Jacoby_Ellsbury

I could carve a statue out of my own dried up s*** and it would have better stuff than Porcello tonight.

We're getting all the help you could want from the umpires.

Porcello's thrown enough meatballs to start his own Quizno's franchise.

Oh go to hell.

Bregman's a pain in the ass.

Needle Dick Rick

Oh Porcello's gonna give this s*** right back isn't he.

Way to screw your team, fan!

Not that you asked, but this park has the shittiest chicken tenders in the world.

Okay fine I'll start watching.

Okay I'm just gonna go back to not watching because my eyes are somehow making this team really really bad.

Was at the game. Pearce and Kinsler looked like they had cement in their shoes.

Martinez is okay I guess.

God dammit Velasquez.

Brian Roberts got old.

I've been out of the loop big time this season. Checked the standings today and my eyes damn near popped out of my head.

Aside from the shock value of Cousins being a big name, this isn't that big a deal. Cousins is Al Jefferson with a three-point shot. He is not effective without the ball in his hands. He's not going to have the ball in his hands with Curry, Thompson, and Durant on the team. The guy can't defend, can't set good screens, and is hardly ever in the right position on either end of the floor. His role will basically be reduced to a spot-up three point shooting big man.

Hence the word "rental". You'd be surprised at what teams might be willing part with at the trade deadline when they're looking for the missing piece, and they'll have a lot more motivation to make it worth San Antonio's while than the Lakers do right now with their take-it-or-leave-it offers. This season is probably Toronto's last chance to contend for a title. Milwaukee's running out of time with Giannis and could really use a deep playoff run. Ditto for New Orleans and Anthony Davis. The Sixers could get antsy if February rolls around and they're sitting in 4th-5th place in the conference. There will be teams in the market. If Kawhi's value is already shot, and the offer coming from the Lakers is garbage and will not get any better (they have nothing to trade), then what's the harm in San Antonio holding onto him? If an "elite scoring prospect" can't put up anything even close to elite scoring numbers in his second NBA season on a completely barren roster, he's no good. Ingram is the next Michael Beasley. There's a reason a Spurs-Lakers trade hasn't already been completed - because San Antonio doesn't f***ing want him.

Sure they do. The Spurs can hold on to him until February then sell him off as a rental. There will be plenty of teams interested and they might even get a better deal than the crumbs the Lakers are offering them now. Or the Spurs could just stick it to him and keep him for the entire year. Send a message that they're not going to be bullied by some guy trying to strong-arm his way out of town for a shoe deal. The Lakers have nothing impressive to give San Antonio. None of their first round picks will be worth anything. Ingram is not a can't-miss prospect by any means. He's not even a particularly good one, he's supposed to be a scorer yet he couldn't even get 20ppg on an empty roster last year. There is no pressure on the Spurs to make a deal with them.

The Lakers can't put together an acceptable trade package for Leonard, otherwise the deal would already be done. Ingram's a B-list prospect, nobody wants Lonzo on account of his crazy family, Kuzma's ceiling is an Antawn Jamison type guy, and that's really all they got. First round picks aren't that useful when they're coming from a surefire playoff team. Only way Kawhi's a Laker this season is if the Spurs get no other trade offers and blink. Maybe if a third team gets involved, but what team is going to pave Kawhi's way to LA in return for peanuts? LeBron didn't do this for basketball reasons (hurr durr), he just wants to be in LA full time so he can get his showbiz career off the ground.

Shaq didn't start giving a s*** about defense and intangibles until it was too late. He had a good run in 99-00 and 00-01, then he turned 30 and hurt his toe and it was downhill from there. Kareem gets points off for only winning two championships as the best player on his team, and even 1980 might be arguable. His prime was in the 70s - not like there was stiff competition or some incumbent dynasty he had to break through. Duncan was the best player and the leader on five championship teams and was the best defensive player in the game for a good nine years - in the modern era. His scoring numbers aren't quite up there compared to Shaq or Kareem, but unlike Russell he had an offensive game and wasn't just limited to fast breaks and cleanups. There's a reason the Spurs won at least 50 games in 18 of Duncan's 19 seasons (that one outlier season is the '99 lockout, and the team's winning percentage that year is equivalent to that of a 60-win team).

