Honestly, had to look him up. Hard last couple of years, looks like injuries have derailed the career. I think the waiver wire is a bit like a bad shooter who is wide open and waving his hands. What we say then is "You're open for a reason!" What I'd say here is "Waived for a reason!"
Never been a Chriss fan. Don't hate him, he's just unspectacular. Looney and Wiseman have their weaknesses, too, but I think are solid enough. And I also think we will see a lot of Draymond or Bjelica as the 5.
Not that it's a democracy, but I vote let's keep the spot open and wait for Sacramento to realize that they're terrible and pull some move like buying out Bagley. Sacramento, Wizards, Knicks: there are teams that can be counted on to be boneheaded. Between buyouts and trades last year, guys like LaMarcus Aldridge, Blake Griffin, Aaron Gordon, Evan Fournier, Norman Powell, Gary Trent got moved around, and more. That doesn't mean that it's super easy to get a good buyout guy, or engineer a favorable trade. But I wouldn't want to plug Chriss in that slot so he can get three rebounds a game, and then find out that Giannis is available. OK bad example. Someone good. Good thing Bob Meyers is on the job and not me.
POR is actively looking for a 3rd string big. The fact that Chriss got passed up by every team and only got a last minute TC invite from POR makes me think there's something we are clearly not seeing as fans.
Some good work by the DN HQ members in the preseason but as we know, our chat here doesn't count until the regular season. These next few days will be a good time for each of us to ask how we can improve our commentary, what we can say that's more interesting, funnier, odder, more homer-ish. I like much of what I'm seeing from fellow members but it's going to be a long season and then of course there are going to be the inevitable injuries. Still, lots of good sharing of tweets, that went well. Excellent discussion of the intricacies of salary cap implications for 15th guys. Nice work on quoting Anthony Slater a lot.
Highlights: lots of enthusiasm for Poole. Excellent work attempting to spell Bjelica.
Lowlights: I gotta keep it real. I don't think the venom for the opponent was there. Come on, people, we're fans. We are supposed to hate on the opponent for random reasons with great vitriol. E.g. Last night I didn't hear anyone make fun of Lillard for sitting out. That's shoddy work and we need to get better. We only have until Tuesday to iron out some of these issues. Let's get to work.
I know you’re not being entirely serious here but I enjoy the vibe of this board way more because we can discuss basketball without hearing silly insults all the time on every game thread. The only exception is F**k the Lakers
We're all about the joy here, preferably of the weaponized variety. Don't need to hate the other teams when you can just pity them.
We can still hate the refs when necessary though. In preseason it didn't matter unless they were letting guys get away with dangerous play, but come regular season, the 8-on-5 comments and "look at them mugging Steph off-ball" comments will be out in force.
Most definitely. I just frequent blogs from other sports sometimes and hearing terms like (player) stans/fanboys/something similar to insult other fellow fans is such a bad look.
Very true. I avoid a lot of sports sites because they, like all internet, tend to degenerate so quickly into stupid vapid insults. Especially stoopid Laker sites
There are certain players, and Harden is one of them, who just become my Personal Villains. It's not reasonable: it's not like they have personally offended my family or anything. But Harden is on that list, and so are Rondo, Dwight, a couple of others. I actually begrudgingly admired that Houston team because no one went all in on small ball like they did, if you're referring to the Eric Gordon/CP3/Harden/Tucker/Ariza type lineups. It was ballsy. I do think Harden engenders a lot of resentment because he has exploited the rules, and by the way it will be interesting to see what the new rule changes will do to his game.
I commit to typing my comments in an external editor such that I can check for spelling and grammar before posting, at least until substack provides an edit feature. Really, it is the least I can do for my fellow fans and I'm always up for doing the least.
Spot on critique! You have appropriately shamed me to vow to spend hours training in my darkened tv room with recordings of Fitz and Kelenna’s most cringe worthy commentary to up my homerism game. I will also follow various NBA players on Twitter/IG to help the hate flow more strongly. All while drinking copious amounts of Hennessy (an homage to our lost Warrior, J Bell). WGBC!!
> Fitz and Kelenna’s most cringe worthy commentary
Ugh speaking of cringe... I usually hold back on my opinions about Fitz since he's about your average broadcast homer but last night's post game with Bjelica was... 🤦
Fitz: So say your name for us so we know how to say it.
Beli: *wtf face* NEM-en-ya
[end of interview]
Fitz: Thanks neh-MEN-ya. And we even got his name right this time! :facepalm:
That guy has at least 4 cringable moments a quarter. I honestly can't wait until he screws up hard enough to lose his job. I know that's harsh but... he's that bad.
