NBA Thread

:SMUG:

Does anyone know if Sportsnation is available on the internet to watch?

ESPN America aren't showing it again until Wednesday.
 
The_Special_One said:
Don't forget about Chandler!!! IMO the signing of the season, the player who given Dallas the missing piece to be a title contender.
Click to expand...

Whilst Chandler has been instrumental in the season, yesterday he had probably his worse match in the final series. He had4 fouls too early and only played 29 minutes, I think, because of the foul problems.

But he's been great all the season and he did great deffense help when needed. Surely the missing piece they needed to go for the ring. In the final quarter he was, like all the team, focused and vital in that possession that they got up to 3 offensive rebounds, most of them thanks to Chandler tipping it back.
 
Can people please stop saying 'choke'? It takes away from how well Dallas played this series. They deserved it, the Heat didn't. That's it.
 
I don't think one leads to another Stuart. LeBron was choke again, that's a undeniable fact, but it doesn't mean that Mavs won because of his bad performance. Dallas won because their team was far superior comparing to the Miami one.

Honestly, I feel sorry for Chris Bosh. All criticism came down to him during the season but he was, in my point of view, the best Heat player in this Finals (maybe in whole POs too?). Moreover, he seems to be a classy guy, his behaviour have nothing to do with the other two (they are always together and the poor boy is constantly alone in press conferences).
 
I also think Bosh was the best and more consistent Heat player during the whole playoffs. And I don't know which word would define it better, but surely Lebron has been out of the game in the 4th quarter of the last 3 matches. That's too much for a great player and one of the big reasons why the Heat couldn't handle the final. The other reasons are of course the great teamplay of Dallas and the key performance of Terry and Barea, the "small" bays that drove Wade and Lebron crazy in deffense.
 
"Michael Jordan gave him (Chandler) to Dallas last summer for Erick Dampier's waivable contract, inadvertently giving Dallas the missing piece it needed to beat LeBron James in the Finals … you know, the guy everyone keeps saying is the next Michael Jordan. MJ really is the greatest."
Click to expand...

:LOL:

Source: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6657623/nba-finals-game-6-retro-diary

This part is also good:

THEORY A

Remember when Wade tore into LeBron with three-plus minutes remaining in Game 3? When he yelled at him for eight solid seconds? When there was genuine anger in his eyes? When he did it right on the court, right in front of the other players, right in front of 20,000 fans and 10 million TV viewers?

LeBron was never the same after that.

When was the last time anyone ever really yelled at LeBron James? You'd have to go back to high school, right? He just spent the past 10 years being coddled by everyone (teammates, coaches, agents, entourage members, yes-men, general managers, owners, media members, etc.). Imagine he was a little kid (which really, he might be to some degree), and imagine you were his father and didn't believe in yelling at your kids. Now, imagine your kid screwed up in his second-grade play and, for whatever reason, you broke character, snapped, and berated him for eight seconds in front of everyone. How would he handle that? Poorly, right? He'd pretend it didn't affect him, but the more he thought about it, it would gnaw away at him (especially once his buddies said, "I can't believe your dad yelled at you like that").

Could that have been what happened to LeBron? Did those eight seconds shake his confidence beyond repair? Did he resent Wade for embarrassing him? Did he think to himself, "Fine, you want to act like this is your team, then YOU win this title?" I believe every basketball champion needs a pecking order of sorts; that's just what the history of the league told us. Miami tried to cheat this concept by putting two of the league's best three players on the same team. It worked for 8½ months; LeBron and Wade ran the team together and deferred to one another depending on the moment. Then the Finals rolled around, Wade kicked it up another gear, LeBron didn't do the same, Wade called him out … and the team was NEVER the same. These are the facts.


THEORY B

Passed along by a friend of mine in NBA circles: LeBron caved from the never-ending scrutiny (as brutal as any athlete has ever faced in the Internet era) and his shaky inner circle, which consists of one parent (his mother, who battled a ton of problems over the years), his high school friends (who assumed an inordinately crucial role in his life without any real experience), his agents (who never threw their bodies in front of "The Decision"), and Miami's management (who walked him into another fiasco with the Heat's Welcome Party). By all accounts, he's a genuinely nice and happy guy who just wants to be liked — he was never meant to be a villain, and as much as he tried to feed off the heat (no pun intended), once it piled up past a certain point, he broke. Maybe he felt that happening against the 2010 Celtics as well; maybe that's why he chose to play with Wade in the first place.

And maybe that's why, right now, he's in total denial. Even in the postgame presser, when he should have been devastated the same way Magic Johnson was distraught after coming up small in the 1984 Finals, LeBron was doing the Frank Drebin "Nothing to see here, please disperse" routine, bristling at the notion that he choked and taking shots at anyone who rooted against him. That's what you do when you're surrounded by enablers — you blame everyone else, and you never look within. He never understood that people only rooted against him because that's what you do when someone boasts before they've ever actually done anything.

