Bebop Meat Mop

First game I've watched. Noticed that Hampton got barely any PT, and seemed pretty aimless and disengaged when he was in. Has this been the case all year?

Agreed. Problem with Simmons is much more than bad FT shooting; he has a mental block, the yips, the heebie-jeebies, whatever you want to call it. He's a head case on offense in crunch-time, and it's gotten progressively worse since he's been in the league. This isn't like a catastrophic knee injury where time and dedicated rehab will eventually make it better. And Simmons has shown little indication that he understands or is able to address the root causes of his problem. Morey has no other option than to wait it out and hope a decent enough deal will come along for him to salvage some of his pride. I don't see how anyone in their right mind would trade what he's asking for Simmons; he'd be lucky to get McCollum straight up.

I love it. This is gonna be a short rebuild, cuz these guys are ready to play right now!

The FT% is really concerning for projecting his future shooting ability, the rest isn't as meaningful. I worry about RJ for the same reason.

Seriously dude? The Spurs tanked for Duncan. The Cavs tanked for Lebron. Even the ultra tanking Sixers have been a contending (if flawed) team for several years now. You are capable of peering into the souls of front office execs to divine their true motives? More likely you've manufactured an arbitrary definition of what "tanking" is to fit your preferred narrative. It's unclear what the Magic did this year was tanking at all, by your definition. They didn't trade Vucevic to deliberately lose games, they traded him because the Bulls offered assets greater than the future value of Vucevic in exchange. That sound like rebuilding, no?

It's likewise a mistake to not take the benefits of tanking into account and only consider the potential downsides, which the anti-tanking crusaders will happily do. I actually agree that the Magic probably should have kept Vuc, but these anti-tanking arguments are getting tiresome. Would you feel better if people used the word "rebuilding" instead? There are plenty of examples to support both sides of the argument, and so much of team success comes down to dumb luck outside of the draft lottery that it's really a waste of time to get all worked up over it.

Yep I like Portis too, but the Magic have young bigs that need to play as much as possible!

It's odd. People in the media are saying Atkinson is the leading candidate yet we don't even know if he's interviewed with the team? What the hell's going on? In other news, I haven't seen Clifford being mentioned for any of these open jobs. Seems like the consensus around here is that he was the one that wanted to leave, wonder if he's starting to regret that now?

Ok, that's probably where I got confused. These guys must be bosom buddies or something.

For some reason I thought Hammond was higher on the chain of command than Weltman, this is incorrect? What exactly does Hammond do? We don't hear a peep from him ever.

I really hope it's Atkinson, guy did a great job developing a team with BKN. Was a victim of circumstance with KD and Kyrie wanting their own guy.

He's got Kispert in the right spot at least.

Yep, smoked. Just looking at the box-score you could chalk it up to hot 3pt shooting by the Bucks, but the Heat defense was lazy and confused from the get go. They looked demoralized, probably realizing that if they can't beat the Bucks when they shoot like crap, they can't beat them at all. Chuck did GAURANTEE a Bucks sweep though, so epic Heat comeback incoming.

Don't remember a lot of people saying he sucked or anything, but Atlanta's choice to not take Luka was rightfully questioned at the time. I don't think it's hindsight to say that was an objectively bad decision, especially since Reddish hasn't shown much. Trae will be a good, exciting player for a long time but that trade will haunt the Hawks forever.

Maybe if the Bulls pick ends up late lottery, but if it's top ten there's going to be much more talented players available.

Oof, Wanamaker might be the worst PG in the league. Payne and Smith would be decent options, though their respective teams seem to like them and would probably try to keep them around.

Warren has high knucklehead factor, don't think Magic would want that around the young guys.

George just got signed to a big extension, so he's probably not going anywhere.

Not really, all those guys should be back next year. The Clippers on the other hand, need to make it happen soon. IIRC Kawhi can bounce after this year if he wants to.

Interesting, didn't realize he was on the staff. One of The Ringer podcasts I like to listen to has Rajah Bell on it. Corbin tends to come up fairly regularly WRT his time as the head coach of the Jazz back in the day, and certainly not in a positive light. Hopefully he's grown as a coach and as a man since then.

The best idea would be to have flat draft odds for all NON-playoff teams. That way the good teams won't ever get top-5/10 picks unless they trade for them, whereas the bad teams basically have no incentive to tank beyond missing the playoffs. There could be other incentives to try to win; like player bonuses for the teams that finish higher in the non-playoff standings, or salary cap credits for those teams. Haven't thought that hard about it, but seems like there would be a ton of little things that could be done to reduce the amount of "rest" and phony injuries that crop up this time of year. Maybe even a losers knockout tournament that would take place during the playoffs whenever there's an empty time-slot.

So what do we think Fournier would be worth on the open market? Don't see why he would opt out of his final year because he seems overpaid at $17.5 mill, but maybe not?

Count me out on Derozan. Having someone who routinely shrivels up in the biggest moments as your number one option is pointlessly stupid. Everything else about him is pretty much irrelevant.

Compared to the other sports you might be right, but there's generally a lot more strength involved with basketball. Bulkier muscles obviously put more strain on joints and tendons. Nadal was one of the few tennis players who really went heavily into strength training and subsequently had a bunch of injuries early in his career; he started staying healthier once he backed off of that. I doubt Federer has lifted a weight in years.

Increased training can add it's own wear and tear, and that training is beginning at much younger ages as well. With tennis I think it may have more to do with players being able to maintain their quickness and flexibility better as they get older (because of advances in training), along with it being a lower impact sport in general. It's not that comparable athletically. Also there was a pretty flukey crop of all-time great players that just happened to show up around the same time with Federer, Nadal, Serena, and Djokovic a little later. Nobody since has had the pure talent to really measure up.