Official Gamethread: Dallas at ORLANDO

[goneNdone 1]

 

Also: there are many, many gods, so what makes you think I was asking YOUR god to damn something?

 

 

Isnt this a contradiction? You say you are an atheist then you claim, there are many many gods. . If you acknowledge the fact that there are gods, your stand on Atheism will fall apart. .

 

Actually I am not very far from you, but I tend to respect beliefs in any form.

[goneNdone 1]

And the second best lineup based on +/- is Duhon instead of Nelson.

 

It's a worthless stat. I wish people would realize that and let it go.

 

I see another contradiction here but to prove it I have to go back 2 billion pages just to dig it out.

I remember clearly AJ had + 16 and played only for 18 minutes with 5 turnovers 2 of 9 shooting and 1 A in a losing battle.

Dwight had -10 in spite of his 20/20 effort.

 

Duhon? He should go back to his hometown and start spending his millions. .

[cetintas22 52]

Isnt this a contradiction? You say you are an atheist then you claim, there are many many gods. . If you acknowledge the fact that there are gods, your stand on Atheism will fall apart. .

 

Actually I am not very far from you, but I tend to respect beliefs in any form.

Hey, bro.

Don't waste your time by trying to discuss with DOM. He surely has so many personnel problems. Most probably he doesn't even have a girlfriend. He might be over 150 kgs (I don't know that US weighing system,codes whatever it is). He is full of superiority complex. It is very strange, he also has many believers in this forum so I believe his believers are also having identity problems or sth like that.

[goneNdone 1]

But what do I know? I am one of

f those guys who comes home from a long day of work, takes off his shoes, and smells his own dirty socks just to bathe in his self glory.

Since this is internet, what the heck I have a multibillion dollar business, no no I am Bill Gates on top of everything I am THE BASKETBALL GOD.

I hide behind my username while windows 8 hits the shelves.

Who cares what who does. This is not a dating site. Do not try to sugar coat yourself Ariel. . Although I respect your opinions, I cant care less for what you do for a living or your background. Excuse meeeee. .

[Secretly Space Jesus 670]

Isnt this a contradiction? You say you are an atheist then you claim, there are many many gods. . If you acknowledge the fact that there are gods, your stand on Atheism will fall apart. .

 

Actually I am not very far from you, but I tend to respect beliefs in any form.

 

I was more commenting on how silly it was to be upset with someone for doing something that's a sin in your beliefs but not theirs.

 

That's what the "Holy cow!" example was about. The entire idea of saying holy cow is to reference a lot of East Asian religions that view the cow as sacred, but I doubt if I wrote that that anyone would've actually cared about it, and if Arielle had written it, he'd not have acknowledged it.

 

But really: lots of gods are worshiped around the world, and hundreds more were worshiped at earlier periods. I don't think it hurts my atheist cred to acknowledge that, any more than I have to believe werewolves are real to acknowledge that they exist as a concept.

 

 

 

[Secretly Space Jesus 670]

Hey, bro.

Don't waste your time by trying to discuss with DOM. He surely has so many personnel problems. Most probably he doesn't even have a girlfriend. He might be over 150 kgs (I don't know that US weighing system,codes whatever it is). He is full of superiority complex. It is very strange, he also has many believers in this forum so I believe his believers are also having identity problems or sth like that.

 

For future reference:

When converting metric weight measurements into SAE, a good rough estimate is:

 

1 kilogram is roughly equal to 2.2 pounds.

 

So if I was 150 kilograms, I'd weigh around 330 pounds.

 

I actually weigh about 84 kilograms.

[FlawlessVictory 26]

But it is cruel to critisize the team and especially Hedo after all losses.

LOL!!!!

 

 

I just can't...

[the notorious S.A.C. 89]

For future reference:

When converting metric weight measurements into SAE, a good rough estimate is:

 

1 kilogram is roughly equal to 2.2 pounds.

 

So if I was 150 kilograms, I'd weigh around 330 pounds.

 

I actually weigh about 84 kilograms.