Let's say you're in college and one of your buddies says, "See that girl over there? I'm taking her home tonight. And I'm doing this because I'm the funniest and best-looking guy in this room." And let's say he's COMPLETELY serious. Guess what you're doing if it doesn't happen? You're making fun of him. Relentlessly. Really, that's what 50 percent of the Miami-related vitriol was about; the other 50 percent was because LeBron tried to stack the deck by playing with his biggest rival (we didn't respect it), and because he broke Cleveland's hearts on national TV (we didn't like it). To this day, LeBron hasn't shown any real regret about last summer; that's the main reason everyone rooted against him. He couldn't handle it. He caved. And now we're here.

So it's Theory A or Theory B, or maybe both, or maybe neither. As I wrote last Wednesday, I don't know why I care so much. Maybe it's because I know LeBron might be the most talented player I will ever watch, the Wilt of this generation, and I'm going to end up being pissed off that he never reached his potential and took me to a higher place as a sports fan … which is only the entire reason we watch sports in the first place, right? Because we don't know what's going to happen next, and because once in a while, someone shows up who's so good and so talented that he makes us say, "I know what's going to happen next?" Like he's giving us sports fan ESP? The best thing about Jordan's final shot wasn't that he made it, but that we knew he would make it. That's why we revere him all these years later. Usually heroes come through only on command in movies; Jordan did it in real life. We loved him for it.

LeBron? We thought he was next. Then he fell apart against Boston. Then he chose to play with his buddy instead of beating him. Then he fell apart again. Forget about him losing; we're losing, too. Nobody has ever fully explained that part to LeBron. We rooted against him this season because it's fun to have villains in sports, and because it's fun to see an overly confident person gets his or her comeuppance. Not because we hated his guts. There will be a day when we root for LeBron James again. You wait. Either way, thanks for indulging me.
Click to expand...
 
Oh my god, why has the comparison to Jordan ever been made with LeBron? Completely different playstyles. Please airjoca, move on with your life.
 
So why does Basketball hate LeBron like football hates Ronaldo? As an American who doesn't watch any basketball, I would really like to know.
 
StuartCulli said:
Oh my god, why has the comparison to Jordan ever been made with LeBron? Completely different playstyles. Please airjoca, move on with your life.
Click to expand...

My post wasn't about comparing LeBron to MJ, they were quotes about 1: How Chandler ended up in Dallas and 2: What possibly caused Lebron to dissapear from game 4 onward.

And the comparisions between LeBron and MJ aren't about them being similar, it's about greatness in Basketball, like comparing Wilt and MJ, Bird and Magic.

And I can post about whatever the hell I want, why does it bother you? Ignore my posts and move on with YOUR life... :)
 
0qeh.jpg


I want this poster.
 
Me too tobi, but I want the same type of poster with a Melo picture next season. :COOL:












Oh wait! There will be NO NBA next season!!!!!
 
+1

He's going to Hollywood or if he fancies a challenge per se, New Jersey with Deron Williams.
 
drekkard said:
Probably that's the only way NY can win it, Special!
Click to expand...

Ouch. :COAT:

drekkard said:
He's going to Hollywood or if he fancies a challenge per se, New Jersey with Deron Williams.
Click to expand...

Who the f*** is New Jersey? :P

D-Will quit NJ in order to go to LA and team up with Howard at the Staples Center.

NBA in 2012:
Bosh, LeBron & James
Amare, Melo & CP3
Kobe, D-Will & Howard (in a huge trade operation and an aging Kobe)

I love this pipedream moves! :D

mark-cuban-trophy.jpg
 
:LOL:

He slept with the trophy too.
 
Stuart is right, Howard is moving to LA no matter what happens. He has made to follow Shaq steps, Beboq. He won't move to Miami! (unless they gave LeBron to the Magic :LOL:)


sauce said:
Brooklyn Nets yall mean.
Click to expand...

The Brooklyn Nets, commonly known as New Jersey Nets or We-wanna-rule-NY-even-if-we-dont-rule-NJ or We-wanna-be-like-the-Lakers-but-we-are-worse-than-the-Clippers, are a good reason to be expecting a fantastic new season. You know that they are going to target Howard, like they did with LeBron, Melo, Paul, Amare, Bosh, Johnson, Boozer, Kobe, Cuban, Obama, Trump, Pallin, your mom, my dad, Obama's dog and so on. They finally added Deron Williams and they are looking for one major piece: Howard. It is going to be interesting if they are able to take the next step during the upcoming season.

Interesting will be also to see if the the Heat are going to rule the East and finally get the ring. In my opinion, they are the favourites to win. They are 1 year older, with plenty of time to gel so there's gonna be hard to beat them. Moreover, I truly believe that Spoelstra (if still in charge) is capable to manage all those big egos.

