Random NBA Observations 2020 - 2021
- Thread starter Big Jo
- Start date
Lakerman0834
Veteran
He’s not a star player. Coli just elevated him for the finals for their laker/bron hate.*If* this happens... with Jim and Bayo not missing significant time from here on out...
Does Jim get a pass because he had Covid (still not 100%?)... or does he get a pass because he overachieved in the bubble and was never really a top 10'ish player?
Or does he not get a pass?
Other top 10 players have their (coli) legacies on the line every night they play
Flex Luger
Job Is Finished
FukkaPaidEmail
Retired Hoodrat whisperer
There isn’t football .
The NBA should have Sunday afternoon doubleheaders....I don’t get it ..
The NBA should have Sunday afternoon doubleheaders....I don’t get it ..
Exactly i been saying this
Once the SB ends the nba should be dominating saturday and sunday coverage. Games all day on all networks. Triple headers. Not this nba tv shyt
<<TheStandard>>
I Am A God
At the end of the day it's still going to be Giannis being unable to shoot from past 5 feet from the rim and they lack the depth they had in past seasons.
Also the Bucks play a scheme which gives up open 3 pointers to protect the rim at all costs, which won't work vs the Nets as it didn't against the Raptors when FVV made every single 3 point attempt
Why are the lakers playing at 10pm on a sunday on national tv?
On the evening before the trade to Houston became official, John Wall received a text from his general manager.
Two words from Tommy Sheppard, all caps: “PLEASE CALL.”
Reports that the Wizards and Rockets were discussing a swap of Wall for Russell Westbrook had persisted for a little more than two weeks. Wall knew what he was about to hear.
“I’m like, OK, I’m traded,” Wall said Saturday in a conversation with The Athletic. “There’s nothing else to be, ‘PLEASE CALL’ about.”
Wall rang. Sheppard told him he’d been traded for Westbrook. Minutes later, Wall started receiving calls from his new team. He was on a plane to Houston the next day.
He says he was “shocked” at the time. Not long before, Wall thought he was “definitely” going to retire as a Wizards player. But he had to know in the back of his mind that a deal was possible. Sheppard’s all-caps text popped up on Wall’s phone at around 7:30 p.m. Dec. 2, only a day after the Wizards first returned to their facility for limited practices but a couple of weeks after the Wall-for-Westbrook rumors began. Training camp was a few days away.
“It was funny because I was supposed to (do a photo shoot) in the City Jerseys on Monday,” said Wall, who the Wizards drafted No. 1 overall in 2010 and had spent the previous decade in D.C. “And I was just like, I ain’t feeling — I just don’t feel like I’m gonna be here. In my mind, I feel like it’s gonna happen. Like, they gonna do something, because it just kept lingering for so long. And I’m like, if it was supposed to not happen, all you had to do was (be) like, ‘I appreciate you all calling for him, but John ain’t tradeable. We keeping him.’ That’s the same as if anybody was calling for Brad (Beal), because we know everybody is calling for Brad. They like, ‘Nah, he’s not tradeable. Brad is off the market.’ Once I realized they weren’t saying that (about me) and conversations kept going, I was, ‘OK, it’s gonna happen.’
“So, I was like, I don’t wanna take the pictures. I don’t wanna do the thing on Monday. So, I was like, ‘Alright. I’ll do it Tuesday. I’m just gonna be a professional because I don’t know if I’m gonna be here or not gonna be here,’ because I kept hearing, ‘Well, let’s try to get through training camp. See how things go with you and Brad, then we’ll make decisions, whatever.’ I’m like, ‘Alright, whatever it is.’ I’m just trying to be professional. Do it the way I wanna do it. I take the pictures (Tuesday) and then I think after you do the green screens, I was supposed to do (a news conference) that day. It was funny because I did green screens and they moved my media to Friday, the day of training camp. I’m like, ‘OK, something’s not right.’
“(I) go there Wednesday, say what up to everybody. I go back home. I’m chilling, watching TV. I’m getting my bag ready for training camp. I get a (text) at, like 7:29, 7:30. ‘We just traded you to Houston.’ That was it.”
One of his first calls after learning the news went to his longtime teammate, Beal.
“It was emotional,” Wall said. “Both of us were crying.”
He spent the night packing and “trying to clear my mind.” The next morning, he was at the team’s practice facility, bidding goodbye to teammates and staffers before the flight to Texas.