That was SO painful. I heard it too. I'm sure Bjelica is over it by now but come on. Don't make a Thing of learning to pronounce a name -- which isn't a very hard thing to do -- and then botch it. It's the salt of failure into the wound of xenophobia. Also does Fitz really have to suck up to Lacob's money that hard?
> It's the salt of failure into the wound of xenophobia.
Such a good way to put it.
Fitz, if you really cared about the pronunciation of his name, practice it and make sure you get it right. Don't make a spectacle out of it and ask somebody to say their name like /they're/ the only ones that can possible say it correctly.
100% He never should have even had the conversation on air.
This is like when teachers look at their roll sheet and say to a schoolkid "Oof that's a hard name, you're going to have to bear with me. Is it MOO-ham-med or MuhammED or what?" And the kid's thinking "It's kind of a popular name where I come from."
One of my HS math teachers took a year+ before he realized he was saying my name wrong. [And my real name is not Dilly - but not all that hard either.] LOL
I’m a bit surprised that one of my favorite sports writers threw in a gif of the biggest basketball asshole on earth along with the biggest pop star pedophile on earth with not even a small sarcastic comment about it… :)
Dame is kind of an honorary Warrior, it's true. But can we at least savage Carmelo more? I thought we did some nice work on Dwight Howard but that's low-hanging fruit.
Carmelo always gets/gives such nice hugs with Warriors after the game (Curry, Poole etc.) it makes him seem like a really sweet person. I just can't sustain fan malice in the face of hugs like that.
Watching these Moody highlights of course but at 44 seconds you can see GP2 there with a mask on? Is there some rule that you have to wear a mask if you are inactive or something? Obviously he's vaccinated because it was a home game and we are past October 13, so I'm curious if he wore it voluntarily or not.
This game has an interesting arc to it. Early on, the Dubs fell way behind as Portland's Lillard-less starters played tough, physical defense, and the refs were letting a lot of contact go uncalled. (The refs were consistent about calling it on both sides, but it took us longer to adjust to it.) Our offense looked a little scattered and Steph was so off he shot an airball and went 0/2 on FTs.
Then mid-second quarter Curry went off and flipped the game upside down. He got the rest of the roster going, then Bjelica got into it with Chriss, and Portland spiralled out of control. From there it was a demonstration of how much deeper our squad was all the way down to the guys who just got waived like Jordan Bell.
I think you're right about the first quarter Portland defense and contact, but a lot of the anemic offense also came down to some really bad shooting. It was one of those moments when someone is supposed to say "Hope they're getting all of those out of their system," but Kelenna was busy thinking speedboats come in 11-foot size and Fitz was busy kissing Lacob's money. I very much agree about depth. When I think of any moment last year when Steph stepped off the court and hoping that Damion Lee could somehow become a superstar overnight ... it's an incredibly stronger bench. I'm going wayyy out on a limb and asserting that Bjelica + Iguodala + Porter >>>> Wannamaker + Mannion + Mulder + Paschall.
Preseason and all, but PorterJr looks good, Poole Looks good, and Draymond, Looney, and Curry all look like themselves. Wiggins even laughed once during the game and shocking outburst of emotion.
Chriss waived now too.
Kris Dunn waived. Thoughts on him?
He was never that good and now he's recovering from injury.
Honestly, had to look him up. Hard last couple of years, looks like injuries have derailed the career. I think the waiver wire is a bit like a bad shooter who is wide open and waving his hands. What we say then is "You're open for a reason!" What I'd say here is "Waived for a reason!"
In case yoy wanna know, Blazers waived Chriss:
[Trail Blazers] The Portland Trail Blazers have waived Marquese Chriss, Quinn Cook, and Patrick Patterson.
Damn I kinda still want Chriss!
Never been a Chriss fan. Don't hate him, he's just unspectacular. Looney and Wiseman have their weaknesses, too, but I think are solid enough. And I also think we will see a lot of Draymond or Bjelica as the 5.
Not that it's a democracy, but I vote let's keep the spot open and wait for Sacramento to realize that they're terrible and pull some move like buying out Bagley. Sacramento, Wizards, Knicks: there are teams that can be counted on to be boneheaded. Between buyouts and trades last year, guys like LaMarcus Aldridge, Blake Griffin, Aaron Gordon, Evan Fournier, Norman Powell, Gary Trent got moved around, and more. That doesn't mean that it's super easy to get a good buyout guy, or engineer a favorable trade. But I wouldn't want to plug Chriss in that slot so he can get three rebounds a game, and then find out that Giannis is available. OK bad example. Someone good. Good thing Bob Meyers is on the job and not me.
And conveniently, we still have a spot for him!
