• Welcome to Talking Time's third iteration! If you would like to register for an account, or have already registered but have not yet been confirmed, please read the following:

    1. The CAPTCHA key's answer is "Percy"
    2. Once you've completed the registration process please email us from the email you used for registration at percyreghelper@gmail.com and include the username you used for registration

    Once you have completed these steps, Moderation Staff will be able to get your account approved.

Beta Metroid

At peace
(he/him)
It's exhausting to see them repeatedly be gifted top-3 seeding. Yes, they schedule tough non-conference games. Plenty of Power 5 schools do that...and then actually play tough games throughout the latter two thirds of their schedule, too. I love seeing non-traditional powers shake things up, but Arkansas honestly fits that bill more than Gonzaga at this point.
 

Violentvixen

(She/Her)
I am posting this right after the three was sunk in the NC state/UConn game to tie it again in overtime. A doctor's appointment made me miss most of this game but holy crap I'm glad I'm watching now.
 

Violentvixen

(She/Her)
Couldn't really figure out how to watch the WNBA draft last night but caught up in articles.

Have to acknowledge Destanni Henderson's teal suit and cap, and I didn't even see the sneakers until now.

4-12_universal-1.jpg
 
Way better sense of style than the men's draft, that's for sure.

The play-in tournament - prelude to the actual playoffs just began last night. The Wolves beat the Clippers in the first matchup for the 7-seed. Today a bunch of media outlets and pundits clowned on the Wolves for celebrating the victory with the aplomb usually reserved for victories deeper in the playoffs. And that whole mentality just pisses me off. Most of these pundits clutch their pearls about how athletes don't care enough these days about basketball, but now they're gonna chastise players for caring too much? God I hate sports punditry. Meanwhile, my team hit new historic lows this season, being the 16th straight to miss the playoffs, I get the pain of teams/fandoms like the Wolves who historically have had little to celebrate finally having something *real* to get happy about and then people make fun of them for it? Smh.

/endrant.
 

Rascally Badger

El Capitan de la outro espacio
(He/Him)
to be fair, it was Patrick Beverly, who is essentially a tiny yappy dog that happens to be a professional athlete.
 
It wasn't like Beverly was prancing about in silence or that the criticisms were just for him. The whole arena was going nuts because of the big comeback they had at the end. The players were just feeding off that energy. I hate p.bev with the burning passion of a quasar's accretion disk, but all of the fans and the rest of that team deserve to be happy and celebrate a good thing.
 

Violentvixen

(She/Her)
Brittney Griner is still detained in Russia but there's maybe some progress on moving her court case up, but I honestly don't know enough about international law to say how good that is or not. I signed the petition the player's league shared although dunno how much impact that really has on anything. Overall just mad that she's been detained for so damned long and agree with the "if this was an NBA player it would be all over the news" statements.

Also it's infuriating how the WNBA is getting ripped apart by COVID since they can't afford charter flights like the NBA. Ugh.
 
It's not that they can't afford it, it's that they *won't* afford for it. It's part of the most recent CBA that charter flights are not allowed for any team, since it's a competitive advantage for the teams that have owners willing to shell out for such things vs the ones that don't.

The Griner situation is only a situation to begin with because the WNBA won't pay their athletes well enough to stay in the country to begin with. If your business model somehow can't figure out what Russia already has figured out, maybe that's a you-problem.

Watching how the Suns went out a few days ago was honestly something to behold.
 
Goodbye to an absolute legend. Russell was also a huge supporter of women's hoops and was at a lot of Storm games.
 
Yeah he was a legit civil rights legend and led an extraordinary life. Like, the FBI even had a file on him. (They predictably said very nasty things.) And Celtics "fans" at one time broke into his home to vandalize his house and shit on his bed, despite him winning 11 championships for them in 13 years. Dude was a champ and handled it all with grace despite being bombarded with unfathomable racism during the time.
 
