2021 NBA Playoffs

L-Jam3 · Post by **L-Jam3** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 10:09 pm

That’s 48 for Durant. And most likely more. Great job drawing that play up, Bud.

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 10:13 pm

L-Jam3 wrote: ↑Sat Jun 19, 2021 10:06 pm This is one hell of a game.

It for damn sure is.

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 10:23 pm

L-Jam3 · Post by **L-Jam3** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 10:24 pm

Are the Bucks even listening to Bud during this timeout?

L-Jam3 · Post by **L-Jam3** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 10:29 pm

So we now know how to stop Durant. Just wait until he plays his 102nd minute in 48 hours.

Rex · Post by **Rex** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 10:55 pm

That was definitely the 15th round of one of those old timey fights where guys were punching the rope because they couldn't see anymore

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 11:11 pm

L-Jam3 wrote: ↑Sat Jun 19, 2021 10:29 pm So we now know how to stop Durant. Just wait until he plays his 102nd minute in 48 hours.

Can’t question his heart for sure. I didn’t see game but everything I have seen about it is complementary. Wait. Complimentary.

DSafetyGuy · Post by **DSafetyGuy** » Sun Jun 20, 2021 10:20 am

Congrats to Joe Harris for shooting 24.2 percent from three in the last five games, also known as barely higher than half the percentage he shot over the course of the season.

Pruitt · Post by **Pruitt** » Sun Jun 20, 2021 10:56 am

DSafetyGuy wrote: ↑Sun Jun 20, 2021 10:20 am Congrats to Joe Harris for shooting 24.2 percent from three in the last five games, also known as barely higher than half the percentage he shot over the course of the season.

He pulled a Starks.

L-Jam3 · Post by **L-Jam3** » Sun Jun 20, 2021 9:10 pm

I take it the refs in the ATL-Philly game got the memo that viewers prefer games when there’s a foul called every 45 seconds.

L-Jam3 · Post by **L-Jam3** » Sun Jun 20, 2021 9:39 pm

Fuck it. I’m rooting for the 404.

mister d · Post by **mister d** » Sun Jun 20, 2021 9:56 pm

No one knows what that is.

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Sun Jun 20, 2021 9:57 pm

Just now catching up on things. Ben Simmons is just a weird, weird basketball player. And, probably, not a good one.

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Sun Jun 20, 2021 9:59 pm

I mean. What. the. fuck.

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Sun Jun 20, 2021 10:00 pm

sancarlos · Post by **sancarlos** » Sun Jun 20, 2021 10:12 pm

L-Jam3 · Post by **L-Jam3** » Sun Jun 20, 2021 10:28 pm

mister d wrote: ↑Sun Jun 20, 2021 9:56 pm No one knows what that is.

Then you missed Jeopardy this past Thursday.

Johnnie · Post by **Johnnie** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 12:25 am

L-Jam3 wrote: ↑Sun Jun 20, 2021 10:28 pm
mister d wrote: ↑Sun Jun 20, 2021 9:56 pm No one knows what that is.
Then you missed Jeopardy this past Thursday.

Or Ludacris 20 years ago

Johnnie · Post by **Johnnie** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 1:29 am

Simmons deserves the hate for real.

HaulCitgo · Post by **HaulCitgo** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 7:37 am

Or not. No probably not the best decision there but ALWAYS room for a playmaker in any sport. You guys hate Jason Kidd too? I take his stat sheet all day everyday. Still want him to throw up some bricks just cause but 6'9" with handles, vision and defense is an asset not a problem.

HaulCitgo · Post by **HaulCitgo** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 7:42 am

And I know thybulle isn't expecting that (not quite sure why) but he not only brings it down and gathers but double clutches. If he just catches high and finishes quick he probably gets 3 and people call it a great play. Not sure Simmons knew it was Young coming to help either. Passing behind the helper is kinda second nature anyway.

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 7:52 am

HaulCitgo wrote: ↑Mon Jun 21, 2021 7:37 am Or not. No probably not the best decision there but ALWAYS room for a playmaker in any sport. You guys hate Jason Kidd too? I take his stat sheet all day everyday. Still want him to throw up some bricks just cause but 6'9" with handles, vision and defense is an asset not a problem.

