General NBA Discussion

[Sweet Rabbit]

looks like Carmelo is staying in NY

 

[bumblebee]

looks like Carmelo is staying in NY

Welcome to a few hours ago, lol!

 

[The Mike]

So LeBron goes to Cleveland, Bosh stays in Miami, Carmelo stays in NY, Lin to LA, Pau to Chicago. Waiting on Wade and Love's decisions, any other big players we're waiting on?

 

[The Josh]

Lebron signed a 2 year 42 million contract and can opt out after 1 year. Wtf?

 

[bumblebee]

Lebron signed a 2 year 42 million contract and can opt out after 1 year. Wtf?

Guess he's going home with a escape clause

 

[bumblebee]

Pau is going to the bulls.

 

[Y4NK33 PL4N3T]

Leoptout surprises very few with that deal.

And I'm stuck with Melo again ****

 

[lukewarm]

I wanted to see pau in San Antonio.

Lakers seemingly look like the losers, however melo not coming might be the better scenario big picture.

Houston got the most surprising spurn in my opinion, which I rather enjoyed.

The east got weaker with chi gaining a little edge with pau..

Only bummer about the LeBron thing is Gilbert is such an astronomical tool.
My .02

 

[The Josh]

I would think assuming Rose is healthy and Gasol does what he should we should be the favorites in the East.

 

[mfoga]

Lebron signed a 2 year 42 million contract and can opt out after 1 year. Wtf?

Opt out after a year and join Melo in NY. And the that whole letter which gained him so much good will will backfire once again and he will be even more hated than ever.

 

[DinoDB1975]

I think Ariza will stay in Washington.

ESPN is reporting Houston will sign Ariza to a four year contract, which likely means they won't match the Mavs' offer to Parsons...unless Morey is thinking of having two starting small forwards.

Really surprising how Houston struck out in free agency as Daryl Morey is widely considered to be one of the best GMs in the NBA. They could have picked up the team option on Parsons for this season for $900 K I believe.

Wonder what Morey can do with the cap room he still has available. Make a play on restricted free agent PG Eric Bledsoe? Renege on the planned trade of Asik? Sign Paul Pierce, who I beeline is an unrestricted free agent and unlike KG, still looks to be able to provide some quality minutes?

 

[DinoDB1975]

Opt out after a year and join Melo in NY. And the that whole letter which gained him so much good will will backfire once again and he will be even more hated than ever.

Or opt out and allow Cleveland to be players in free agency to get players as needed. Lebron's a smart guy. Despite what he said this year about wanting a max contract, I don't think he really cares about being the highest paid player in the NBA. He makes tons from his endorsements on obviously, and has numerous other business deals. He made $30 million in a day last year when Beats was sold to Apple.

 

[The Josh]

It appears Lebron did that to get more money when the new tv deal hits.

 

[lukewarm]

Smart if you ask me...

 

[azurepred]

I would think assuming Rose is healthy and Gasol does what he should we should be the favorites in the East.

unless Stevenson resigns or the Cavs get Love. Don't think in any of those scenarios, either of those teams beat a healthy SA team though. OKC didn't improve in any of the spots they needed too.

It appears Lebron did that to get more money when the new tv deal hits.

yep, I believe the salary cap or something is extended a little bit? He can sign for more $ in the future compared to what he can get now. He already admitted the Cavs prolly won't be serious contenders for a few years, so why ppl think he would leave is beyond me.

 

[jstep13]

Since LeBron is working backwards (TV > written statement > ?), will decision #3 be Morse code?

 

[The Josh]

unless Stevenson resigns or the Cavs get Love. Don't think in any of those scenarios, either of those teams beat a healthy SA team though. OKC didn't improve in any of the spots they needed too.

Stevenson can resign with Indy and if Rose is healthy and Gasol plays like he does we're better than them. If those two things happen I think we can go toe to toe with SA. Would be a fantastic showing of two teams playing team ball. I'd give us a fighters chance at least.

 

[jstep13]

First LeBron fan sighting since his signing

 

[Wake]

Pat Riley dragged Stan Van Gundy ( a good coach, just clearly not someone would could convince Shaq that eating 50 chalupas a day and constantly being overweight and out of shape was bad for the team and his career) to the back of the barn and put a knife in his back. Then put two rounds in his head. Then cut his throat and took a dump in it. Don't get me wrong, Riley was a great coach and a tough efficient executive, but the slobber knobber job over him is a bit extreme IMHO. The whole "don't run from adversity" rings pretty hollow when James and Bosh essentially bailed on their previous teams to uplift the Heat. I'm not saying James and Bosh didn't have the right to leave, I'm saying you can't try to challenge your players in the press about not exercising free agency when free agency is the reason you got them at all in the first place.