The 30-year-old will return to D.C. on Monday for the first time since the trade when the Rockets take on the Wizards.
A trade that Wall expected simultaneously surprised him.
He had spent the later parts of the fall working out in Los Angeles with a sampling of teammates. He provided some viral moments in scrimmages against Kevin Durant and the rest of the Nets, who were out there preparing for the upcoming season. Wizards management visited him in California, as well.
Throughout the offseason, the organization both privately and publicly pumped up how Wall performed during what became a two-year rehab from a litany of serious injuries. He had bone spurs removed from his left heel in December 2018 and ruptured the Achilles in his same leg the next month. His first NBA game with the Rockets was his first in 24 months.
He was traveling from L.A. back to D.C. on Nov. 17 when The Athletic first reported that Washington had discussed with Houston exchanging Wall for Westbrook, who the Rockets were making calls on after the former MVP requested a trade.
“Somebody hit me and was like, ‘You know you’re on the trade block with Russell Westbrook.’ I’m like, ‘Ain’t no way I’m on the trade block,’ ” Wall said Saturday. “You know what I mean? I haven’t played in (two) years. And I was like, I know it’s part of the business. I said all I ever wanted from the start was honesty. You know what I mean? Just tell me the truth, what it was. I can deal with it.”
He said, though, that the organization was less than honest with him at the end, though he didn’t single out specific people.
“I felt like I deserved the honesty and respect because I’ve been there for 10 years. I’ve been through the bad times, when we had shytty teams and when we had good teams in D.C.,” he continued. “I never turned my back on the organization. I played through damn near every injury that a lot of people wouldn’t have played through. I played through broken hands in the playoffs. I think I did everything I could and gave everything I had, heart and soul to the organization on and off the court.
“Then everybody kept telling me, ‘No, it’s not true. Don’t believe it. Don’t believe it.’ And I’m like, I know Houston probably called them first. But it’s part of the business. Why wouldn’t you call if somebody wants to be traded? You know what I mean? And it’s not nothing, just having conversations. And that’s all I wanted. If you’re having conversations, that’s cool, I get it. Nobody could ever tell me the truth about it.”
The Wizards declined to comment for this story.
Sheppard said in a news conference on Nov. 23 that “there’s no plans to trade John.”
He was asked about the timeline of the deal while speaking to reporters the day after the trade became official on Dec. 4.
“The responsibility of this organization is to get the very best team out on the floor at all times. You’re always looking to make your team better,” Sheppard said. “I guess on Wednesday, there was a call to revisit a concept that was thrown out at one time, and you kind of step back, you look at it. … Once it became obvious that’s an opportunity that (we) can get, I felt that it’s my responsibility for the Wizards to get better, to have the opportunity to acquire a player that’s a nine-time All-NBA player (in Westbrook). …
“I don’t know times and dates. I don’t know what time we started up. It seemed like it was around 3:30, 4:00 in the afternoon. We were able to get to this place that we needed to be relatively quickly.”
There was also the issue of, as Wall calls it, “the video,” which he hints could have played a part in the trade.
A video of Wall flashing gang signs while at a party went viral back in September. He tweeted an apology later that week, but Wizards owner Ted Leonsis was “furious” over the incident, The Athletic’s David Aldridge later wrote.
“I called everybody and apologized about it. Nobody’s perfect. We make mistakes,” Wall said. “We live through it and move forward. I think I did what I was supposed to do on my end of calling the owner, the GM, all the coaches, the players on the team, talking to them, telling them that’s my apology. Those types of things can’t happen being the leader of the team. Then they said we were moving forward from it. So, I thought that was in the past. I don’t know if that’s the reason why I got traded, but I thought that was over with.”
Rockets coach Stephen Silas said a few weeks ago before his team played the Wizards in Houston that he’d use Wall as an extra scout leading into the game. Who else would know the upcoming opponent better than its former point guard of a decade? Of course, Wall’s connection to the Wizards doesn’t just come from eight years playing alongside Beal or institutional knowledge of Scott Brooks or any of the other players who have carried over from past seasons.
He says he watches “all their games.”
On Saturday morning, he voted for Beal for the All-Star Game. Beal currently leads the NBA in scoring and is tops among Eastern Conference guards in the fan vote.
