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New thread up!

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Just so you know, you’re all welcome to manipulate me with flattery and favors.

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Sep 11·edited Sep 11

I think we've been doing that all along.

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"We got no food! We got no jobs! Our pets' heads are falling off!!”

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Worse than all that, NBA training camp is still two weeks away.

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OMG only 2 weeks!!!!! [girl with cotton candy.gif]

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"Leaders must have dignity. Leaders must tell the truth. Leaders must care about the people they are leading." ~ Steve Kerr

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We're shit out of luck then, innit

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It all depends.

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Habitat for Humanity selling 27ft 2018 era Warriors banner (Klay, KD, Steph, Draymond, Zaza). $500.

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/fod/d/oakland-27-golden-state-warriors-2018/7774875714.html

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I wish I owned property across the street from the garden or crypto where I could hang said banner.

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Wow, Chuck falling into this group was not what I would have guessed. Obviously, the lack of team accomplishments killed him. But overall, this list has at least mostly passed the sniff test.

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Sep 10·edited Sep 10

I was looking at playoff success, which BEAST only considers a part of (Finals participants), to see if that might help his case. Barkley was in a lot of playoff games (123) but was only 50% in them. So not sure if that helps or not.

Then I looked at our own SC30 for some comparison; 99-48 (67%) going 23-5 in terms of series wins versus losses... honestly, that's insane. By round: 7-1, 6-2, 6-0, 4-2. The 6-0 WCF series record is particularly jaw-dropping. I haven't compared this to anyone else, but it seems very impressive...

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Compares pretty evenly with Jordan! 119-60 (66.4%) in games, 30-7 in series.

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Why Steph Curry & Warriors will BOUNCE BACK in 2024 NBA season | Hoops Tonight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIim-K2C90w

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I do not understand that headline attached to that video... those guys basically said "Steph is pretty awesome! Warriors suck and have put a terrible team around him." Timpf seems to think that Steph will have a "bounce back year", but not the Warriors unless they put a second star next to him.

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Yeah, Timpf’s been consistently opining that Steph has the worst supporting cast of any of the Top 11 player, who he considers the theorhetical best to build around for the upcoming season./post-season, and that they need to make a trade to contend.

I’m a fan of his, but as a “stand pat” guy, I really want the ‘24-25 Dubs to prove all the doubters wrong by surrounding Steph with a bunch of #3 scorers, lots of defense and a shit ton of BBIQ…all while preserving the future.

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They need a real scoring threat for when Steph is off the floor. A bunch of #3 scorers isn’t going to get that done… unless they’re a ‘04 Detroit Pistons level defense creating hella transition opportunities… which I suppose a Melton/MoodyWiggins/Dray/TJD lineup could emulate…

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The Dubs need another major scoring threat when Steph is on the floor too. That used to be Klay. (At one time, obviously, we also had KD but that was overkill.) The need for a second major star is what Timpf and his guests were getting at, and they're right. All of the Western Conference contenders (of which we are not one until we prove otherwise) have at least two major offensive stars or superstars. We don't.

Now, that doesn't mean there's no way we get there because it IS at least theoretically possible to play so well as a team that the lack of individual stars is less of a problem. But it's a big ask.

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Second scorer candidates on the team currently:

1. JK

2. Wiggins

3. Hield

Tertiary scorers in the rotation:

1. Podz

2. Melton

3. TJD

4. Moody

As collected, we're gonna have to count on defense creating offense in the regular season and hope that JK develops into a playoff level second scorer by the end of the year... which is a big ask indeed.

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I agree with your assessment. We know Good Wiggs gives us a steady 17 pts/game with a few ups and downs.

So it's going to have to be Steph plus scoring by committee, so to speak, with better defense than we've had the past couple of seasons, and several of the secondary and tertiary scorers you listed stepping up.

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…with GP2, Looney, SloMo and Kuminga all being capable of providing stalwart defense as well.

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We have a number of guys who can defend if healthy. Melton, Good Wiggs, Moody (potentially a "poor man's Iggy" defensively). Maybe Podz. TJD, especially if he got stronger.

Now if Mean Draymond Green can stay on the court and out of trouble....

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author

Tim Bontemps:

[[

The NBA has announced that replay rules have been expanded on out of bounds calls after the change was approved by the league's Board of Governors today.

Adam Silver will be speaking at the conclusion of the meeting later this afternoon.

]]

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Honestly, I would prefer they eliminate replay altogether, perhaps until the playoffs. It’s not like it actually eliminates human error as a factor in the game, and it slows things down interminably (though I guess our old vets might welcome the breather sometimes 🙂).

