The 2014-2015 NBA Season Thread. Lock It Up Please: The Golden State Warriors Are The Champions

[offset pow clow]

The nba aint giving out perfect attendance awards

F playing all 82 gms if you dont want to, getting to the playoffs is all that matters

 

[coldcity]

Chips is all that matters once all the bs boils down just to be 1000% honest here

 

[coldcity]

Dwight Howard talks about his exit from Orlando, explains reasons for asking Magic to fire Stan Van Gundy



"Dwight Howard became a villain of sorts among basketball fans, for the way he chose to exit two separate organizations.

His divorce from the Magic was as messy as possible, and involved him asking for the team to fire then-head coach Stan Van Gundy, and going back and forth about opting in and out of the final year of his deal before finally demanding a trade out of town.

In a new documentary entitled “Dwight Howard: In The Moment”, Howard candidly explains his side of the story.

From Marc Stein of ESPN.com:


Dwight on asking Magic management to make a coaching change after Orlando’s first-round exit in the 2011 playoffs:

“We shouldn’t be losing like this. I wanted to win. And I went to management and I said: ‘Guys, I’m a player. I just want to give my two cents. I think that our coach has lost his touch with the team. Great coach, but I think he’s lost his touch, I think he’s lost his voice. And I think it’s time that you guys get a new voice.’ I said, ‘I love him as a coach, but I think we need a new voice.’ … Six weeks [later], they finally respond [and say], ‘We’re gonna keep Stan.’ So I’m like: ‘OK. That lets me know how you guys feel about your leader expressing how to make the team better.’ “

Dwight on the trade demand that soon followed:

“That summer I just thought about what I needed for my career. And when I got back [to Orlando], I let those guys know that I wanted to be traded. … I just wanted a change for myself. I didn’t want it to be done publicly. I just wanted it to happen silently. And I’d go to a new team, start fresh. Well, it didn’t happen that way. … The season comes around and they asked me to come to the office, shook my hand and they said, ‘We’re gonna trade you tomorrow.’ The next day the trade didn’t happen, but they came out and said I wanted to be traded. And that’s when everything went downhill. And I feel like I should have came out and said some things at that point to let people know what was going on, but in that situation I really didn’t know what to do.”

Howard has a right to tell management how he perceives the team’s relationship with its head coach, but management has the right to realize that really good coaches at the NBA level are few and far between, and keeping one (as they wanted to do with Van Gundy at the time) was far from something that should have caused Howard to be as offended as he was.

As for the part about wanting his trade demand kept quiet, it’s tough to envision that happening under any circumstances, even if the organization had the best intentions. Anytime a player of Howard’s caliber is on the market, for whatever reason, it’s going to be national news that’s impossible to keep under wraps. But where Howard was wrong about Van Gundy, he’s right in that if the team “came out and said” he wanted to be traded, that caused an unnecessary firestorm that he was (perhaps unfairly) forced to deal with.

Howard also left the Lakers under less than pleasant circumstances, although as an unrestricted free agent, there was no reason for him to call for the coach to be fired or demand to be traded; he could simply leave an extra $30 million or so on the table to play somewhere else. That’s the path Howard chose, and as has been well-documented by now, his relationship (or lack thereof) with Kobe Bryant played the biggest part in his decision.

The quote, again via Stein:

“Before I got to the Lakers, I would talk to him [and] he would really help me out on the [down] low about how to become everything that I said I wanted to be. And I looked up to him and I looked up to everything he, as a basketball player, stood for. … [By the end of that season] I just felt so hurt and disappointed in the fact that the guy that I was expecting to be somebody who was gonna pass the torch, somebody to say, ‘Dwight, I’ll take you under my wing and I’ll show you how to get it done’ … it was none of that.”

Kobe Bryant is not in any way the singular reason the Lakers franchise finds itself where it is today. But the way he clashed with Howard is undoubtedly the reason that Dwight now plays for the Houston Rockets."


I thought he swore he never requested stan to be canned?

