When a player starts ascending to best player/mvp of the league level there just becomes a mass battle of stans and haters everytime.

The focus on every action by said player increases tenfold

I don’t think people on this sub actually watch basketball for the love of it anymore. Now all they want is drama, controversy, anger, and validation via upvotes. Idk that’s just the way I see it though. Could be completely off.

It happens every week and this sub is intolerable and you can’t defend whichever player it is cause you’ll just be downvoted to oblivion cause no one wants to read any discussion at that point.

Every fanbase has an agenda they want to push. Its miserable

If Denver played that day: Jokic haters get to spam

If OKC played that day: Shai haters get to spam

If Lakers played that day: Laker haters get to spam (on whichever target they choose for that day)

Something I’ve noticed

When Embiid/Harden/SGA have an egregious flopping game a dozen posts will get made about how their ruining the game

When jokic has a bad game there’s always posts about how nba discourse has too much hate

The funny thing is these “All Lives Matter” type posts only pop up when it is Jokic getting piled upon.

I’ve never seen these post when it’s Shai, Luka, Embiid, etc… getting hated on. Jokic PR is insane lmao

I think a lot of people here don’t even like basketball. They just push agenda. You literally never see these people post when said player they hate on has a game they can’t find a spin for, ever since the “despite the win” posts got clowned on enough that they stopped.

Of course this post only happens when it’s jokic lol

I mean let’s be real it was mostly just anti Embiid then anti Shai the past 3-4 years. Jokic but only in 2023 just before the chip, the hate he’s getting here now is only really retaliatory but it’s not cracking more than 1k upvotes in the Shai hate era

All the hate that they get combined pales in comparison to one video where Joel Embiid falls down. Those posts used to have tens of thousands of comments. Absolutely insane shit.

Now that he simply doesn’t play enough games to be eligible for awards (or deserve them even without the rule) it’s much less now. People need to hate on multiple players to get the same weird feeling these people used to get from solely hating on Joel.

I hate it. I love basketball. I understand its what gets upvotes at the end of the day but I wish positive basketball discussion could be had here without someone butting in about r/nba’s villain of the week. Its like a manufactured news cycle.

I’m going to copy pasta this next time I see Shai getting a lot of hate!

This sub is by far and away the worst sports sub that I frequent. Just the most insanely low IQ and toxic takes constantly by dudes who literally do not even watch the games. Dudes care way too much about being fucking downvoted that whatever is the upvoted opinions at the time they will just decide that’s their opinion now as well

“Suddenly” lmao. The past year and a half anything anti-Thunder was a free 1k upvotes at minimum. Hell there was a Jokic post a few nights ago showing a dirty play that got zero upvotes and was eventually removed. It wasn’t until last night that he actually got any real criticism.

I’m here to watch the box scores and highlights. Maybe some cool statlines or funny discussions too, but lately it’s been flooded with lowlights, hate posts or clips which puts players in a negative light. It’s turning into garbage.

Yeah I mean I don’t disagree with the premise of your post here but I do find it funny that this type of post is being well received after jokic has one night of criticism after this sub has spent the last year and a half mega boosting any anti sga narrative with little to no backlash from any non OKC fan. NBA discourse is in the mud and I think it’s entirely due to this relatively newfound obsession with officiating. I remember when people would get shamed if they blamed their teams loss on the refs. Now it’s all anyone does.

It’s the Circle(jerk) of Life.

Who is the player being targeted tonight? Are any of the lowlights shared not post-worthy?

Easy engagement. I can just say Cade MVP and make the nephew bot farm appear.

Because this sub used to be primarily highlights and a great way to keep up with the league but now it’s just rage baiting, complaining and nonsense most of the time

feels like fanbases like Shai’s and Embiids who were clearly the butt of most jokes and hate are just retaliating now that the other two are doing it much more.

It’s been sga for a full year, now Jokic and Luka are getting it for a week yall wanna call foul??

So, you only tried to ignore the doncic hate posts and only now crying that another white guy is getting targeted? you people don’t know how to be subtle with your prejudices, dont you?

If it’s always, is it suddenly?

Of course it’s only a problem when it happens to jokic lmao

The real answer- because it is a karma farming method.

Those posts do nothing to help us enjoy basketball or the nba but meme culture has overrun all big subreddits and plenty of accounts exist to farm karma and be sold. Exploiting the meta is an easy way to do this.

Why did no one care until it was targeted at jokic?

Maybe sometimes it is blatant?

I.E today’s game between Denver and Utah.

