What’s the deal with Batum’s injury? Didn’t he take a chunk of time off and then come back? With so many injuries, its hard to keep track.
Golden State must be giddy over the prospect of facing a Conley-less Grizz in the next round.
I’m also surprised to learn that you can’t just pop a dislocated shoulder back in and be fine. Movies and TV have lied to me yet again! Reports are that Love is probably gonefor the remainder of the playoffs
Prediction-
Spurs win today on a game winner from Manu Ginobili. Ginobilis been quiet throughout the series scoring-wise, and he will be the same tonight except for the clutch game winner and perhaps only one turn over tonight.
Griffin has really impressed me. I really loathed this guy back when he was Mr. Dunk every time I receive the ball guy. But now he can shoot that little mid-range jumper, while his passing game has improved tremendously.
I wonder if Conley will be able to come back with a mask. I’d guess doubtful for at least the entire 2nd round. That sucks for the Grizzlies.
He went for the steal but he lead with his face! Never a good idea.
He had a sprained wrist, far as I know. Instead of letting it fully heal, he just kept trying to play, losing the ball, missing shots, etc. He went and sat on a beach during the All-Star Break and seemed to come back rejuvenated, but since then it’s been a steady slide back into seeming indifference, although it’s difficult to differentiate between a Frenchman who is acting normal and one who is indifferent.
Good game last night between the Clips and the Spurs, but damn, we were so close! 2 heartbreaking losses for the Clippers in this series so far. I like the way they bounced back after their game 3 loss, I hope they can do it 2 more times. Fuck, so close…Chris Paul needs to go for 30 points if the Clippers are going to have a shot at winning. Blake is looking amazing, doing everything. I hope they don’t break this team up, they have to resign Jordan even if they lose. This is just an unprecedented first round opponent. They need to treat a potential loss as a loss in the WCF and not make stupid, rash personnel changes. Timmy’s fountain of youth has got to run out sometime, right?
Wonder how much money Rondo cost himself after that debacle. Even Bill Simmons can’t defend that. But they didn’t just lose the series, the Mavs got beat. Houston is stronger than I gave them credit for and they’ll be a real handful for, sigh, probably the Spurs in the next round.
For tonight’s games, I’ll say Atlanta takes game 5 at home convincingly. If the result is anything other than a blowout for at least this game and a win in the next, I’m picking the Wizards in the next round. Maybe its the water there but I just can’t believe in this team yet. Brooklyn is the worst team in the entire playoffs and the Hawks are the 2nd best. This is like an NCAA #2 vs. #16 matchup! There shouldn’t be any drama at all!
For Portland/Memphis, I gotta stick with Portland after the loss of Conley. The Grizz aren’t terrible without him, Gasol and Randolph are enough to bully the entire Blazers team into submission, but something about knowing they lost Conley (for the rest of the playoffs?) is gotta be demoralizing for them and the Blazers should be extra rejuvenated by the news. Add to that, Lillard has been getting better the last 2 games after starting out badly in Memphis and I think he carries that over to game 5.
Can I just say how much I dislike Shaq on TNT? I totally gave him the benefit of the doubt when they first hired him and I think that most people probably look at the goofy, fun, Kazaam Shaq and think he’ll be a great fit. I could get over his mumbling, but not his deadpan delivery and his mean streak.
More than once during these playoffs, I’ve heard Shaq (playfully?) threaten Barkley, or seriously disagree with Kenny. I know Barkley can be abrasive, but when he interacts with Ernie or Kenny, you can hear the slight change of tone, see the smirk on the corner of his mouth, or the laughter after they go after each other but end on a fun note. They’re friends and you can see that. But Shaq mumbles, and when something is said that he disagrees with, he has this serious face and tone that almost makes it seem like he’s holding back a tremendous amount of rage.
One time, during a discussion about somebody’s freethrows, probably Deandre Jordan or Josh Smith, one of the guys made a point about not being able to trust a bad free thrower. Shaq seemed to take that personally as we all know he’s a terrible free throw shooter. He responded in all seriousness that free throw shooting doesn’t matter as much, that the player will adjust, and that the team just has to work through it. Whereas the other 3 guys would disagree but end on a compromising, positive tone, Shaq was all about defending himself as if he was being attacked personally. He doesn’t back down. On the court, that’s great, but on a fun, light-hearted sports show, its annoying when he just has to get his point made and be the last word.
A few other times, when Barkley was joking about something Shaq disagreed on, Shaq responded with something like “Why don’t you come over here and say it” or “How about I smack you?” Luckily, Charles didn’t take the bait, but that pretty much ended the banter. Kenny had to jump in and make an overall, compromising point to end on a positive. But that shit is uncomfortable for me as the viewer and I don’t want to see it. Even Magic when he was on the show briefly with his slow, plodding delivery was more “fun” because he’s genuinely a nice, charming guy. I prefer that slow delivery more than a giant threatening people who doesn’t agree with him.
Watch Shaq on TNT. Pretty much every night something like that will happen. Once you notice it, you can’t unnotice it.
I don’t always like Barkley, but he’s almost always right. Barkley can be abrasive, but it’s done with a wink. Shaq doesn’t seem to be in on the joke.