 

[offset pow clow]

Then dudes be like "i spent my hard earned money to come watch him play & he does this" like hes the only player on the court, they're all still pros & the best at what they do at the end of the day

 

[coldcity]

another from PFT

love this dude tobias game...him & melo could be nasty

Tobias Harris and the Orlando Magic couldn’t come to terms on a contract extension before the Oct. 31 deadline to do so, so he will be a restricted free agent next summer.

Harris is on record as saying he wants to stay in Orlando, and the Magic can simply match any offer he receives to ensure that’s the case.

But Harris is from Long Island, and playing for the Knicks may be too tempting to try to pass up, should they come calling with a hefty offer sheet at the conclusion of this season.

From Adam Zagoria of The Knicks Blog (via HoopsHype):


“I’m telling you if the Knicks come at him hard, who wouldn’t want to play for their hometown team?” a Harris confidant told SNY.tv and The Knicks Blog.

The source pointed out that the 6-foot-9 Harris plays well alongside Knicks star Carmelo Anthony. The pair worked out together multiple times this summer at Terminal 23, Anthony’s midtown gym.

“They play well together,” the confidant said. “Carmelo always had him on his team when Kevin Durant came to town and they would win every game.”

There’s also the reported matter of Harris having an incentive in his Nike contract to play in a large market like New York, but even if that’s true, a player of Harris’ stature is unlikely to be materially affected by whatever bonus amount that may be; it would pale in comparison to a multi-year deal in the $8-$12 million per season range.

Harris is off to a strong start for the Magic this season, averaging career bests in points (17.5) and rebounds (8. while playing 37 minutes per contest.

 

[NickFolarin]

It's funny how people talk about Thibs running the s**t out of his players and say he runs them to hard and long and they will never win a ring like that, but when a player sits SOME games to preserve his body for the long 82+ game season, he's being selfish?????

 

[coldcity]

It's funny how people talk about Thibs running the s**t out of his players and say he runs them to hard and long and they will never win a ring like that, but when a player sits SOME games to preserve his body for the long 82+ game season, he's being selfish?????

dont come in here talking with sense... you know better

 

[Vincent Van Goat]

Gretchen, stop trying to make Rainbow happen, it's not gonna happen

 

[coldcity]

Knicks better get tobias or rudy rainbow next summer

Gretchen, stop trying to make Rainbow happen, it's not gonna happen

i had to read it 2-3 times to catch who that was

when he was in memphis i called him rude fruit but thats worse than rainbow

 

[bravelude]

dis still about Rose?

 

[osh kosh bosh]

‏
‏@ESPNStatsInfo 
Kobe Bryant (1st), Anthony Davis (4th) among NBA leaders in PPG. Davis leads league in player efficiency rating; Bryant is 59th

PER famously overrates shot creation.

So take Kobe Bryant's PER with a giant grain of salt.

 

[pmatic]

Gretchen, stop trying to make Rainbow happen, it's not gonna happen

A+

 

[BIG LEEMELONE]

Surprised no one has mentioned that Chicago training staff is responsible for mishandling player injuries on a pretty consistent basis. As bad as scott brooks is at coaching, that's how bad their staff is about looking out for players. Check it out

Everyone here is well aware of the Chicago Bulls medical and training staff, right? The ones that cleared former center Omer Asik to play with a broken fibula during the 2011 playoffs? The one that listed Luol Deng as “day to day” after a spinal tap, before then selling him out to the media and fans before reportedly ignoring him during the summer months that followed? The ones that thought it was just fine to push Joakim Noah’s feet for 40 minutes a game last season in spite of his history with plantar fasciitis? Before he had to sit for most of the second half of the season after developing, you guessed it, plantar fasciitis? The team that put both Noah and guard Jimmy Butler back into games with what should have been obvious, debilitating injuries?

More: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ball-...n-team-allowed-mike-james-175437007--nba.html

Gotta look out for yourself because they will work you to a pulp and then in the words of e40 "they'll have a new ***** next year"


Dwight doing a lot of singing to the media lately, anonymously and otherwise.

