Fred Huebner is on AM1000, so since that's not an option I turned this on this show. Bernstein referred to Kobe as "The Last of the Great Inefficents" and said (the quote might be slightly off) "The NBA has evolved, and the objective truths of efficency cannot be denied."

good Morrissey song title, Senor

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Why take the negative approach?

Nvm it’s Bernstein.

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is he talking about kobe's midrange game? there's plenty of chuckers left in the nba. if so, that's a pretty dumb take on a man, his daughter and 7 other people dying in a horrific helicopter crash

Coby White didn't get the memo

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Has Goff for two segments and I am not sure Conor said a single word. Bernsie could barely get a word in edgewise. Jason can talk and he had a bunch of stories.

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Was one of the stories about how he had Kobe to the Bulls as imminent ?

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

My guy is hearing the same thing.

Read the thread then listened to the podcast of this segment.

Bernstein has a long history of being a judgmental douche. I don’t think that tone was present today when he was discussing Kobe, him patterning his game after Jordan or his style of play relative to how the game has evolved.

I also think, for a change, both dan and Connor handled the Colorado incident in an appropriate manner

Just my 2 cents

I don't watch the NBA enough these days to know if it's more entertaining than it was when guys wanted to play like prime Jordan, regardless of how efficient it may have been. I do know Kobe (and Jordan) were fun as hell to watch. Certainly more fun than watching guys just rain threes in from forty feet, never mind their effectiveness/high percentage. You guys tell me. Was the game more fun to watch when Kobe was the best player in the game than it is now?

But I can speak to what has happened to baseball and how computer analysis has changed the game, and not for the better. The powers that be better figure out a way to make winning strategy line up with entertainment. Because a shithead like bernstein doesn't seem to understand that sports are entertainment. And most of us aren't entertained by a bunch of Ivy Leaguers figuring out ways to make the games boring as hell in the name of efficiency.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Most have days at work that are filled with efficiency, critical thought and the need for frequent assessment of critical situations. Sports are a relief from daily life where one can be a meatball fan and watch people much more genetically gifted, or chemically enhanced than we are play the sports we grew up playing at a much higher level than we ever could. Wondering if in the future much of the advanced analytics cited today will eventually be "Astroscised", revealed to be that teams/players figured out how to cheat effectively by finding holes in monitoring or new PED's/ways to beat testing.

Your first and third sentences completely contradict each other. Kinda funny.

Talkin a lot, yet saying very little

Are you confirming that today's NBA is just a bunch of guys raining threes from 40 feet?

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

Ok pal.

Is that a yes, sport?

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

I don’t give enough of a fuck to say much other than your multi paragraph post was a bunch of rambling.

You gave enough of a fuck to make a snotty and incorrect comment in the first place. And now you're butthurt because I showed you that nothing in my post was contradictory. All you had to do was say that today's NBA is as excitng as ever and I would have accepted your opinion. Instead you wanted to be a dick. Well, I can be the biggest dick on the board if that's the route you want to go.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

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Seems like it was a pretty easy question to answer .

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

I am inclined to agree with Jorr here in that both basketball and baseball have evolved into games that are less fun to watch. If you like high scoring and up and down action, then I suspect today’s NBA is very exciting for you. I also think the league is blessed with more dynamic players. But it has the feel of a three point shooting contest with very little defensive effort. I am not sure the 90’s Knicks mugging opponents was all that fun either. It goes against my sensibilities for it to be a strategy to shoot farther away from the basket when most of our lives we tried to create closer, open shots.

On the other hand, I think the NFL and NHL are better products today. The penalties are a bit much in the NFL, but the game is a lot of fun to watch. And hockey flows the best of all the sports with very little in the way of interruptions and the removal of interference and clutching of offensive players.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Even with the mid range game dying, NBA is a better game. It's worse for say, a guy like Embiid, who will never get his due with this style of play.

The NHL is so much better than it was in the early 2000s, but the analytics people have even gotten to hockey and made everyone shoot too much. It's fun when the Penguins do it, the Hurricanes and Golden Knights, less so.

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Yeah I probably won't go back and listen but I don't get this for the reason you mentioned. There's always going to be gunners and one of the main reasons for that is because it's pretty damn impossible for teams to just mimic Golden State.

The Bulls' entire post-Thibs era can be seen as an illustration of this, as despite paying lip service to pace and space and analytically smart shots, they've relied on Butler in previous seasons and LaVine more and more the last 2 years to carry their offense. I'd also posit one of the main reasons for Markannen's regression this year has been some combo of Boylen and Paxson basically taking away his midrange game because they've decided that the sacred numbers told them those were bad shots. Hell Kawhi Leonard just took a team to the title while playing a ballstopping, inefficient-looking offensive game that drew comparisons to MJ rather than jeers.

This whiggish version of NBA history I often hear guys like Bernstein pushing, where Very Smart Venture Capitalists are effectively right around the corner from completely optimizing the game, just glosses over the actual nuances of the sport. Efficiency cannot be operationalized in a single manner and even if it could be, it's not in the hands of the casual fan to begin with. Proprietary data that teams have is loads more useful than some idiot like me in a forum or some idiot like Dan on a radio show sorting players by PER. Citing Kobe as the last great inefficient also strikes me as a bit strange because part of his inefficiency was chucking 3s (particularly in comparison to someone like Wade), and doing that regardless of efficiency has at times been framed as a triumph of efficiency itself when it comes to proponents of Harden and the Rockets.

In-game tactics and counterplay actually exist as well and they matter a helluva lot more to the outcomes of games than Daryl Morey or Joe Lacob giving us the breathtaking insight that 3s are worth more than 2s. And this also manifests itself in a variety of playing styles that still exists in today's NBA; the Rockets are unwatchable dreck but the 13-14 Spurs and pre-Durant Warriors were actually aesthetically pleasing, despite the notion that all these teams have been equally informed by the numbers and supposedly conforming to a single style of play.

Kawhi is built for playoffs, not regular season.

Houston can't win a championship.

Oh no. The biggest dick on the board....what ever will I do?!?!

Suck it.

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Variety is inneresting. The NBA has lost the post up and iso players. ERGO, less inneresting.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

The NBA is great.

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