Russell didn't have an offensive game. He got his points on rebounds and breakaway dunks, but he could not create his own opportunities on that end of the foor. Too incomplete to be the best ever. He may well be the best defensive player of all time, though. Jordan is the absolute best. Six rings, two threepeats, insane scoring averages, and for a good six years (87-93) he was the best offensive and the best defensive player in the game. Not merely the best overall, but the actual best in the business on both sides of the ball. I've never seen a LeBron-over-Jordan argument that wasn't just a barrage of excuses or petty qualifiers that begin with the phrase "you have to understand", or some soliloquy about what a great guy* LeBron is and what a pooface Jordan is (because that totally matters). Jordan is #1, LeBron is #2, Tim Duncan is #3 and LeBron is a lot closer to Duncan than he is to Jordan. Actually the more I think about it the more I wonder if Duncan should be #2. *He's actually a flighty, two-faced s*** who owes his entire empire to the PR team that created and maintains this winsome public image for him.

LeBron turned into a phony, race-baiting shitbrick when he rejoined Cleveland. I was a staunch defender of his during the Miami era (as previous pages of this thread will show) but over the last four years he has become insufferable.

Tim Donaghy. He casually bet on NBA games that he wasn't involved in with his golf buddies, who unbeknownst to him were passing his tips/bets on to organized crime. Donaghy decided to stop betting because it hit him that he was abusing his position and would be in deep, deep s*** if anyone found out, and the mob (obviously) wasn't happy. They tracked him down early in the 06-07 season and threatened him back not only into picking games (directly for them this time), but also to start betting on games that he officiated. He took note of league directives that went out to refs through e-mail (i.e. they would send a bunch of replays of Allen Iverson getting away with palming violations, the obvious message being that the league wanted to refs to crack down on that), and he knew the officiating patterns and biases of his fellow refs well enough to hit on like 75% of his picks. He knew that Dick Bavetta officiated to keep games close, so he bet the underdog in Bavetta's games on the assumption that the favorite would fail to cover the point spread due to Bavetta manipulating the game. He knew that Joey Crawford hated several league owners and would try to stick it to their team whenever possible. Allen Iverson once publicly mouthed off about Steve Javie and didn't really get punished by the league for it, so the refs not-so-secretly decided to inflict mob justice and screwed Iverson on calls for the next couple of weeks, which Donaghy used to make more picks and win more money by betting against Denver for the next couple of weeks. Interestingly, a bunch of refs were pals with Isiah Thomas and would hit him up for signed merchandise and other goodies, with an unspoken understanding that they would help out the Knicks on the court, which makes the Knicks' failures in the mid 2000s all the more hilarious - they had several officials in their back pocket and STILL could only win 23 games a year. Maybe a certain ref blew an important call that cost Orlando a game and felt guilty or was doubting himself over it. If that ref mentioned to Donaghy or Donaghy otherwise found out that the ref would be working another game for Orlando within the next week or two, Donaghy would pick Orlando to win that game. Sometimes the rationale for his picks was less sinister - maybe Kobe Bryant or Allen Iverson somebody was the favorite player of some ref's son or nephew, so the ref would favor that player, subconsciously or not. Maybe a coach owned a restaurant and Donaghy found out that the restaurant comped the ref's meal, or gave them a standing 'free dinner' card for whenever they were in town, and of course they would return the favor and help his team out on the floor. I have his book. Pretty interesting stuff.

Bamba's probably a smokescreen. The Celtics supposedly described Fultz as a "transcendent" point guard before trading the pick last year, while we didn't hear a peep about Tatum before draft day. Jaylen Brown flew under the radar in 2016, the lead-up to that draft was all trade rumors about the #3 pick for Hayward/Jimmy Butler/Paul George. If Bamba is the guy though, he's a project. His defense is good, his athleticism and mobility are good, but he can't shoot, can't rebound, gets pushed around down low, and apparently he's a bad screener. That seems like a lot of holes for a guy that you'd be trading up to get, but these guys know more than we do.