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In principle, I disagree, although given Kerr's pathetic record on challenges, it would help the Dubs a bit if they eliminated replays.

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I’m a pretty hard disagree. It’s imperfect certainly, but is able to right a lot of wrongs, including flagrants and dust ups.

Replay delays don’t bother me all that much, and I kind of enjoy trying to predict how they rule.

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They do drag on sometimes though.

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Without replays, we wouldn't have been treated to Wiggs dunking on Luka over and over again in the 2022 WCFs :)

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That was some pretty sweet karmic justice for 'The Flop Heard Round The World!'

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Think of replay as hitting the pause button so you can make a pit stop or go grab a fresh drink.

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Watching the Monday Night Football game last night, they had some pretty slick replay implementations. They had a team in the replay office that overruled two calls between plays without needing a coach's challenge, and without delaying the game more than 5-10 seconds in both instances. The NBA is very different than the NFL, but it's clear that there should be easy ways to improve replay implementation as a real pathway to get more calls right without impacting game flow very much.

As to the expanded out of bounds calls, are they going to actually encode the long standing "The player who knocked the ball out of bounds was getting fouled, but it's a bit of a tickytack foul, so I'm just going to give the ball to that team instead of calling a foul" approach refs have taken for years?

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There's also OOB calls where a player swats at the ball away from an opponent and the possession goes to the opponent... but if you look closely enough at the replay it becomes a realllly difficult call.

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The Q&A: Steve Kerr talks Team USA, Warriors' next chapter and more: https://www.nba.com/news/the-qa-steve-kerr-talks-team-usa-warriors-next-chapter-and-more

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But I love competition in camp. I love to be able to say “Jobs are available. Go earn it!” That sets you up for a good camp and I think a tone for a good season, too.

Seems like a pretty key quote, can't wait to see who steps up

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Sep 10·edited Sep 10

I'm quite looking forward to the camp and this season. Even if we're crappy, there are a lot of fun players to root for and new ones to get to know (Waters, Plowden, Post, even Hield, really). I'm not in the "wasting Steph's prime" camp, so I'm not going to get that worked up if we have another 'disappointing' year, if we see some growth.

And, I think it's better than 50-50 that we make the playoffs, barring a lengthy Steph injury < furiously knocks on wood >. I am optimistic that we get a bounce-back season from Wiggs, and further improvement from Kuminga and Moody (contract year improvement, baby!).

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Ditto. Optimism ftw!

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The things I consistently marvel at, is how Steve Kerr always has a real honest and direct answer for every question. It's never just a worthless Sportsball cliche.

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Feels like he’s had some moments of promise in the last few years, but a guard who won’t take more than 2 three-pointers a game (and doesn’t make the ones he does take) just doesn’t really work in the long run, I guess. Still, I hope he catches on somewhere.

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> And as much as we hate to lose Klay, we feel we have a lot of young players who are ready to take on bigger roles.

Let's over analyze this quote. Go!

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Welcome to the free market! Any chance he signs anything other than a vet min?

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Is he eligible for an Exhibit 10?

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As a camp deal, I guess, but it wouldn't make much sense for Fultz. Exhibit 10 is basically a tryout deal, more often used for Summer League. It can be converted to a 2-way but Fultz isn't eligible for that. A team would still have to give him a spot on the 15-man roster to play in the NBA on standard minimum deal.

If he can't catch on at camp and get a vet min deal, my guess is he'll play overseas somewhere.

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Hopefully not considered a political statement... But police while detaining Tyreek Hill said "When we tell you to do something, you do it, you understand?" the officer told Hill. "Not when you want, but when we tell you. You're a little f---ing confused." These guys are absolute sickos, completely demented and we give them guns and power. I am pro-police but these guys are just sickening. Hill is right, if he wasn't a famous NFL player, who knows, he might have ended up dead.

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Thin blue line baby. It's hard to be pro cop and I think we all want to be but the history is just, well bad. And with the advent of cameras everywhere were seeing just what they are really made up of. There are heros mixed in for sure but the ratio is not good.

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Those cops were definitely power tripping. Use of force because Tyreek rolled up his window and was being disrespectful? Since when is being disrespectful to cops illegal?

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Yeah for some reason that's what hit me about this incident. Tyreek was probably wrecklessly endangering folks with his speeding. He acted quite entitled and treated the officers with disrespect. HOWEVER, it's scary to live in a world where cops think "I'm going to give this guy what he deserves". From a karma perspective, maybe Hill deserved it, maybe not -- but it's incredibly scary to think there's a police force out there who feel comfortable taking that judgement into their own hands.

