2024 NBA Season and Playoffs

[hpantazo]

KAT gets 50 and they give the MVP to Lillard. Smh…

KAT's team got blown out from start to finish...

[Goldstar88]

KAT is getting MVP. Good.

Really? For taking 35 shots on the loosing team? The next closest guy on his team took 17 shots

Halliburton w 32pts on 15 shots, plus nearly leading his team in assists

He shot 23-35, so about 66%. Not good enough for you? 

Who cares if his team lost, it’s the freaking ASG. There is zero defense.

[hpantazo]

KAT is getting MVP. Good.

Really? For taking 35 shots on the loosing team? The next closest guy on his team took 17 shots

Halliburton w 32pts on 15 shots, plus nearly leading his team in assists

He shot 23-35, so about 66%. Not good enough for you? 

Who cares if his team lost, it’s the freaking ASG. There is zero defense.

Maybe KAT and his team should play some defense next time if he wants the game MVP

[jambr380]

Pretty disappointing MVP result. Dame had a couple long-ass 3s, but he took 11 more shots than Haliburton and had worse stats overall.

And without those late 3s by Dame and Hali, Brown might have actually won it. Obviously a bummer that Brown didn’t get it for Cs fans, but I’d be pretty angry as an Indy fan in Indy that Dame chucked his way to MVP

[Goldstar88]

Pretty disappointing MVP result. Dame had a couple long-ass 3s, but he took 11 more shots than Haliburton and had worse stats overall.

And without those late 3s by Dame and Hali, Brown might have actually won it. Obviously a bummer that Brown didn’t get it for Cs fans, but I’d be pretty angry as an Indy fan in Indy that Dame chucked his way to MVP

Oh, they were. The Boo’s were raining down when they handed out the trophy.

[86MaxwellSmart]

I'm still mad that Ray Allen got cheated out of the MVP in the 2008 ALL Star Game....He totally saved the East....but they gifted it to LeBron, of course.

[Who]

211-186 is a ridiculous scoreline.

[Who]

Luka with 7pts 7reb 7ast. This is his 5th ASG and he hasn't managed double digit points in any of them.

[Atzar]

Can't help but feel like the less-than-walkthrough-effort of the All-Star game is a reflection of what the NBA's current stars actually think about their fans. 

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

Tuned in for literally 1 minute and then had to change the channel. Pickup games have more energy. If this is how the ASG is going to be, the NBA shouldn’t have it — just name the all-stars and leave it at that.

[SparzWizard]

Tuned in for literally 1 minute and then had to change the channel. Pickup games have more energy. If this is how the ASG is going to be, the NBA shouldn’t have it — just name the all-stars and leave it at that.

Saw somebody taking some 80-foot 3 just to miss it and the opposing team rebounds it to dribble back half court for a successful 3.

[ozgod]

KAT gets 50 and they give the MVP to Lillard. Smh…

KAT's team got blown out from start to finish...

So KAT 19-22 from 2…was he going up against turnstiles or something. Given his team lost there must’ve been more turnstiles on the West team

[Who]

West starting lineup vs East starting lineup

C: Jokic vs Bam
F: Durant vs Giannis
F: LeBron vs Tatum
G: Doncic vs Haliburton
G: SGA vs Lillard


This is the problem with calling Luka a guard. He is not a guard. He is a forward. He is a slow forward. Not a SF or a PF but a slow forward. A slow forward who needs to be paired with a quick forward who can defend so Luka can be hidden. Like Larry Bird had with Cedric Maxwell, later Kevin McHale and later again Kevin Gamble. Someone with the footspeed and defensive versatility to hide Luka.

So we have Luka who is a slow forward. We have LeBron who is a 39 year old slow forward. We have Durant who is a 35 year old slow forward. Then we have Jokic who is a slow center. So one slow big man, three slow forwards and only one guard. Only one player with good quickness in SGA.

Look at the East squad. Bam is a high level athlete. Giannis is slowing down a bit but still a good athlete. Tatum is a superior athlete. Then two guards with good speed in Haliburton and Lillard. In an open court game like the ASG, that five man lineup was always going to the run the West off the court. The West was simply too slow.

And large chunk of that comes down to pretending Luka is a guard. Imagine subbing out LeBron or Durant for Anthony Edwards. Ant and SGA in the backcourt. Now that is something to work with. Still slow in the frontcourt but at least you are somewhat competitive speed wise. Too dang slow.

[ozgod]

West starting lineup vs East starting lineup

C: Jokic vs Bam
F: Durant vs Giannis
F: LeBron vs Tatum
G: Doncic vs Haliburton
G: SGA vs Lillard


This is the problem with calling Luka a guard. He is not a guard. He is a forward. He is a slow forward. Not a SF or a PF but a slow forward. A slow forward who needs to be paired with a quick forward who can defend so Luka can be hidden. Like Larry Bird had with Cedric Maxwell, later Kevin McHale and later again Kevin Gamble. Someone with the footspeed and defensive versatility to hide Luka.

