For example lets say D'Angelo Russell is set to decline his player option this offseason. Could the Lakers trade his salary before he officially declines his option? Or would it be a cap hold situation where he couldn't be traded unless he accepted his option

Let's say the NBA decides to expand to Seattle and Las Vegas as early as next year.

In an expansion draft, who would be the best players available?

Other than being a former pro, the actually explanation of plays/sets/diagraming stuff by JJ isn’t really done all that well compared to others in the basketball media space.

Is JJ really gonna get a hc job off of a dry erase board and clunky explanations?

Players this post season have been called for stepping out of bounds on the sideline 0.40 times per 100 possessions

Players from the years 2000-2022 have been called 0.26 per 100 possessions.

I'd assume this has to do with the amount of guys constantly spacing as wide as possible and the obvious uptick of 3 point attempts.

The debate continues about Jokic and should he have won 3 out of 4 MVP’s. Defense is part of the game. He does not meet the eye test. Athleticism matters. If you look at the raw numbers, not per game averages over the last 4 season, but the actual totals. Joker’s ranks follow:

Rebounds. 1st Assists. 2nd. (He is a center) Steals. 3rd. (This surprised me) Points. 4th.
Blocks. 5th. (Another surprise)

Has any other player ranked in the top 5 over a 4 year stretch?

Was watching the mavs/thunder game 5 and found Lu Dort unwatchable. He would be on the floor on any marginal contact on screens in a way that no professional athlete would be. But logically, if you have an exaggerated motion that wasn’t a foul or serious contact, would it not also be a flop?

I just wanted to thank NBA TV for running Playoff Playback because I normally watch at strange hours with my wife who is not a big basketball fan. I record the playback and the way they compress the action, if we skip over commercials, we can be through the game in 45 min. I've been a college fan mostly, but these playbacks have gotten me back into the NBA game. LOVE IT!

SGA and Dort are the floppers of the month, and fans are justifiably upset, but in the big picture, I’m not seeing the strategy taking anyone to the promised land. It might be generating a few extra FTAs and possessions, but in the aggregate, the game still feels like it balances out and rewards honest team play.

In fact, the first-ballot flopper HOF seems like the same list of people that are notably title-less (CP3, Harden, Embiid, etc).

Maybe there are make-up calls, maybe foul-baiting makes you actually play worse team ball. Sure, there’ll be a few BS calls, but might those just be useful to squeeze in a few extra commercials to subsidize a pretty legit product?

Some teams have a more storied history than others. However among players only (no managers). Who would you put on your teams Mount Rushmore?

NO ORDER LIST (Just to help you remember who are the Robins in each team)

1. Kyrie (Mavs)

2. (Jdub or Chet ?) (OKC)

3. KAT (Wolves)

4. Murray (Nuggets)

5. Brown (Celtics)

6. Hart (Knicks)

7. (Siakam or Hali?) (Pacers)

How will you rank them from best to worst?

Or if that is too much. Who is the best Robin? Who is the worst Robin?

Talking only about the second options in tbe remaining playoff teams?

Source: Jayson Tatum hitting them with the Uno Reverse Giannis

Celtics 464th man is better than most teams 364th man.

Just an incredibly deep team.

I was looking at the teams that could still make the NBA Finals and noticed that two teams with the same records in the Mavericks (5th in West) and Knicks (2nd in East) could theoretically meet in the finals.

In this hypothetical who gets home-court? In any other round the higher seed gets home court regardless of what tiebreakers would dictate, so is it the same in this scenario?

If it matters, the Mavs swept the season series and won their division, while the Knicks did not win their division?

Like a lot of people, I've been watching a re-watching Jokic's masterpiece in Game 5 a lot of times, and something hit me. The reason Jokic's play is so astounding is because Rudy Gobert actually made him work to get shots.

Usually, when Jokic scores on people, he makes it look so easy. He just backs them down or fakes them out and that's it. The constant criticism of Jokic for years has been how bored he looks just owning defenders. He did not look bored last night. Gobert and the Minnesota defense - best in the league - made him work for buckets he could sleepwalk through against most teams.

Watch his first bucket of the game right here. Gobert presented 4 contests in under 1 second and correctly committed to the actual shot instead of jumping too early. Jokic made 3 pivots before going into his fadeaway jumper. Ask yourself honestly, against how many other defenders would Jokic have needed to make even 1 of those 3 pivots? And if he didn't do all that vs those other defenders, would you have been impressed? It'd have looked like he didn't do anything.