If he's uncooperative, levy higher fines, whatever it may be.. but escalating non-violent encounters to violent ones is never going to be the right route.

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He said he wasn't even being disrespectful. He had his window down, gave the cop his license (I think), then rolled it back up because he didn't want passersby to see and recognize him. The incident took place very close to the player's entrance to the stadium.

That one cop was sooo far out of line. I gather he's on an administrative assignment while it all gets sorted out. Apparently the other cop, the one who first approached the car before the nasty cop took over, was okay (per Hill).

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Seeing the video, to be honest Hill was probably being disrespectful. The problem is, being disrespectful should not be a ego triggering event for police officers to warrant taking someone down to the pavement. When I imagine a model police officer, it is one who forgoes his ego for the greater community good. This officer showed the opposite in behavior.

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Trained to deescalate vs escalate.

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Every day of the week.

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Sep 10·edited Sep 10

... As a nation, we have a need for police, but the balance in this nation is out of whack. I don't doubt he was speeding, but that doesn't require an aggressive response.

Also a take I have...when the police can ensure protest are essentially not effective.... You are are on the edge of a police state. It's complicated cause I do think you need a variation of a police force but not the one we have.

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> You are are on the edge of a police state

We passed that threshold awhile ago tbh

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Sep 11·edited Sep 11

We've been living in a police state since at least October 26, 2001, and much earlier depending on your definition and skin color.

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Yeah I'm sure he was speeding, and from what I know about Tyreek he is probably a fairly detestable human (domestic abuse, etc). But still the account of what happened hit me hard. This officer (and clearly others) are completely comfortable in escalating obvious non-violent situations to aggressive ends, just because they feel disrespected. It's easy to say, if I were in Hill's place, I wouldn't do what he did. But it's also disgusting that ignoring orders immediately results in being physically assaulted.

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Two wrongs don’t make a right… aren’t police supposed to be trained in de-escalation?

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Sep 9·edited Sep 9

OT: GSW V……..oops GSV

“NASA has five Valkyrie robots around the world.”

New Scientist

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GSV = General Systems Vehicle?

https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_spacecraft#Common_ship_types

SpaceX names some of its ships after Culture craft, but I don't think Elon understood anything Banks wrote at all.

My favorite GSV name is 'A Fine Disregard For Awkward Facts' ... it would have been 'Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints', but that's a kick-ass Abominator-class General Offensive Unit.

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GSW V? Is that a prediction for this season? Are we numbering the ‘chips with Roman numerals now?

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😊👏🏽

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That's a pretty impressive four corners offense.

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Sep 9·edited Sep 9

AI is a really important player when plugged in to a team of stars like the Warriors team he was a big part of.

Top 60? I will leave it at that since this is all suppose to be in good fun, but…..🤐😇

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Any objective or metric-based rankings will have players it overrates or underrates. That said, so far I'm liking this list! If Iguodala in the top-75 is the biggest miss so far, I can't think of many other rankings (objective, or subjective like the official top-75) that actually do better :D

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Yeah, he was our guy and an important member of the dynasty Dubs — the guy Kerr trusted to calm everybody down when things got edgy — but I wouldn't have put him in the top 75.

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Fwiw he’s not ranked in the top 50

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Sep 9·edited Sep 9

Whoops. I should have been wider awake 😊

I edited it to top 60.

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> But sometimes voters spectacularly fail in their duty. Hence the use of an “egregious error” factor where some points are deducted because of a clear voter error.

I hope you employ this to the benefit of one Draymond Green, who was cheated out of a DPOY in 2014-15 when Kawhi won it with eight (!) fewer first place votes, because a handful of voters decided to leave Green off their ballots because they didn't like him. Egregious indeed.

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“Iguodala was the guy who the dyanstic Warriors never won a ring without. Interestingly Sam Walker, whose excellent book on sports leadership “The Captain Class” posits the theory that all great teams across sports have an unsung real leader of a championship culture, pinpointed Iguodala as the Warriors “captain”.

This sparks an interesting thought exercise: Without Iggy, who will be “The Captain Class” should the Warriors win a title this year?

Steph is the obvious choice, but he hasn’t been it before and he’s more of a quiet leader and might have too much of an bright aura about him.

