NBA Off Topic Thread

[ggsimmonds]

Re: NBA Off Topic Thread

CJ brought up something I was thinking about in the past few weeks that I have held back on bringing up here because I wasn't sure how it would be received.

First the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQmIJ14bZeU

Early on in the video he mentioned two types of players. For one basketball is life and those players will leave everything they can on the court. For the other type of player, its just a 9 to 5.

I feel like the percentage of players who view it just as a 9-5 is significantly higher than it was "in the good ol days."
For a large number of players, I don't think basketball is as important. And I think it makes sense. All the shootings and the BLM movement would cause me to step back and think this basketball s*** doesn't really matter that much. Then theres the fact that its more common for active players to have other sources of revenue beyond NBA salary and sponsorships.

All in all, I think its a net good thing, but there are drawbacks. Like disappearance of rivalries and load management.

[dubcity]

Re: NBA Off Topic Thread

I watched one of Kobe's last major interviews recently and the topic was brought up, and he was having none of it. Thought it was total BS, as you would imagine.

Now I think players have convinced themselves that trying to play every game is for suckers, their teams don't deserve that sacrifice, and the goal is individual branding. Load management is more about taking it easy than actually staying healthy, if we are being honest. Get as much money and time off as you can get from these teams, and if it doesn't result in a winning run, oh well who cares on to the next team. Nice work if you can get it lol.

[ProfessaPackMan]

Re: NBA Off Topic Thread

CJ brought up something I was thinking about in the past few weeks that I have held back on bringing up here because I wasn't sure how it would be received.

First the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQmIJ14bZeU

Early on in the video he mentioned two types of players. For one basketball is life and those players will leave everything they can on the court. For the other type of player, its just a 9 to 5.

I feel like the percentage of players who view it just as a 9-5 is significantly higher than it was "in the good ol days."
For a large number of players, I don't think basketball is as important. And I think it makes sense. All the shootings and the BLM movement would cause me to step back and think this basketball s*** doesn't really matter that much. Then theres the fact that its more common for active players to have other sources of revenue beyond NBA salary and sponsorships.

All in all, I think its a net good thing, but there are drawbacks. Like disappearance of rivalries and load management.

Mannnn I’ve been feeling/thinking this for a while now.

It’s just a job for them at this point, as we see with how they interact with each other off the court and how often you see it now compared to “back in the day”.

If I had to put a percentage on the # of players that are in that category, it would definitely be in a little more than half of the league.

[Junior Moe]

Re: NBA Off Topic Thread

Interesting idea apparently thrown around by the NBA.

Regular season awards might require players to qualify to be eligible for them.

As in, you can't win MVP if you play something like 60 games.

This probably doesn't impact "load management" as much as they'd hope, but I wonder how it would be recieved.

Or if a guy has it in his contract where he gets a bonus if he's voted in to the NBA All __ Team, but won't be eligible due to sitting out too many games.

I absolutely love this idea. Let the guys who want to punt on the regular season do that. Whatever. I think having awards and I believe contract escalators from those awards, tied to games played, would incentivize dudes to play more. If for no other reason than the money. Didn't Trae Young making the allstar game or all NBA team allow him to get a larger max or something? Plus, it could protect the teams, to an extent, who have exceptionally talented but injury prone guys like the Pelicans.

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[Yeah...THAT Guy]

Re: NBA Off Topic Thread

Interesting idea apparently thrown around by the NBA.

Regular season awards might require players to qualify to be eligible for them.

As in, you can't win MVP if you play something like 60 games.

This probably doesn't impact "load management" as much as they'd hope, but I wonder how it would be recieved.

Or if a guy has it in his contract where he gets a bonus if he's voted in to the NBA All __ Team, but won't be eligible due to sitting out too many games.

I don't think this will really change anything, in part because it's already baked in. A lot of the award voters already consider games played as is.

CJ brought up something I was thinking about in the past few weeks that I have held back on bringing up here because I wasn't sure how it would be received.