It's a problem. Refusing to shoot is a problem. THREE fourth quarter attempts in SEVEN games is a MASSIVE FUCKING PROBLEM.

mister d · Post by **mister d** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 7:57 am

Yeah, I make it a habit to be super critical of Embiid to my Philadelphia friends just because I find him annoying but Simmons made it difficult these last few days.

HaulCitgo · Post by **HaulCitgo** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 8:22 am

tennbengal wrote: ↑Mon Jun 21, 2021 7:52 am
HaulCitgo wrote: ↑Mon Jun 21, 2021 7:37 am Or not. No probably not the best decision there but ALWAYS room for a playmaker in any sport. You guys hate Jason Kidd too? I take his stat sheet all day everyday. Still want him to throw up some bricks just cause but 6'9" with handles, vision and defense is an asset not a problem.
It's a problem. Refusing to shoot is a problem. THREE fourth quarter attempts in SEVEN games is a MASSIVE FUCKING PROBLEM.

It is. But lots of other guys with holes in their games out there. League is littered with guys that won't/can't rebound, won't/can't defend, won't/can't pass. Not much different to me. Mostly expectations. He's not a perimeter threat. How is that so much different than getting blown by or back doored or boxed out or turned over. Celtics will take him.

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 8:25 am

At his contract, IT IS DIFFERENT. Holy fuck.

HaulCitgo · Post by **HaulCitgo** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 8:27 am

Kembas getting paid a lot too. Why doesn't he block more shots? It's like the guy brings zero rim protection.

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 8:30 am

Rex · Post by **Rex** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 8:33 am

In other words, they never gave Fultz a chance

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 8:43 am

Ratto's piece on this at the Defector (I'm gonna paste it):

If you can concentrate on this over the shrieking sounds and fetal-ball-shaped ouroboros coming from Comrade McQuade’s Dungeon O’Fun known as Philadelphia, imagine you have a favorite team and someone comes to you and says, “Do you want Ben Simmons?” Now imagine the amount of time it takes you to figure out the answer. It used to be measured in nanoseconds. Today, it is measured in staff meetings. For never in modern history has a great player so rejected such a basic tenet of his or her sport, to such universal damage.

Part of the tradition of playoff series is to find out who the big-name villain is and tear his reputation into tatters (this does not seem to be coin of the realm in women’s team sports yet, but we can dream). It usually stops short of every other fan base hearing a badly cobbled trade rumor and shrieking “No! No! Anyone but HIM!” I mean, millions of people hate the way James Harden plays, but until his body turned him into a 46-year-old claims adjuster, most of them would have cheerily accepted his services without hesitation.

Ben Simmons, though, is the outlier that proves the unicorn. Right now, he is spectacularly unpalatable as a building block for any team, including the one he’s on. He is considered the kind of playing liability one normally finds getting 27 minutes a night in Orlando. He is the all-star who doesn’t get picked by either captain. He is the pathologically shot-phobic guard who prevents even Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal from faking disagreement with each other over his merits. He is the max-contract disgust magnet. You name the basketball-related slur, and someone has used it on him within the last 14 hours.

Simmons is the new and higher-powered face of post-elimination revulsion, for his refusal to shoot has gone past mere mental block and transcended into Pavlovian studies. His self-inflicted opt-out in the Philadelphia 76ers’ second-round shame bomb against the Atlanta Hawks is the undisputed signature of the piece. Joel Embiid’s devotion and earnestness on one leg will always take second place in this Daliesque paint spill to Simmons’s open lane to the basket that he turned into a dump=off to a Hawk-bracketed Matisse Thybulle—all because he has not only lost even the instinct to shoot, but stamped it out with clear and evident malice.

He took fewer shots in the last three games than Atlanta’s Trae Young missed on Sunday, and Young is a hero in large part because of that fact. Simmons’s fear of the box score has taken on such epic proportions that one of the game’s most coveted players is now regarded as an outright liability in any late-game situation short of up-nine, under five seconds.

