2017 NBA playoff thread

[poindexter]

You could find a lot of angles.
- Team that came together rather suddenly
- Traded up in coach, but that coach ends up screwing up their roster on the back end
- A team that most personified what the west is at the moment, a conference where being a very good team might not get you to the conference finals.
- Sterling stuff
- Getting lapped by maybe two upstarts

You could pull together something good if the right folks talked.

I'd call them a team with bad timing. You could make a case they're better than the Champion Mavs, better than some of the western teams that Jordan lost to, but the conferences were aligned in the way they are. (Last year was just **** luck)

Why not do one on the 1980s Milwaukee Bucks? They won 60 games one year; 59 another; 57 another; 55 another. Never made the NBA finals.
How scintillating does that sound?

 

[Buck]

A team with bad timing was the Buffalo Bills or the NY Knicks.

 

[dirtybird]

Why not do one on the 1980s Milwaukee Bucks? They won 60 games one year; 59 another; 57 another; 55 another. Never made the NBA finals.
How scintillating does that sound?

I dunno, I suppose it depends the stories you could get people to tell.

This also implies you can't be interesting if you don't hit a certian benchmark of success. This seems kinda silly, but also very in line with one of the favored methods of arguing sports of our time: feeling something is getting overhyped (everything if overhypeed) and then pounding on whatever it hasn't done. And in the end, the takeaway is that things that are pretty good are, in fact, not really all that good.

(I'm also not saying I want that documentary. I hardly watch the damn things any more, but there've been enough random subjects that I can't imagine you couldn't squeeze something out of this.)

 

[poindexter]

I dunno, I suppose it depends the stories you could get people to tell.

This also implies you can't be interesting if you don't hit a certian benchmark of success. This seems kinda silly, but also very in line with one of the favored methods of arguing sports of our time: feeling something is getting overhyped (everything if overhypeed) and then pounding on whatever it hasn't done. And in the end, the takeaway is that things that are pretty good are, in fact, not really all that good.

(I'm also not saying I want that documentary. I hardly watch the damn things any more, but there've been enough random subjects that I can't imagine you couldn't squeeze something out of this.)

Fair enough. I'm not looking for a knock down, drag out. It just seems to me that "fairly underachieving team who hasn't made a blip on the national scene, except for their 80-year old racist owner" isn't the best documentary material.

 

[Stoney]

I think the more entertaining Clipper 30 for 30 is the one that could've been made 5 or 6 years ago focusing on the Sterling Clips' status as the worst franchise in American sports. What if I told you there was an NBA franchise that gets high lottery picks each year, plays in our second largest market and glamour capital, yet has been nothing but sustained excrement for nearly four straight decades.

But that story got muddled after Chris Paul came to town, they started winning, and the racist owner got kicked the **** out. They're no longer America's worst franchise, but also not the best, just another somewhere in the middle. That's a tougher tale to tell.

 

[poindexter]

I think perhaps the more entertaining Clipper 30 for 30 is the one that could've been made 5 or 6 years ago focusing entirely upon the Sterling Clips' status as the worst franchise in American sports. What if I told you there was an NBA franchise that gets high lottery picks each year, plays in our second largest market and glamour capital, yet has been nothing but sustained excrement for nearly four straight decades.

But that story got muddled after Chris Paul came to town, they started winning, and the racist owner got kicked the **** out. They're no longer America's worst franchise, but also not the best, just another somewhere in the middle. That's a tougher tale to tell.

Until a decade ago, the Clippers practiced at a gawdawful junior college near Watts, LA Southwest College. Elgin Baylor was the GM for 22 years and was fired in 2009, making a salary of $350k, a pittance. They played in a complete ****hole, the LA Sports Arena.

The pre-Chris Paul era was much more interesting to me.

 

[qtlaw]

Man Nate McMillan, you've got the ball with what 10 secs left and the best you can come up with is CJ Miles with a 14 footer? Knowing that there's an automatic double coming on George, you can't come up with something better? How about at least an Ellis elbow jumper? At least he's been a 20 pt scorer before or a Myles Turner roll into the lane off the PNR?

 

[HanSenSE]

Ah, Donald Sterling. On top of everything else he was ...

Always loved those huge ads he'd buy in the LA Times patting himself, or one of his companies, on the back for work for some charity. And within a few pages there'd be an ad for Clippers tickets essentially saying "Hey, the Lakers are coming to our place! Get tickets now!"

I mean, we're talking about a team that, a couple of years ago, had to change radio stations halfway through the season because the station was sold and went from sports talk to all-Bollywood.

 

[Spartan Squad]

Is this a statement about how non-interesting the first round is that we're debating the merits of whether the Clippers deserve a 30 for 30?

 

[poindexter]

Is this a statement about how non-interesting the first round is that we're debating the merits of whether the Clippers deserve a 30 for 30?

That would be an unequivocal "yes".

We have up to two more weekends to finish off round one.

 

[LongTimeListener]

Before tipping off for Game 3, the Warriors and Blazers will have played two games in nine nights.

 

[HanSenSE]

Before tipping off for Game 3, the Warriors and Blazers will have played two games in nine nights.

And Van Gundy was complaining about it on the broadcast Sunday. Guess he never learned not to bite the hand that feeds you?

 

[dirtybird]

Before tipping off for Game 3, the Warriors and Blazers will have played two games in nine nights.

I remember when Curry got hurt last year, slowly realizing a two-week (I think?) injury wouldn't cost him a game in the second round.

 

[Della9250]

Is there something so wrong with the first four games of a series going:
Play Sunday
Play Tuesday
Play Friday
Play Sunday

 

[Webster]

George starts out on James and then too easily allows himself to be picked off him.

 

[poindexter]

Is there something so wrong with the first four games of a series going:
Play Sunday
Play Tuesday
Play Friday
Play Sunday

networks don't want two games on at once.

 

[Starman]

Actually, the pre-embryonic Clippers, the Buffalo Braves from about 1974-76, were a fun and interesting team to watch, which might actually have become a contender in the East had the ABA merger not gone down the way it did.
If Dr. J didn't go to the Sixers in the fallout of the merger, Philly isn't a contender. If the Braves kept McAdoo, Ernie DiGregorio, Randy Smith and the rest together, they had a chance to challenge the Bullets for top dog in the East, attendance remains good, and the team stays put in Buffalo.

You could probably write a 30-for-30 off of that.

 

[Spartan Squad]

That would be an unequivocal "yes".

We have up to two more weekends to finish off round one.

Ask a silly question, right?

I love the way the hockey playoffs have started so much more. They got on with it quicker and the games have been exciting. Feel like the first round will be a slog in basketball

 

[LanceyHoward]

Actually, the pre-embryonic Clippers, the Buffalo Braves from about 1974-76, were a fun and interesting team to watch, which might actually have become a contender in the East had the ABA merger not gone down the way it did.
If Dr. J didn't go to the Sixers in the fallout of the merger, Philly isn't a contender. If the Braves kept McAdoo, Ernie DiGregorio, Randy Smith and the rest together, they had a chance to challenge the Bullets for top dog in the East, attendance remains good, and the team stays put in Buffalo.

You could probably write a 30-for-30 off of that.

The merger could have been great for Buffalo. Do not forget that post merger Moses Malone played for the Braves. For two games and three minutes before getting traded to Houston. I bet there is a 30-for-30 just on that.

 

[qtlaw]

Joe Johnson my goodness, best rebirth of a has been going nowadays?