The Bulls are one shooting guard (not necessarily an all-start but he has to be very good) away from being legit contenders according to a certain Basketball expert called TSO. Aaron Aflalo, albeit not being an all-star, is a free agent and a good option for them (in fact, there's no all-star SG available that's why I've picked him).

The Celtics will try to get the maximum they can from their aging core: Garnett, Pierce, Allen. I think its time to rebuild around Rondo and probably Jeff Green (trade Perkins was a mistake but that's my opinion) although you never know when it comes to the mighty C's.

Will Westbrook and Durant learn to play together? That's the main question in OKC kingdom. If so, I can't even imagine what is going to happen in the West!

The Mavs have to re-signed some important players like Chandler, Barea and Butler. The problem is, they don't have the cap to handle all those signs. My guess is that they are going to release Butler, as he didn't play the POs and there are still so many doubts about his health.

What can I say about the Lakers? Well, they are the Lakers! LA is always a legit contender. Mike Brown is in charge now and it will be curious to see if the team will accept his own game philosophy after Phil Jackson reign.

And last but not least, my beloved New York Knicks. The question is: are they going to blow one more year in order to attain the 2012 Free Agency (read Paul or Howard) or are they really appointing batteries at championship run next season? Still hard to answer with all the changes happing in their Presidency. If the Knicks want a deep PO run they must sign a big, like the Mavs did when they signed Tyson Chandler last year, and get a bunch of role players. And the most important one: play f'n defense! (I hope you'are reading this Mike)


All said, next NBA season is going to be terrific! (if there's a season)

And remember: The last time the Boston Bruins won a Stanley Cup, the Knicks won the NBA Championship the following year. :COOL:
 
Last edited:
Ricky Rubio is officially joining the Timberwolves, what's he like?
 
Well, it's hard to say wether he will have success or not in the NBA. He's too much of an european type of PG. He has good vision and passing abbilities, but he lacks a lot in shooting and phisically he's too weak. Surely they will "build him" a lot there in the states, but still it remains a mistery if he will suit the athletism of the league. Plus, he's not that constant in his play. He has long streaks of good or bad form, so right now he isn't too reliable at long term in terms of mentality.

He can be great for a run and crazy plays type of play, but in the key moments, don't look for him to decide anything. He's very young, too, so there's plenty of room there to grow.

He's got a nack for flashy passing, running and most of all he's an splendid perimeter deffender. But against bigger guys and athletic PGs like those in the NBA I don't know if he will struggle a bit.

He coudl develop into a Nash type of player (without the shooting abbilities of Nash) or a Kidd type, but lesser versions of course. I doubt he becomes a star, but he can the kind of player that's loved by the fans of a minor franchise, that's for sure, given his childish looks, his youth and his energy.

It's the kind of player that can shine in a crazy match and he won't shy away from trying absurdly nice things (even if they are uneffective now and then).
 
The_Special_One said:
The Brooklyn Nets, commonly known as New Jersey Nets or We-wanna-rule-NY-even-if-we-dont-rule-NJ or We-wanna-be-like-the-Lakers-but-we-are-worse-than-the-Clippers, are a good reason to be expecting a fantastic new season. You know that they are going to target Howard, like they did with LeBron, Melo, Paul, Amare, Bosh, Johnson, Boozer, Kobe, Cuban, Obama, Trump, Pallin, your mom, my dad, Obama's dog and so on. They finally added Deron Williams and they are looking for one major piece: Howard. It is going to be interesting if they are able to take the next step during the upcoming season.
Click to expand...

WOW :LOL:
 
Oh this is priceless.

Lakers' Artest wants to change name to Metta World Peace
Posted Jun 23 2011 7:46PM - Updated Jun 24 2011 11:33AM

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Los Angeles Lakers forward Ron Artest wants to change his name to Metta World Peace.

Artest's attorney filed a petition in Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday seeking the change. The 31-year-old NBA star was born Ronald William Artest Jr.

In the court documents, Artest cites personal reasons for wanting to make the change.

An Aug. 26 court date was set to consider the petition.

The petition filing was first reported by celebrity website TMZ.

Artest's career has been filled with ups and downs. He helped the Lakers win the NBA championship a year ago and in April he received an award for outstanding service and dedication to the community.

He has testified before Congress to support mental health legislation.

Artest may be best known for triggering the most notorious brawl in NBA history when he jumped into the stands and attacked a fan while playing for the Indiana Pacers in November 2004. He was suspended for the rest of that season.

Artest wouldn't be the first NBA player to make a change to an unusual name.

Lloyd Bernard Free, who played in the league from 1975-88, had his first name legally changed to World in 1981. A friend had given him the nickname because of his 44-inch vertical leaps and 360-degree dunks.

In the NFL, Cincinnati Bengals star Chad Johnson legally changed his last name to Ochocinco in August 2008. The name means "eight five" in Spanish.
Click to expand...

:LMAO:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom