More Hardwood + Round Holes = Lots of Scoring in Basketball 2K19

[Hurlshort]

Warriors got past the Grizzlies. I guess that is an upset since the 3 seed beat the 2 seed. 

Meanwhile the NHL has 5 game 7's in the first round. Craziness.

[Bartimaeus]

Bucks' shooting has been...difficult to watch outside of Giannis this Celtics series. Probably going to go home because of none of the roleplayers being able to ever hit any open 3s.

(e): That'll do it. Inconsistent teams don't win championships, last year's aberration aside, and boy, the Bucks have been horribly inconsistent in the playoffs over the last five years. Guess I'm cheering for...Dallas?

Edited May 15, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Keyrock]

I feel like the Celtics are now the best team left in the playoffs, but what do they have left in the tank after a tough physical series like that?

[Bartimaeus]

Holy crap, and I thought we/the Bucks had it bad. RIP Suns, and just at the half too. I mean, theoretically, the Suns could make up this ridiculous deficit, but it sure doesn't seem likely.

(e): Somehow, it got worse.

Edited May 16, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Keyrock]

That was one of the most epic bed ****tings I've ever seen by a favorite from Phoenix. I wonder if CP3 was playing hurt; he was good in round 1 and the first 2 games of this series, then he fell off a cliff.

The Suns are in a weird spot now. Does Deandre Ayton play for them next season? This doesn't get any easier for CP3 as he gets another year older. I guess the hope, if you are the Suns, is that Devin Booker makes a leap into the top echelon similar to what Jayson Tatum just did.

[Bartimaeus]

basketball's just about dead, folks

[Hurlshort]

9 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

basketball's just about dead, folks

Hardly. A Warriors/Celtics matchup would be fantastic for the NBA. 

It's been an interesting turn seeing the Warriors become the villains of the NBA. I mean, they are still basically the same homegrown team that won their first title in 2015. Is it because Draymond Green talks too much? *shrug*

I'd love for them to get a 2nd title without KD. As a dynasty, there might not be many other shots at it.

[Bartimaeus]

27 minutes ago, Hurlsnot said:

A Warriors/Celtics matchup would be fantastic for the NBA. 

I deliberately pirate all of my sports streams precisely because I don't want to support these sports organizations even when I literally could watch stuff over the air in HD legitimately. I cannot understate how much I do not care what's "good" for the business side of things - I watch football and basketball because I want to enjoy watching the sport, and seeing a Boston/Warriors match-up would be like seeing a Patriots/Packers match-up to me (ignore that I am a Packers fan, I am talking from a more general view where seeing the same teams continue to be great for too long is awful and boring). Admittedly, I like to see athletes get paid for their ridiculous talent and hard work, but that's just about inversely offset by the brazillionaires getting even more as a percentage of whatever the sport earns as a whole.

27 minutes ago, Hurlsnot said:

It's been an interesting turn seeing the Warriors become the villains of the NBA. I mean, they are still basically the same homegrown team that won their first title in 2015. Is it because Draymond Green talks too much? *shrug*

I'd love for them to get a 2nd title without KD. As a dynasty, there might not be many other shots at it.

Do you want the Patriots to win another Super Bowl next year? Even though Tom Brady's no longer on the team, kind of difficult for me to particularly want that. The rotten stink of Kevin Durant probably won't fade for me until that entire team is dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up.

Edited May 23, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Gfted1]

13 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I deliberately pirate all of my sports streams precisely because I don't want to support these sports organizations even when I literally could watch stuff over the air in HD legitimately.

Classy.

[Bartimaeus]

2 minutes ago, Gfted1 said:

Classy.

Hey, it's a form of...I was going to say "civil disobedience", but it's more "corporate disobedience", I guess, since it doesn't really impact anyone besides the particular corporation. Well, I don't think the U.S. will be greatly impacted by whether the NBA or NFL lives or dies, but maybe I'm wrong and it is a small form of the former after all.

[Gfted1]

But you already pay for the Comcast?

[Bartimaeus]

9 minutes ago, Gfted1 said:

But you already pay for the Comcast?

Nope, I don't have cable, but I have access to free over-the-air channels that has stuff like Fox and CBS Sports, which would cover the majority of NFL games. NBA is a bit more spotty because like half of the games are on channels that aren't free over-the-air and also the NBA doesn't seem to have a good national TV deal like the NFL does (for example, AFAIK @ShadySands's Denver Nuggets are basically never on TV in Colorado at all because some incredibly garbage service bought the home market rights and so unless you happen to have the very specific service, it's not really possible to watch most of their games legally - correct me if I'm wrong about this Shady).

Edited May 23, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[ShadySands]

44 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Nope, I don't have cable, but I have access to free over-the-air channels that has stuff like Fox and CBS Sports, which would cover the majority of NFL games. NBA is a bit more spotty because like half of the games are on channels that aren't free over-the-air and also the NBA doesn't seem to have a good national TV deal like the NFL does (for example, AFAIK @ShadySands's Denver Nuggets are basically never on TV in Colorado at all because some incredibly garbage service bought the home market rights and so unless you happen to have the very specific service, it's not really possible to watch most of their games legally - correct me if I'm wrong about this Shady).

Nope, this is generally accurate. The only thing is that the garbage company with the home market rights is the team's ownership group.

[Bartimaeus]

Oh, so it's not ever going to change either. Well, that's just unfortunate, especially what with the team actually being good (and having a two-straight bonafide MVP player - I'm sure we'd all love to forget terrible injuries having derailed two Nuggets post-seasons, but that's a different matter entirely). And that's for a home market: the whole American sports TV model of making it very difficult or outright impossible to watch games for out-of-market teams is incredibly annoying if you're not in the home market for your specific team. Yeah, I think I'll save my money and tears for smaller companies and creators, not the huge sports leagues that are already ridiculously flush with cash.

