a quick rock-paper-scissors. envision being down 2 with 3 seconds to go and you got fucking kyle anderson throwing scissors to lose the game.

What about letting the coach select the player for the jump, kind of like a technical free throw

Possession arrow is so much better. 80% of jump balls feel like a foregone conclusion

God no. Nothing worse than a team making a great play on defense to get a tie up at the end of the game but the possession arrow is the other way and the defense gets punished for no good reason.

Basketball has always favored tall players. If you don’t like tall players having an advantage I don’t know how you can like basketball lol

It’s electric when a small guy wins the tip though

both these balls lonzo and lamelo

Do you prefer fresh from the box or the well seasoned tattered YMCA ball?

Based

Found Air Bud

Pistons fans always believed this

This is not a hot take because everyone who thinks they know ball spews the “no one cares about defense anymore besides me” bullshit

I’ve especially gained an appreciation for cohesive and committed team defense. A lot of bad and mediocre teams struggle because guys don’t care at all for the side of the court and it shows.

Gobertstan in the wild

There are dozens of us

Wasn’t even a controversy until this year lol. Some people didn’t even realize this rule was a thing until this season

i just think they should include minutes played as well - like someone who played 60 games @ 35 minutes played 2100 minutes, same as someone who played 70 @ 30 minutes.

Missing 17 games is a lot and people act like it’s unfair.

(ish)

The rule removes this! Either you reasonably account for playing time as MVP voters always have, or you give 0 recognition to 62 games from one player in favor of 68 games of worse play from another.

“oh my favorite player won’t make it so now we have to change the rule”

no. your favorite player, along with many others, missed about a quarter of the season, THAT is the problem. eliminate back to backs, shorten the season, do something. but you don’t deserve first team all nba, mvp, or dpoy if you can’t play more than 3/4ths the season.

personally i disagree with contractual stuff being tied to these things as well

People think it matters so much historically but when I think about Jordan or Bird or Magic or whatever I never even think about the MVP awards.

Lebron should’ve had it like every season lol 

The Westbrook MVP is all the evidence needed for this

It’s crazy that he is 2 inches shorter than the next shortest guy. Nate Robinson was the short guy standard for years and had 6 inches on Muggsy!

I’m so glad I’m not the only guy who feels this way about Muggsy.

I argue all the time that if he isn’t the fucking GOAT he’s certainly the most important dude to ever play in the NBA. Proved ANYONE could fucking outplay these giants of the game with enough grit and craftiness.

Plus his talent was admired so much that literal fucking aliens came from Moron Mountain to drain him of his abilities and use it in a basketball game against the Looney Tunes.

Like cmon bruh. Muggsy is the fucking shit.

Imagine seeing this annoying little pissant dribbling down the court and all your attention is on him just for him to lob it clear over your head to fucking Air Carter and you look dumb as fuck for having a dime dropped on you by a fucking 3rd grader

Earl Boykins was pretty damn good too

As a Steph fan I agree. It felt like Steph/KD/Kawhi was always a conversation but Lebron was just head and shoulders above from 2012-2020ish

I don’t think any individual rivalry in American team sports is on the level of Magic v Bird. It started in college and lasted their entire NBA careers. They had dueling dynasties of the two biggest NBA brands that meet in the finals. Titles and MVPs for both. They had the whole culture/race war aspect fueling how people felt about it. At the time they both retired they were top 5 all time and goats at their position. Even decades later they still near the top of every list They are so tied at the hip you automatically think of them as a pair.

I feel that has more to do with the average NBA player getting more skilled and better at shooting as time goes on. It’s not like the good teams don’t play defense any more.

I think a lot of the NBAs problems would be fixed if they allowed teams to play physical defense and hand check. Pace would slow, more styles of play could potentially develop, injuries would possibly go down due to the lower pace, and officiating wouldn’t feel as random with random ticky tack fouls but it would still suck because fuck Scott Foster.

I’ll extend this but the warriors teams from 2015 to 2019 honestly made watching basketball annoying

I get that a lot of players are taking more jumpshots/three pointers but istg I’ll watch a game every now and then and mfs just pulling up from 3 every chance they get

It was bound to happen but that warrior dynasty basically sped it up due to how out of nowhere it was, I don’t think anyone expected them to be as good as they were in 2014-15, let alone make a genuine run for 73 wins the next year, it was either copy or die so everyone copied

For the NBA as a league sure, but for us fans I think most would prefer parity, gives our teams a better chance at winning, and makes series less predictable.

They’re good for getting eyeballs on the league, but bad for dedicated fans who watch lots of games.

Now that’s picante.

What conference would it be in. It’s far af away from everyone

We know Mexico borders the U.S. That does not mean Mexico City specifically is close.

I don’t think any players would ever sign there.

Too much issues involved in so many ways….

the challenges of having a mexican team far exceeds the challenges of a couple more canadian teams. plus canada shouldn’t only have the bum-ass raps for the whole country

Oh gross. You fulfilled the prompt though I guess.

Baseball did this and everyone hated it.