 

So much for your shot at the biggest loser everyone thought you'd get. Who knows maybe they will throw out the weight requirement and youll be sure to win. Note (It was just a joke people....me and DOM go way back with this stuff and he isn,t easily offended...statistically of course). BTW I hear Oden is available or at least pieces of him are.

[Secretly Space Jesus 670]

I don't even know why you try sometimes. You've told them so many times.

 

I do it because I'm so kind and generous, and because when I wanted to learn more about basketball, people helped me. And I know that it would be a betrayal of those people, if I didn't try to pay their generosity forward.

 

One of the most fascinating things about the way a lot of people post on this board is that there seems to be no level of self-examination at all. Arielle, and the dozens of others who have posted similar things over the years, think(s) that everyone's opinions should be respected, regardless of their validity. The idea there is that if one person researches their thesis and writes a well thought out argument, and another just mashes out a wildly inaccurate and inarticulate theory, both opinions should be respected equally. That notion doesn't hold up to even the most basic level of scrutiny.

 

One of my closest friends is a FANTASTIC painter. She's simply an amazing artist, and makes a very good living with her work. I, on the other hand, have all the artistic skill of an epileptic squirrel. If you were to ask the two of us to each paint the same landscape, she would give you an incredible work of art; I would give you something that looked like a 5th grader made it. And that's completely fine, because I'm secure enough to acknowledge that I'm an indescribably ****ty painter.

 

But if a person were to offer up an opinion that my painting was better in that scenario, you wouldn't think: "Well, I need to respect his/her beliefs" in any way. You'd think that person was insane, an idiot, or an insane idiot, because objective quality and personal preference aren't the same thing.

More importantly though, that is an unbelievably mean thing to do to another person. The cruelest thing you can do to another is tell them that they're great when they're not.

But when Arielle, or someone else, says that all opinions should be respected, when I've done research, gathered information, etc and the other person hasn't, it never seems to occur to him/them how incredibly disrespectful that is to me. If two basketball players started off as equals, but one practiced hard to get better and the other didn't, you wouldn't maintain that you had to respect them both as equal players. If two students had projects for class, and one worked really hard and the other didn't, you wouldn't give them the same grade because everyone should be treated equally. The idea of doing something like that is ridiculous, but that's the same logic being applied here.

 

The idea that everyone deserves to have their opinion respected is silly. An opinion that the sky is brown isn't an opinion that is worth respect.

 

What everyone deserves is an equal playing field, and they have that. This board is better than real life in that respect, because no matter what your background, wealth, influence, location, or upbringing in real life, on this forum you arrive with a blank slate and the same opportunities as everyone else. Prove you have value to add to conversation, people will support you. Prove you don't, and you'll be mocked. It's a total meritocracy. That's the dream, but there is a group of people that would see that destroyed in the name of everyone feeling awesome about themselves, whether they've earned that or not.

 

And that's infinitely frustrating for people like me, because I joined this board with a very, very limited understanding of NBA history and of the legal and by-law aspects of the NBA game. I didn't just gain that knowledge through sorcery; I read books. I did research. I asked questions on topics I didn't understand to people who I thought could provide me accurate answers. I gained knowledge and understanding by working for it. By saying that my opinion, that is informed by all of the aforementioned work, is no better than the uninformed and inaccurate ranting of people who don't know what they're talking about, they're not only disrespecting my opinion(while condemning me for doing the same), they're also blatantly disrespecting the amount of work that went into the arrival at that opinion and the amount of work that went into its presentation.

 

There are times I've spent multiple HOURS writing a lengthy, detailed individual post, only for people to immediately casually dismiss it or worse, outright insult me for having written it. But whenever that is pointed out to the group of posters who think I'm a humorless bully, they either ignore it, or they attempt to justify it by claiming that I deserve it or have it coming for reasons that are at best dubious. And while having that level of hypocrisy stare me in the face so often is annoying, I can forgive it because I'm smart enough to see it for what it is: an emotional cudgel and a defense mechanism.

