I think in general people get too personally invested in agreeing or disagree with one another on here, like it's a competition or something and there's a scoreboard somewhere.
Disagreement is not a personal attack. Agreement is not an expression of approval of everything a person has ever said.
We can all do a better job of adding to the conversation, in a way that invites and challenges others to do so too.
Phosita there is kind of a difference between posters disagreeing with each other and what is happening here. We both post a lot, and we have some pretty different views on things, but overwhelmingly I would say we have a fairly productive dialogue. At least a decent amount of our debate concludes with "that is a pretty good point." (ie our discussion on the playoff thread) I feel like it is that way with just about everyone on these forums. However, time and time again you see one posters getting in battles with multiple posters, creating a thread with their username in the title and sidetracking conversations into the same debates over and over again. This is different behavior and creates controversy and anger for a lot of people. While I think it is a fair counter point to say that people (myself included) could do a better job of not taking the bait, I also think it is a fair question to ask why one person is repeatedly trying to stir the pot and bait other posters.
I tend to agree with you on a lot of what you said here, which is why in my first response to this thread I said that my biggest problem with LarBrd is not his "pessimism" but that discussions involving him tend to become about him -- whether that's his fault or not -- as opposed to the Celtics or NBA basketball in general.
I was going to title this "General Optimism thread"... I dont' think I have a major history of creating threads with my name in it. As I said in the previous page, I mostly just wanted one place where people following me from thread to thread baiting me into arguments would see that I have some broad optimism about this team as well. I think it did it's job, judging by the amount of my detractors who have crawled out of the flooring to comment in this thread.
Hopefully this puts to rest the daily occurrences of people derailing threads to comment about how LarBrd33's "underrating of our players and overrrating of other team's players is out of control" or suggesting that I'm obscenely biased against the Celtics. It's silly. There's a few things that I'm very pleased with about this team... I listed them in this thread. Hopefully that helps cut down on the riffraff being perpetuated by a small clique of instigators.
if you happen to be wrong about something, don't be afraid to say you are wrong in the present moment.
I have no trouble admitting when I am wrong. For instance, I spent the summer reading all the news coming out about Joel Embiid. The consensus was he felt fine, was walking around without a boot, dunking in practice... his former coach said Joel was fine. His friends said he was fine. Personal anecdotes from podcasters who spent time with him suggested he was fine.
The team officially hadn't come out to say anything was wrong with him and actually denied reports that he had re-injured anything... their public stance was that they just wanted to get Embiid as healthy as possible to have a long-term career. They merely said that his level of healing wasn't where they wanted it to be All signs pointed to his injury slowly healing, but probably not in time for him to make the scheduled appearance in Summer league. Insight from medical professionals following the story speculated that while his bone was healing, the tissue around the bone hadn't yet filled in... and while Embiid likely could play without pain, there was still a risk of re-injury and the team was likely just being cautious with their potential franchise player... likely trying to avoid a Greg Oden situation, and delaying his return until the regular season (months away) instead of letting him suit up for Summer league with the foot at 80%. There was also a growing sentiment from some fans that Philly was deliberately keeping Embiid's situation under wraps, because the draft was approaching and the team strongly preferred to land D'Angelo Russell with the #3 pick... the belief was that the team was nervous that the Lakers would take Russell ahead of them and then force Philly to give up extra assets to trade up even though most signs pointed to Okafor being the Lakers real target. The assumption was that Philly would never take Okafor 3rd with both healthy Embiid and Noel returning... so it benefited Philly to suggest Embiid might not return. It was a semi-ridiculous concept, but one that had been gaining momentum.
Based on all of this, I believed Embiid was probably going to be fine and would likely suit up for the team opening day. It was based on my research of the situation with the little tangible information available. I shared what I knew... made an educated guess, but I was quick to point out that NOBODY outside of Philly really knew what the hell was going on.
On the flip side, there were a bunch of juvenile members of this board who had an opinion on Embiid that can be summed up more or less as, "lol next Greg Oden... some rando on twitter says he re-broke his foot and Philly is refusing to admit it... lolz @ PHilly". Either way, it was still a conspiracy theory... that the team was intentionally lying about Embiid's situation when there was no real reason to do so... and arbitrarily delaying his surgery for no apparent reason?... made no sense. There was nothing tangible to back up this stance other than "Greg Oden".
So then it comes out that Embiid would be having a bone graft. Still to this day, many months later, it has yet to be confirmed if Embiid did indeed re-break anything. There was an unconfirmed report some months ago that he rebroke a bone in his foot, but officially the word from Philly was:
It is unclear why the procedure was delayed, but the team announced Tuesday that Embiid “underwent a bone graft procedure of the navicular bone” in order “to maximize his opportunity for a long and successful NBA career.”
