(Never Too Much podcast: NBA media day blurbs you can believe, click ‘Listen in podcast app’ to subscribe!)
You were right, all of you. The 2019-20 regular season, pre-bubble, ran without charm. There was no reason to watch.
The season felt like it began only weeks after the last one ended. After Houston bled into Golden State which bled into Toronto’s championship which bled into the draft which wasn’t done by the time Durant confirmed on a Sunday afternoon that he’d be in Brooklyn, now. Then the earthquake hit, and with it Kawhi, and all of this was seventeen months ago and not seventeen decades ago.
The 2019-20 regular season came off as inessential, not for lack of contenders but the absence of cohesion. It was as if the entire league needed a break and a half and, whoops, by March, it got one.
It is December now and 2020-21 is three weeks away and yet it doesn’t feel like the season ended just weeks ago, which it did, or that three-quarters of the teams require a pause.
Every team wants to win, now. Los Angeles and L.A. are tip and tops, for sure, but that doesn’t mean every team in every conference (2) isn’t trying to challenge.
Perhaps the Pistons, Cavaliers, Knicks and Thunder acknowledged 2021 won’t serve as a major uptick, but none of these clubs have ruled themselves out of the play-in race. The 2021 NBA draft looks nicer with each new morning, generational talent remains a championship bedrock, and yet nobody is clipping sandbags.
For those that dig those transactions, it should only get better. This trade deadline should act a doozy, with agents looking to lease their free agent-y players to the sort of promised land that Jordan Clarkson ($52 million!) launched into. No team in the Eastern playoff race will consider 2021’s top seed an unconquerable collection, everyone’s a player away.
The trades aren’t ending. Hell, Charlotte is probably counting the weeks until it can give Hayward the Blake Griffin-treatment. Nobody really ever leaves this market.
This certainly hurt interest in 2019-20, though the changes helped.
The play-in tourney and lottery squash kept an incentive for what fans and Hinkies alike hate the most: the 38-win team with an edge. Atlanta looked absolutely hopeless last season, years away from the postseason, yet the front office should well be lauded for going for it.
No club bottomed out. Every outfit is trying to make the most of their roster, as even the lone tanker in OKC boasts primetime, playoff-tested performers who wouldn’t look out of place on TNT Thursday. OKC knows that if it wants the kid still playing in Stillwater, it can trade one of its trillion first-round picks to move on up.
Everybody wants to put wins up, and it hasn’t been this way in decades. The pressure on this season should be fascinating.
UPSET AT HOW THIS ALWAYS IS WITH THE LAKERS
It doesn’t bother me that the Lakers attracted Marc Gasol in the same offseason as Montrezl Harrell, 2019’s championship pivot with 2020’s Sixth Man Award-winner. Doesn’t bug me that Cleveland helped make it happen, eating JaVale McGee’s contract in a cap-clearing deal.
It doesn’t bug me because it is likely Harrell will even sniff the late fourth quarter of a close playoff game, it doesn’t offend because the Lakers drafted Gasol in the first place, and because KCP earned that three-year, $39.1 million deal (with the third year only guaranteed for $4.88 million) by rimming in all those Very Tough Shots.
I don’t mind it because the Lakers don’t just have the best player in the game, they have LeBron James.
The NBA’s top player, on most seasons, isn’t anywhere as good as LeBron James, and isn’t nearly as sensitive (or as corny). LeBron is not Kobe, and Shaq had nowhere near the staying power of LeBron. Los Angeles’ perpetual NBA advantage, by this point inarguable, won’t always be this strong.
The best player won’t always be LeBron. Enjoy him while he’s around.
HALFTIME
This is Ted Stepien, Cleveland Cavaliers owner, and the time he dropped a bunch of softballs from the 52nd floor of Cleveland’s Terminal Tower as thousands looked on below.
In a somewhat eerie foretelling of events to come Stepien reportedly said “This is bad, I’m really going to hurt somebody.”
Just before his first throw someone on the observation deck told him to make sure he threw the ball far so that it would clear the base of the building. With this in mind Stepien launched it roughly 50 feet away before it began hurtling towards the earth. A few seconds later it smashed into a car below, leaving a massive dent.