 

Look at Arielle's posts in this thread. It becomes increasingly obvious over the course of the thread that Arielle doesn't really want to debate basketball, so each successive post after about page 22 becomes more and more of an attempt to undercut me as a person rather than make any kind of statement about the points I'm making. According to what's said or heavily implied in just Arielle's posts in the last 7 or 8 pages of this thread, I'm an unhappy, bullying, self-important, arrogant "big-talker" with low self-esteem whose internet bravado is really just a front for how badly I feel about myself, and whose life will be filled only with regret in 20 years. And then, in the same thread just a few minutes later he wrote, with what I have to imagine was an entirely straight face:

If someone didn't agree, I would never bash them over it.

I cannot stress how sad that is. But the even more insulting thing is that he went on to say that I COULD help people on this board learn if only I tried.

 

What the hell?

 

My wanting to help people learn more about basketball is the entire reason that this thread even exists. It's the reason I spent almost two hours one morning writing this post about Jameer to give Babir a better understanding of how Jameer compares to other point guards. It's why I wrote all those CotM posts, even when they almost immediately devolved into places where people could insult me in the replies. It's why I continued to write posts on this board at all after writing this post which got me harassed about being racist for 18 months.

 

But all that other bull****? Yes, I notice it. I can't NOT notice it. When I write a long, detailed post pointing out that someone's point is not only wrong, but also explaining WHY it's wrong and how they can avoid making the same mistakes in the future, and the response I get is essentially "Shut up, you arrogant douche," of course I'm bothered by that, and of course dealing with that all the time is frustrating.

 

For a long time, my avatar was a stick figure of Don Quixote. It started off as a joke, but the truth of the matter is that a lot of the time, as people have constantly pointed out, I really am tilting at windmills on this board. There have certainly been times when I thought about just leaving this board for good, like a lot of posters from my "generation" of posters did, simply because having the same 5 inane and idiotic conversations over and over again is a boring and annoying waste of my time.

 

And maybe at some point I will just wash my hands of this board. But until that point, I'm going to keep trying to point out the truth here, because it's the kindest thing to do, even if the vast majority of people on this board who benefit from that kindness aren't smart enough to recognize it or are too self-absorbed to appreciate it.

[the notorious S.A.C. 89]

 

 

 

Oh lawwwd

SHAQ=MOOBS.

[Wharf Rat 94]

29 pages on a game thread...I take it we lost :shard:

[Magicman28 295]

I do it because I'm so kind and generous, and because when I wanted to learn more about basketball, people helped me. And I know that it would be a betrayal of those people, if I didn't try to pay their generosity forward.

 

One of the most fascinating things about the way a lot of people post on this board is that there seems to be no level of self-examination at all. Arielle, and the dozens of others who have posted similar things over the years, think(s) that everyone's opinions should be respected, regardless of their validity. The idea there is that if one person researches their thesis and writes a well thought out argument, and another just mashes out a wildly inaccurate and inarticulate theory, both opinions should be respected equally. That notion doesn't hold up to even the most basic level of scrutiny.

 

One of my closest friends is a FANTASTIC painter. She's simply an amazing artist, and makes a very good living with her work. I, on the other hand, have all the artistic skill of an epileptic squirrel. If you were to ask the two of us to each paint the same landscape, she would give you an incredible work of art; I would give you something that looked like a 5th grader made it. And that's completely fine, because I'm secure enough to acknowledge that I'm an indescribably ****ty painter.

 

But if a person were to offer up an opinion that my painting was better in that scenario, you wouldn't think: "Well, I need to respect his/her beliefs" in any way. You'd think that person was insane, an idiot, or an insane idiot, because objective quality and personal preference aren't the same thing.

More importantly though, that is an unbelievably mean thing to do to another person. The cruelest thing you can do to another is tell them that they're great when they're not.

But when Arielle, or someone else, says that all opinions should be respected, when I've done research, gathered information, etc and the other person hasn't, it never seems to occur to him/them how incredibly disrespectful that is to me. If two basketball players started off as equals, but one practiced hard to get better and the other didn't, you wouldn't maintain that you had to respect them both as equal players. If two students had projects for class, and one worked really hard and the other didn't, you wouldn't give them the same grade because everyone should be treated equally. The idea of doing something like that is ridiculous, but that's the same logic being applied here.

 

The idea that everyone deserves to have their opinion respected is silly. An opinion that the sky is brown isn't an opinion that isn't worth respect.

