240 Comments
Sep 11·edited Sep 11

We always talk about what our young guns like Kuminga/Moody have to add to their games, but why not play the same game with our grizzled vets? There are plenty of examples of older players adding/expanding to their game so why not them?

Klay: Post Game, he can't get as much seperation running off ball but he is 6'7 and a great shooter. Why not add this to his game a la Livingston so he can manufacture some points every once in a while.

Curry: You're perfect.

Dray: Add a floater to your game and utilize that more consistently. You've lost athleticism as you've gotten older and its made it more difficult for you to finish inside. Use a floater/push shot to get some easy buckets like Richaun Holmes.

Looney: You're not a grizzled vet, but I consider you one. One a very low frequency, you shot 42% on shots from 10 ft - 3PT. Lets see how you can do with a bit higher frequency and up that PPG.

What would you guys want the OG's to add?

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Sources - LeBron James, Stephen Curry interested in Team USA: https://www.espn.com/olympics/story/_/id/38378132/sources-lebron-james-stephen-curry-interested-team-usa

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Just rewatched Warriors-Celtics finals game 4, where the Dubs turned it all around in Boston. My takeaways for what it took to get that pivotal win, and might take to get a 2024 chip:

+ Steph, deity-level maniac. 43pts, 10 rebs, constant fury.

+ Wing rebounding! Wiggs got his career-high, 16 boards that night--if JK and MM go in a winning playoff rotation, it'll probably be because their extender arms have been activated.

+ Defense in numbers! Dray had a rough night but still a pest. Loon, Wiggs, GP2 gave all the hard grit you'd expect. Who stunned me were Klay--physical, focused, craftily chasing down Brown cross court to force an out-of-bounds TO--and especially Bjelica, who got key minutes and broke Tatum's spirit 1:1 in three possessions in a row in a key stretch of Q3 (IIRC). Hoping we can get something close from Saric, plus Wiggs, GPII and Klay back in shape, plus growth from Moody + JK, to get our team defense back in Tatum-busting, Q4 lockdown shape.

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So this business about "World Champions".....

I think no one questions that the NBA is the best league with the best players.

This is more about a country declaring itself "world champions" of something or other when no one else in the world asked it to. It is cloying embarassing self-declared pomposity, all this greatest-this greatest-that business. I think this is what Greg Popovich - someone who knows more about basketball than just about anyone else - was alluding to when he said that the winner of the NBA is, rightfully, the "NBA Champions".

Many other regions in the world are by far the best at particular sport, you don't see em going around declaring that the winner of the some league or regional championship "world champions" to the extent that the US of A does. The most ridiculously annoying is when you hear commentators going on about the Superbowl "World" champions. We just need to get over ourselves already.

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Is Iggy retired officially and I missed it?

Or did golf.com out Iggy retirement: https://golf.com/lifestyle/steph-curry-launches-golf-channel-show/

“An all-star cast of characters was recruited to help Curry in pursuit of that goal, including McIlroy, Michelle Wie West, Curry’s swing coach Alex Riggs and his former teammate (and fellow avid golfer) Andre Iguodala.”

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Sep 10·edited Sep 10Liked by Eric Apricot

Oh, happy Sunday, we have a new troll onsite ... Peter.

Fortunately, he's pretty small.

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Finally.

“Today, I notified the interim president at 930pm, Mr. Pedro Rocha, that I have resigned as President of RFEF. I have also let him know that I have also resigned my position in UEFA so that my Vice-presidency position can be filled,” Rubiales said

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FIBA results with NBA salaries....

Best performances per salary: Germany, Serbia, Lativa, Lithuania, Italy, Spain, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Greece, Jordan, South Sudan, Japan, Egypt

