The NBA - basketball talk

That was the same gameplan against us by Chris Paul, Ricky Rubio, Ty Lawson, Raymond Felton, Steve Nash, Tony Parker, Brandon Jennings. All of those were "fully willing to use the opposing team's atempts (sic) to stop him at all costs to give his teammates ridiculous numbers of assist throws for their own goals."

But when the "attempt to stop him" was "being guarded by Shawn Marion"...nothing really happened with them. Paul's only FG made in the 4th was the fadeaway 3pt with seconds left. All of his assists were made in the first three quarters. Something similar happened to Rubio. Ty Lawson was hardly effective (1/8 F Gs, 2 assists), Felton wasted too much of the ball (4/17 F Gs, 2 assists). Tony Parker (and starters) played so badly the bench players got better performances, and while Steve Nash did dish out 12 assists, he wasn't exactly hitting it offensively (2/9 F Gs, 0/3 3PTs). Brandon Jennings (and Shaun Livingston) scored in double-figures, but they only got 1 assist each as their teammates were offensively inept.

edited 16th Feb '12 6:51:01 AM by entropy13

So this season, Detroit seems to keep beating Boston, and almost beat Miami.
WTF?

Sadly, Miami is first in the East right now. Ah well, Chicago will still beat OKC for the championship.

what. the. hell. Now that's a dynamic duo.

edited 19th Feb '12 11:55:42 PM by wanderlustwarrior

I'm amazed that the Clippers are doing so well, even though Blake Griffin is spending more time trying (and failing) to look less bland than being a team player.

This guy's dunks are so incredibly boring and predictable and yet, he's always on the top or near the top of the highlight reels. And I think even fans are starting to tire of them (seeing that he's not in this year's slam dunk contest and it's being judged by the fans).

I feel that the only reason why Griffin gets so much attention is his skin color. I'm not trying to sound racist (and I'm not), but I feel that Griffin being white (or at least half) would explain his success. If he were (completely) black, no one would care about him. But since light-skinned, he's been more or less given a free ride since high school. It's similar to how people only care about boxing whenever a white guy gets a title shot (see The Great White Hype for more on this, despite being directed by known misanthrope Reginald Hudlin, it's a fairly accurate portrayal of race in sports).

It's Unfortunate Implications and it just rubs me off the wrong way.

Rant over. Now, I will try to show Dwyane Wade's positive qualities only to get ignored due to him playing with Lebron.

I heard that we could make a TV Tropes page for Jeremy Lin.

I'm not sure if that's a good idea, 'cause that would mean we'd have to make pages for everyone else as well.

I'd wait a few years for a Lin page. But his play has been a Crowning Moment Of Awesome for both the NBA and Asian Americans.

Today's the day for the Knicks and the Heat to rekindle their old rivalry.

They had a rivalry?
They were relevant before this millennium?

I do hope the Knicks win. Lin is really overhyped, but I'd like to see Miami lose.

edited 23rd Feb '12 3:11:04 PM by wanderlustwarrior

There's Jeremy Lin to thank for that.

He's not really all that overhyped. If anything, he's been underhyped his whole goddamn career. He puts up insane numbers in High School and college, and proceeds to barely get a look in the NBA (as well originally in college) because he's Asian, and asian people arent good at sports and have small penises. etc.

Do you remember the overhyping of Asian players after Yao Ming? Yi Jianlian was supposed to be the next big thing as I'd said earlier.

I've got nothing against him personally, but I really shouldn't be hearing about him incessantly during stories for business and other industries. Yes, I get that sports is a business, but this seems like an overly large amount of coverage.

Well, this is E!SPN's fault, rather than sports media in general.

They really need to know that nobody cares that Lin got a new apartment...

edited 23rd Feb '12 4:10:29 PM by NoChorus

Actually, I was talking about Fox News. Because in Texas, all places of business seem to be set to Fox News.

I Do like the appelation E!SPN, though.

Okay, here's the update on the Heat-Knicks game.

Heat points: Miller had 3 points, Haslem had 6, Chalmers and Battier got 8 points each, Cole took 10, James had 20 points, Wade had 22 and Bosh had 25.

Knick points: Jeffries scored 4 points, Fields and Lin both had 8, Chandler had 10, Novak took 12, Stoudemire had 13, Smith had 14, and Carmelo scored 19 points.

