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NBA 2021-2022


ztejas

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2 minutes ago, Llogg said:

You're insane. Even ignoring that he was looking right at him, James would have felt that his arm was on top of Stewart's. If he wanted to swipe the arm away he would swipe down. He did not. He swung at the man's face. Don't be fatuous.

OK. Sure. If it was Artest or someone like one of the Morris bros i could see not giving them the benefit of the doubt. I dont think lebron just decided to start punching people in the face.

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20 minutes ago, Pam Cummings said:

OK. Sure. If it was Artest or someone like one of the Morris bros i could see not giving them the benefit of the doubt. I dont think lebron just decided to start punching people in the face.

He’s not as athletic as he used to be.  That can be frustrating.

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1 hour ago, Pam Cummings said:

OK. Sure. If it was Artest or someone like one of the Morris bros i could see not giving them the benefit of the doubt. I dont think lebron just decided to start punching people in the face.

Guys (and gals) that are paid extremely fat salaries to be rules experts and judge player intention on plays like this ejected him from the game. And not just eject "him" but eject LeBron James. 

And - as far as flagrant 2s go - that was a bad one. I've seen way softer shit get guys tossed this year - including a more incidental act get Durant tossed. 

They don't send face-of-the-league type players to the locker room if they aren't convinced it was intentional. 

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classic case of someone doing something stupid and reactive, and then immediately regretting it once they see the ramifications of their actions. AD came out and said, "everyone knows Bron isn't a dirty player. as soon as he saw what happened he went over and said, 'my bad, i didn't mean to do it.'" right. i'm sure he didn't mean to bust up dude's face and get blood everywhere, but he definitely punched him in the face on purpose.

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6 hours ago, ztejas said:

Guys (and gals) that are paid extremely fat salaries to be rules experts and judge player intention on plays like this ejected him from the game. And not just eject "him" but eject LeBron James. 

And - as far as flagrant 2s go - that was a bad one. I've seen way softer shit get guys tossed this year - including a more incidental act get Durant tossed. 

They don't send face-of-the-league type players to the locker room if they aren't convinced it was intentional. 

OK. I guess i was just expecting to see something different when i heard lebron punched someone. That was how it was described to me. Not hitting someone in the face as he falls away.

 

And i'm all for ejecting/suspending him, that's how the rules work. Probably a game or 2.

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It was a cheap shot. While positioning for the rebound Stewart absolutely manhandles Lebron and pushes him off his spot at least 2 feet. I bet Lebron can count on one hand the number of times he's been overpowered so he lashed out like most old guys when they realize they aint what they used to be.

It was the type of dirty play we see Draymond or Rondo make nearly every other game. But this time he drew blood and caused a whole disruptive ass scene. And its Lebron. Aint no way the posters over at daily texan are gonna let him get away with this. Probably firing up Alex Baldwin memes as I type

Edited by blacklab
User taking day off for bringing cr into bb
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1 hour ago, Scraps said:

Bitch move by Lebron, but unfortunately Stewart looks like a psycho and will take the heat for reacting how he did

Yes Stewart's reaction was completely crazy. Trying to come back and fight, multiple times? He escalated things way way beyond where they needed to be.

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50 minutes ago, Pam Cummings said:

Yes Stewart's reaction was completely crazy. Trying to come back and fight, multiple times? He escalated things way way beyond where they needed to be.

That’s what anger and a significant lack of understanding of consequences looks like. I learned that he was a boxer before  he discovered basketball and boxing is his first love. Probably for the best that be didn’t actually make it through. Kind of cool to see someone not going through the ritualistic “hold me back” routine. That dude saw blood and was ready to fight. Oh well, now the shitass Lakers will probably use this as a rallying cry and win 4 out of their next 10.

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47 minutes ago, Kermit said:

That’s what anger and a significant lack of understanding of consequences looks like. I learned that he was a boxer before  he discovered basketball and boxing is his first love. Probably for the best that be didn’t actually make it through. Kind of cool to see someone not going through the ritualistic “hold me back” routine. That dude saw blood and was ready to fight. Oh well, now the shitass Lakers will probably use this as a rallying cry and win 4 out of their next 10.