But we're not being told something. He didn't make the Blazers; maybe the FO knows something about his injury...
Maybe he wasn’t as diligent about his rehab as he should have been?
POR is actively looking for a 3rd string big. The fact that Chriss got passed up by every team and only got a last minute TC invite from POR makes me think there's something we are clearly not seeing as fans.
Yah, if he can't make 3rd string big for POR, there's something up.
Steals
Stephen Curry2.5
Draymond Green1.2
Avery Bradley1.2
Kevon Looney1.2
Jordan Poole1.0
Preseason leaders
Blocks
Gary Payton II1.0
Draymond Green0.8
Andrew Wiggins0.8
Nemanja Bjelica0.6
Kevon Looney0.6
Assists
Draymond Green3.8
Andre Iguodala3.8
Juan Toscano-Anderson3.4
Jordan Poole3.0
Nemanja Bjelica3.0
Final preseason stats
Rebounds
Kevon Looney5.4
Otto Porter5.0
Stephen Curry4.5
Draymond Green4.2
Andrew Wiggins4.2
Our Hall of Fame PF out-assisted our HoF PG, but our HoF PG out-rebounded our HoF PF.
Final pre-season stats
Points
Stephen Curry24.5
Jordan Poole21.8
Otto Porter13.0
Gary Payton II12.0
Nemanja Bjelica9.6
LOL. stealing the scoring lead from JP in the last game.
Other than Payton, these will likely be 4 of the top 5 scorers, but where will Wiggins land? And what about that Klay guy?
Here in my hometown Nico Mannion made his debut in Italian League. 5 pts + 3 ass in 5 minutes on the floor. Easy win
That's a lot of ass
Did you see how skinny he got? Maybe he went a little overboard rebuilding his weight.
So they built up such a huge lead in the first five minutes that they let Nico sit the final 43?
Fiba rules = 40 minutes only
4 x 10. It's a long way to go for Nico to get back in shape
On a 36 min per, that's 36 points and 21 assists! He'll be the Italian league MVP!
Some good work by the DN HQ members in the preseason but as we know, our chat here doesn't count until the regular season. These next few days will be a good time for each of us to ask how we can improve our commentary, what we can say that's more interesting, funnier, odder, more homer-ish. I like much of what I'm seeing from fellow members but it's going to be a long season and then of course there are going to be the inevitable injuries. Still, lots of good sharing of tweets, that went well. Excellent discussion of the intricacies of salary cap implications for 15th guys. Nice work on quoting Anthony Slater a lot.
Highlights: lots of enthusiasm for Poole. Excellent work attempting to spell Bjelica.
Lowlights: I gotta keep it real. I don't think the venom for the opponent was there. Come on, people, we're fans. We are supposed to hate on the opponent for random reasons with great vitriol. E.g. Last night I didn't hear anyone make fun of Lillard for sitting out. That's shoddy work and we need to get better. We only have until Tuesday to iron out some of these issues. Let's get to work.
Well played. Very well played.
I know you’re not being entirely serious here but I enjoy the vibe of this board way more because we can discuss basketball without hearing silly insults all the time on every game thread. The only exception is F**k the Lakers
Nets too
We're all about the joy here, preferably of the weaponized variety. Don't need to hate the other teams when you can just pity them.
We can still hate the refs when necessary though. In preseason it didn't matter unless they were letting guys get away with dangerous play, but come regular season, the 8-on-5 comments and "look at them mugging Steph off-ball" comments will be out in force.
Most definitely. I just frequent blogs from other sports sometimes and hearing terms like (player) stans/fanboys/something similar to insult other fellow fans is such a bad look.
Very true. I avoid a lot of sports sites because they, like all internet, tend to degenerate so quickly into stupid vapid insults. Especially stoopid Laker sites
I'm guessing that if this site was around when we were knocking off Harden's Rockets every postseason that we might have seen a few more insults :)
There are certain players, and Harden is one of them, who just become my Personal Villains. It's not reasonable: it's not like they have personally offended my family or anything. But Harden is on that list, and so are Rondo, Dwight, a couple of others. I actually begrudgingly admired that Houston team because no one went all in on small ball like they did, if you're referring to the Eric Gordon/CP3/Harden/Tucker/Ariza type lineups. It was ballsy. I do think Harden engenders a lot of resentment because he has exploited the rules, and by the way it will be interesting to see what the new rule changes will do to his game.
I commit to typing my comments in an external editor such that I can check for spelling and grammar before posting, at least until substack provides an edit feature. Really, it is the least I can do for my fellow fans and I'm always up for doing the least.
We expect nothing more. Good work.