First the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQmIJ14bZeU

Early on in the video he mentioned two types of players. For one basketball is life and those players will leave everything they can on the court. For the other type of player, its just a 9 to 5.

I feel like the percentage of players who view it just as a 9-5 is significantly higher than it was "in the good ol days."
For a large number of players, I don't think basketball is as important. And I think it makes sense. All the shootings and the BLM movement would cause me to step back and think this basketball s*** doesn't really matter that much. Then theres the fact that its more common for active players to have other sources of revenue beyond NBA salary and sponsorships.

All in all, I think its a net good thing, but there are drawbacks. Like disappearance of rivalries and load management.

I think this is almost undoubtedly true, and feels like a microcosm for society in general. At least anecdotally speaking, it feels like my generation (myself included) view our career more as a means to an end than our parents did. Obviously I'm kinda in my own bubble though so maybe outside of it, that isn't true.

[The 24th Letter]

NBA Off Topic Thread

I feel like the percentage of players who view it just as a 9-5 is significantly higher than it was "in the good ol days."

For a large number of players, I don't think basketball is as important. And I think it makes sense. All the shootings and the BLM movement would cause me to step back and think this basketball s*** doesn't really matter that much. Then theres the fact that its more common for active players to have other sources of revenue beyond NBA salary and sponsorships.

All in all, I think its a net good thing, but there are drawbacks. Like disappearance of rivalries and load management.

I was just reading about how Joe DiMaggio looked at baseball as a way of making money more than a passion. He was just incredibly good at it.

Curtis Martins HOF speech comes to mind, Where he talked about playing the game for other people, and not having the same love for the game as other inductees.

I always felt like it’s a bit naive to think that players from yesteryear just have some innate passion for the game in comparison to today. Most are just going to operate within the the norms they live in.

[ojandpizza]

Re: NBA Off Topic Thread

As in, you can't win MVP if you play something like 60 games.

I thought this already existed? Or maybe that's for All-NBA sections? This exists somewhere because we just talked about it a couple years back. I thought anyways.

Regardless only two players have ever won the award anyways with less than 60 games. Bill Walton 58 games, and Karl Malone 49 but they only played 50 games that year anyways. Only 4 other players have ever won with 60 something games as well. And one of them was Bron in the lockout with only 66 total games anyway. And another was Giannis during the shorter pandemic season.

So in the 76 or whatever years in league history we've had 3 seasons where a player has won MVP and played less than what would be the equivalent of 70+ games. And the most recent of them was 1978.

In other words this is already being applied even if there isn't a written rule in place and this is just something stupid for everyone to talk/complain about yet another issue that isn't really an "issue" to begin with.

[Majingir]

Re: NBA Off Topic Thread

I thought this already existed? Or maybe that's for All-NBA sections? This exists somewhere because we just talked about it a couple years back. I thought anyways.



Regardless only two players have ever won the award anyways with less than 60 games. Bill Walton 58 games, and Karl Malone 49 but they only played 50 games that year anyways. Only 4 other players have ever won with 60 something games as well. And one of them was Bron in the lockout with only 66 total games anyway. And another was Giannis during the shorter pandemic season.



So in the 76 or whatever years in league history we've had 3 seasons where a player has won MVP and played less than what would be the equivalent of 70+ games. And the most recent of them was 1978.



In other words this is already being applied even if there isn't a written rule in place and this is just something stupid for everyone to talk/complain about yet another issue that isn't really an "issue" to begin with.

60 was just a random number thrown out.

Not sure what the actual number could/should be.

I'm sure they'll look at the history of the MVP award and see how many games guys have been playing and making a minimum based on that.

But it probably won't impact guys taking days off anyways. Being rested/healthy/good for the playoffs is better than being eligible for an award they probably won't even win.

[ggsimmonds]

Re: NBA Off Topic Thread

I was just reading about how Joe DiMaggio looked at baseball as a way of making money more than a passion. He was just incredibly good at it.

Curtis Martins HOF speech comes to mind, Where he talked about playing the game for other people, and not having the same love for the game as other inductees.