Watch lebron end up recruiting him to the Lakers...

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29 minutes ago, Pam Cummings said:

Watch lebron end up recruiting him to the Lakers...

You know, Stewart just might do that. 
 

Lebron: Man, thanks for coming to the Lakers. We’ve really need some new players since I traded all our good ones for Russ. 
 

Isiah: Now that I’ve got you alone…

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It was a cheap shot. While positioning for the rebound Stewart absolutely manhandles Lebron and pushes him off his spot at least 2 feet. I bet Lebron can count on one hand the number of times he's been overpowered so he lashed out like most old guys when they realize they aint what they used to be.
It was the type of dirty play we see Draymond or Rondo make nearly every other game. But this time he drew blood and caused a whole disruptive ass scene. And its Lebron. Aint no way the posters over at daily texan are gonna let him get away with this. Probably firing up Alex Baldwin memes as I type


Lebron is gonna have to start carrying his pistol to make these lil punks show him some respect.

We're too old to take an ass kicking.
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49 minutes ago, Brothahorn said:



 

 


Lebron is gonna have to start carrying his pistol to make these lil punks show him some respect.

We're too old to take an ass kicking.

 

Shit you joke but look at all these rappers out here getting killed. When someone with that level of clout disrespects you a lot of these dudes snap and lash out and take them out. If Stewart had a gun no doubt he was gonna light that court up. Lebron better make things right with that man, theyre too rich to be out here playing gang gang

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8 minutes ago, ztejas said:

I'm not the biggest hater but I'd never deny the fine posters here. 

 

The NBA fans on Reddit and their detective work scare the absolute shit out of me. I don’t post on there strictly because as soon as I hit submit, someone is going to respond with “well on February 29, 2004 at 3:30 pm you had an unsatisfactory sexual experience with an overweight woman so who are you to be calling Draymond Green ugly?”

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2 minutes ago, Kermit said:

The NBA fans on Reddit and their detective work scare the absolute shit out of me. I don’t post on there strictly because as soon as I hit submit, someone is going to respond with “well on February 29, 2004 at 3:30 pm you had an unsatisfactory sexual experience with an overweight woman so who are you to be calling Draymond Green ugly?”

It was awesome 7 or 8 years ago. I remember when they hit 200k subs. I still peruse it at times because it can be a fairly good digest of league happenings but the group-think and incessant crusades against certain players get old. And it's filled with teenagers that are ignorant of and unwilling to study what the league looked like even 5 or 6 years ago and before that.

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LeBron gets absolutely no leeway with "I'm not a dirty player." Fuck that. He was basically the GM of those Cavs teams and brought in Dahntay Jones--a talentless hack--right before every postseason for no other reason than to cheap shot the opposition and send "playoff messages."

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51 minutes ago, Kermit said:

The NBA fans on Reddit and their detective work scare the absolute shit out of me. I don’t post on there strictly because as soon as I hit submit, someone is going to respond with “well on February 29, 2004 at 3:30 pm you had an unsatisfactory sexual experience with an overweight woman so who are you to be calling Draymond Green ugly?”

Don’t care, had sex, am I right? 

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1 hour ago, Kermit said:

The NBA fans on Reddit and their detective work scare the absolute shit out of me. I don’t post on there strictly because as soon as I hit submit, someone is going to respond with “well on February 29, 2004 at 3:30 pm you had an unsatisfactory sexual experience with an overweight woman so who are you to be calling Draymond Green ugly?”

Historically, I’ve found leap day sex to be pretty good.

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Stewart really had no business boxing out Lebron that hard on a made free throw. Last week he did the same thing to Blake Griffin and threw him all the way to the ground then tried to fight him. Blake didnt want the smoke.Last year in his rookie season he fought Dwight Howard. He's a tough, hard nosed dude making a name for himself out there. Some might call him a menace. Im glad he only got 2 games. 

