NBA 2017-2018 Season Thread

Alex said:

I would be so ashamed if I was Lonzo. You're in a league with grown ass men - many of whom have children - and your dad is always getting up in your business. Just embarrassing.

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All the Ball kids have to be screwed up psychologically from Lavar. I'm hoping for a Johnny Moxon moment from one of them, but a suicide is more likely

Celts vs Rockets. Harden loses his composure, and costs them a potential win.

I knew nothing about Tatum prior to coming to Boston. He's gotta be in the discussion at least for rookie of the year. Though Simmons is on another level.

Kuzma has been awesome in what I've seen. But he's also just had great games against the Warriors.

Tatum's 3P % has been damn impressive, only finally dropping below 50% lately. He seems to be in that Melo / Jabari Parker (if he can ever stay healthy) line of SF's that can just flat out score, but so far at least is happy to be a role player on a deep well coached team which is allowing him to be very efficient. He'll be a good player for a long time, not sure if he can be great though.

Kuzma is the same kind of player, its just wow, finding a guy like that in the late 20's does not happen often. When the Lakers traded De'Angelo Russell I thought they were trading low and should have been able to get a top 10 pick, but Kuzma is a top 10 pick in a redraft so it's worked out.

Obligatory Jordan Bell mention in any rookie discussion. He's not in the RoY race at all cause he can't get enough minutes and is not a scorer, but as I said on the first page of this thread, I don't know if any member of the rookie class would have been a better fit to help the Warriors just for this season. A few months in and his play has only enforced this. Dude is happy to just to the dirty work, only takes good shots, solid passer for a rookie big, and is going to be an elite perimeter defender for a guy that can play a lot of minutes at C. Bell, Durant, Draymond as a closing front line vs. teams trying to match our small ball (Rockets, Celtics, Cavs) is going to become more and more of a thing. Top defender from this rookie class, a guy that may be top 5 in this year's DPoY race thus far, and the reigning DPoY. It's ridic, not taking this run for granted one bit.

But yeah, SImmons is running away with the rookie of the year award.

Doncic will be a bust, there's no way he's getting picked before Porter Jr.

Anyways, its anybody's guess at this point how the draft order ends up. Lakers are 2nd worst now but there are about 10 teams separated by only 4-5 wins and a lot of games to go. Lakers have seemingly had a drop off in how competitive they are since Ball has been out.

Yeah. I was opting towards Porter Jr. before the surgery, but Bagley is a can't miss star so it probably ends up being him unless Porter unexpectedly comes back and plays some. 10 years ago Ayton would have hands down been the #1 pick of this draft class, but in today's world he's probably 3rd. Nobody is going to pull another Oden over Durant for a while.

I linked this a few years back but recently revisited it. I highly recommend it if you've never read it before. It is fucking hilarious:

The death of basketball

There's one for the NFL that is similarly hilarious.

I remember reading it back when, but some of this is funny again in retrospect. Like they had the Cavs going to umpteen straight finals in the same years even though they didn't know Lebron would go back to the Cavs and he wasn't on those simulated Cavs teams. Seeing Lebron on Lakers playing against the Cavs is funny considering the rumors about where he may go next. Kyrie Irving on the Cavs beating Kevin Love's TWolves in the finals in 2020.

Think I'm good with the reality we've had over this.

That was a fun read. The one thing, amongst many, that stood out is an entire season going by for the T-Wolves and never getting an assist off 4300 points. Haha.