Overall, the Heat won by 14 points - 102 to the Kicks' 88. I must say, even as a Heat fan, I'm disappointed that Lin didn't fair as well as he did before, but he's still a rookie in a game filled with all-stars.

edited 23rd Feb '12 7:47:01 PM by Serocco

yeah. Not to mention the poor guys got shit-tons of pressure on him thanks to hilariously unrealistic expectations.

Critics have called Lin a Fake Ultimate Hero, and they're using this loss to backup their claims. Given the latest game, do you think Lin was a Fake Ultimate Hero, or just a rookie that doesn't have it in his veins yet against the all-stars?

Interestingly, while Bosh and Wade certainly respect Lin as a player, they were reminded of the hype that they themselves got in the last season. Since they found the Linsanity coverage rather overbearing, Bosh admitted that he understands why other teams felt overshadowed last season. Honestly, they're much classier now than they were last season. It's like they mellowed out when they were defeated.

edited 23rd Feb '12 9:40:09 PM by Serocco

Not that that was hard...

I'd say it's too early for the critics to call him anything. Hasn't it been like 2 weeks? I mean, I'm fairly certain he'll be a good player, and I don't wish him any ill, but calling anything right now seems to be jumping the gun.

At least he seems to be almost as humble as another point guard out there, whose team is seemingly overlooked now. Yes, I'm talking about Derrick Rose and the Bulls again. I'm sorry, it just grates me that one article called this Knicks/Heat matchup "the marquee match of the year".

It's the Knicks.

I think idiots will point to any slipups as proof he magically has no skills at all. I think he's got potential,. but like anyone else, he needs more than two goddamned weeks to be consistently great.

So much for Linsanity, I guess.

edited 23rd Feb '12 9:44:14 PM by Serocco

No, actually its a quite apt term. The hype is insane.

Hardly.

if he consistantly does terrible from now on, then yes. One loss in a streak of as many stellar starts as he's had is hardly the end of the world,.

edited 23rd Feb '12 9:48:20 PM by Midgetsnowman

Still, I was hyped to see the rookie of the month take on the runner-ups of the last season. Hell, the Knicks beat the Mavericks, the champions in the last season. I was more than a little disappointed that Lin didn't deliver, but I gotta give a hand to Smith, Carmelo and Stoudemire.

If anything, Carmelo is the Ewing Theory in full-force. When Melo was out, the Knicks won. When he's in, the Knicks lose. Lin has been serviceable but you can't call him a failure on a few games.

Isn't Rose on the same situation as Carmelo?

Yeah - they score more without him, but they have less turnovers with him.

Ha, saying Rose is the same as Carmelo is like comparing MVP apple leading the best team in the league to oranges that hit a guy in the face then run away, whose teams are better once they trade him.

So Firebert, I'm back in the Chi. Is there anywhere you recommend I can by Bulls tickets for fairly cheap so I can take my siblings? It'll be me and one or two young kids.

Last dunk competitor I cared about was Dwight Howard. He used props, but they were actually physical and about dunking. Blake Griffin and the others killed it, and not in the good way. This is boring as hell. Have all the good actual dunks been done? 1st round was completely boring. But then... (second round has 1 bullet, last round has 2)

• Evans does a pretty damn good double dunk.
  • Dunks over 3 foot 2 Kevin Hart next, so whatever.
• George gets a well done 360 dunk, while glowing with the dark with all the house lights off, thus making it harder to find placement. On the first try, unlike most of the others.
  • For his next dunk, messes up repeatedly a sticker dunk, where unlike Dwights, the sticker was at the bottom of the backboard.
• Williams gets a dunk where both he and his assister are running from the corner, and the pass is bounced off the side of the backboard. He catches, does a 360, and dunks it (2 tries).
  • Several tries on an off the backboard between the legs dunk, that he didn't get.
• Budinger: I don't even remember his second dunk
  • messes up Cedric Ceballos' blindfolded dunk, but gets a reverse version on the second try. An old idea, and beaten by a lights off dunk, but it didn't suck. It just made me nostalgic for something I didn't even know happened.

Blake Griffin Kia commercial right after reminding me of why I got out of this.
Text voting is limited, Twitter is limited to 100 per user. What.
Man, the presentation on this is really lame.

Evans wins. Damn that was lame. Chuck was even talking over his win interview about that they need the superstars in it. I don't think so, I just think they need some good dunks.

edited 25th Feb '12 8:09:18 PM by wanderlustwarrior