Few days ago there were 4 posts bashing Sengun on front page, each with few thousand upvotes

It’s only the matter of who was the last to have a bad game or do something controversial/annoying

NBA is THE Haters Ball

Y’all act like it’s weird to have a problem with Jokic jumping on players’ backs, pushing them out of bounds, and throwing his hands up looking for the refs to send him to the line

The mod team quietly turned over and they don’t address it.

It’s a free for all

The season is 82 games long with 16 of the 30 teams making the playoffs with 4 more in play in contention. What else we gonna talk about on this sub?

Other question, why do only the Jokic posts get deleted?

sounds like a lot of players to me then

People have been criticizing Lu Dort recently for his trip on Jokic, so you saw a bunch of Thunder flairs posting anti-Jokic stuff.

SGA’s foul baiting got more attention/criticism since they won, so you’ll see anti-SGA a lot.

Doncic has a lot more eyes on him since the Finals run and then the trade to LA, so you’ll see anti-Doncic stuff more.

Some of it is legitimate, some of it not.

You don’t have to be good at the game to win. You simply have to understand the current system/structure, highlight weaknesses, and expose them.

The sad thing is - most of the influence is now off the court. Refereeing, legalising of gambling, rigged crafts becoming overt.

And the juxtaposition is hilarious - the average nba player today is better than 20 years past. But their gains are overshadowed by a tsunami of structural mediocrity.

SGA is insane. Jokic is insane. Giannis is insane. But the system is mediocre. The wrong things are incentivised. The wrong cultural aspects are elevated and glorified.

The net value of the product falls in the long term.

What the hell do you mean by that lmfao. Stars that are rival to the East European duo have always been on the grill in this sub most of the times. After five straight years of slandering and bullshitting from those stans, now you can’t take back the heat???

Because this is a circlejerk sub

These threads crack me up, just a chance for everybody to indulge a little self aggrandizement.

laughs in Jazz fan

When the Jazz were good people just piled on Gobert every night

Now that the Jazz are awful people just rail them because they’re doing a tanking rebuild for the 2nd time in their entire history lol

because sports is likes politics. they’re constantly conditioning you to the narrative they want you to follow.

this is likely pro-america campaign given the current global environment.

if you don’t think it’s that deep then you’re naive to what the NBA really is which, in steve kerr’s own words, is simply a global PR firm.

There’s also a karma chasing aspect to it to. Like in grade school when one kid is a target and everyone’s cracking jokes at them, you want to get in on the laughs so you add a joke too.

Remove Jokic from this list, he doesn’t get nearly as much hate as any other star lmao

I’m a Jokic fan. He had a shameless game last night. There being 5+ egregious examples is noteworthy.

I think a lot of it is run by bots/overseas users.

Ragebait=Clicks

Very simple

“Why do posts that get high engagement proliferate in a system that prioritizes engagement above all else”

Gee I wonder. This is like asking why newspaper headlines are often sensationalized

It makes sense when you realize the sub is filled with 14 year olds

Other times it’s agenda. But tonight was just especially egregious

Welcome on earth. This is Reddit human nature. Frustrations transfert they call it.

There are fans of certain teams which wait for their chance to shittalk and then their are neutrals who just go with the narrative of the day.

They need those karma

Man it’s been like this for the last like, maybe couple of seasons? I for sure started noticing it more in the playoffs last year. It’s been bad before but lately I swear dude this place is miserable. Seems like nobody even likes basketball here it’s just complaints about refs, certain players, flopping, etc and it’s just the same narratives being parroted over and over. As bad/dramatic as it sounds it has actually killed some of the fun I had following basketball all these years lol, I used to like coming here and seeing like-minded people discussing the game but now it’s like vitriol everywhere

Karma farming and copy cats 

People being defensive and wanting to deflect their favorites weaknesses onto others.

Welcome to the circle jerk

People like me who don’t actually care about any of the three agendas/hardcore fanbases and just show up every time to those posts with popcorn do exist, tbf.

General Reddit issue, with the karma trap circlejerk

Bot pocalyose perhaps?

because all of those guys do exactly that to an egregious level? you can’t watch jokic play tonight and pretend like what he was doing isnt noteworthy. there are also tons of posts celebrating their positive achievements.

I think it mostly comes down to two factors.

1. A good chunk of the “fans” don’t actually enjoy the watching the sport and for them it’s more about the drama (what players say off the court, how “embarrassed” a player is because of a bad game, ect)

2. Haters don’t have anything to say when a player is doing well. They’ll come out in full force when a player does poorly but they’ll stay quiet otherwise, which is how you end up with threads piling on Jokic, then Lebron the next day, then Doncic the day after