 

What everyone deserves is an equal playing field, and they have that. This board is better than real life in that respect, because no matter what your background, wealth, influence, location, or upbringing in real life, on this forum you arrive with a blank slate and the same opportunities as everyone else. Prove you have value to add to conversation, people will support you. Prove you don't, and you'll be mocked. It's a total meritocracy. That's the dream, but there is a group of people that would see that destroyed in the name of everyone feeling awesome about themselves, whether they've earned that or not.

 

And that's infinitely frustrating for people like me, because I joined this board with a very, very limited understanding of NBA history and of the legal and by-law aspects of the NBA game. I didn't just gain that knowledge through sorcery; I read books. I did research. I asked questions on topics I didn't understand to people who I thought could provide me accurate answers. I gained knowledge and understanding by working for it. By saying that my opinion, that is informed by all of the aforementioned work, is no better than the uninformed and inaccurate ranting of people who don't know what they're talking about, they're not only disrespecting my opinion(while condemning me for doing the same), they're also blatantly disrespecting the amount of work that went into the arrival at that opinion and the amount of work that went into its presentation.

 

There are times I've spent multiple HOURS writing a lengthy, detailed individual post, only for people to immediately casually dismiss it or worse, outright insult me for having written it. But whenever that is pointed out to the group of posters who think I'm a humorless bully, they either ignore it, or they attempt to justify it by claiming that I deserve it or have it coming for reasons that are at best dubious. And while having that level of hypocrisy stare me in the face so often is annoying, I can forgive it because I'm smart enough to see it for what it is: an emotional cudgel and a defense mechanism.

 

Look at Arielle's posts in this thread. It becomes increasingly obvious over the course of the thread that Arielle doesn't really want to debate basketball, so each successive post after about page 22 becomes more and more of an attempt to undercut me as a person rather than make any kind of statement about the points I'm making. According to what's said or heavily implied in just Arielle's posts in the last 7 or 8 pages of this thread, I'm an unhappy, bullying, self-important, arrogant "big-talker" with low self-esteem whose internet bravado is really just a front for how badly I feel about myself, and whose life will be filled only with regret in 20 years. And then, in the same thread just a few minutes later he wrote, with what I have to imagine was an entirely straight face:

[/size][/color]

I cannot stress how sad that is. But the even more insulting thing is that he went on to say that I COULD help people on this board learn if only I tried.

 

What the hell?

 

My wanting to help people learn more about basketball is the entire reason that this thread even exists. It's the reason I spent almost two hours one morning writing this post about Jameer to give Babir a better understanding of how Jameer compares to other point guards. It's why I wrote all those CotM posts, even when they almost immediately devolved into places where people could insult me in the replies. It's why I continued to write posts on this board at all after writing this post which got me harassed about being racist for 18 months.

 

But all that other bull****? Yes, I notice it. I can't NOT notice it. When I write a long, detailed post pointing out that someone's point is not only wrong, but also explaining WHY it's wrong and how they can avoid making the same mistakes in the future, and the response I get is essentially "Shut up, you arrogant douche," of course I'm bothered by that, and of course dealing with that all the time is frustrating.

 

For a long time, my avatar was a stick figure of Don Quixote. It started off as a joke, but the truth of the matter is that a lot of the time, as people have constantly pointed out, I really am tilting at windmills on this board. There have certainly been times when I thought about just leaving this board for good, like a lot of posters from my "generation" of posters did, simply because having the same 5 inane and idiotic conversations over and over again is a boring and annoying waste of my time.

 

And maybe at some point I will just wash my hands of this board. But until that point, I'm going to keep trying to point out the truth here, because it's the kindest thing to do, even if the vast majority of people on this board who benefit from that kindness aren't smart enough to recognize it or are too self-absorbed to appreciate it.

 

Excellent post as well as the last few pages that you've contributed to.

 

I always thought I knew more about the game then a lot since I played it and I know you and I have disagreed on numerous occasions and will again in the future. I have taken a step back after some of the conversations and reanalyze it and see your point of view.

 

I appreciate your opinion and I realize there's more to know outside of my experience in something that was so dominate when I was younger.