The Official NBA 2022-23 Season Thread
 

Ok, I am not starting this with current NBA teams or players. If you are interested in seeing if Victor Wembanyama and Scoot Henderson can repeat their performance from the other night, their teams are playing again on ESPN2 at 3pm today.

Everyone should tank this year.

Remember, they changed the rules. I think now, the top 3 teams have an equal 14% chance of getting the #1 pick. So you better be comfortable with the top 3-5 players if you're going to go all out with the tank.

Whoever drafts him also better come up with a plan on what they will be putting around a bit earlier than what the Mavs have done with Luka.

Nine free throws for James Harden is not a good way to start the season.

Honestly, it's to the point that I start to wonder how much better off the NBA would be as an on-court product if Harden had simply never been in the league. His style of "play" seems to have contributed into making it the unwatchable mess that it is.

Idk, I enjoyed watching him get smoked on defense repeatedly. ;) (FWIW on the FT's I thought the first one was a bullshit technical with how far and to the left he stuck his foot out to land on Al's, but the other two were just bad fouls by Grant & Lana Rhoades baby daddy).

Don't want to read too much into night 1 because we just remain a bad matchup for Philly unless Embiid dominates, but I'm on board the Jayson Tatum longshot MVP campaign. He made that leap last year 2nd half, was just completely worn down by the finals, and with some Jokic voter fatigue I don't think he's as far off the Giannis/Luka/Steph category even if they were the trendier picks. Just such a 2-way force.

Nothing against Henderson, and I'm notoriously wrong at these things, but Wenbayama looks transcendent to me. What I thought Anthony Davis could be and probably could have been, Zion to a lesser extent.

I think it contributed, but it's much bigger than Harden. I think there's been quite a long progression/evolution of basketball and rules not modernizing to match. I know some purists will say they shouldn't, but basketball strikes me as a sport that just needs some significant changes.

Can I just sim this season to see where the Rockets land in the lottery and which players break out or bust?

SI

I feel the same way. I think Wenbayama is the clear #1. The thing that terrifies me is the team that gets him mishandling him fitness wise. He definitely has to get stronger to handle the physical demands of the league. He does not need to put fifty pounds next year to achieve that goal.

I don't know if Orlando or Detroit will actually be good this year but I would be satisfied if they are going to be fun to watch.

I agree. I don't know what changes need to be made. But I think they need to have the equivalent of a Constitutional Convention where everything is on the table for changes.

The athletes are so much better than they have ever been. But I find the game less fun to watch than it was back in my day (get off my lawn, etc.)

Westbrook won’t survive until Thanksgiving and his next stop is in the CBA if he wants to continue playing basketball. Guessing he can put up 40ppg there. There’s not a single NBA team that he makes sense for. He’s too bad to help you win, but too good to help you tank.

Warriors-Kings game is 89-71 at the half!

I'm more surprised the Kings have 71 than I am the Warriors have 89.

Westbrook is 1-12 from 3. Shooters gotta shoot

Some people won't like it - and it'll never happen - but what I'd do:

- Crack down on travels/carries. Dribble with your hand over the ball.
- Flopping is a technical foul. Two shots plus the ball. It's bad sportsmanship, so treat it as such. Same with the whole pump-fake, now I lean into you and draw the foul. No. That's an offensive foul if you're being generous.
- Things like putting your feet under the opposing shooter a la Bruce Bowen should be automatic several-game suspension and a major fine. I used to be a Bowen fan as he played for the Spurs. I'm ashamed of that now and think they owe Phoenix a championship.
- The whole charge/block thing in the lane with players getting undercut is just way too dangerous. I admit that I don't know what to do with it, but expanding the semi-circle area where you can't draw a charge is a good start.
- Move the 3-point line out. That would also mean no corner threes and I'm fine with that. It shouldn't be obviously better to have a league-average shooter taking a three, then to have someone taking a 2-point shot. I think it's good for it to be a superior weapon for good shooters, but you should have to be a good shooter.
- End foul-outs. Past whatever limit in the half for the team, and for players individually, make it two shots plus the ball. Star players can still play, and it ends the whole ticky-tack foul late in the game meaning someone is tossed.

Cracking down on carries would be impossible and if it did happen it would cause so many more stoppages and decrease fun. Boo. Hiss

I'm aware this almost certainly won't happen, but it would be fun if LeBron, AD, Durant, Irving, and Simmons were all traded this season.

LeBron can’t be traded. But I’m all about anarchy. The NBA is def becoming more like sports entertainment these days.

"And here comes Russell Westbrook, sneaking up behind the Lakers bench with a folding chair"

SI

Oh shit he missed

The problem with flopping being an in game technical is it's hard to detect and you'll have the same problems that flopping causes, just going the other way.