There's a lot of exciting things happening in the NBA here, early in the season. And almost all of it is getting completely overshadowed by how much of a train wreck the Brooklyn Nets are. Headlined by the fact that their star point guard can't help himself from saying/supporting antisemitic propaganda. And the fact that the league isn't doing anything about it is just extremely disappointing. The players, the teams, the commissioner, all of them are basically complicit. It's really disappointing and offputting.
 
I don't usually start paying much attention to basketball and hockey until January, but I still saw some of the stuff. Extremely frustrating, but power protects power.
 

Rascally Badger

El Capitan de la outro espacio
(He/Him)
Don't worry, they are going to hire a coach who was mysteriously suspended from his old coaching job for some kind of inappropriate relationship with a subordinate. He's sure to clean things up and right that ship of off putting malcontents.

I really thought my opinion of Kyrie couldn't get lower than it did last year.
 
I really thought my opinion of Kyrie couldn't get lower than it did last year.
After pledging to donate 500K to the Anti-Defamation League, and issuing a statement where he 'takes responsibility' for his posts, but didn't actually apologize anywhere to anybody, or admit to any wrongdoing, or even state that the film he endorsed was anti-Semitic... he doubled down on everything earlier today in a press interview where he refused to simply state that the film was anti-Semitic, refused to say sorry, and parroted the film's core anti-Semitic ideology again.
 
This year, my team (Kings) installed a giant fucking laser on top of the arena, and it fires a massive purple light into the sky anytime the Kings win a game. It's so stupid, and yet ngl kinda hype. Especially after beating the Dubs after losing to them in a BS way a week or so ago.
 

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
Niantic, the Pokémon GO folks, launched a new real-world-map based game with an NBA license recently. I mostly hear it’s pretty meh, but I’m not interested enough in collecting NBA players to really give it a shot.
 

Violentvixen

(She/Her)
I have not been paying enough attention to basketball this year which is a shame. Gotta catch up this weekend, I know I'll likely just do what the algorithms say for brackets but I need to catch up so I have some idea of what I'm talking about.
 
Wow. Twice in 5 years. Maybe the 1 and done thing isn't all that great after all.
One-and-dones have been a thing for over two decades at this point. That alone isn't why you're seeing the increased volatility here. What's way more important is that now, in ascending order:

1) There are much more legitimate avenues for top tier talent to reach the NBA than the NCAAs. In the last few years, we've seen many top high school prospects opt to play abroad in foreign pro leagues, or go spend a year in the G-League.

2) The college game itself has transformed significantly in the past half decade or so. College players used to be bad at shooting 3s and take low volume at them traditionally. We've now hit the point though, where everyone who is 18 today, grew up watching and idolizing Stephen Curry or Damian Lillard, and everyone shoots a TON of threes now. And just like in the pros, if you can shoot 3s well, you're never out of a game. A 10 point deficit used to be insurmountable late in a game; now you just have to hit a couple 3s in a row and you're right back in it.

3) The transfer portal means that that good players that get recruited to top tier schools, but who would - in previous years - languish on the bench behind other top talent, can now transfer out to a different school where they can start and get more playing time. This is the biggest one imo, because it's done more for parity and spreading talent throughout the NCAAs than anything else.

Also, I don't really get the perspective that this is all somehow a bad thing? I WANT to see upsets. It's boring to watch games/tournaments where you know the outcome. These upsets are exciting af
 
Oh yeah, upsets are great. I was more thinking about how schools like Kentucky loved the one-and-done model because it seemed to make them powerhouses but now it doesn't seem to be working in schools' favor anymore (the reasons you mention are ones I hadn't thought of but they totally make sense). I despise Kentucky, and one-and-done really hurt UW, so I've never liked it and am glad it is going away.

I would argue that Purdue being mostly freshmen, while FDU was all juniors and seniors that had been playing together for awhile was a part of that upset, which was why I brought up the one-and-done thing. A team full of freshmen isn't going to go that deep if one of those freshmen isn't, say, Anthony Davis.
 
Top