 

[offset pow clow]

Gretchen, stop trying to make Rainbow happen, it's not gonna happen

 

[coldcity]

Surprised no one has mentioned that Chicago training staff is responsible for mishandling player injuries on a pretty consistent basis. As bad as scott brooks is at coaching, that's how bad their staff is about looking out for players. Check it out

Everyone here is well aware of the Chicago Bulls medical and training staff, right? The ones that cleared former center Omer Asik to play with a broken fibula during the 2011 playoffs? The one that listed Luol Deng as “day to day” after a spinal tap, before then selling him out to the media and fans before reportedly ignoring him during the summer months that followed? The ones that thought it was just fine to push Joakim Noah’s feet for 40 minutes a game last season in spite of his history with plantar fasciitis? Before he had to sit for most of the second half of the season after developing, you guessed it, plantar fasciitis? The team that put both Noah and guard Jimmy Butler back into games with what should have been obvious, debilitating injuries?

More: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ball-...n-team-allowed-mike-james-175437007--nba.html

Gotta look out for yourself because they will work you to a pulp and then in the words of e40 "they'll have a new ***** next year"


Dwight doing a lot of singing to the media lately, anonymously and otherwise.

also cleared asik to play on a broken tibula during the playoffs

 

[phuzzy badpheet]

 
‏‏@ESPNStatsInfo 

Kobe Bryant (1st), Anthony Davis (4th) among NBA leaders in PPG. Davis leads league in player efficiency rating; Bryant is 59th

Bryant told Howard that he wanted him to come to Los Angeles and help him win two more championships, but not as an understudy. He wanted Howard to be the team’s third option behind himself and Pau Gasol, according to a source. Bryant tried to sell Howard on being his “Tyson Chandler” and made it clear that Los Angeles would be his, but only once Bryant decided he was done playing.

LOLOLOLOL!!!!!

Dwight should have asked Kobe to be his Steve Kerr!

Howard clearly made the best basketball choice for himself moving on to Houston.

A lot of us said that at the time, but it was crystal clear Tuesday. Howard and Harden make a far more formidable force than Howard could have with the aging and inefficient Kobe we saw Tuesday in Los Angeles. Make no mistake, Kobe was as good as anyone should have expected, but right now Harden is simply better. It doesn’t hurt that Howard’s back is clearly the healthiest it has been in a couple years.

http://probasketballtalk.nbcsports....m-kobe-lakers-actions-show-feud-going-strong/

 

[everysingletime]

I think chicago overhauled their training staff when they appointed a new director last yr, so the whole thing should be a non issue

 

[everysingletime]

Was about to say, how the hell is Kobe first in PER but then I read it again. LOL

 

[bishopstrongbow]

Wassup with fans *****ing like this?

**** up and watch the game. This social media era got everybody thinking they have a voice.

This.

 

[nick.]

The only argument against sitting players, or players choosing to sit, is that the fans pay to see the stars play.

If I paid say $100 to go to a Knicks game and I found out Melo wasn't playing because he had a game last night, I'd be pissed. Bulls fans don't pay money to watch Pau & Noah. They want to see the youngest MVP in history do his thing.

 

[offset pow clow]

The only argument against sitting players, or players choosing to sit, is that the fans pay to see the stars play.

If I paid say $100 to go to a Knicks game and I found out Melo wasn't playing because he had a game last night, I'd be pissed. Bulls fans don't pay money to watch Pau & Noah. They want to see the youngest MVP in history do his thing.

All i can say about that is buy tickets to meaningful games

 

[mr marcus]

Guessing I'm the only one who saw the sportscenter segment on rose. They posted fans tweets and one was hashtag #*****made SC trollin

 

[bravelude]

DRose aint cooking anything these days tho. More so, prices are all different right, depending who they play.

 

[nelson999]

So, who's going to be ROY?

 

[kingjaffejo]

Dat boi Bari