NBA 2016 Off-Season Thread

fanaskin_sl said:

Why? the nba exploded when it was celtics/lakers over and over again, it sucks for competition but the nba has the most interest in marketing stars, getting durant into the finals ontop of curry and lebron is exactly what they want.

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Why? Why?! Because as fans we have to be incredibly upset about something! So, Warriors are now the villains of the NBA and Durant is a traitor and evil person!

And if Wade goes to the Cavs it won't be at all similar stacking another Hall of Famer on a team with the best player ever, one of the biggest up and coming stars and a perenial all-star. It's totally different, because, umm, Warriors are the villains of the NBA, remember!

It's all dumb WWE bullshit that the average retardo fan eats up and sadly the average talk-radio host can't stop regurgitating as if it's amazing journalism to go over every sentence of Durant's Next Chapter letter guessing at the 'real' meaning and criticizing him because Conley wrote a letter 3 times as long.

In short, stupid people like stupid shit. And it's different than The Decision because then it was Lebron being the stupid person doing stupid shit, whereas in this situation Durant has been pretty humble and handled the situation with dignity so it's the fans and dumb asses like Stephen A having to double down on the stupid to make it into a story they can get clicks over by riling people up.

Having three excellent shooters is going to allow the offense to be so much more simple too. I bet the TOs go down quite a bit this season. Downside likely is not as much ball movement. But who knows what Kerr has planned?

GS just got David west too.

Convo_sl said:

GS just got David west too.

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Fuck

Kerr gonna hook up everyone with a ring

Djay_sl said:

West is just going to keep bouncing around to teams that won the championship two seasons prior. He'll be on the Cavs next year and the Raptors the year after that.

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Lmao.

There is monster growing in the east. Its amazing how well he sees the court already.. I can't wait to see what he does with guys like Embiid.

Now y'all just need to turn your 30 centers into a shooter or three.

Foggy_sl said:

Now y'all just need to turn your 30 centers into a shooter or three.

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probably have 2 lottery picks next year, we will fill out. I'm not for rushing and bringing in the wrong pieces. Although Luwawu looked really good last night with Simmons and the catch and shoot, Bayless should help there as well. Baby steps, we have a lot of growing to do.

"The system is f--ked up," said a longtime team executive from a large market.

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Ahaha! oh Ainge!

ProSportsDaily

I'm curious what y'all will do with Noel next offseason.

Foggy_sl said:

I'm curious what y'all will do with Noel next offseason.

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not sure, I suspect he's who they are looking to deal. Guess the right deal needs to come along. If not, we will just go into the season with 3 bigs and see how the landscape changes. A few injuries to some key big men could change a lot, and you never know what a team is willing to do at the trade deadline if they feel they need a guy like him for a playoff run. So many variables, we just need to be patient and let things play out.

That is a damn good impression. His Lebron reading was even better.

r4ndomdan_sl said:

Was talking with a buddy about this, but are there any other sports where there are super teams created via free agency like in the NBA? It seems the NBA is just getting worse and worse with this. Maybe add the franchise tag like in football? I don't know what needs to be done. The past two years the warriors were all their own players, but now adding Durant to a 73 win team, is just insane.

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There's this sport called baseball... maybe you've heard of it.

This is nothing new to the NBA either. It's only been increasing its worldwide popularity over the past couple decades largely due to great teams and storylines such as this one. I hated the Lebron-Wade-Bosh collusion to play together, but fuck if it didn't make me want to watch and see them lose.

Angelwatch_sl said:

I'm in the "I hope it blows up in their face camp." But that's just my gut reaction as a Cleveland fan. When Lebron bolted to Miami I wasn't upset with him leaving. It was the way he left that pissed us off. Since then he's grown up a bit, recognized his mistakes and gave us our championship. In hindsight Lebron had to leave to get the Cavs where we are at today. Despite Lebron the 2010 Cavs were not very good.

The KD thing is a bit different in my thinking. He's leaving a team that was on the brink of greatness. They needed one win to get to the Finals. A bit of tweaking and the Thunder could have been contenders again this year. But by all appearances he's bolting for the sole purpose of joining an already stacked team just for some Rings.

In the end I'm looking forward to next season though. The whole "Warriors are now the NBA villains" narrative is going to be interesting to watch play out. It will be nice to have all the petty drama shift from the Cavs and their dynamic over to the Warriors. Get ready for a ton of click bait on the Warriors now.

Final thought: As a Cavs fan I am really going to miss Ezeli. He basically choked in game 7 giving us the win.

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KD is not leaving a team that was "on the brink of greatness." He's leaving a team that was going to give him a ~30-40% chance of making the finals next year to have a shot at playing Lebron who has like a 90% + chance of making the finals pretty much every year. Lebron has put himself into the best possible situations to make the finals for the past 6 years. Yes, Lebron has received a lot of backlash for it, but KD is seeing that winning cures a lot of those woes. In the end nobody is going to care how Lebron came to the teams he was on, they're just going to look at the # of rings he had and the numbers he put up.

I don't see this as much different than what Lebron did joining Wade. Lebron could have also been a contender without going to the extremes they did, but he banded up with another top 5 player and the top PF in his conference to create a superteam that was guaranteed to make the finals every year. They literally thought they were going to win 5 or 6 straight titles when they put that team together. They even told the world that, increasing the size of the instant target that had been put on their backs. The intent here with Durant joining the Warriors is the same, to win multiple titles, but hopefully they'll continue to show the more restrained humility I'd expect. (outside of the owner Joe Lacob who I hope can keep his fucking mouth shut til they at least get another ring..)

I really think Durant made this decision with Lebron very much in his mind, how couldn't he? He's watched Lebron pick and choose the best teams for his situation, and yes he has received a lot of backlash for it, but in the end he's in the finals every year and is now receiving more accolades for winning another title. Durant was asking himself why can't he put himself in the same type of position? Going to the Warriors was a Lebron type move in that it almost guarantees him to make the finals for a stretch of a number of years. It was the only place he could have gone where that would have been the case. He wanted the chance to take down Lebron in the finals and avenge that loss he suffered the first time he went. But staying on a very good OKC team in the west makes it tough just to get there when you have to get through a field including GSW / SAS / LAC every year, three good to great teams in their own right.

The players did this when they insisted on the cap exploding immediately instead of having it rise gradually.