The second ball nearly beaned a 66 year old factory worker, just barely missing his skull and nailing him in the shoulder. It was badly bruised but the man refused medical attention. Stepien’s third ball rocketed towards the ground and shattered 24-year-old Gayle Falinski’s right wrist. By this time many people were starting to flee, and those that stayed were pushed away from the tower by police in order to try and keep them out of the way of the aimless projectiles.
Following the debacle, Stepien lamented his outfit’s lack of preparation.
“It was ill-advised. It's unfortunate that there wasn't a practice or a dry run. This is a dangerous stunt.”
In a settlement, Stepien later paid $35,875 to Ms. Falinsky.
THIS ISN’T BENEATH THE SUNS
Not by a long shot.
Here is a tweet from former Suns GM Ryan McDonough, still up,
First of all, wasn’t (current Suns GM) James Jones the only one that got out of the Brooks & Brooks debacle unscathed?
Secondly, this isn’t a good post. It’s not funny, there’s no burn, only a needless tag for Oubre and enough treadmill-tweet energy to power a fleet of Lincoln Town Cars. John Hollinger at least has the good sense to get paid for carping about front office semantics, and for more than 14 re-tweets.
Kelly Oubre’s been a Sun, recently, and the new Golden State Warrior is damned happy to be out of Phoenix:
“I can play for an owner -- somebody who actually cares about the organization and not just the perception of the organization on the media end of it.”
The Suns might make the playoffs this year, and they will probably pay Chris Paul over $44 million to play basketball next year, but the whole stink is still there. The same stink that hamstrung D’Antoni and Nash and eventually Steve Kerr, the same foundation that hired McDonough, the same group sitting through James Jones’, say it softly, mercurial stylings.
TORONTO HAD A ROUGH OFFSEASON
The Raptors knew it wouldn’t last forever and, look, it didn’t.
Kawhi split and Marc Gasol always had a foot out the door and Serge Ibaka (for the first time in his career) thought it lovely to be courted. The return is what Raptors fans used to brag out: Masai Ujiri’s fringe finds stepping up, followed by more slash-and-dash moves to secure the sort of superstar Toronto deserves.
At least Fred VanVleet is totally 6-1.
CHARLOTTE HAD A ROUGH OFFSEASON
In spite of of his impermanence, Gordon Hayward still found teammates in Boston. His rebounding improved and while his free throw rate dipped, it wasn’t terrible. His expected future decline, even with a price tag that pays Hayward $31.5 million in 2024, doesn’t make this an obscene valuation provided he stays healthy. Which he probably won’t.
It makes Boston worse, but it creates confidence in Charlotte. Even if Terry Rozier regards passing as something best suited for the left-hand lane, even if Devonte’ Graham sleeps with the ball in his bassinet.
My list of “pros” is longer than Hayward’s face: Gordon won’t get to mope on national TV as much, the East’s play-in tourney will be slightly more talented, Bill Simmons is upset.
These are all wintertime treats.
BOSTON HAD A ROUGH OFFSEASON
Kemba Walker just had the, whaddya call it, fuckin’ stem-cell injections into his knee.
This was not a thin team in the bubble, even with Gordon Hayward out there missing layups. Walker is out until January, he hopes, Wanamaker is gone and he wasn’t really that great to begin with. Theis is a year older and there is no way in hell new signee Tristan Thompson is still only 29.
Try not to let the rumors bother you, nobody from the Indiana damn Pacers was going to save Boston’s 2020-21, but your anxiety is well-founded. Walker may never be the same. The Celtics owned the nicest setup, picks for ages and salary cap space to spare, now it can barely field a rotation (on top of the game’s two best young swingmen).
They’ll still beat the hell out of the Sixers.
DETROIT HAD A ROUGH OFFSEASON
But it’s fine. Plumlee is sweet to make fun of but he can pass. The draft weirdness (Isaiah Stewart strangely at No. 16, a whole lotta movement to acquire Saddiq Bey) is a little alarming and Jerami Grant probably isn’t a $20 million player unless you’re a rookie NBA GM and this is your first offseason.
And the Pistons don’t need anybody, right now. The team is years away.