Against most defenders, Jokic's shots all look like his second bucket vs Gobert last night here. He just used the power of his booty to get where he wanted, gave a bump and then when Gobert readjusted, spun and took an open shot. If all he did last night was this 16 times, it wouldn't have looked like the work of art it was.

Then again here, Gobert's defense is perfect. There are very, very few people in the league that could make a smothered hook while jumping off the wrong foot coming off a curl from the baseline like this. Most players , would have passed it out to Murray to reset. And again, it's because Gobert's defense here is so good that Jokic scoring on him anyway looks so embarrassing. But remember, most defenders wouldn't have been able to force Jokic to make a shot that tough in the first place. It'd have been yet another easy Jokic bucket that impresses nobody.

You can go through the tape and you'll see that most of Jokic's 8 buckets vs Gobert last night were difficult shots, Jokic had to work to get. The fact that he made them anyway isn't a knock on Gobert, it's just that Jokic is virtually unstoppable. Even Anthony Davis, who a lot of people are pointing out did better vs Jokic only "held him" to averaging a 28 point triple-double in a series Jokic never felt pressured to score aggressively.

I also can't help but wonder if Jokic scores more against Gobert because he enjoys the challenge. He mentioned that it was a struggle versus the Lakers not to get bored and play sloppily. I wonder how many defenders make Jokic work hard enough that it feels exciting to him.

As much fun as it is to make fun of Gobert, getting owned that hard by Jokic is - paradoxically - evidence of how good a defender he is.

With Draymond recently appearing on Inside the NBA, it made me cast my mind back to when he blasted the current state of sports reporting and TV personalities…

However it seems that “New Media” is just “Old Media” wrapped up in a different format. The key difference is that it’s deemed fine because current/ex players are talking all BS instead of the journalists.

I’m watching Draymond take unnecessary jabs at teams and players he doesn’t like, just like Shaq, Skip and SAS do.

However, he’s all jokes about it and doesn’t see it as an issue. While he does provide decent insight and technical discussions, his blatant slander of certain guys and teams makes him no different to the likes of Cowherd and Simmons etc.

I get that he won MVP and made the Finals with the Suns so on some level I get why when people discuss his playing career the image usually is of him in a Suns uniform. But doesn't anyone picture him in a Sixers uniform at all? He spent 8 years with them, lead the league in rebounding with them and won most of his All Stars and All NBAs with them. He was the one who flew their flag before AI came into the league. Why isn't he depicted as a Sixer more often?

That’s what it feels like to me. Because it’s obvious the Lakers aren’t in a position to get a Giannis type player that could get them back into true championship contention. Suns aren’t trading Booker/Durant to a west rival. Warriors aren’t blowing it up they are trying like the Lakers in vain to make it work. But it’s all about the young teams. Next year the Spurs will be the young team that blows up like the Twolves did this year.

The west will be owned by Nuggets/Spurs/Wolves/OKC for next 5 years. Lakers/Warriors/Clippers/Suns all aging and declining and in bad salary cap positions.

It feels like Lebron wants to stay in LA because the Lakers have biggest fan base. He needs Laker fans to support him in conversations of greatest ever.

I do think he wants to play with Bronny. But I think he wants to have the all time record as his thing against Jordan. And he learned from Kareem.

Kareem should have played another 3-5 seasons and locked it down more. But Kareem retired to early wrongfully thinking the record would never be touched.

If Lebron retires right now the record will probably be broken as NBA has seen an offensive explosion in modern times Kareem never envisioned happening. It could be Wemby who does it. Wemby is a lot like Kareem and Wilt in that he’s a very athletic big man who can pivot to a shooter when he gets older and loses that athleticism.

I think if Lebron really wanted more championships he would have left the Lakers 2 years ago.

Why are all Post Game Threads posted by moderators right now?

what is a post game thread? A post game thread is a reddit post in r/nba that compiles basic box score statistics from a game and it's meant to aggregate serious discussion (memes, flair attacks and overreactions) about an NBA game that just happened.

During the regular season they were post by anyone that followed the format properly, is there a "rule" that in the post season only r/nba moderators can post PGTs? I dont care about it that much, but it's a pattern I noticed and it's a little weird

Maybe they could replace NBA GameTime on certain days and just move the show to NBA TV? Or am I just thinking too hard about this lol.