Instead, flopping should be reviewed after the game and lead to escalating game suspensions for those caught doing it.

How is AD already hurt. It’s 5 games in.

Depends on your definition of fun.

I think the NFL is a more balanced and therefore 'fun' game to watch than Arena Football was. There's a point at which the rules favor the offense so much that the defense is a non-factor. Professional basketball is just about there. Moving screens are another issue there. Players adjust to the way the game is officiated. Having star players routinely travel/carry and get away with it to the point of being literally unguardable isn't more fun IMO. It's far less fun than the alternative.

It is weird to see, just 4-6 games in, only 1 undefeated team. I feel like that's unusual (though maybe not?).

https://champsorchumps.us/records/lo...o-start-season

List hasn’t been updated in a couple years but roughly 55 teams have started with 6 wins in a row. So almost 1 per season on average

- Carrying and to a certain extent traveling are the NBA's equivalent to offensive line holding and to a certain extent roughing the QB.

- The easy fix for flopping is having refs call fouls that they see, not fouls that they hear and/or think that they see. There are occasions when contact happens on the court and the game just moves on. There are occasions when a player is fouled and he does not end up flailing his arms all around or fall back 15 feet.

- There is a Bruce Bowen rule in the NBA already.

-I like the suggestion to expand the restricted zone.

- The three point line has to move but along with the court should be widened.

- Don't like the no foul outs rule at all.

The NBA has moved too far in favor of offense. I don't think you have to punish the offense in order to get it back in balance though. Defenses have and will adjust. The league and fans just have to be ok with a good to great defensive team winning the title on in a while.

So over the past couple of days we have the Spurs releasing a 1st round pick they just picked up an option on for having a problem exposing himself to women and Kyrie is pushing an anti-Semitic book turned movie on social media.

Kyrie said he is not anti-Semitic and he is a free thinker so take that back.

Steve Nash out as Brooklyn Nets coach after chaotic tenure

I am probably going to ask this question a lot about the Nets this season.

What was the point? What was the point of keeping Steve Nash to enter the season? It was obvious he could not handle the basketball stuff on the court. That was enough of a reason to let him go. Then Durant basically said him or me. The Nets ownership put Durant in his place by keeping Nash for a total of *checks notes* seven games.

And of course, Woj is reporting that the Nets will inquire about Ime Udoka and the Celtics will let him leave for another job.

Bizarre Nets coaching moves for sure.

Is it bizarre?

I think Ime Udoka is a better coach than Steve Nash. He was available. At this point all we know is whatever happened in Boston was against Celtics company policy not against the law. That has nothing to do with the Nets. They are trying to win now, others morality be damned.

I’m anticipating a massive dump of cringy dirt soon-ish now that the Celtics aren’t protecting the brand anymore. I’m probably wrong.

If it's that clearly against "Celtics company policy" that they sideline him for that long one can reasonably assume, possibly hope, that other teams policy isn't a million miles away from being similar.

Agreed. That is a safe assumption. However, as we are seeing more and more in all walks of life, people are willing to hold their nose and ignore their principles and policies if it means getting wins. My guess is the Nets will change whatever policies need to be changed if it means he will be able to get them to an NBA finals and win it.

It's pretty simple. He slept with Celtics staff as head coach of the Celtics. Now that he's the Nets coach he slept with another team's staff which probably isn't against Nets conduct rules.

The Nets have sent Kyrie home for at least five games without pay.

For as much as I would love to make sarcastic remarks about the whole free thinker thing, his 1st amendment rights and all the other tropes, I find it ridiculous that it has taken this long it has taken this long to get him away from that team.

AND

Is it wrong to think that it looks like the Anti-Defamation League could be bought off for one million dollars? I read that statement that someone wrote in Kyrie's name It was clear to me that he was not sorry for what he had done. But hey he and the Nets were giving up $500,000 a piece and everything was going to be cool? I am happy the ADL did not accept the donation but they can't allow themselves to be put in that sort of situation.

I can excuse the ADL as this is probably their first time dealing with Kyrie. The Nets have no such excuse. I knew I would come back to this. What's the point of not having Kyrie talk to the press on Tuesday because it was not the right form but then you put him out there in a media scrum on Thursday? With no higher ups standing like right next to him? Clown show

I'm glad they refused the money. The ADL sometimes goes off-message, gets involved where it shouldn't, but they have a difficult mission.

I'm not a big proponent of banning people for offensive views. I'd rather see stronger statements made about the views themselves. But whatever standard is out there should be enforced fairly. Kyrie was given the opportunity to learn and doubled down on offensive instead. It was funny when it was flat-earth stuff and dinosaurs. It hasn't been funny in a long time.