They’ll be fun, though, with Blake and Plumlee dishing around and Delon Wright getting his fair share of the ball. Past Piston outfits revealed no such appeal.
Also, trading second-round picks, like, who gives a rat’s ass?
Look at the gunner they just got:
He can’t jump, but the 6-8 Deividas Sirvydi IS left-handed.
DENVER HAD A ROUGH OFFSEASON
Remember all those times in 2020 when Michael Porter Jr.’s guy did something cool, like cut to the basket unopposed, and Michael Porter Jr. didn’t notice?
Wal-Mart crapped out, didn’t want to pay for a winner, and Nugget fans will have to find slim solace noting that Jerami Grant wasn’t as great at defense as they said he was, anyway.
And at least they still don’t have to pretend Juancho Hernangomez is really good.
MILWAUKEE HAD A ROUGH OFFSEASON
It isn’t fair to compare players when a market is involved, real apples-to-oranges stuff, but in Milwaukee’s instance Torrey Craig can be an upgrade over Bogdan Bogdanovic for so many reasons. Bogdan needs the ball, Craig will score half as much but you’ll never see him touch the thing this game is named after.
There is the argument to make that the Bucks still require a “needs the ball”-type to sop up possessions against second units. In an ideal world, Bobby Portis might be that guy. In MKE’s world, Portis might have to start. You tend to worry about a front office once they start signing a bunch of tantalizing, Knicksian names, someone like Portis. Makes you wonder if Noah Vonleh was next, luckily your Bulls stepped in.
Giannis signing the supermax changes nothing, he’ll be on the block until the Bucks win a championship. His team’s attempts at immediate validity, in an offseason that changes out lead stories every hour, was embarrassing.
If you want to be taken seriously, don’t leak shit.
While we’re doling advice,
TAKE MORE BANK SHOTS
The ball hits the box, it goes in. You don’t have to be a good shooter, you just have to aim well.
A basketball attempt doesn’t have to float to a certain apex before an extinguished arc nose-dives toward just beyond the tip of the goal, no, fuck all that.
Hit the box, let it bounce in.
From Micah Adams, via Marc Stein’s newsletter:
Duncan converted 945 bank shots (good for 1,890 points) over the final 13 seasons of his career, shooting 59.1 percent on bankers over that span.
Hit the box.
From straightaway, even, Kelly?
Bank it. Call it.
ROUNDUP
The Blazers signed Harry Giles and he’ll rarely play but I’ll be with him when he does, his game is weird and you should watch it … Denver re-signed Paul Millsap but the problem is that it’s 2020 now, almost 2021, and the Paul Millsap that Denver needs is the Paul Millsap Denver signed in 2017 … Memphis kept De’Anthony Melton and they should, every team needs a Haslem of its own … Steven Adams’ contract extension with the Pelicans is only for two years, who cares, he can play in spots and Adams is sizeable contract to trade who will be 29 when the contract is up.
For those of you worried about fit, well,
He said they won’t be punked, so they won’t be punked. He said they won’t be punked.
Minnesota signed Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, who is a small forward that plays like a center and will earn minutes with his offensive rebounding capabilities … Your Wolves also re-signed the aforementioned Hernangomez, who is only 25 and good in the locker room … RHJ is also friends with several players on the roster … Minnesota also picked up Ed Davis and I guess this turned into a whole Minnesota Timberwolves bit … The Timberwolves only have a swingman glut if you think Jarrett Culver can actually play
Shaq Harrison earned a bit of tread online to start the week and for good reason:
That’s a good post.
Harrison can absolutely press and play in this league, I understand his many side-splitting faults but it’s also hilarious no team has backed him with the mild confidence of a minimum contract yet. Especially with the Knicks retaining Elfrid Payton, Harrison would be so lovely in Tom Thibodeau’s hands (even if New York is up to a dozen potential perimeter starters) … (save one) …
Sacramento didn’t match Bogdan Bogdanovic’s offer with the Hawks because when you miss your exit you gotta take your L and drive on to the next exit, not slide across two lanes and the gravelly-side of an exit ramp just to aim at what you want. Sacramento didn’t have to ruin Bogdan’s life for eight months just to improve their offseason grade by a letter on someone’s newsletter.
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