Lebron basically committed a flagrant 2 and was ejected. He gets the extra game for the aftermath 

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John Hollinger at The Athletic on the Lakers & LeBron's play this season:

https://theathletic.com/2971149/2021/11/22/lebrons-lack-of-finish-a-defining-moment-for-lakers-scouting-cade-cunningham-hollingers-week-that-was/

 

Quote

There was a moment in Sunday night’s Lakers-Pistons game that truly mattered, but it wasn’t the one everybody’s talking about.

In the first quarter, LeBron James beat his man off the dribble 1-on-1 – actually one of the few times we’ve seen that this season – and barreled toward the rim. With a head of steam and Detroit rookie Cade Cunningham kind of, but not really in his way, James didn’t power up for an earth-shattering tomahawk… or glide in for an understated drop of the ball over the rim… or even sidestep around Cunningham and flip in a little finger roll.

Instead, he did … this.

LeBron-bad-finish.mp4?_=1

 

Quote

James’s double-pumping reverse layup that didn’t come all that close to going in was a defining moment for the Lakers in a first quarter of the season that has contained a series of them, because it underscored the reality that they can’t just be Cleveland 2.0 and count on LeBron to save the day. This 36-year-old version of LeBron James, while surely still quite good at basketball, just isn’t That Guy.

The evidence has been piling up in the early part of the season, even before he went out with an abdominal strain, changes discernible with the eye test that are also piling up all over his stat sheet. In truth, you could start seeing the signs last season, but 2020-21 was so weird on so many levels it was hard to take it all in.

 

Spoiler

James’s double-pumping reverse layup that didn’t come all that close to going in was a defining moment for the Lakers in a first quarter of the season that has contained a series of them, because it underscored the reality that they can’t just be Cleveland 2.0 and count on LeBron to save the day. This 36-year-old version of LeBron James, while surely still quite good at basketball, just isn’t That Guy.

The evidence has been piling up in the early part of the season, even before he went out with an abdominal strain, changes discernible with the eye test that are also piling up all over his stat sheet. In truth, you could start seeing the signs last season, but 2020-21 was so weird on so many levels it was hard to take it all in.

James is taking half as many free throws as he did a year ago, going to the basket far less and becoming increasingly reliant on 3s for his offense – they now comprise nearly half his shots. His average shot distance, which hovered between 11 and 12 feet for most of his career, jumped to 13.9 in 2020-21 and is now 15.2 feet so far this year. We have a small sample size still, but he’s shooting 65.9 percent at the rim, by far the worst of his career, with the blown finish above serving as a prominent example. A huge plus on the glass for his entire career, he’s seemed paralyzed on the floor at times and sports just a 7.6 Rebound Rate.

Even the shots he used to get away with no problem offer a greater challenge these days. I noted the drive above, but that wasn’t the only moment in this game that felt that way. He got stonewalled by 6-foot-3 Cory Joseph on consecutive post-ups, for instance, and Jerami Grant blocked his step-back 3. When was the last time you saw James’s jumper blocked?

James finished with ten points and five assists in 21 minutes before his fracas with Detroit’s Isaiah Stewart. The Lakers came back and won the game without him, after a double ejection that may have hurt Detroit more than it hurt the Lakers.

Playing against a bad team that was perhaps slightly less bad because it wasn’t forced to drag around a boat anchor for the first eight minutes of each half, the fact that the Lakers ended up winning is hardly cause for a parade.

In fact, Detroit was the latest patsy in a joke of an early schedule for the Lakers that eventually gets much, much harder. Remember, this was supposed to be the time for the Lakers to pad their win total and build up a margin on the rest of the West.

L.A. played 12 of its first 18 games at home, had two games apiece against the Spurs, Thunder, and Rockets and one versus the Pistons and Wolves, and yet were lucky to emerge from it 9-9. They’ve been outscored by 64 points on the season.

You can blame that on James only being present for eight of those games, except that the Lakers are minus-4 with James on the court his year. Two of those eight games were against Houston.

If that happens when they play the bad teams, what happens once they face real opposition? We saw a bit of the answer when the Bulls, Bucks and Celtics all smoked them this week.

