This theory of yours in which Jokic is yet to become very famous and wealthy, what alternative universe is it set in?
This is why I don’t comment on the internet anymore. You exist in the alternative reality in which every back and forth is a polarized ridiculous showdown. Jokic is not famous outside of basketball. The Saudi’s would make him so wealthy he’d seem poor today by comparison.
I agree with your point and response. This activity of being players overs to new leagues run by Saudi or adjacent countries has been huge in almost every major sport. Some with much more success than others.
This article has reduced it too far. Yes, the game has gotten optimized... for the moment. However a few years ago the complaint was that it was only about 3s. Now it's about 3s... and defense... and floor spread... and layups... and small ball... and big men who can shoot the three... and rim protectors... and it goes on and on. There's no one thing and the number of combinations of tactics, players, and circumstances make it pretty dynamic.
If there's any problem with basketball right now it's that Adam Silver is trying too many radical things and leaving history behind in uncomfortable ways. I mean, he's talking about going to 10 minute quarters! That will invalidate basically every record ever. I could go on and on, but the NBA game itself is not broken.
The world cup is not a league, it's a tournament. My point is towards the regular season + playoffs which is imho lame. Imagine a formula 1 season where you watch 20 races and then the best teams play it out in the last 4. That's a giant nonsense in most sports but somehow it spread even to European basket and volley in the 80s, I guess under the American influx. I just don't like it.
That's your choice of course. I suspect that a lot of casual fans (raises hand) may largely ignore the regular (long) season but get more engaged in the payoffs, especially if they have a team they care about involved which has obvious financial implications for the teams involved.
may largely ignore the regular (long) season but get more engaged in the playoffs
you are saying exactly the right words but arguing the wrong side. that is exactly why shit stinks, make the season ALL there is to it, then see whether it is long / boring / … :)
Draymond Green is the Joe Rogan of the NBA. He's just optimizing for engagement and controversy. If it were truly as you say, those players would get pulled. Logo 3s are rare. And when someone heats up and hits multiple consecutive, it's anything but boring.
> Draymond Green is the Joe Rogan of the NBA. I personally dislike Green because of his on-the-court antics, but I don't think that comparison is fair. Rogan is a know-nothing meathead unqualified to challenge his guests, whereas Green is a veteran, elite, champion NBA player. His opinions, however controversial, have some basis in experience, expertise, and reality. > If it were truly as you say, those players would…
Is there some magic percentage that must be passed to justify your aesthetic demands? I think the fact that guys like Dame hit 1/3, and seem to hit even more in the clutch, is wildly entertaining.
> Recently, teams have realized three-pointers have higher point value despite their lower scoring percentage. This was such an eye-opener for me. A high-stakes sport like basketball/the NBA went on for decades without realising the simple math that three pointers are more valuable than two-pointers if you just do the basic math. How many areas in our lives are yet to be optimised with really basic math?
Disclaimer: I have only extremely limited exposure to this topic (I worked in sports analytics, attached to a team, quite awhile ago), so take it all as heavy speculation: 1) It seems like there’s a natural resistance to change driven by loss aversion; you see a similar pattern in the NFL with decisions like punting vs. going for it on fourth down. Even if the expected value is positive, the failures are given far mo…
Baseball lent itself to advanced analytics even before player tracking became a thing, since the sport consists of a series of discrete one-on-one matchups with limited possible outcomes.
That's not true I'm afraid: The German Bundesliga has a playoff to see which of the 16th team in tier 1 or the 3rd team in tier 2 goes into tier 1 next year The English Championship (tier 2) has a tournament of four teams (placed 3rd-6th) to determine who goes up into the Premier League. The final of this is known as the richest game in football, worth £120m+ to the winner. It could also be argued that the new UEFA C…
so we gonna count losers and bottom-feeders? my bad, lets do NFL the same way, “superbowl” this year should be like Giants vs. Pats :)
Moving the goalposts there pal. You said playoffs don't exist outside the US. They do.
UEFA Champions League is the finest competition in world football. It's a league-then-playoff system. Real Madrid ring any bells?
The winner of the Championship playoff joins the best, richest league in the world. Bottom feeder, lmao.
Bertans is a close to 8PPG, 40%3P shooter in his career. Sounds like a useful role player to me. Not everyone has to be Lebron James.
if we paid $84m to role players NBA will need salary cap equal to US GDP :)
Are you thinking the salary cap hasn't changed from the 90s? The MLE is 12.3m this year, and that is a high-end role player. If one plays at that level for 8 years, they make that amount you're complaining about. And the cap is expected to go up significantly over the next few years (would have gone up more drastically, but the KD to Warriors situation convinced teams to adopt smoothing).
It is true that in general, super stars are underpaid, and role players are overpaid.
so we gonna count losers and bottom-feeders? my bad, lets do NFL the same way, “superbowl” this year should be like Giants vs. Pats :)
Moving the goalposts there pal. You said playoffs don't exist outside the US. They do. UEFA Champions League is the finest competition in world football. It's a league-then-playoff system. Real Madrid ring any bells? The winner of the Championship playoff joins the best, richest league in the world. Bottom feeder, lmao.
Look at what I commented on mate…
These are not playoff systems for a championship but for a promotion/relegation
And again, UEFA CL is NOT (look that up if it is confusing) single country league. Once Chiefs start playing Montreal Destroyers and San Salvador Bulldogs in North America Football league than we can compare US sports leagues with UEFA CL. until then, try to find a country in which there are playoffs after league season is over, only US does this garbage and makes regular season generally un-watchable and meaningless
So I agree that more complexity is not better and there’s a real risk of alienating fans with complicated schemes. But chess has made real inroads by providing good commentators and analysis. You can’t make teams play dumber but you can teach fans to be smarter. As for missing, the video I linked debunks that. 3 pointers are replacing long 2 pointers which also had a low percentage. And in turn, the game has become l…
Thinking Basketball is great. The people who complain about the 3s in basketball probably didn’t watch the NBA in the older days. Horrible defense and far less skill — and that’s the era I grew up and loved. I have two major complaints about the game nowadays: (1) intentional fouling to get an advantage. It’s the only major sport where fouling can often work to your advantage. (2) The block call is so inconsistent it…
Horrible defense? You're kidding, right? Check out the mid-80's - 90's - early 2000's Bulls, Knicks, Celtics, 76'ers, and Pistons, or basically any team east of the Mississippi. The 95-96 Bulls were the best defensive team in NBA history. No one's played defense in the NBA for 20 years at least. And yeah, the 3 has completely changed the game into something more resembling NBA 2K1, which is exactly what the league wants.
I find basketball (College and NBA) incredibly hard to watch. Beyond the basic necessary ball handling skills, the games are largely decided by the acting for the refs.
I much prefer the street ball route: make it a contact sport and stop the flopping.