Arena The NBA Thread

I'm really hoping the Nets can survive Round 1 and face the Heat in the second round. That would be epic!

 

Final standings of Heat, Pacers, Bulls, Raptors, Nets, Wizards would be nice.

The difference between the Wizards and Pacers as opponents and the Nets and Heat is beyond drastic.

 

Hell of a last quarter here

Come on Noah, 4 more points

 

Yeah I want the Heat to have the 1 seed so they have to face the Bulls or the Nets in round 2.

 

Heat win, Pacers lose, Bulls win, Toronto lose. Perfect.

 

This officially marks the first time in NBA history that the Lakers, Celtics, or Knicks will not be in the playoffs.

 

Ugh, yeah, not a good year for my boys in green, although that was to be expected. The good news is we have Brad Stevens, and like 17 first round picks over the next few years.

 

The Bucks were sold for 550 Mil. At least they get to stay in Milwaukee for now.

 

Hah, the Heat's plan to avoid a possible match with the Nets in Round 2 has been foiled! Now the Nets have locked up the #6 seed, so that matchup can still happen!

 

OKC has to play Memphis again! LOL! Poor Durant.

 

Posting to acknowledge the playoffs starting, keeping my mouth shut about everything because I'm superstitious.

 

Lamar Odom has signed with the Knicks.

 

Though tonight was technically their final game, it was hard to notice as the Lakers season ended back in December. 27-55... a new franchise* record for futility! When my brother's kids ask about this decades from now, I can regale with them stories of Robert Sacre's dance moves, Swaggy P's 3-point shooting, KAMANMANIA, and Mike D'Antoni's various looks of disgust & vigorous time out calling. It'll be great!


Aside from thinking about the possibility of having a top-5 draft pick, what's kept me (relatively) sane basketball wise has been this:






.


The numbers** are a bit skewed for some of them, considering the team's terrible play, but it's an overall semi-accurate mark of how this usually plays out; there wasn't a single game without at least 1 in attendance, so that was nice.

Totals!:

Jack: 11 games attended, 30 missed

Lou Adler: 10 games attended, 31 missed

Yori Saneyoshi: 29 games attended, 12 missed

Kay Harrington: 24 games attended, 17 missed

"Kurt Cobain": 8 games attended, 33 missed (he's off next season's list )

Norm Pattiz: 24 games attended, 17 missed

"Tim Conway": 29 games attended, 12 missed

Joe Smith & his wife- 14 games attended together, 25 missed; 2 games Joe attended by himself, 2 games in which they both were absent

Avi Lerner: 24 games attended, 17 missed

Patrick Soon-Shiong: 30 games attended, 11 missed


And the most faithful of the bunch this season...




Dyan Cannon: 33 games attended, 8 missed


There's likely to be new additions for next season's list. The hobbies I keep...



*

From a couple of days ago... clearly in better spirits than many of the fans.


**I more than realize that 1) Nobody may give a ****, and 2) Many of you will likely find this to be weird.

 

33-49 for the Cavs. 9 wins better than last year. We are improving. Wish we could have gotten into the play-offs but we are getting closer.

 

Blazers finish with an impressive 54-28 record, much much better than last year! This series with the Rockets is going to be intense.

 

I mean this with all sincerity: Portland's got to win that series.

 

Perfect ending to the season. Wizards and Pacers beats Nets and Heat. Huzzah!

 

Pretty good 30 for 30 tonight on the Bad Boys.

 

I loved it! Despite knowing much of what was presented, there was still some nuggets of information here & there (an example: Jordan's comments concerning Detroit before the concluding game of the '91 ECF) that were new to me. Concerning that tidbit, Isiah may disagree with me ( ), along with others, but I loved the Pistons walking off the court before the conclusion of that game (4)/series. It completely fit their whole aura, identity & so forth.


Also, during the discussion of the '88 Finals (games 6 & 7), this particular play was given attention:





Foul, say what?! Talking about a superstar getting a call. I was certainly not surprised about the focus on that, but what did surprise me was the lack of focus & mention on this*:





Specifically, from the 1:51 mark to 2:07. Yeah, it was a different culture in the NBA during the 80's (even with I'm about to say, there's something so damn cool about the court storming), but look at the chaos there... media, fans & players already on the court as Laimbeer tries to inbound it, Magic tripping Isiah once the ball is inbounded. Sure, Detroit was down 3, and could have easily missed a 3-point attempt, but I think there's more of a gripe (well, it should be) about that chaos than the phantom foul call in game 6. I suppose since they did go on to win the next 2 titles, the overall feeling of that goal getting accomplished anyway (even if a chance of a rare 3-peat was lost) soothed any gripes about how game 7 ended. Maybe.



*Of course I'm slightly playing Devil's Advocate here... despite recognizing the legit gripe Detroit/their fans can have about it, that won't make me appreciate such a great & classic Laker bit of history any less.

 

As someone without access to cable or ESPN and who became a Knicks fan in the 90's when Riley was coach it was interesting to see the clips of him coaching the Lakers.

Guys on the radio were talking about this on my drive home from work last night. What they said that caught my interest: It's a shame Isiah's career ended at 32 with an achiles injury and they mentioned who's trying to come back from that injury now.

I always think of Isiah as a big embarrassment to my favorite franchise. Never saw him play and I don't care for him.

Here's hoping Westbrook doesn't get hurt and the Thunder have a better showing in the play-offs this year!

 

I'm predicting that the higher seed wins every first round matchup, with the exceptions of the Nets and Blazers. Only the Heat will get a first round sweep.

 

Nets pull off a solid win over the Raptors today. I really hope they can win this series, because I think the Nets are the only team capable of defeating the Heat.

 

warriors hanging tough. way too many fouls in this game though.

 

STOP TALKING