKAY again because we are in an election year.

[WilyWestbrook0]

In even more interesting politics, Barack Obama also encouraged LeBron to resume the season:

https://www.aol.com/article/news/202...ason/24603303/

LeBron's petulance in these meetings is all over the news right now. As much as he would like to influence politics, I don't think he has the patience, abstract thinking, or strategic intelligence to work the political game very well. Both the younger players and the older owners were annoyed by his manner from all the news I've read. If he didn't have other notable people in his inner circle and PR team influencing him, he wouldn't know what to do by himself. In fact, I doubt he even came up with the voting campaign thing by himself. Regardless of one's political persuasion, LeBron isn't really the kind of leader the black community needs in a time like this. A volatile situation like this proves he needs lots of help because he can't lead when he's doing things on his own.

[pwaldo]

In even more interesting politics, Barack Obama also encouraged LeBron to resume the season:

https://www.aol.com/article/news/202...ason/24603303/

LeBron's petulance in these meetings is all over the news right now. As much as he would like to influence politics, I don't think he has the patience, abstract thinking, or strategic intelligence to work the political game very well. Both the younger players and the older owners were annoyed by his manner from all the news I've read. If he didn't have other notable people in his inner circle and PR team influencing him, he wouldn't know what to do by himself. In fact, I doubt he even came up with the voting campaign thing by himself. Regardless of one's political persuasion, LeBron isn't really the kind of leader the black community needs in a time like this. A volatile situation like this proves he needs lots of help because he can't lead when he's doing things on his own.

Probably Obama telling them to knock it off because it is tanking Biden's poll numbers. If you stop sports you are just going to get all the people who aren't political mad at whatever causes them to shutdown. And despite a new ad campaign by Biden today blaming Trump for the sports shutdown it would all be on the players who have voluntarily decided to shut things down. So people would just be anti whatever the players were saying to stick it to them.

Also Lebron James can do whatever he wants but if he or people on the left think that a guy whose nickname is KING, was a millionaire as a teenager, didn't have to go to college and really didn't have a "real world job", and who is now a billionaire is the best person to go around and lecture white people on their "privilege" is a good idea....well I can see how poorly that is going to go so why can't they? Did they not pay attention to the backlash against all those Hollywood celebrities whining about how covid and isolation in their mansions was making them bored?

I said it before and I'll say it again people watch sports for SPORTS. If you do something that is not sports you will get some backlash even if it is the "right" thing to do. You just turn into annoying vegans or Jehova's Witnesses. Just people somebody plays sports or because they make a movie doesn't mean they know better than you and they certainly don't care about you. When they tell you to vote for this person or support this cause it is in their best interest not yours.

[WilyWestbrook0]

I think we're in a time where, with everything going on (protests everywhere -- look at Portland, place is like Lord of the Flies right now), politics seems unavoidable, like it was back in the 1960s and you had the black power fist on the Olympic podium. For sports, we're hearing about BLM because NBA is a majority black league, and blacks statistically tend 90-95% Democrat. I hinted that I can't even fellowship in the church anymore without hearing it, either -- I mean, I go to the Facebook web page for the denomination I grew up in, and no one there is talking about the Bible or theology -- they're talking politics, how they're against BLM because conservative churches are big into traditional family units and are against socialism. There is no compartmentalization anymore -- everything bleeds into everything else, so sports is no longer just about the game, church is no longer just about the Bible and theology.

So what do I do? There are times where I'd like to just tune everything out. But I'm a person of faith, and I also like the sport of basketball in my free time. What I can do, is not go to the Facebook page for the denomination. For sports, I can focus mostly on my team and how they're playing; I don't have to look at the BLM logo and ponder endlessly what I should think or do about that. I may not be able to ignore everything, and maybe I shouldn't, but I try to keep in mind what the primary purpose for each of these things is. And it's ultimately not politics.

The Nuggets-Jazz game is quite the contest right now, btw!

[WilyWestbrook0]

Rockets Moreyball is so terrible to watch. Extreme analytics and James Harden are just...ugh. They'll probably win the series though bc OKC just doesn't have the offense.