“Why wouldn’t I? I told everybody, I said, I still watch all their games. Who the hell wouldn’t wanna watch Bradley Beal?” Wall said. “The numbers he puts up, the way he plays, you wanna support that. Outside of being just my brother, he’s a hell of a basketball player. So, a fan would wanna enjoy that.”
The two guards fought through rough patches over eight seasons as costars but spent the last year declaring how they wanted to continue playing together. They discussed the nitty-gritty of how Wall’s return could go seamlessly. Beal, who’s progressed as a one-on-one scorer and facilitator each season, has evolved as a player since the last time Wall was healthy as a Wizard. Wall expounded about how he would learn to play without the rock better. He was going to cut and complement Beal with a jumper he insisted would be more accurate after a couple of years of rehab.
(Cato Cataldo/NBAE via Getty Images)
He’s shooting an improved 37 percent from deep and is taking more 3s than ever with the Rockets, while averaging 19.1 points, 3.9 rebounds and 6.1 assists. No coincidence, his efficiency numbers are career-bests, as well.
Now, he says missing out on another run with Beal is what he wishes he could have back most.
“The number one goal is, you didn’t give me the opportunity for me and Brad to run it back, like y’all said we (would),” he said. “That was (my) and our ultimate goal. It was, ‘OK, we’re gonna give it one more shot.’ If it’s just one year or two years, we were gonna give it one more shot just to see. … And it’s just crazy we never got to do that. I don’t think they wanted to do that. I think they moved forward and did whatever they wanted, which is cool. But that was the most frustrating thing than anything. Like, to have an opportunity to run it back with my brother and playing with the guy, the level he’s on now.”
He wishes the world were more normal so fans could attend his return game Monday. The Wizards are one of the many teams still playing in front of empty arenas. They will run a tribute video, anyway, and could show another one when Wall comes back next season, assuming they can host crowds then.
“I think that’s gonna hit even more because then the fans can show me appreciation if they want to or don’t want to — which I think they will,” he said.
His prediction?
“I think it’ll be a dope-ass reception, to be honest,” he said. “I wouldn’t expect nothing less. I’ll be shocked if it was less.” He added, “Just know that I love (the Wizards fan base). They’ll always have a place in my heart.”
Whenever fans come back, he plans to invite a group from Bright Beginnings, a nonprofit organization that operates learning centers for children who experience homelessness in D.C. Wall has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the charity and worked with it so extensively during his years with the Wizards that he earned the NBA’s Community Assist Award in 2016, which he says now was his best moment while with the franchise.
Come Monday, he’ll have to turn left at the players’ entrance to Capital One Arena, instead of the right he’s made countless times. The Rockets won that first meeting with the Wizards in Houston, a return game for Westbrook, who spent one season there before they flipped him to Washington.
Wall and Westbrook were called for double-technicals that night and scattered trash talk throughout the game. But it’s not a Westbrook thing, Wall says. He told NBC Sports Washington’s Chris Miller the day before the win that the matchup would be “personal.” After a decade of calling one place his home, he now wants to beat the Wizards — every time he can.
“We always just been two competitive people that play hard as shyt and want to get wins. That’s what it is,” Wall said. “It ain’t gonna make nothing no better, but for damn sure, when I play the Wizards I wanna win every time we play them. And that’s gonna be true no matter if Russ is there or anybody else is there. Any time you get traded from a team, you wanna win every time you play them, so that’s my ultimate goal.”
(Photo of Wall and Bradley Beal: Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)
Celtics are so uninspiring
Most unenjoyable Celtic team of the last decade
That two week Jordan Crawford run filled my heart with more joy than the shyt I’ve seen this year
Smfh, Wiz fukked up trading Wall.
FukkaPaidEmail
Retired Hoodrat whisperer
For real .
One of those TNT nights should be a Sunday afternoon .
NBA has their best overall product hidden on Tuesdays and Thursday’s
Nero Christ
Sniper out now on all digital platforms brev
is Tatum not playing because the Celtics shouldn't be down to the Bullets
Ultimately, for all the talk about Brooklyn's flaws... there's nothing about Milwaukee, Boston, or Miami that makes me think BK wouldn't dismiss all of them in 5 games if shyt came down to it. They just don't look that impressive at all, whatever the excuses.
Still 45+ games to go + trade deadlines and buyouts of course.
is Westbrook not playing because the Celtics shouldn't be down to the Bullets
