Hopelfully guys will have an attitude of wanting to complete instead of teaming up. Time will telll… just need these older guys to go away.
Last week I did the math that hornets would need to win at least 20 games to close the season and the 76ers would need to go .500 or less.
76ers dropped another game and Embiid has some kind of aggravated injury now (shocker 
) and no Paul George for 25 games. We’ve kept rolling so, 18 wins sounds right to me.
Hornets have a 7 game home stretch. Finish last 10/14 at home. And an easy stretch after the all star break. Need to survive the Miles Moussa suspensions.
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I’m tired of complaining about the all star weekend/game. So I’m not going to even vent about it. Here’s what I think:
Turn it into a pick up game with either teams of 3 or teams of 5. 3on3 is fun, but the league would never let them do 3on3. So I’ll talk through the 5on5 option
24 total all stars selected, 12 each conference. The top 2 vote getters (FAN VOTE) from each conference are your four team captains. Period. No media, no player vote. The four team captains are purely from the fan vote. The remaining 10 players from each conference will be the traditional blend of fan/media/player vote formula.
-The team captain with the most fans votes gets the first pick, and so on…
-Do a LIVE team draft on Friday night. Give it the look and feeling of NBA/NFL draft night. When players are selected, give them a hat for their team like on draft night. Each team of 5 has one reserve that will sub in each game (so teams of 6)
-Play games to 21 points, via points scored via 1s and 2s, like we all do while playing pickup ball. No refs. Call their own fouls. Like a real pickup game.
-Double elimination tournament format with the four teams. Whoever emerges from the losers bracket plays in the finals against the team who hasn’t lost.
My take: 10.5 ft goals, multiple bonus point shot areas, bonus points for alley oops. Celebrity/ex-nba players can award a certain amount of style points directly following a play. At various points, celebrity refs introduce new rules for a period, like no dribbling.
Lean into it being an fun offensive show case that still highlights skills and athleticism while relying less on defense that they’re not likely to play.
Give the dunk contest trophy to the best in game dunk. Also solves that problem.
Pay the players on the winning team $5M each. Or more if that isn’t enough to capture their interest.
I have zero interest in the all-star game. Only contest I enjoy is the 3 point shooting. That was pretty good. They should just kill the dunk contest. It’s embarrassing.
Heard this on the radio.
If you had a commissioner like stern. Commissioner selects the all stars based on who plays hard and most regularly during the season. His point, nobody cares about the actual game but they all care about making it particularly with contract bonuses and hall of fame resumes on the line.
Then for the game itself if they don’t actually care about playing it, they won’t be selected back again.
All-Star game:
Give the teams only 4-5 seconds to get the ball past half court. See what the NBA looks like where full court pressure is a serious weapon. Seems like it could lead to a lot of open court fun.
Another crazy idea:
Since this era is all about honoring women, have an All-Star weekend game where the players play by the old six on six high school girls rules. My grandmother played that way. Parts of Iowa were playing that way into the '90s, and honestly it’s more entertaining than you would expect. I would love to see these elite athletes trying it out. It brings a whole new(or old?) meaning to “the guard position”.
Honestly I don’t care that much about the all star game but I hope they just go back to simple East vs West
You lost me here. But then you pulled me right back in with everything that followed.
Whatever the solution is, there’s two things the NBA has to do in order to pull fans back into the all star game:
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the players have to give a fuck
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the fans have to be given more of a role. Look at Melo last year. Wasn’t he number two in fan votes and didn’t make the all star team?? That’s a great way to alienate fans that says “fuck you! Your votes don’t matter.”
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I think his point was that it isn’t up to fans or players in the least. Not a popularity contest.
I disagree. If the plan is to get fans more interested in the all star game, the fans need more say so, not less. Also, giving say so to the commissioner would result in several conflict of interest issues. Given that all star nominations can result in bonuses to salaries, which is just one example.
That first game was mildly entertaining even tuning out all the “they are playing hard" emphasis from reggie. The league is at least trying.
I just don’t like the disjointed nature of the 4 different games.
Didn’t know where else to put this but since most of the All Star discussion is in here…
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Watching the Allstar game now and I can say this is the hardest I’ve seen them actually try for quite some time. So maybe the game is heading in the right direction.
Edit: everyone tried until the last game… then the guys who ruined the Allstar game stopped trying to play defense.
People are saying that KD’s Twitter burner account and private messages were leaked. One of the messages was him comparing the Hornets young core to the Rockets
So here is your unverifiable rumor of the day
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As much as I like kd, pass.
No highly paid old players. They are cap killers
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This is part of a larger message where he is shit talking Rockets young core before mentioning Hornets. Also, there are versions of this out there with the Raptors in place of Hornets but I am told the original version is Hornets.
If KD wants to join the hornets for a one year, one-off season. Thats cool with me. I don’t see any slip in his game whatsoever. In fact, playing less minutes in a slightly smaller role would be incredible for KD. It would allow him to stay fresh instead of playing 37 minutes per game.
I don’t know how adding a HOF 7’0 would hamper this team. If we pretend that his contract is up at the end of this season, we could ditch bridges and afford to add KD for a year. It’s not like KD is inefficient or has to have the ball in his hands constantly.
But all of this is irrelevant. He’s on a two year deal with a third year player option on 2027/28. So he’ll be 39, almost 40 then.
Because he won’t do it for $10-15m per year or even $25m