I don’t think TNT even bothered to audition him for the job, they just gave it to him because he’s “Shaq.” If they had, they’d have known that he adds absolutely nothing to any conversation they have, even when the subject is a practice that is literally named after him, e.g. “Hack-a-Shaq.”
Shaq seems like one of those guys who likes to make fun of everyone else, but can’t stand for anyone else to make fun of him. Then he gets pretty defensive and mean.
Thank you! That’s exactly how he comes off. I’m glad someone else sees it. If I could get through a TNT discussion without having to feel embarrassed for him, I would be happy. Now I don’t even watch half of it because I change the channel sometimes when Shaq is on one of his little mean rants
I remember that. Must have been game 3 or 4 of the Clips/Spurs game when somebody mentioned Hack-a-Shaq and he was quick to demand they call it something else. Look man, the tactic may not have originated with you, but you are the most famous example of it. Plus it rhymes. Its like discovering a new disease, you think Mr. Bob Hemmoroids was happy his name now meant “Swollen Taint”? But you roll with it because you’re a champion millionaire and one of the best big men ever to play. Its a fun little legacy. And most importantly, against you, it didn’t work
And he broke that specialized dog bed that some viewer made for Barkley’s 2 dogs! WTF man?! What did you think was going to happen when you plopped your 300lb+ girth on top of a wooden bed made for 10 pound dogs?? Barkley was laughing but he seemed genuinely surprised that Shaq would do something so stupid like that
Not to hijack the thread but what you’ve described here about “Shuh-KWEEL” is pretty much how I viewed him as a player: big and threatening and not particularly talented. I’ll just put this out there and then leave it: whenever I see “Shuh-KWEEL”'s enormous mug on my T.V. screen (which, thankfully, isn’t very often) I either change the channel or turn my T.V. off. That’s how much I dislike him.
I take issue with that. Yeah, he enjoyed a lot of success while in the N.B.A. as a player, but I’ve always wondered how much impact he would’ve had on the game had he not weighed 350 lbs. and had weighed more like, say, 270 (a more “normal” N.B.A. center weight)? Personally I thought guys like David Robinson and Hakeem Olajuwon were 1000X more talented than “Shaq.”
I swear I saw a video of him once after he’d leaped on the back of his then-girlfriend on some late night talk show. It looked liked he outweighed her by about 200 lbs. (at least). All that did was bolster my belief that the guy’s a freakin’ self-absorbed idiot.
Well the Spurs pulled away with the win last night, but boy that game was just reffed atrociously.
Calls both ways really just swayed the game, plus with the hack-a-Deondre that drew out the game even longer. Popovich doesn’t care though, and neither do I because the Spurs will continue to exploit Jordan’s weakness- because it works. Slows down the game for the older team, stop momentum for the other while chopping points off the board.
Shaq is also very annoying, but the whole TNT halftime analysis and post game shit is just garbage anyway. All of them are just clowns if you really think about it.
As I mentioned before, Leonard seems more than able to frustrate Gasol and rarely falls for his fakes. Lopez is a different story. If Stotts is smart, he’ll play Lopez early on, then put Leonard in for the second half (or earlier), just like last game.
Portland is done for the season. It would have helped if their two all-stars had bothered to show up for a critical game. Batum was dead weight, as usual. Leonard and McCollum kept it from being a blowout.
That’s like wondering how good Robinson or Olajuwon would have been if they weren’t 7 feet tall. If they were 6’9" they would probably have still been quite good, but maybe not among the greatest.
Basketball is one sport where you don’t have to master any skill to be great as long as you’re bigger than everyone else. Talented or not, Shaq dominated.
Yeah, he “dominated.” But not through being especially talented. Just through being so freakin’ HUGE. I have no problem watching guys get dominated by other guys but if I want to see them being dominated through sheer SIZE or STRENGTH then I’ll watch MMA or something like that. Basketball is supposed to be a game of SKILL. “Shaq” didn’t dominate ANYTHING for that reason. Let me ask you something: “If the N.B.A. had been FULL of 7’, 350 lb. centers during the time ‘Shuh-KWEEL’ ‘dominated’ in the league, do you still think he would have ‘dominated’ the league the way he did?” I think you can probably already guess MY answer to that question.
That’s kind of the point, though. Shaq was unique because of his size and strength. I don’t know if it was revolutionary to the NBA, but he proved he could dominate by brute force alone. Shawn Bradley, Manute Bol and George Mureson were always 6" taller than anyone else on the court, but they couldn’t dominate like Shaq.
Yeah, because they didn’t weigh 500 lbs. If you’re cool with someone dominating what’s supposed to be a “skillful” sport through just being bigger and stronger than everybody else then I can’t stop you. But that never impressed me (of course, I would NEVER say anything like that to “Shuh-KWEEL” in person because he’d likely want to pulverize me, then - tough guy that he is). Matter of fact his rise in popularity is a BIG reason why I quit watching the N.B.A.
Exactly. Bradley, Bol, and Muresan were just big. Shaq wasn’t just big, he was quick; in his prime, he moved like a guy 6-8 inches shorter. He was diminished in his later years, besides wear-and-tear, because he lost that quickness.