Jayson Tatum February Player of the Month

You are on fucking LSD if you think Jason Tatum is on the same level as Giannis 

You play 34 that many minutes and he’s close to averaging 40PPG 

JFC Giannis is averaging 10 more boards per game.  10!!!   And double the assists per game. 

Fucking morons 

Who cares.... More motivation for Giannis.

The anti-Milwaukee shit is really pissing me off.

It’s been this way all season 

Keep focused -- keep winning -- I promise the winning will make everything right in the world. 

Like most of us have been saying- it will never matter. They don’t want milwaukee on top. They could win 3 straight titles and the coverage will not change. 

The narrative has been all about having two stars. Giannis has obviously played every minute of his career as a Buck. Their second best player is Middleton, who has played 15506 of his 15981 NBA minutes as a Buck (97.5%). Middleton was a throw in during the Brandon Jennings/Brandon Knight trade. He's basically also been a Buck his whole career. The fact that either one (let alone both) became all-stars was against a lot of odds. 

The other 7 teams with the 8 best records in the league are the Lakers, Raptors, Clippers, Celtics, Nuggets, Rockets, and Heat. 

5 of those teams have at least one (and most of the time, both) of their star players who will have established a Hall of Fame level career before they get to where they are this season. The Lakers best two players have played 112 (James) and 52 (AD) games with the Lakers. Well over 90% of their careers were somewhere else. The Clippers best two players (Kawhi and George) have both played less than 50 games with the Clippers. The Rockets two best players are both OKC draft picks (to be fair, Harden didn't become a star until he got to Houston, but Westbrook won an MVP in OKC). The Heat have Jimmy Butler in his first year. Boston's 2nd best player is in his first year with them (Kemba). The Nets will vault into this level when Durant comes back next year and Kyrie decides it's worth his time to actually play. 

Other than the Bucks, you have the Nuggets (Jokic and Murray) and the Raptors (Lowry and Siakam) whose two best players were basically lifers for their teams. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that we hear much less about the Raptors and Nuggets as well? 

The media wants to make their stories about the player movement - especially to the places where the media lives. 

I may be in the minority, but I'd rather root for home-grown (or at least long-term ) players on "my" teams than rentals or mercenaries. The Raptors title last year was really subdued in nature because they'll be lucky if their best player even goes to the reunions 20 years from now. If the Lakers or Clippers win this year, only their fair-weather fans will care. 

Give me Magic and Larry Bird battling it out for the better part of a decade, Michael Jordan having to struggle for years to beat the Bad Boys Pistons, the Spurs core coming back to beat the Heat one year after losing a heartbreaking Finals to LeBron's AAU team at that time (thanks to Ray Allen). That's what gets me invested as a fan. I'd rather cheer for Giannis and Middleton for the next 5 years even if they never win a title than cheer for some superteam set up by Klutch Sports. 

That’s a great breakdown of the “Player Empowerment Era”, and it demonstrates the difference between what the media wants (the story) versus the fan. 

The player movement era started with Shaq. Shaq was the biggest one- next to MJ, he was the game’s most captivating star. His desire to go to LA started the movement- and look at the stars that came after. The players that grew up in AAU all treat the NBA the same way. The pathway to winning is to join forces with other players on other teams. The ones that don’t? Mostly non-American born who didn’t cut their teeth playing AAU. 

I can understand the player motivations as well.  I spent a number of years in Minnesota during Kevin Garnett’s heyday and quite honestly I’m not sure the team did everything in their power to build and support a winning culture.   He stuck with it but toward the end they had no chance at a title so he was dealt and won one with Boston. 

Then you have players like Ray Allen and Demar Derozan or James Harden that got traded despite being loyal to their teams so I guess it cuts both ways. Heck, go back years when Barkley got dealt to Phoenix or Vince Carter getting traded to New Jersey. 

Flip to some other players and I would agree some just took the easy way out.  Durant could have won a title with Westbrook in OKC.  I think Kahwi could have been “the man” and probably competed for another title in San Antonio. Anthony Davis, same thing with New Orleans. 

Players want the ability to move and I get it because not all teams have the best intentions.   But I think it’s shifted a bit too much toward the players and I don’t think it’s good for the league to have super teams assembled on the coasts because players want to jam or stick it to the clubs that were good to them. 

Interesting that while the player movement thing is a fairly recent phenomenon, the one distant one pertains to the Bucks (accommodating Jabbar, well at the time Lew Alcindor).

Didn’t know where to put this: but the NBA is better with Steph Curry. Now that Cupcake is in Brooklyn, I can like watching GS again... 

Music City posted:

Didn’t know where to put this: but the NBA is better with Steph Curry. Now that Cupcake is in Brooklyn, I can like watching GS again... 

As per my earlier discussion, that 2014-15 team is what being a fan of a team should be all about. 4 of their 5 best players were drafted by the Warriors and the other pieces were acquired in trades (Iguodala was acquired in a 3 team, multi-player trade that was made mainly by  teams exchanging extras) or mid-range free agent pickups.

In some ways, there are parallels to the Bucks. There was a nucleus that was (in retrospect) underperforming with an overrated coach (Mark Jackson/Jason Kidd). A new coach came  in (Kerr/Bud) and reworked the whole system to better fit the personnel and the same core guys improved by 16 wins in the new coach's first year (Warriors went from 51 to 67 wins while the Bucks went from 44 to 60 wins last year). The Bucks are now one year past that with the same core guys and have a similar trajectory (the Warriors won 6 more games the next year (73) in Kerr's second year and the Bucks will probably win at least 6 more games (66) in Bud's second year.

Interesting parallels.

@Music City

Why do you call Durant "🧁" ?? Thin skin?

Think Durant got the nickname from OKC when he returned to play a game.  

Boris posted:

Interesting parallels.

@Music City

Why do you call Durant "🧁" ?? Thin skin?

That’s what the OKC fans called him after he left. Started with Kendrick Perkins, I think... 

Fans are Stoooooopid......Durant decided to take his career in another direction. It's his career & his decision & he won 2 titles. Sounds to me like he made the correct decision. Because playing with Westbrook probably sucked. 

He is not a cupcake. He is the Slim Reaper & I like watching him play. He's amazing.

I always felt like LeBron was Durant's kryptonite but he proved all that wrong in that first finals series. He was incredible.