the NBA is the best. the absolute best.

Jimmy Butler 😆 what a routine!

Got ejected today too, but Dudley's sacrifice was in vain.

Great to see the non-favorites putting up a fight in the playoffs. The Nets being outscored 17-27 in the fourth quarter is a lot to do with a lack of experience and high-stakes execution in my opinion. They will benefit from the experience and it brings me joy seeing a team comprising of dispensable assets putting together good basketball in the last few months and under play off lights. Win or lose this series, I hope it garners a bit of fervor among the community.

a few thoughts

  • refereeing was terrible in this game. terrible. they did everything they could to help the nets even the series
  • on the play that started the melee, embiid got a clean block. if you want to say it was a foul, which i dont think it was, it was a common foul. the league better rescind that flagrant on embiid
  • dudley instigated the entire thing, butler was sticking up for jo. obviously thats a huge win for the nets, sacrificing a nothing player like dudley to get butler ejected. the league really needs to look at this
  • fuck the nets. on to the next one.

hehe what's wrong with the Nets? Embiid committed a flagrant 1 elbow without penalty in Game 2 and laughed about it afterwards. Thats just putting a target on your back. Then from Dudlley's angle yesterday the foul on Allen looked pretty hard so he came in to defend his teammate. The league needs to look into this? What the refs needlessly ejecting both players or Dudley? I'd be surprised if you think Dudley had dastardly intentions to get an opposition player ejected.

Btw on second look Simmons didn't take a shot at Dudley; just got pushed along with him.

Think the refs largely got that call right. Dudley and Butler had to go of course. Was a hard foul by Embiid, but he did get a lot of ball too. Perhaps a flagrant was a tad harsh, but can easily be motivated too IMO.
Was a really good game btw! I really like watching LeVert. Will be interesting to see how he develops in the next couple of seasons.

Rex wrote:

Think the refs largely got that call right. Dudley and Butler had to go of course. Was a hard foul by Embiid, but he did get a lot of ball too. Perhaps a flagrant was a tad harsh, but can easily be motivated too IMO.
Was a really good game btw! I really like watching LeVert. Will be interesting to see how he develops in the next couple of seasons.

i disagree with this. i think either you eject just dudley for instigating (and coming half way down the court to do it) or more preferably, you eject neither. i think the refs overreacted because the players fell into the first row when the shoving started. technicals would have been fine. what the refs did was allow to dudley, a nobody, to sacrifice himself to get the 3rd best sixer ejected from the game.

The baddest motherfucker in the NBA right now.

Next Question, wait, I mean, next season Russ. 😆

dame dolla strikes again. shit gave me flashbacks to 5 years ago against the rockets. couldn't even sleep good. i fuckin love this game.

Logo Lillard hits again. Sooooo fucking good! Just sad that Nurkic is out, because I think the Blazers could have gone places these playoffs with him. Defending McCollum and Lillard is such a nightmare for any team, the addition of Kanter is great, but ultimately I think Nurkic being out will prevent them from being in position to knock off either Rockets or Warriors.

It was an incredible shot wasn’t it? Bittersweet for me because it was against OKC but I can’t hate on greatness. OKC just doesn’t have a balanced squad yet, and Westbrook for all his energy isn’t a mature player and doesn’t know how to control a game in critical moments, and neither is Paul George. Lol at PG13 saying in the post game presser that it was a “bad shot”.

Anyway the OKC squad needs to be tweaked and our glaring weaknesses - poor 3 point shooting and lack of bench offense has to be addressed before we stand a chance in the playoffs in the future.

Now me and LeBron can just sit back and enjoy the rest of the playoffs. May the best team win.

Westbrook is obviously amazing but, man, has his shooting gone to shit! It was never great, the fact that he can average a triple double with his shooting woes is mindboggling, but as a team OKC needs to be constructed differently to have a chance to go all the way IMO. More shooters is a given, but Westbrook also has to realize that he can't be the man when it comes to jump shots down the stretch when a game is in the balance.

well scoring is the easiest part of a triple double for a guard and he chucks it up enough, so that doesn't surprise me. OKC established what's important to their team culture when they basically give him freebounds. what kind of self-respecting big man does that? so of course steven adams isn't gonna be shit when he's bitching up like that. and last year he had westbrook telling him what questions he was allowed to answer from reporters. you're 7' your response should be "if you don't shut the fuck up i'm going to step on your little ass." they're going nowhere with westbrick, former UCLA player or not. he doesn't make good decisions and it's why when harden was their 6th man, he ran the team in the 4th quarter.

lol, utah defending harden from the back

first game you seen in the series? it was more ridiculous in the first game. anyway, a couple months ago scottie pippen said on espn that's how he would defend harden and milwaukee's coaches said "oh for real, we're gonna try that." and it worked pretty good because it takes away his step back. utah just copied it. it's a pretty good strategy if you have a long player defending harden from the back and funneling him towards a shot blocking big like gobert.