Edited May 23, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Hurlshort]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Do you want the Patriots to win another Super Bowl next year? Even though Tom Brady's no longer on the team, kind of difficult for me to particularly want that. The rotten stink of Kevin Durant probably won't fade for me until that entire team is dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up.

The Warriors were bad for about 30 years, and then they drafted well, hired a rookie coach, won a surprise title against King James, set the NBA record for wins in a season, and lost in 7 to King James. That was all before KD showed up. 

Now they spent the previous 2 years without KD, rebuilding depth, recovering from injuries, and getting nowhere near the playoffs. They've finally gotten healthy, they've rebuilt the bench, and they are playing better team basketball than everyone else. Are they the Patriots of basketball? I'd say they are more like the Showtime Laker or the Gretzky Oilers. As for KD being Brady, pshaw I say. Pshaw! 

[Bartimaeus]

16 minutes ago, Hurlsnot said:

The Warriors were bad for about 30 years, and then they drafted well, hired a rookie coach, won a surprise title against King James, set the NBA record for wins in a season, and lost in 7 to King James. That was all before KD showed up. 

Now they spent the previous 2 years without KD, rebuilding depth, recovering from injuries, and getting nowhere near the playoffs. They've finally gotten healthy, they've rebuilt the bench, and they are playing better team basketball than everyone else. Are they the Patriots of basketball? I'd say they are more like the Showtime Laker or the Gretzky Oilers. As for KD being Brady, pshaw I say. Pshaw! 

It's not a perfect analogy, but keep in mind that the Patriots were arguably even worse than the Warriors were during the 60s-90s, and they were "the Patriots" as we know them by the end of the 2000s after having won 3 titles. Golden State went to five straight and won 3, so it's not particularly different to me - they came out of nowhere to dominate the 2010s, and now they look to want to establish a second leg of dominance just like the Patriots did. Yeah, I'm gonna be cheering against Golden State.

Well...I would be, except I like Boston even less, while I still haven't made up my mind about how I feel about Miami in relation to the other two options. Which is precisely why basketball will feel dead to me after Dallas is eliminated here, .

Edited May 23, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[ShadySands]

We draft well and usually have decent coaching but are often plagued by injuries and ownership that doesn't often pay to retain talent.

Speaking of which, I hear our president is heading off to Minnesota.

[Keyrock]

While the Heat are a scrappy and well coached team, the same thing that happened last year seems to be happening again. They are falling to the more talented and ultimately better team. It's not over yet, but I have a hard time seeing Miami beating Boston 2 times in a row, barring an injury.

[Bartimaeus]

Man, I think the Bucks would've had a pretty good chance of repeating if Khris Middleton hadn't slipped on a banana peel in the first round and/or the roleplayers hadn't decided they were going to be the absolute worst over a 7 game series. Stupid sports.

[Keyrock]

On 5/26/2022 at 1:22 AM, Bartimaeus said:

Man, I think the Bucks would've had a pretty good chance of repeating if Khris Middleton hadn't slipped on a banana peel in the first round and/or the roleplayers hadn't decided they were going to be the absolute worst over a 7 game series. Stupid sports.

In fairness, there are scenarios like that in many years. What if Derrick Rose didn't tear his ACL in round 1 2012? What if Klay and KD didn't both get hurt in the 2019 playoffs? What if CP3 didn't pull a hammy in the 2018 playoffs? What if Bill Walton stayed healthy on many occasions?

Anyway, which is the worse scenario: The Celtics winning their 18th championship or the Dubs winning their 4th in 7 years?

[Bartimaeus]

11 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

Anyway, which is the worse scenario: The Celtics winning their 18th championship or the Dubs winning their 4th in 7 years?

Yes.

11 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

In fairness, there are scenarios like that in many years. What if Derrick Rose didn't tear his ACL in round 1 2012? What if Klay and KD didn't both get hurt in the 2019 playoffs? What if CP3 didn't pull a hammy in the 2018 playoffs? What if Bill Walton stayed healthy on many occasions?

Yeah, that's why I added "stupid sports" as an acknowledgement of that sort of thing - sports are dumb, and dumb things happen in sports that change how everyone perceives everything, . For how good the Packers have been over the last ten years, we should've at least had a Super Bowl appearance, but somehow piles of stupid stuff have happened over and over to prevent it - them's the kicks. Bucks are very lucky they got one, all things considered.

Edited May 30, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Keyrock]

28 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Bucks are very lucky they got one, all things considered.

If it makes you feel better, the Bucks look to be in good shape going forward. Giannis is at the beginning of his prime and likely hadn't hit his peak yet, which is a terrifying thought for everybody except the Bucks and their fans. Compare them to the Lakers who have an aging Lebron and Anthony Davis who can't stay healthy and the Russell Westbrook situation is a disaster. They got a title, so mortgaging the farm was worth it IMHO, but going forward... Yikes!

[Keyrock]

 

[ShadySands]

No matter who wins, we lose?

I'm mostly indifferent to these finals. I'm hoping for a good series though I'm leaning slightly towards Boston because I'm a tower in Pisa I don't think they have anyone left from their last championship run like a decade and a half ago... and it'll put them over the Lakers. BUT! At the same time, I won't be upset if Kerr gets another ring.

 

Edited May 31, 2022 by ShadySands

[Hurlshort]

Best offense against the best defense? Seems like a good matchup to me. That video says the Warriors always have an easy path to the finals. That is ridiculous. Memphis was a very deep team that had their number since last season. Even before Ja went down, they had taken a 3-1 series lead. Maybe they are just a better team? They also beat the Rockets and Thunder when they were the big dogs, and that was all before KD. Haters gonna hate.