At any rate, we've come a long way from Delmon Young, who the Detroit Tigers were happy to keep paying after a far more physical manifestation of hate. I wrote the Tigers after that incident (I was still living in Michigan at the time) and they offered me free tickets. I told them that I thought they missed the point there, and politely declined. Three more teams paid Young after the Tigers. He remained in baseball until his lack of offensive production made him unemployable.

Still, the more important piece is what happens next.

I will: He should have done his own research.

(In all seriousness: my stance here is definitely far from "shut up and dribble". But if you want to be outspoken on issues, of which inequality and racism are very real and pressing ones, it's generally a really good idea to do more prep work than stream a film and expect to have it all figured out. And no amount of "just asking questions" can mask that this "i really get what others don't or hide" is at the root of Irvings thinking same as most other conspiracy nuts).

I would prefer not to hear any more statements about the views myself. I don't think anyone is going to like the ratio of people who see both sides on this one.

We can't pretend that's not the case, though. We saw Kanye's reaction - he thinks of Kyrie as some sort of martyr. This is why museums exist. And groups that preserve information and keep records of the past.

I think the problem is when you give people like Kyrie and Kanye platforms doe hate on social media,ext that's going to have a far larger impact on society than those museums. It's not like the people that agree with or are on the fence about stuff like this want to hear both sides or are going to go visit a museum to get the full story.

That's one of the issues with speech and social media. It's a massive platform to spread misinformation that we haven't been prepared to counter. Just allowing them to have a platform under the false pretense of free speech and hoping followers become more educated isn't working. If anything they're actively choosing to be less educated.

That all boils down to who gets to decide what is 'harmful' or 'misinformation'. People putting more credence in what a sports star says about issues than they do on what serious efforts say about them is a dysfunction in society that you can't work around or fix by deplatforming people. What that does is harden people in what they think, as well as causing all manner of problems when the people being deplatformed will unavoidably sometimes be those with the 'right' opinions.

I don't see anyway to combat misinformation other than with the right information. People have to care more about facts/truth than having their biases reinforced. Until we have those priorities as a society, we can't deal with these situations in a healthy way. Suppression of dissent never goes well in the long-term.

I agree, Brian. I'd even argue that Trump would be a bitter has-been with half his following if he were met with vigorous debate rather than a banning from the major platforms.

After the election, I heard the crap, saw the images. I know enough about elections to see patterns myself and didn't think the election was "stolen." But what was dangerous was the silencing - trying to keep the dissent underground. When Trump had his day in court, the arguments his team presented didn't hold up and that probably would have been the end of it if not for the attempts to keep the griping off of social media.

The same essentially applies to Kyrie. When challenged on his views, he clams up, repeats nonsense phrases. But what he learned yesterday is that if he wants to play in the NBA, he has to shut up and dribble, so to speak. Well, that's not helping anyone. His supporters feel he's a martyr. The issue itself doesn't get debated.

The Black Hebrew Israelite argument is gibberish, cobbled together from conspiracy theory and antisemitic tomes like the Protocols. Yet it persists, because it's driven underground. When there was an opportunity to discuss it a while back, with the Covington kid, the media just focused on a kid smirking or wearing that uncomfortable "I'm not going to react" grin and wearing the wrong hat. Not why he was doing that, what he was hearing from the person yelling at him.

So I don't support bans or suspensions, unless there's violence or N-words, or really out-there, I'll know it when I hear it, hate speech. Not a retweet, like the Michigan football player last week. Otherwise, it's an opportunity to discuss, not equivocate.

Discussion doesn't mean "giving someone a platform." That person has one, whether it's on Twitter or just among friends and family. It doesn't mean giving the argument presented respect or acknowledgement. If we can't articulate why the movie Kyrie's watching and talking about is ugly and false, then we're not helping anyone.

I am not pretending that is not the case. It is an acknowledgement that Kyrie and his followers may not have the same levels of trust in the historical accuracy of those museums or the groups that preserve information and keep records of the past that you may think they should. It is an acknowledgement that Kyrie and his followers are much more likely to find Amazon Video to be a trusted source of information than those other two sources.

OMG....

Charlotte’s City Edition uniforms

(h/t @WilliePStyle ) pic.twitter.com/9Y04UU1bzT

— NBACentral (@TheNBACentral) November 10, 2022

So is this social media guy getting buzz for the City jerseys? Social media guy getting in jokes? Or social media guy too dumb to realize that, putting, say, #23 on the jersey doesn't get nearly as many jokes?

SI