Yes, the Lakers have had injuries, but they’re not the only team in the league that can say that. The Warriors don’t have Klay Thompson and are running away from them at 15-2; the Suns didn’t have Deandre Ayton for several games and still managed to rip off 12 straight wins; and the Mavs and Nuggets, even with absences from MVP-caliber talents, still sit ahead of L.A. in the standings despite harder schedules. Closer to home, the Kawhi Leonard-less Clippers also top them in the table.

Fortunately for L.A., they have a bit more time before this really becomes a dire question, because the quality on their schedule is incredibly backloaded. Twelve of the Lakers’ next 24 games are against relative bottom-feeders (although one of those bottom-feeders just beat them in Staples Center by 27 points), affording a bit more time to get their act together before an absolutely ferocious stretch of the schedule begins in mid-January.

They might use that time to figure out a better way to make this all work, because the fortunate thing about the Lakers is that they still have some high-level talent – particularly in the person of Anthony Davis.

That’s where the Detroit game contains the other kernel of the truth about the reality of the Lakers versus what they imagined entering the season. Much as they try to experiment with big lineups, this Lakers team is far better with Davis at 5 as a menacing, switching defensive monster than trying to play huge lineups with Davis next to Dwight Howard or DeAndre Jordan. The Lakers have tried those combos for a total of 182 minutes and been outscored by 36 points.

Playing those bigs together, especially with Westbrook, has often resulted in comical floor spacing setups like this:

Partly, the turn to Howard and Jordan has been dictated by a lack of surrounding quality – have you seen this team’s other options off the bench? – but the Lakers’ 37-17 fourth-quarter domination of Detroit was a monstrous display of the havoc Davis can unleash at both ends.

Sorry, Cade.

 

No, seriously, dude, this window is closed.

 

Having only one big on the floor also had a positive effect on Russell Westbrook, who seemed to suddenly morph into 2010 Russ in that fourth quarter with the floor more open, including an electrifying downhill dunk on Hamidou Diallo. Keep in mind that Westbrook’s last two seasons featured absolutely brutal starts followed by increasingly impactful play as the year went on. Could he be following this pattern again?

The Lakers need the revved-up Russ and even moreso, the all-world superstar version of Davis – the one that was arguably the most valuable player of the 2020 playoffs – to be prominent if they’re going to achieve anything anywhere near their goals at the start of the season.

That’s not just because of James looking mortal, either. Even against a cake schedule, the back of this roster has performed almost comically badly, with an amazing five different perimeter rotation players (Avery Bradley, Kent Bazemore, Austin Reaves, Wayne Ellington and Rajon Rondo) sporting PERs below 8.0. At times Davis must feel like he’s back in New Orleans only with better food better nightlife more direct flights. The return of Talen Horton-Tucker helps, and if Kendrick Nunn ever comes back he’ll help even more.

Even that offers no instant panacea for the Lakers, who rank 20th in defense and have basically not offered a single moment all year where you could believe in them as a contender. Their only quality win all year, over Miami, came in a game where Jimmy Butler went out in the first half and the Lakers shot 18-of-37 from 3… to win in overtime.

If Sunday night in Detroit offered one takeaway, then, it was to squash the idea that LeBron can ride in and play savior. Whatever the Lakers’ imagined version was of how this team might regain relevance as a contender – not to mention avoid the humiliation of another trip to the play-in tournament (gasp!) – the reality is playing out much differently.

In particular, the original idea was that Davis could play Robin to LeBron’s Batman. Sunday night underscored that the reality is now entirely opposite, and that’s probably a permanent shift.

 

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13 hours ago, cmontexas said:

It was a cheap shot. While positioning for the rebound Stewart absolutely manhandles Lebron and pushes him off his spot at least 2 feet. I bet Lebron can count on one hand the number of times he's been overpowered so he lashed out like most old guys when they realize they aint what they used to be.

It was the type of dirty play we see Draymond or Rondo make nearly every other game. But this time he drew blood and caused a whole disruptive ass scene. And its Lebron. Aint no way the posters over at daily texan are gonna let him get away with this. Probably firing up Alex Baldwin memes as I type

Take your dumb Cloak Room shit where it belongs

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