Spurs needed to steal game 1 to have a chance in the series. 1230pm start on the West coast, on Mother’s Day no less, you can’t ask for better circumstances to negate a home court advantage.
Spurs would have won if Leonard does not get hurt. That said, they still should not have choked away a 25 point lead.
I think Zaza is a dirty player. I despise Draymond. I really don’t like the Warriors. Looks like they will have another cake walk into the Finals. Go Cavs!
I’m just trying to imagine a 7 game series where Zaza Pachulia squares off against Kelly Olynyk. I wonder how many limbs they’d each have by the end of it.
Did Bowen actively hurt people? I mean, i know he was a real pita as a defender, but I don’t recall him actually hurting people.
The series wouldn’t last more than a quarter because Patrick Beverley would fly in for a steal and take out all their knees.
Then Tyler Hansbrough would randomly hit someone for no reason to try to revive his career.
Most of the links are dead, but you can see him against Steve Francis amd AI: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/13152-its-official-bruce-bowen-is-a-dirty-player
Celtics down 37 in the 2nd quarter and about to get booed out of the arena.
The NBA should really do something about this two week gap between the second round and the Finals. Why not play some games?
I hope these playoffs drive some changes going forward.
I’d really like to see the post season seeded 1-16. I think that would result in a lot better match ups in the 2nd and 3rd rounds. The East is a fucking joke and has been for like 10 years. And lets be frank, no one in the East is getting to the Finals as long as Lebron is there. He’s literally playing the best ball of his career and its his fucking 14th season. I’m not sure he’s peaked.
Long term, when the players and the league renegotiate their CBA, I hope we see some changes to max contracts. The way it works now its too easy to stockpile top 30 players because of the hard limit as a percentage of the salary cap on player salaries. Every team should have one salary that can be an unlimited percentage of the cap as opposed to the way it is now where the max contract is a fixed percentage of the salary cap. This would encourage the top 30 players to be spread out among all 30 teams.
Seeding this year’s playoffs, 1-16:
So, you’d get one better semi-final matchup in GSW-CLE, at the expense of the Finals being awful.
I think I’d like something along these lines (and I say that as a Cavs fan). You’ll always get high-end vets willing to play for minimum salaries to chase rings, but that won’t typically happen with players in their primes. But yeah, I’d say a hard cap and allow for one player per team to not count against it. Maybe have some variant of the Bird exception to slot an extra % which wouldn’t count for those players who have been on the team for a long while.
Down goes IT.
…and Bill Simmons claims that the basketball gods do not bother with draft lottery karma.
Maybe not directly, Bill.
Dual 12-0 sweeps I guess? Let’s hope no one else gets injured.
This year. The biggest problem is the soft team salary cap and the hard cap on individual contracts. But aside from that, the East fucking sucks and has for a while. That is a problem. First team All NBA the past 5 years has had exactly one East player not named Lebron James. So, 19 West players and 6 East and 5 of those were James. GG.
My suggestions aside, the NBA should be concerned with the state of their game. In the NFL, MLB and NHL any team making the post season has a chance to win a title. In the NBA, right now, if you aren’t the stacked Warriors or the Cavs with the best player in NBA history aside from Jordan, you are shit out of luck.
I don’t see that changing next year. Or the year after that. The Warriors will be able to keep their nucleus thanks to a soft cap and the Cavs are going to cruise out of the East again. I think there is a very real chance we are going to see the Warriors-Cavs four years in a row with a fifth not out of the realm of possibility. Seeding 1-16 fixes that.
I think think the Celtics may be able to make the jump to contender with the #1 pick and cap room. I also think the Sixers with a healthy Embiid and Simmons and a top pick may be able to cause some damage if things click.
The balance could shift if they do and Milwaukee continues to rise. The rockets, thunder and clippers will all be worse.
There’s no point for the Celtics to trade the #1 pick for a, say, Jimmy Butler.
Frankly, no one’s getting past the Cavs in the East, not while LeBron is at his prime. (And, by some miracle some team does that, there’s that other superteam in the form of the Warriors that they have to deal with).
Draft Fultz #1, and they’ll get New Jersey’s pick next year, which is probably Top 3. Use that pick next year, and start playing your young core. LeBron is 32. He’ll have to slow down in 3, 4, or 5 years. If you’re the Celtics, you’ll want to position yourself for that moment.
Yeah, I remember everyone thinking the Warriors were crazy to draft Curry when they already had an all star at the position. That turned out pretty well. …
What a game! Boston is single-handedly saving these playoffs.
Apparently the internet says they played the Space Jam Monstars theme for their entrance. The jinx is real.