I was just lolling at how unusual and inventive teams are exerting themselves to defend the freak not disparaging.

Utah just don't have the players to even slow down Harden with that approach, even if the approach makes sense. Bucks, on the other hand, have the players to execute. In the end it mostly comes down to that anyway.

i thought they did a great job of slowing him down after the first game, they made adjustments to a strategy they were just copying. when they tweaked it for their personnel they did better. gobert basically made his floater game ineffective.

It says how great a player is when teams have to change their entire game plan and defensive set up to account for just him. It’s like the “Jordan rules” for the Bad Boys or what Mourinho tried doing against Messi on numerous occasions and was successful only in the Inter Milan CL final.

Kudos to him.

Claudius wrote:

This Magic story’s nuts. So much a reminder of the challenges Buss the younger has had of late. Can’t even get amsome mid season trades around the king done discretely and quickly. And now inadvertently copying Magic on performance discussions related to him. Tsk.
Email fail. https://www.foxnews.com/sports/magic-johnson-resigned-lakers-emails-bad-job-performance.amp

Jeanie Buss doesn't appear to be a capable leader at the moment with all the dysfunction going on. 

I had hoped that they could hire someone of prominence quickly to be the President of Basketball Operations and fire the General Manager Rob Pelinka (who has a negative reputation around the league due to being a former agent and screwing teams over), but that isn't happening. Jeanie likes her "yes-people" around her. There is someone named Linda Rambis (wife of mediocre former NBA coach/Laker Kurt Rambis) who is her whisperer about basketball decisions. This person is traveling with the front office to interview with potential coaches like Monty Williams! 

It would've been much better if they had allowed someone from the outside instead of being the Laker family run the show. 

Despite all this mess, it only takes one major signing to turn things around. 

Are you now reconsidering your previous mocking of Magic doing what he did as, for me, his reaction was restrained.
e: Not blaming you, personally, as you couldn't possibly have known everything!

Bold Tone wrote:

Are you now reconsidering your previous mocking of Magic doing what he did as, for me, his reaction was restrained.
e: Not blaming you, personally, as you couldn't possibly have known everything!

I still think the way he quit was unprofessional. We wouldn't just quit our jobs by going out to the media to declare that we are quitting without telling your boss beforehand.  

His performance was also an issue for me. He took jabs at players like D'Angelo Russell when he was traded to Nets saying that he wanted a leader and had a grand idea of putting playmakers with Lebron instead of shooters. 

if they were talking shit about me behind my back and i could put them on blast publicy, hell yes i would quit that way.

Why didn't the Spurs foul at the end? 😆 goodbye!!!

Now the playoffs really begin. Western semis. Who do you guys have for Rockets Warriors?

yeah if kawhi and siakam shoot 80% from the field on high volume, the sixers wont win a game in this series

Horford just absolutely beasted Giannis today in Game 1 of the ECSMs. It's unfair we're not talking about this man as an all star despite clearly besting Embiid and to a lesser extent Giannis over the season. A scintillating victory that's got me quite aroused.

KingslandBarge wrote:

Horford just absolutely beasted Giannis today in Game 1 of the ECSMs. It's unfair we're not talking about this man as an all star despite clearly besting Embiid and to a lesser extent Giannis over the season. A scintillating victory that's got me quite aroused.

embiid gave it to horford the last time the teams played

mdgoonah41 wrote:
KingslandBarge wrote:

Horford just absolutely beasted Giannis today in Game 1 of the ECSMs. It's unfair we're not talking about this man as an all star despite clearly besting Embiid and to a lesser extent Giannis over the season. A scintillating victory that's got me quite aroused.

embiid gave it to horford the last time the teams played

21 gimme free throws in that game. Joel went soft and got a helping hand from refs 🙂

time for the rockets to go ankle hunting on steph and klay. the league just gave them the green light. don't bitch and whine, get even.

well, that was better.

defensive intensity ratcheted up about 8 notches, butler made a bunch of huge shots, and we won despite embiid looking like a ghost out there.

home court advantage, stolen. lets go

Love these playoffs. Every series is super exciting.

I used to like CP3, by my god the man's a prick. A sore loser, you would think by now he would be used to losing.
I don't like GSW but I want them to beat the Rockets just to see CP and Harden cry about it

I happen to really like watching the Warriors. One of the best teams ever assembled, possibly THE best. They also happen to play fantastic basketball. Having said that, I feel for the Rockets. In game 1 the refs screwed up at least 3 calls on Harden. They for some reason reffed the game differently than they have been doing all season, and it is NOT cool to repeatedly land in the shooter's landing area. Because it is dangerous. And then in game 2 the unfortunate injury to Harden, which clearly affected him.
I want the Warriors to beat the Rockets, but not like this! I would like to see both teams at their best.

well tonight is probably the biggest game the sixers have played, all things considered, in about 17 years. no pressure