Draymond is too volatile and probably the biggest reason the team needs a Captain Class

Looney has been referred to as Kerr as the most respected voice in the locker room and credited with playing a key role in helping the team navigate both The Punch and Deki crises. His role as Captain Class probably depends on whether he can contribute enough on the court to not be marginalized.

It’s not often that a newly acquired player can emerge as a team leader, but Kyle Anderson seems to exude classy, selfless play and seems like a good, smart dude. I’d say he’s a candidate.

It’s not often that a 2nd year player emerges as a team leader, but Podziemski seems destined. He demonstrated as a rookie that he’s unafraid to chew out vets like Green (in practice) or Wiggins (in an actual game) for not hustling, and certainly walks the walk with his own effort, hustle and putting his body on the line, and he earned enough respect from Kerr to get prominent minutes as a rookie. It seems the biggest question is whether he’s too young and/or cocky to the point of unlikable to be Captain Class this season.

TJD is another rookie to earn minutes with BBIQ and effort. He’s also a bit older than Podz, but seems a little more of a quiet presence. His second year will be interesting to watch to see if he no longer feels like he needs to stay in his rookie lane.

Kuminga hasn’t struck me as a leader to this point, and I suspect he’ll be far too concerned with his own playing time and contract to be really focused on the team’s dynamics.

Moody is in the same boat contract-wise, but (like Looney) seems wise and mature beyond his years. He’s pretty quiet, but if he’s able to contribute on the court, might find his voice and emerge as a captain. He’s certainly classy.

Wiggins doesn’t strike me at all as candidate due to his lackadaisical demeanor and off court issues.

D’Anthony Melton seems like a good candidate. His high effort earned him the nickname “Mr Do Something” and tenacious defense is a great way to inspire teammates. He’s known as a high BBIQ guy and from interviews, he seems very engaging and has a quick smile.

GP2 seems more like everybody’s friend who’s happy to be here, but I don’t know if he’s a leader type.

Who do you all see as the best candidates? My guess is Podz, SloMo or Melton.

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Sep 10·edited Sep 10

I guy like AI is the exception not the rule, a rarity. Podz is way too young and unaccomplished. There might be someone who partly does what AI did but nobody on this team has AI’s credentials and skills.

It is also a totally different job on a team like this vs a dynastic super team.

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Sep 9·edited Sep 9

After reading a summary of the book, I'm going with SloMo and Loon... maybe in that order.

I think Steph definitely has the ability to be the one but like you said, his aura is too bright. It's hard to "lead from behind in a service role rather than as a spectacular superstar" when you're Mr. Nuit Nuit. Even if he's doing the little things on the court and willing to come off the bench, everybody knows it's Steph Curry.

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It's 100% Steph. His leadership has grown over the years as the older vets have retired. Listen to any of the younger players talking about him and it couldn't be more evident.

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Sep 9·edited Sep 9

Yeah, that makes sense with what we've heard in public too. The "if you're not going to lock in, don't get on the bus to Sacramento" speech was a notable example of him showing leadership in more dramatic fashion, but it also feels like the things he's said and the way he says them in public interviews shows a greater sense of responsibility for the team and cognizance of his role in it at this stage in small ways too.

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Dwight Howard is probably the highest-ranking sort-of out gay basketball player on the list.

Nice to see Artis included, as he was as strong of an inside player that the league had ever seen---though his best days were in the ABA as mentioned...

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Dwight not just "sort of out" he's full blown. Does not like to talk about it but when the rape allegations came out he had to.

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I'm down with the Gilmore love. I didn't see him until he was in the NBA and I thought "how can anybody stop this freaking tank from getting to the rim?" He seemed to score at will and was so much bigger and stronger than anybody else on the court.

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I once saw Gilmore miss a trek foot shot by 5 feet. Not fair to judge him by that but hard to get it out of my mind…

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That is really funny! I used to see him play for the Kentucky Colonels in Louisville in the ABA. I don't recall him being a bad shooter, but not a great shooter either...

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For all you summer white-knucklers out there like me:

It's exactly one month to the first Dubs preseason game ...

alternatively, the amount of time it takes Kyle Anderson to drive the length of the court 60 times.

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Huh, I see them having their first game on Oct. 5th in Hawaii, and the second game at Sac on the 9th. But, it was exactly one month (yesterday) to the second Dubs pre-season game doesn't quite have the same ring :) So, only 50 Kyle drives left!

https://www.nba.com/warriors/schedule

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Sep 10·edited Sep 10

Yeah, I think you're right. Google search says the first game is Oct. 9, but NBA.com has Oct. 5. Good news!

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