I might be alone here in this thought, but I still contend Dan Gilbert is brilliant. When players say the LeBron letter would ensure no free agents would sign with the Cavs, I think that was some serious happy horse **** they were pushing. Players have shown most will go for the most money, most of the time. Barring that, they want to go to the most possible money that will also give them minutes and a good role. Barring that, they want to play for a contender. The players with real options, weren't coming to Cleveland anyway. Not the players who can command max contracts. So what did Gilbert lose? That a guy like Melo would never sign with the Cavs aside from a team up? Melo and players at that level aren't coming to the Cavs anyway. Every other player, role players and fringe guys, it's about minutes and money.

"No, no, no, the Cavs are offering me a 4 year, 20 million deal, and the only other offer on the table is a 2 year, 8 million deal. No mother ****ing way I'm taking that contract because Dan Gilbert wrote that letter to LeBron James!"

Yeah, that's likely.

What Gilbert did do is become the franchise that becomes the face of all small market NBA franchises. That no matter what you do, the current system in place is designed so small market ( in application) teams in the NBA are only really farm teams for cities like LA and NY and Miami. Stern had no choice to but to start rigging drafts in the Cavs favor. Who wants to buy a NBA franchise for those big dollar amounts if it looks like you have zero hope to win a ring or keep your best players? No bidding wars for NBA franchises for sale, no big valuation on all existing franchises. The Cavs won the top pick in three of the last four drafts. Does anyone really think that was random luck?

While James was gone, the "Letter" gave the Cavs fandom an identity. The team that LeBron dumped. Fans can rally around that. So can a city. And enough acrimony and bad blood got spilled so LeBron James felt he had to go back to repair his image/perception.

If Riley and Gilbert both did one thing right, it's the idea that if you are dealing with an entitled narcissist who grew up with no father, the best thing to do is to get up in their face and challenge them. Sorry, but it's not just the celebrity/athlete culture, it's also an issue in the black culture and how many young black men interact with other non African Americans. Sadly, there are just a lot of young black men out there, normal Joes and pro athletes alike, who don't see "respect" until they are challenged. While it's a sad indictment on the evolution of the black culture in America, it's also an effective strategy for negotiation. The Dan Gilbert "letter" might seem like disrespect by some Heat fans, but in a culture where killing off their young black males is common, having so many fatherless households and the ideal that the best form of success is to be some quadruple threat of being an athlete/actor/sports agent mogul/gangster rapper, I'm not sure it was such a bad strategy.

Underlying a lot of the tension between the Gilbert letter and LeBron James is that one is a wealthy old white guy, and the other is a young rich athletically gifted black guy.

Are we going to pretend that LeBron James wrote that letter himself for SI? I bet my last dollar that Nike wrote it for him. Do you think LeBron James stays unmarried for so long and then suddenly gets married out of the blue and that Nike and his other sponsors and the NBA and the networks have no influence on that? ( A black guy with lots of kids out of wedlock is simply not as marketable as a family man, a married man who has a stable looking family with kids and a wife in tow?)

IMHO, James is a mercenary front runner. He's going to Cleveland because they have, as I talked about before, the key ingredients that winning teams need to have 1) Cap flexibility 2) Draft ammo ( though they burned a lot of that for Deng, Hawes and clearing cap space) and 3) Young players on rookie contracts with upside ( Waiters, Bennett) Do you think he would go "home" if the Cavs looked like the Heat right now ( older roster, broken down former franchise player, forced to take massive paycut to rearm roster, no draft picks, no young player with upside, almost no cap flexibility?)

Franchise player? Sure
One of the greatest players ever? Absolutely.
But is he really all these accolades he's getting recently? Like Bill Simmons calling him "classy" and a "genius"?

To me, he's still the same jack off that mocked Dirk Nowitski for being sick during the Finals.

It's his right to be a mercenary. But as Bill Simmons said, his last few games as a Heat player, passing the ball angrily and not taking shots because he wanted to make "a statement about the roster" was plain as day. When James can't win, he checks out. He showed that in his last days in Cleveland and he did it again in Miami. He's a front runner and if the Cavs aren't going to contend this next year, he'll move on again.

But at least we can be spared next season with some insufferable Heat fans from constantly licking his balls. I mean deep into the corner type of tongue work. Too bad we can't all be spared from the press ( driven by corporate advertising) constantly blowing him for the rest of the offseason for "going home"

I was gonna say "you lost me at dan Gilbert is brilliant" but the truth is you've never had me. Not for any of your thousand word essay diatribes. Never met anyone who writes more with so little substantive material behind it.

 

[jstep13]

^^ Clearly you've never read Bill Plaschke columns...