So we have Luka who is a slow forward. We have LeBron who is a 39 year old slow forward. We have Durant who is a 35 year old slow forward. Then we have Jokic who is a slow center. So one slow big man, three slow forwards and only one guard. Only one player with good quickness in SGA.

Look at the East squad. Bam is a high level athlete. Giannis is slowing down a bit but still a good athlete. Tatum is a superior athlete. Then two guards with good speed in Haliburton and Lillard. In an open court game like the ASG, that five man lineup was always going to the run the West off the court. The West was simply too slow.

And large chunk of that comes down to pretending Luka is a guard. Imagine subbing out LeBron or Durant for Anthony Edwards. Ant and SGA in the backcourt. Now that is something to work with. Still slow in the frontcourt but at least you are somewhat competitive speed wise. Too dang slow.

Maybe that's why those specific positions are going away now and people like Brad Stevens just look at players as ball handlers, wings and bigs. There's obviously then subcategories within those, like stretch big, rim protector, point forward, score-first PG, etc. But the way the voting works, they still have the five positions that James Naismith originally came up with in 1891, that most of us grew up watching until the game started to change around the turn of the century.

I never saw Luka as a guard, I always saw him as a point forward - a ball handling wing. But defensively I don't think he can defend more traditional ball handlers, especially score-first PGs like Dame.

[ozgod]

Adam Silver was not pleased about the fiasco that was the latest All Star Game.

But after the 73rd All-Star Game looked exactly like last year's lackluster performance in Salt Lake City -- with the Eastern Conference setting the all-time scoring record by becoming the first team to surpass 200 points in what was eventually a 211-186 victory over the Western Conference -- Silver's annoyance at what took place was clearly on display.

"And to the Eastern Conference All-Stars, you scored the most points," Silver said flatly. "Well ... congratulations."

Here's what the players had to say about the fiasco that was the latest All Star Game. Most cited the desire to avoid injury in a meaningless game.

"I think it's something we need to figure out," said Lakers star LeBron James, who set a new record with his 20th All-Star Game appearance Sunday night but didn't play in the second half as he manages a balky left ankle. "Obviously from a player's perspective, it's fun to get up and down. But at the end of the day, our competitive nature don't like to have free-flowing scoring like that.

"But I think the good thing that came out of tonight was none of the players were injured, and everybody came out unscathed or how they were before the game started. So it's a deeper conversation."

"Obviously the fans and the league and everybody wants to be competitive, but then you also as players think about trying not to get hurt," Davis said. "Obviously injuries are a part of the game, and no one wants to get hurt in the All-Star Game. ... All these guys here are very valuable to their teams. So it's some mixed emotions about it. You try to go out there and compete a little bit and not just be a highlight show. But at the same time, do you guys really want to see somebody going down for a dunk and somebody going to contest it and, God forbid, something happens in the All-Star Game when it could have been avoided?"

Then there was Minnesota Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards, who admitted he wasn't interested in playing all that hard in an All-Star Game, period.

"For me, it's an All-Star Game, so I will never look at it as being super competitive," he said. "It's always fun. I don't know what they can do to make it more competitive. I don't know. I think everyone looks at it ... it's a break, so I don't think everyone wants to come here and compete."

"There were definitely some [discussions about the game being more competitive]," Boston Celtics forward Jaylen Brown said. "I'm not sure how successful that was, but there was definitely some discussions. I guess guys are trying to figure out how to do that at the same time as having fun, being safe, being injury-free.

"I guess more solutions need to be had to figure that out."

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/39556264/nba-again-left-seeking-solutions-another-uncompetitive-all-star-game

Silver went on to say maybe it was his fault for trying to focus too much on entertainment than the game itself.

“The feeling was that maybe — and I’ll take responsibility for it; as you know, I used to run something called NBA Entertainment — that we’d gotten carried away a little bit with the entertainment aspect,” Silver said. “By that I’m not just talking about the halftime or the intros, per se. One of the things we heard from the players, and I think this goes to the draft, was on one hand now you’re telling us you want us to play this as if it were a real game, but there’s nothing about it that feels like a real game. You have us standing up on stage, operating through this draft. Then once the intros start, we get cold, we’re standing there forever, we don’t get to go through our usual routines. Then come halftime you’re adding not just a little bit of extra time but a lot of extra time (for a halftime concert), so we get cold in the locker rooms.

“I think we sat down with the players and we listened to them, and we said, all right, we have to return to basketball, back to basketball, so to speak. It’s about the game. That’s ultimately how we’re going to be judged.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/02/18/sports/nba-all-star-game-changes/