In the next few days, we will find several fresh versions about how he came to shrink from all the moments available. We will learn how eagerly the Sixers are to find someone who will find the good in Simmons that they are no longer privy to. We might even learn if this is actually the rock bottom from which Simmons will rise and become at least a long shadow of his anticipated self. After this season, anything that can be conceived can be bet on with a decent chance of paying off.

But it has been a long time since someone so good has willfully become so unusable, and almost never in the one area in which almost no other players have ever engaged: shot aversion.

Simmons made Sixers coach Doc Rivers cover for him so often that Rivers could legitimately charge him billable hours as his lawyer, and the always generous Philadelphia sports community probably will leave him be only because there is no real sport in beating him down now. The new trick, for those who are willing to try it, is to convince oneself he is actually quite good anyway in his current twitchy state, if only to see if some fresh-faced general manager (hello, Brad Stevens) might fall into the sinkhole of thinking his self-loathing of his own shot can be repaired.

But when Daryl Morey makes those calls (while denying ever making them), he will quite likely find few eager partners. Simmons has elevated (well, defenestrated, more like) his one glaring liability into the central essence of his game, even though everyone agrees there are still elite parts to his skill set. And unlike players whose reputations are sullied by their laconic, combative, or goofy natures, Simmons’s legacy is entirely fact-based. He won’t join in with the other 76ers at the most critical times because … well, at this point, fear is only part of it. And he’s in the wrongest of wrong towns to show weakness.

But Simmons’s mudslide of a postseason may have reduced his desirability to other teams to the level of a stress fracture, and as a result might actually make Sixers fans think that booing him next October would be counterproductive. And they’re always willing to lend Morey a helping boot.

HaulCitgo · Post by **HaulCitgo** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 8:46 am

Let's just say I hope so. Want Evan Fournier? I'd say he's the other side of the coin. He can shoot it for sure. But does he do any of the other stuff that impacts winning? Not sure really but he'll be over paid too come free agency. Can't have Smart and Simmons but as for Fournier, I'd take Simmons.

"The new trick, for those who are willing to try it, is to convince oneself he is actually quite good anyway in his current twitchy state, if only to see if some fresh-faced general manager (hello, Brad Stevens) might fall into the sinkhole of thinking his self-loathing of his own shot can be repaired."

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 8:50 am

Good luck!

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 8:51 am

Also, this Defector comment to that piece is very quality for this early on a Monday...

Crazy to see the top two seeds in the East done in by injuries, respectively, to Kyrie (ankle) and Simmons (Ankiel).

Ryan · Post by **Ryan** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 8:52 am

If Kemba Walker was Boston's 2nd best player and it would really help if he went for 10-20 blocks a night, I'd probably be clowning Kemba Walker if he literally never jumped.

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 8:59 am

Is this bad? this seems bad.

mister d · Post by **mister d** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 9:10 am

Including free throws hahahahahahaha!!!

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 9:15 am

Scout: He's an otherworldly WR, blocks like a madman, 4.31 40 that translates to game speed. Borderline uncoverable. Always open.

GM: holy crap, any issues?

Scout: Not really. I mean, he refuses to catch the ball when it is thrown to him, but we hope to get him over that mental hurdle.

GM: ...

L-Jam3 · Post by **L-Jam3** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 9:21 am

I so fucking hate this team. More than any local team in my lifetime. I thought my self-loathing for this team was the 10-72 season. Nope. I was wrong. It was the "prize" of going 10-72.

mister d · Post by **mister d** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 9:24 am

If it helps, the team seems pretty joyless too.

Ryan · Post by **Ryan** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 9:31 am

Honestly I can’t even look at any of the final 4 rosters and say I’d be happier with them than I am with the Celtics or Sixers fans should be with theirs*. Maybe the healthy Clippers. Atlanta and Phoenix are way fun but I would never think they’re championship-ready.

This was a weird year. Coaching and injuries made way more impact than talent.

*Ok maybe not the Sixers. Their 2nd star is Magic Shaq and somehow sucks and their 3rd is wildly overpaid and doesnt try a lot.

mister d · Post by **mister d** » Mon Jun 21, 2021 10:08 am

This is impossibly funny and I'd love to know which players would be off-limits and why Embiid isn't one of them.