Yup, and (agreeing with you), this doesn’t really diminish the accomplishment. The Guardian did a nice job of looking at both sides of it:
Anyone who takes issue with Adebayo scoring 83 points –more than the entire Milwaukee Bucks team managed in a game earlier this month – is a pedantic loser… Objectively, there is no such thing as a “cheap” way to do something that no player other than Wilt has ever done.
While at the same time, they called it "theater of the absurd, “turning the late stages of the game into a joke” and the “farcical effort to get Adebayo to 83,” and finally closing with “none of this means Adebayo’s night wasn’t extraordinary.”
It’s both amazing and ridiculous, and both those are necessary ingredients for this kind of total.
The Celtics/Thunder game was a nail-biter that the Thunder won by two in Tatum’s absence as he took off for a scheduled rest day. Payton Prichard missed a game-winning three at the buzzer.
I just realized it: Bam isn’t even as good a basketball player as his girlfriend. But only because his girlfriend is four-time WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson.
Ivica Zubac made his Pacers debut last night in a loss to the Suns, getting 8 points, 6 rebounds, and 2 assists in 16 minutes. He was a highly-efficient 4 of 5 from the field.
He’s our guy at center. And we have a coin-flip chance between getting a top-four pick or missing the draft entirely.
SGA breaks Wilt Chamberlain’s record of consecutive 20-point regular season games, with 127 such contests. He has averaged 32.5 points in the 127 games.
The Pacers lost at home tonight to our hated rival, the New York Knicks. We’re 15-51, losers of a franchise-record 11 games in a row.
We’re winless since the All-Star Break and on pace to eclipse our franchise-worst record of 20-62, which was achieved in 1982-83, 11’years before we won our first NBA Playoffs series.
And we still only have a coin flip chance of even getting a top-4 pick. I’m not sure about this Zubac trade anymore. I’m nervous.
I just want the Pistons to win so badly. My son is 15 and has had no pro sports championships, though he and I agree Michigan being national champs in football couple years ago was equal.
And, to be fair, if Michigan wins the NCAA March Madness this year, it would pretty much equal it as well.
Still, we’d love a Tigers, Red Wings, Pistons, or Lions win. We thought the Lions were going to win it two seasons ago and they blew it.
The worst 6 teams are in the lottery, with exactly equal odds. 96 balls, 16 balls each. The next 8 non-lottery, non-playoff teams are in order of win-loss record, e.g. best record gets pick #7, second best gets #8, etc. Playoff teams remain in reverse order of finish after that.
Or, my nuclear option is to divorce the draft from win-loss record entirely. Just establish an annual rotation, a set order to be followed, forever. Every 30 years, every team gets pick #1, then the year after that, pick #30, then pick #29, and so on. Eliminates tanking instantly. It’s still unfair, but it institutionalizes the unfairness. And the ascending order forces teams to plan ahead.
You still want to help bad teams get better. Your second solution would solve tanking, but the lottery is there for a reason. The first solution wouldn’t change anything at all, if anything the tank for bottom six would be even worse.
When this topic came up in an NFL thread, I proposed basing the draft order on the standings at some point before the end of the season, far enough out that most teams might still have some slight hope of making the playoffs. You could even make the exact date determined randomly after the season is over, so teams don’t have a “tank date” they can play to.
Still not perfect, but I think something like that strikes a balance between discouraging tanking while still giving the worse teams a better pick.
My other proposal: give the NBA Cup some actual teeth. It’s pretty meh right now, the winning team gets some cash, woo-hoo. But if it guaranteed a play-in spot, it adds incentive to weaker teams to try to win. Finish higher than 10th, keep your higher seed, but finish lower than 10th, you are already slotted into the play-in game.
At the same time, ban the winner from the lottery, so you can’t just win the play-in berth and tank for lottery odds.
The single-elimination format makes it an “any given night” situation. Good teams are trying to win every game anyways, and most seasons a team that is easily going to make the playoffs is likely to win it, but the Cinderella possibility makes it compelling for those middle class teams.
In what might be a low point for my team Toronto scored 31 points in a row against Orlando last night, in what was a key game for the standings. We ended up losing by 52 points.
Luka Doncic will miss the rest of the regular season with a hamstring strain, which means that he will have participated in 64 games this year, one short of the minimum expectation for most player awards including MVP and All-NBA.
Which is a damn shame, because he’s the NBA’s leading scorer.
His agent intends to file for an Extraordinary Circumstances Exemption.
I think Shai is the MVP due entirely to having impact on both sides of the court instead of being a detriment on defense and trying to make up for it by scoring 40+ a night, but Luka deserved to be in the running. I read he could ask for a waiver due to extraordinary circumstances because two of those days are due to the birth of his child.
