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Pretty ing sad that someone (and likely at least two people) whose livelihood depends on the ability to write publishes "could care less."
Also wingtips with no socks.
Pretty ing sad that someone (and likely at least two people) whose livelihood depends on the ability to write publishes "could care less."
Jesus Christ Allah Akbar you are ing re ed.
Didn't the Spurs have a pretty good record ...last yearr?? Didn't help out too many bad teams wwith their records. ...
Was about to read, but then read the thread first.
Thanks guys
What you should take from the article is that someone outside of SA knows who the Spurs are and couldn't get an interview with Kobe.
Also, he's talking about a paradigm shift, where the Spurs aren't Rocky Balboa, but Ivan Drago... trained to kill ruthlessly and effortlessly, while giving the impression they are cuddly and cute (unlike Drago)
That wasn't the point. 1 or 2 games that the Spurs should have won had they not rested starters (probably would have) but at the same time it could have meant they don't make a deep playoff run because of the Kobe effect of having to play 40 minutes a night to appease the rhinestone ball cap wearing celebs who never look up from their PDAs anyhow.
Teams should do what's required to win. As Spurs fans we not only approve of it, we demand it. When Manu hurt his arm in a meaningless last game of the season, that was stupid, and we all wanted him to sit but he could have done it in the 1st game of the playoffs as well.
the rest of the league, who cares what they think or how it impacts them? You have superteams with over half the total NBA les ever won, the lion's share of the talent year in and year out and somehow a small market team like SA is supposed to give a and be a Washington Generals team? No thanks. The Spurs should be the favorite team of anyone who hates status quo and corporate scams like some sports seem to be, however oddly enough the Spurs status quo is a playoff appearance and lately deep runs into the playoffs.
Pop's strategy has so many more benefits then most analysts give him credit for. #1, it gives bench players starts/minutes. That's important. It gets them ready for big moments down the road. Patty Mills played with incredible confidence in the playoffs last year, because he was in familiar territory. The other thing it does is a brilliant psychological play... if the Spurs lose, everyone thinks, well, big deal, of course they lost, their best players weren't out there... but if they win, or even compete in a close game, it makes the other team think that the Spurs' system is so good that it can beat you even when the stars are sitting. Pop has specifically mentioned a regular season game against the Heat where he sat guys and experimented with Diaw guarding LeBron. It worked better than he expected, and that paid off later when Diaw became the starter in the finals...
1. No lottery team has ever said, "if only the Spurs wouldn't have rested their big three in that game in Dec." and 2. I question the author's motive. It sounds like he's trying to praise Pop for his season long strategy but falls flat on the effect it has on the rest of the league. He must've bought tix to a "rest game" recently.
So we are the bad guys now?
Good read. Although this is why I like the how english football (and all other football leagues) work. The regular season is the playoffs. You win (or draw) the most games in the season, you win the league based on points. Now NBA will never have ties but your could do the same thing. Also, this would help Adam Silver add more midseason tournaments like he said he wanted to do last year and maybe make the game truly international. I just hate the idea that you can be the best team through 82 games and get one bad match up in the playoffs and get knocked out.
I've prescribed to the "shorten the season" idea before as well, but I now find it to be untenable. History is what keeps me from wanting to see the league to drop the regular season down to 67 games or so. While the hypothetical reduction in wear on players would be nice, it would reset existing stat records to zero. Players' production from anytime before any significant change in the number or length of games would be disregarded completely.
Whatever. The author says himself that the Spurs are operating within the rules. Every team tends to coast a bit during stretches of the regular season because it's so freaking long. The Spurs just are more obvious because Pop sits guys rather than have them jog around lifeless on the court.
The league is still making money with their 82 game schedule. If they want to improve the product on the floor the league should shorten the season to 45 games and cut the 30 teams down to 20. It's all about making money, not about putting the best possible regular season effort and match-ups on the floor every night. Pop's dealing with the ridiculousness of putting guys through a 100 game basketball season.
Someone in another of the "tanking" threads mentioned the idea of a tournament for the non-playoff teams that either determines - or at least impacts - the lottery position.
On the one hand, you could have a playoff for the non-playoff teams where team's finishing order determines their draft position. Teams would be less likely to tank because it would affect their home court advantage in the lottery playoff.
Another, more complicated option would be to keep the current lottery system based on record, but have it supplemented through a playoff system. So theoretically, 50% of the "lottery points" would be based on record, with 50% being based on lottery playoff performance. Tanking would/could still occur, but it wouldn't be as blatant (since it could negatively impact lottery-playoff position) and the overall payoff for the worst records would be less. Under that kind of system, the 12th-worst team could have an equal chance in the draft if they win the lottery playoff as the worst team in the league that finishes last in the lottery playoff.
In my opinion, career stats don't matter that much in basketball, who cares that Karl Malone and Kobe scored that many points, per-game stats are the stats of relevance.
but an 82 game season with only 12 teams making the playoffs would still be a lot more meaningful, NBA should start with that
A better article on the matter...
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nba--da...194828970.html
That may have been Woj's greatest article, ever. I wonder if he lost any kind of league/team access after that. He not only cut off Stern's balls, he shoved them in his mouth.
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