Worst performances per salary: USA, France, Australia

1. germany 9+5+8+2 = 24m

2. serbia 3.5+3+1 = 7.5m

3. canada 8+22.5+4.5+24+15+5.5+12 = 91.5m

4. usa 23+24+5+13.5+27+4.5+13.5+7+26.5+13+11.5+3 = 171.5m

5. latvia 17m

6. lithuania 15.5m

7. slovenia 40m

8. italy 3m

9. spain 2m

10. australia 1+4+5+2+11.5+6+6.5+10.5+2 = 48.5m

11. montenegro 18.5m

12. puerto rico 0m

13. brazil 0m

14. dominican republic .5+36m = 36.5m

15. greece 2m

16. georgia 2m+2m = 4m

17. south sudan 2m

18. france 11m+41m+19m = 71m

19. japan 2m

20. egypt 0m

21. finland 17m

22. new zealand 0m

23. lebanon 0m

24. philippines 11.5m

25. mexico 0m

26. angola 2.5m

27. ivory coast 0m

28. cape verde 0m

29. china 9m

30. venezuela 0m

31. iran 0m

32. jordan 0m

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Sep 10·edited Sep 10

I imagine several of us are imagining our Olympic team next summer. Here are my candidates which would be available now.

Steph, Booker, Halliburton, Young, Lillard, McCollum, Fox,……maybe CP3

JJJ, Tatum, George, Butler, Williams, AD, Dray, deRozan, Randle,…..maybe Embiid or James

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#YES

In my view, without Bob there is no dynasty. The question going forward now is, without Bob, will there be additional titles. I think the second sentence is strong evidence in favor of the first sentence.

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To paraphrase NBA players: "The NBA is the best league in the world, so the Larry O'Brien IS the world championship; because if the USA *hypothetically* put its best players out there and *hypothetically* practiced together and *hypothetically* sacrificed for the team and *hypothetically* could learn to play FIBA rules and *hypothetically* didn't get injured and *hypothetically* figured out how to counter some great international squads and *hypothetically* played defense and *hypothetically* rebounded and *hypothetically* generally tried and *hypothetically* their contracts permitted it, they would be the best.

Uh. Sure! And if I were *hypothetically* 7 feet tall and *hypothetically* skilled, I'd be in the NBA.

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Only Andrew Wiggins (#22) days left until training camp. I hope anyway, now I'm seeing conflicting dates, but nba.com still says Oct 2nd so I'm sticking with that.

Was rewatching some AW highlights, starting with THAT DUNK ON LUKA!!! and man, I'm not saying I forgot how good he can be, but I do tend to remember rusty and then hurt Andrew from the end of last season more than almost-finals-MVP Wiggs. Hoping all his family concerns are behind him and he can just ball out again in '23-'24.

Here are highlights from those playoffs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN2PKqVm4PE

And, I think a lot of people jumped from "He shouldn't have started in the all-star game" right to "He didn't deserve to be an all-star", which is just wrong, he was pretty, pretty good that whole year. Here's some evidence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zjdr2yFnUg

And, to be more topical, I agree with JZAlvarado that adding Wiggs and Murray to that Canada team will be good. But, I thought they were prioritizing people that made the multi-year commitment, so I think someone needs to decide to drop out for them to get a spot. Would be crazy if Wiggs wants to play and they can't add him based on their approach.

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OT: I don't really know why it hits me so hard, but I'm just so happy for Coco!

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Sep 10Liked by Eric Apricot

Congratulation to Team Germany, still early here so I haven't watched the game yet but that was an impressive result, Serbia is no slouch.

Looks like as expected many fans are freaking out about Team USA, with many comments like "Kerr and Grant Hill are embarrassments and have to go". From a quick read, my headline would be "Team USA, missing 3 of their top 7 players - two starters and a key sub - still manage to take the game to overtime". Hey, sports are like that. I hope it is nothing serious for the sick guys. I also hope it isn't just the "My agent doesn't want to get hurt in a game that doesn't seem too important" flu.

Anyway, the squads will look a lot different for the Olympics, but man, there will be some good teams there, take this Serbia team and add the consensus best player in the world to it as an example. Hoping that we can get some good big men on the squad, I wonder how much impact a healthy Chet would make if he decides to play - I think he was pretty successful playing in the youth FIBA contests.

It's also the last day of the WNBA season, so every team plays today with some playoff seeding on the line, to see who gets to lose to the Aces and Liberty in the first two rounds before those teams meet in the finals.

Oh, and that game with the funny shaped ball has a bunch of matches today as well if that's your jam.

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Weltmeister!!! 🏀🏀🇩🇪🇩🇪❤️❤️

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Ouch. Beaten by Dillon Brooks? No bueno.

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