I always felt like it’s a bit naive to think that players from yesteryear just have some innate passion for the game in comparison to today. Most are just going to operate within the the norms they live in.

It may not be a passion for the game that changed. If you were an NBA player in the 80s and 90s, unless you were one of the very top megastars, there wasn't much else for you outside of the NBA. Now you have social media influencers and streamers.

There could be multiple reasons, and less passion may just be one of them. But the effect of them all is that players don't have as much personal stake in what happens on the court.

[ojandpizza]

Re: NBA Off Topic Thread

I wouldn't say there is a lack of passion or love for the game, some of these same old heads that get upset over load management also acknowledge that today's players also put in way more time in the off-season and all that instead of spending all that time out of the gym. Magic Johnson made it sound like the difference was night and day.

I honestly think the biggest difference is just less guys play through minor things. Slight discomfort and they sit. And teams and players both are probably fine with that for the most part. Teams have too much money invested in guys, players in line for contracts that are far too large to play on something you might aggravate worse. Why play a couple games through knee soreness if there is even a 0.000001% change of hurting it further when staying healthy could lock you in an extra 100mil in a few months?

IDK, I just strongly feel the whole thing is overexaggerated to an extent anyways. And if it wasn't we'd have actual examples of where this is a problem. Not these super generic "load management is an issue", "too many guys missing games", and all that. If it's a problem, name them. Who's missing games. Name a guy who doesn't play for the Clippers that has missed 5 games for no reason this season? You can't but at the same time it's supposedly a HUGE issue lol.

[ggsimmonds]

Re: NBA Off Topic Thread

I wouldn't say there is a lack of passion or love for the game, some of these same old heads that get upset over load management also acknowledge that today's players also put in way more time in the off-season and all that instead of spending all that time out of the gym. Magic Johnson made it sound like the difference was night and day.

I honestly think the biggest difference is just less guys play through minor things. Slight discomfort and they sit. And teams and players both are probably fine with that for the most part. Teams have too much money invested in guys, players in line for contracts that are far too large to play on something you might aggravate worse. Why play a couple games through knee soreness if there is even a 0.000001% change of hurting it further when staying healthy could lock you in an extra 100mil in a few months?

IDK, I just strongly feel the whole thing is overexaggerated to an extent anyways. And if it wasn't we'd have actual examples of where this is a problem. Not these super generic "load management is an issue", "too many guys missing games", and all that. If it's a problem, name them. Who's missing games. Name a guy who doesn't play for the Clippers that has missed 5 games for no reason this season? You can't but at the same time it's supposedly a HUGE issue lol.

Like I said in an earlier post, thats not why its an issue. Its only a problem in aggregate, not individual players.

That said I also think the issue is overstated a bit

And more broadly, misconstruing it into arguing that players today don't love the game is why I was hesitant to bring it up before, its not that they don't love the game, they just don't take it as personally.

Thats why I think rivalries are mostly dead. I don't think anyone on the Celtics dislikes any of the Warriors over losing the Finals. Because players today are better at separating the business vs personal. Back to load management, deciding to rest is a business decision whereas maybe in the past a player may think deciding to sit out a game would be an affront to his manhood.

[ProfessaPackMan]

Re: NBA Off Topic Thread

Interesting thing is the decision is usually forced upon the players to sit out than it is them making that decision.

[ggsimmonds]

Re: NBA Off Topic Thread

Interesting thing is the decision is usually forced upon the players to sit out than it is them making that decision.

Based on the conversation between CJ and JJ its an even split.

CJ remarked thats why it is hard to find a solution because some players need to be protected from themselves but at the same time he could neither confirm nor deny that other players will be like "gotta sit this one out coach" just because they are sore

[Majingir]

Re: NBA Off Topic Thread

Jarrett Allen with a classic quote about Love leaving Cleveland (and the last time he saw Love).

"I was told he was going for milk and cigarettes and he never came back"

[DamnYanks2]

Re: NBA Off Topic Thread

Lol regarding load management. Lillard is out tonight due to rest. But what? Did he not just have the All star Break? I'm guessing it's an unspecified reason. But that made me laugh.

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