But it would turn the ASG into something other than a lame points-fest with no defense.

I have Jordan as the GOAT but you can’t give him this point. Phil was insanely important to the Bulls’ success. 

Neither of your exceptions won with coaches that aren’t considered quality. Some people try to knock ty lue but i think he qualifies as quality.

In the last ten years the coaches who have reached the finals are:

Steve Kerr, David Blatt, Tyronn Lue, Nick Nurse, Frank Vogel, Monty Williams, Mike Budenholzer, Ime Udoka, Michael Malone, Erik Spoelstra, Jason Kidd, Joe Mazzulla, Mark Daigneault and Rick Carlisle.

And while many of them are “high-quality”, however you define that, half of them are out of the league or currently struggling as coaches.

Seems like a stacked team can overcome mediocre coaching.

Say this in a barbershop and you’d be stomped out

The power creep is real.

I was having so much fun til I got to this comment haha

I hope not.

Mavericks and Magic are the two most reprehensible ownership groups in the NBA.

Naz Reid

Why?

Brunson entering god mode in the clutch saved the first two series, but by round 3 Haliburton was also in full on god mode and out god moded him

Is this a hot take

That’s what usually happens with threads like this: Popular cold-take opinions get upvoted and the actual hot takes aren’t because… they’re hot takes

This is a good one although I don’t think I agree with it. I think he’s a great coach who’s been given way too much leniency by the org and who’s been coaching at one place for too long. Which may have evoked some complacency.

I will gladly take him off your hands.

He also massively changed the way the Heat play this year, so I wouldn’t say he’s rigid in adapting to strengths and weaknesses of his teams. Getting the Butler era Heat to 2 Finals doesn’t at all strike me as a limit your ceiling guy either.

Also Ware is straight up a bad defender. You don’t want him playing more minutes.

This is an awful take lol. Spo is one of the best playoff schemers there is, the quintessential ceiling raiser. He doesn’t even have a system because he constantly evolves his team based on his players. the way the team plays this year is entirely different than how they played just last season.

How do you define his system?

I mean looking at the team in recent years. I felt like they overachieved with their roster. So I can’t say he’s not a ceiling raiser.

My take is that it wasnt and we simply live in a cruel reality where the worst dumbest people are often rewarded

As convenient as it seems, I doubt Kyrie intentionally tears his ACL for this master plan

I agree but I don’t think it was rigged for Dallas, rather I believe there was zero chance that Flagg (or Wemby) would ever be allowed to play for Charlotte or Washington.

HELL no. Could you imagine the degree of tanking that would’ve occurred in 2023 for Wemby? The Jazz would’ve put out a team of make-a-wish kids

this seems like such an obvious move idk why it hasn’t been implemented. they put the draft lottery to prevent tanking but teams still tanked so they are now voting to put more rules on top of the lottery?

I broadly agree with this but give coaches unlimited challenges if you keep being right. It’s ridiculous that youre cut off after being right twice

Freezing fucking cold

Too early to say, and they hedged by getting a late future 1st from Orlando. Essentially gives them two swings. If Yang is a bust, they can still recoup value via the extra pick.

This is a hot take, nobody hates watching games more than NBA fans.

This applies to so many big men tbh

Bill Walton, but he’s up there. Also imagine if he wasn’t such an obnoxious ft merchant.

I agree strongly with this .

At different points of his career he was extremely athletic when he first arrived. Movile and wirey

Played out the post

He was a top 3 big man defender for a while .

Best scoring big man ever .

Even is good passer now

If he never got injured he would have had the whole package . He’s one of the most complete and dominant players I’ve ever seen

Teams tanked for Zaccharie Risacher. Tanking will never stop. Even if that 18 team lottery rule gets implemented play-in teams will try to tank for the 11 seed because difference between the 10 seed and 11 seed is 5.5% in odds

The Wyoming Bisons versus the Montana Yellowstones would draw negative viewers, but I would watch a game just out of morbid curiosity.

Bro wants to adopt soccer format with relegation too?

i think we should make middies worth 3 and 3s worth 2

Elite hot take

Give examples

What in the American fuck is a pickled nacho

Is the cheese cold, though?

Everyone forgets how close it was for them last year

Genuine hot take, but also clinically insane.

i always find it weird how media has now made MVP and “Best in the World” two different titles

like what the fuck are we doing

This is a genuinely hot take because the results disagree with you. Booker took his team to the finals as the best player on his team. John Wall went to the playoffs a few times.

No “hot takes” everyone already agrees with

Don’t make me tap the sign

This isnt even close to a hot take lol

White Phosphorus 🤣🤣

That’s factually not true because refs have been jailed for rigging lol

Pure uncut lunacy, i love it

I love the delusion

Guards like him have been getting whistles forever and imagine an era where zone defense was banned and think anyone is staying infront of SGA lmao. BTW the mid 10s wasn’t that long ago. James Harden, who is the epitome of what you’re saying, was an all-nba player. But yeah, SGA would have not been that good. Please.