Later, reports came out that Embiid was deliberately disobeying the wishes of the team, not following proper diet restrictions, walking without a boot, dunking, etc. While a confirmation of the player's lack of maturity it essentially confirmed all the information I was passing along MONTHS before these reports came out... that Embiid was telling people he was fine and walking without a boot.
Even now, we don't know the full story on Embiid. What we do know is that the bone graft procedure is the same one that Brook Lopez underwent in Jan 2014 and he's been fine since. It's also the same bone graft surgery that Kevin Durant underwent in April 2015... and he's playing fine. And it's being done by the same doctor.
Assuming in-fact that he didn't re-break his foot (as unsubstantiated reports have suggested without any confirmation from Embiid, the team or doctors surrounding him), We can attempt to connect the dots and speculate a little one what actually happened. As I relayed back during these "debates", while Embiid felt fine and was running, jumping and dunking without pain... the images of the injury showed that it wasn't yet at a level the team felt comfortable with. The team likely wanted him to get a bone graft put in to maximize his potential for a long-term career. Embiid, being an immature young kid who was understandably tired of spending all the time rehabbing, probably wasn't too keen on having another season-ending surgery when he felt well enough to run, jump and dunk without pain... Ultimately, they convinced him this was the best course of action and he finally agreed to do it months later.. hence the delay. Again, this is my speculation. If you want to read about what happened from the perspective of his Surgeon, here's an article on it:
http://www.phillymag.com/news/2015/08/19/surgeon-sixer-joel-embiid-foot/On July 11th the Sixers announced that Joel Embiid would require a second surgery to repair the navicular bone in his right foot, an injury that was first discovered mere days before the 2014 draft, and one which caused Embiid to miss his entire rookie season.
The surgery, which included replacing the two existing screws in Embiid’s foot along with a bone grafting procedure intended to help strengthen the area and promote healing, was performed Tuesday at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City.
"Visual inspection suggested good vascularity of the bone," said Dr. Martin J. O'Malley, the surgeon who headed up the operation. "We were able to identify that bone's integrity was even better than expected and has been put in a great position to support full recovery."
O'Malley is a renowned foot and ankle specialist who has performed several surgeries on high-profile NBA players. His recent clients include Nets' center Brook Lopez, who had surgery in January 2014 to repair a fractured fifth metatarsal in his right foot, and Kevin Durant, who underwent a bone graft for the fifth metatarsal in his right foot this past April.
...
When the team sent out its press release on July 11th announcing the need for surgery, they anticipated the operation would occur within the next 7-10 days. The wait instead dragged on for over a month without an update, causing some to wonder whether Embiid was in agreement.
The delay, instead, came down to selecting who would perform the surgery.
"From that point Joel had some additional diligence that he wanted to do, like talk to players," Hinkie said about the delay. "He had talked to a number of the players that had first hand experience, as a patient, with the various surgeons that we were looking at. I thought it was a really reasonable approach and a good way to think about it if you're a patient."
...
Hinkie reiterated that Embiid did not suffer another fracture. Instead, a CT scan in early June revealed less healing than expected.
Hinkie also addressed why a bone graft was not done during the initial surgery last year. While he was quick to point out that the Sixers weren't involved with the first surgery, he stuck up for the decision.
"It's not something people always start with," Hinkie said about the bone graft. "[It's] increasingly popular, but you're often seeing it happen on the second time through."
Read more at http://www.phillymag.com/news/2015/08/19/surgeon-sixer-joel-embiid-foot/#SEeUGTeHE1vm07hT.99
All that said, when it was first announced that Embiid would miss this season, I immediately jumped onto this forum, changed my thumbnail to a guy eating crow, admitted that I was wrong about him playing this season, and took my licks like a man... despite the fact that if you go back and read literally any of those threads, the only one that had any clue what he was talking about... remains me. Per usual, you have a small selection of fans who want to rub my face in the dirt and squeel "admit you're wrong!, admit you're wrong!" when they themselves have no clear grasp of my stance.
When I'm wrong, I'll let you know. But I'm not going to come out and say "whoops, the Nets didn't win 35-40 games... my bad" when we're less than half through the season and I prefaced that comment by saying "if they stay healthy". I assure you, nobody wants me to be wrong more than myself. But it'd be a little stupid for me to say "I'm wrong" when I'm not yet wrong. That goes likewise for my thread asking if the team would be better off trading the #16 pick for Nik Stuaskas. If Rozier ends up having a better career than Nik Stauskas, remind me and I'll admit to my dumb idea. But as of today, there's no tangible evidence to suggest that was a bad idea considering my entire premise was built around Nik Stauskas likely having more POTENTIAL than the guy we'd end up taking 16th.
What I have no interest in dealing with, is some folks (perhaps you are one of them... I can't place your name) turning several threads into a "bash LarBrd33 for his dumb ideas" conversation before my ideas have even been proven to be dumb. That's lame and derails way too many of these threads that I'm actually trying to make a genuine effort in providing my (admitted often warped) perspective on.