Spot on critique! You have appropriately shamed me to vow to spend hours training in my darkened tv room with recordings of Fitz and Kelenna’s most cringe worthy commentary to up my homerism game. I will also follow various NBA players on Twitter/IG to help the hate flow more strongly. All while drinking copious amounts of Hennessy (an homage to our lost Warrior, J Bell). WGBC!!
#HENNY
> Fitz and Kelenna’s most cringe worthy commentary
Ugh speaking of cringe... I usually hold back on my opinions about Fitz since he's about your average broadcast homer but last night's post game with Bjelica was... 🤦
Fitz: So say your name for us so we know how to say it.
Beli: *wtf face* NEM-en-ya
[end of interview]
Fitz: Thanks neh-MEN-ya. And we even got his name right this time! :facepalm:
--------
No, Fitz... you did not.
That guy has at least 4 cringable moments a quarter. I honestly can't wait until he screws up hard enough to lose his job. I know that's harsh but... he's that bad.
That was SO painful. I heard it too. I'm sure Bjelica is over it by now but come on. Don't make a Thing of learning to pronounce a name -- which isn't a very hard thing to do -- and then botch it. It's the salt of failure into the wound of xenophobia. Also does Fitz really have to suck up to Lacob's money that hard?
> It's the salt of failure into the wound of xenophobia.
Such a good way to put it.
Fitz, if you really cared about the pronunciation of his name, practice it and make sure you get it right. Don't make a spectacle out of it and ask somebody to say their name like /they're/ the only ones that can possible say it correctly.
100% He never should have even had the conversation on air.
This is like when teachers look at their roll sheet and say to a schoolkid "Oof that's a hard name, you're going to have to bear with me. Is it MOO-ham-med or MuhammED or what?" And the kid's thinking "It's kind of a popular name where I come from."
One of my HS math teachers took a year+ before he realized he was saying my name wrong. [And my real name is not Dilly - but not all that hard either.] LOL
hahahah
I’m a bit surprised that one of my favorite sports writers threw in a gif of the biggest basketball asshole on earth along with the biggest pop star pedophile on earth with not even a small sarcastic comment about it… :)
P.s I love the work you do!
Where's the gif of Karl Malone? I don't see it.
Don't forget Russ and Harden. They also deserve vitriol.
Are we being kind to Austin Rivers ever since Dray ganked him?
Dame is kind of an honorary Warrior, it's true. But can we at least savage Carmelo more? I thought we did some nice work on Dwight Howard but that's low-hanging fruit.
Carmelo always gets/gives such nice hugs with Warriors after the game (Curry, Poole etc.) it makes him seem like a really sweet person. I just can't sustain fan malice in the face of hugs like that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5uFmsFpf1I
Watching these Moody highlights of course but at 44 seconds you can see GP2 there with a mask on? Is there some rule that you have to wear a mask if you are inactive or something? Obviously he's vaccinated because it was a home game and we are past October 13, so I'm curious if he wore it voluntarily or not.
This game has an interesting arc to it. Early on, the Dubs fell way behind as Portland's Lillard-less starters played tough, physical defense, and the refs were letting a lot of contact go uncalled. (The refs were consistent about calling it on both sides, but it took us longer to adjust to it.) Our offense looked a little scattered and Steph was so off he shot an airball and went 0/2 on FTs.
Then mid-second quarter Curry went off and flipped the game upside down. He got the rest of the roster going, then Bjelica got into it with Chriss, and Portland spiralled out of control. From there it was a demonstration of how much deeper our squad was all the way down to the guys who just got waived like Jordan Bell.
I think you're right about the first quarter Portland defense and contact, but a lot of the anemic offense also came down to some really bad shooting. It was one of those moments when someone is supposed to say "Hope they're getting all of those out of their system," but Kelenna was busy thinking speedboats come in 11-foot size and Fitz was busy kissing Lacob's money. I very much agree about depth. When I think of any moment last year when Steph stepped off the court and hoping that Damion Lee could somehow become a superstar overnight ... it's an incredibly stronger bench. I'm going wayyy out on a limb and asserting that Bjelica + Iguodala + Porter >>>> Wannamaker + Mannion + Mulder + Paschall.
That's a pretty sturdy limb :)
I love the GIF -- is that Ip Man?
Yes it is haha. Donnie Yen. Supposedly none of the fights were sped up, afaik...
Not much of an actor but as a martial artist... holy cow.
yep!
+1
Preseason and all, but PorterJr looks good, Poole Looks good, and Draymond, Looney, and Curry all look like themselves. Wiggins even laughed once during the game and shocking outburst of emotion.
#DestroyLA
Nothing more fun than watching Curry hoop. Two 4 point plays even with the rule changes. 😍
Amen and amen. He is must-see tv.