Arena The NBA Thread

It could be the New Orleans Pelicans as early as next season. If and when the name change happens, Jordan is on record saying that he'd be interested in taking the Hornets name back for Charlotte.

I wish Utah would give up the name Jazz and let New Orleans have it back.

 

thunder/nets game was decent. i feel like durant wasn't anywhere near his best but he still finished with 30 some points.

 

Yeah, I like the Memphis Blues. Back when the Grizzlies first moved here I was hoping that they would have just renovated the Pyramid for more suites and changed the name to the Pharaohs. I thought it would have been cool to stay with the Egyptian theme and thought a hieroglyph of an ancient Egyptian dunking the ball would have been sweet also.

But they moved to the FedEx Forum, which has it's plaza filtering out into Beale Street, so the Blues would make sense now.

But for some reason they want to stick with the Grizzlies.

 

Oh, and lol @ the Heat

 

gotta lol @ the heat whenever we get the chance these days.

 

I guess I don't feel as bad about the Blazers losing to the Wiz now, then.

 

GAM OVER WIZARD!!!!!

 

That's a good list of names, too bad most of it will never be reality. I really like the sound of 'New Orleans Pelicans' however, and didn't know until today that it's the state bird of Louisiana, so there are obvious connections with that name.

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/8707196/west-side-nba-schedule-78-games

Adande makes a persuasive case here, and I would like to see something of this nature (you can make the season between 78-72 games) done in the future, even if the prospects don't look so great right now*. If baseball can move from a 154 schedule to 162 games in the early '60's, than the NBA can make this change. Another change I would love to see but know it will never happen is the first round playoff format... it's ridiculous & completely unneeded to have it be a best of 7 format. The best of 5 is just much, much better to move the playoffs along (since they now take about 37 months to complete), and it makes the actual games & series more exciting & tense.


http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nba/...s-angeles-lakers-says-loves-pau-gasol-brother

http://scores.espn.go.com/nba/recap?gameId=400277976


Tendinitis will keep Gasooooooooooooooooooooool out for a bit, but even when he's back on the court it will be uncertain if Gasol can return to being the elite power forward/center (or even 70-80% of that player) for the Lakers as he was from 2008-2011. Schizo, bipolar, Dr. Jekyl & Mr. Hyde, The Nutty Professors... either of these can perfectly describe this Laker team so far this season. For 3 1/2 quarters, the purple & gold controlled the tempo of tonight's game, even when the Rockets made their little runs here & there. And then POOF!, defense lapses kick in, along with inspired play by Houston, and the game ends in another Lakers road loss. Dwight* needs to be a bit more aggressive offensively, to help burden Kobe's load a bit, and Jamison needs to prove his worth in Gasol's absence.



*though Dwight made a couple of free throws in a row at one point in the 4th (and wasn't the reason per se the Lakers lost tonight), he still missed 8 of his 16 attempts. Every time he bricks one, this is what it's like* in my mind. :





*from 0:43-0:53.

 

Kobe joined the 30, 000 points club.

 

The PELICANS? PELICANS are seriously being considered as a mascot for a team? Ugh.

 

Why is that a bad idea?

 

Are you a peliCAN or a peliCANT?

 

Well, it is the state bird and I think it's also paying a bit of homage to a minor league baseball team that they had in New Orleans decades ago called the Pelicans.

 

so the lakers have essentially a more athletic but not as dominant shaq clone? that's certainly lol worthy.

 

GAM OVER KNICK!!!!!

Texts from my phone tonight over a 20 min span:

"Felton!"
"FELTON!!!!!"
"FEEEEELLLTOOOOOONNNNNN"
"NOVAK!!!!!"
"F-E-L-T-O-N"

cc Point Given

 

Right I was entering my town home after work, I hear my brother ranting & cussing at the television, angry that Carmelo wasn't playing because he wanted the Knicks to be at their absolute best when they played his Heat... and the Knick won convincingly anyway. Awesome.


http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-t...ld-support-the-change-to-new-orleans-pelicans

I don't care if others don't like this possible change, but I love it. Why couldn't it work? Besides, there are more questionable animal themed names for North American teams (Raptors, Penguins I'm looking at you). Speaking of the New Orleans NBA franchise...





*

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id...shots-translate-new-nba-statistic-kobe-assist


Watching** Bryant joining the 30,000 point club was quite a thrill last night because it's such a damned great & historic achievement, since only 4 players had accomplished this feat before last night... I'm sure & confident that LeBron/Durant will join Kobe and the others on this list, and those would be fascinating achievements as well. Out of the 5 current members of the 30,000, 4 of them of spent either parts*** or significant years of their career while playing for the Lakers. That is ******* niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice.




*Watching the opening few seconds of that video made me remember of how much I miss Joel Meyers calling Laker games (he's know the Hornets play-by-play man). It's no offense to the current Laker television play-by-play man (Bill Macdonald), because I enjoy & appreciate his style... I feel Joel is simply better, and has a voice better made for this sort of work.


**It helped that the purple & gold beat the Pelicans last night (2nd road win on the season! ) , because Kobe passing the 30,000 point mark would have been much less exciting in a loss. It would be like eating a great 15-20oz. steak at an insanely expensive steakhouse and then immediately (within 5 minutes of completing the meal) having massive diarrhea.


***To be fair, Malone had a cameo (the infamous '03-'04 season, which spiced up my senior year of high school I might add) with the Lakers, and spent a lot of time during that season injured with a right knee sprain.

 

So is Stern going to fine the Heat for not showing up for the last two games?

 

#theReturn

 

That Heat-Knicks game was a good watch until NY ran away with it.

 

yes. at which point it became something truly wonderful.

 

That look of disgust/disamazement (I don't care if that's not a real world) on Jack's face there accurately sums up the Lakers season thus far. Losing in OKC this past Friday night was still annoying to watch, but at the very least there was an effort involved late in the game to make something out of it... tonight, that was practically non-existent. Utah outscored the Lakers by 20 (54-34) in the paint, and shot 54.2% from the field, helped in large part by the Lakers deciding to not play defense tonight. The purple & gold's 3-point shooting (they made 15 of them) was the only thing that kept the Jazz from winning by 15-20 points. 3-7 in their last 10 games, a terribly pedestrian 7-6 mark at home, and 2 lousy road wins in 8 road games... the Lakers will play their next 4 on the road, including a stop at MSG.

 

I wonder who the Lakers are gonna take with their lottery pick.

(I take this comment back times a million if they somehow make the Finals and play the Heat)