Poll of the Day > Sports Discussion Topic #178: Simon Belmont Stakes

(+) Yeah! (+)

The fucking Lakers? Ugh. Is it okay to hate LeBron again?

And you know what else this means? Boston in the Finals every year. Can't believe that I'll probably have to root for the Warriors by the conference finals

Plus we still haven't gotten to Kawhi. It's probably like 90% he'll be in either Boston or LA which of course both suck. I think Philly is the only other team trying to make a serious play but they seem like a longshot

STLCards1991 posted...

Well here it is: silver with 1879 points. Congrats to me on not getting the most embarrassing ranking!

You're not as bad as you make yourself out to be. A couple of the friends I play with are lower than you.

Back to the NBA for a second: I've always thought Cousins was a good guy despite his emotional outbursts, but he's dead to me if he joins LA. I know it's just business for him, but this time I get to be the one having an emotional outburst.

It seems like all of LeBron's big free agency decisions were made well in advance. Lame. I mean, he can do whatever he wants, but it would've been fun to see some sleeper team come out of the woodwork with a surprise pitch. Miami I guess was a bit of a surprise but the way it all went down was unsatisfying.

I wonder how this will all shake out. He could start declining, or LA could strike out on getting other big names, and the whole West playoffs are brutal. Maybe they won't even be that good... but it would've been nice to have somebody besides Boston or LA to beat the Warriors. I wish he had gone to Houston or Philly where they already have pieces in place, they could contend even with a hypothetical declining LeBron

A guy who can write his own ticket moving to Philly or Houston was probably never gonna happen though. I have no problem with those cities (having never been) but why live in Philadelphia of all places when you can go to friggin Hollywood?

You could say the same thing about Cleveland, but we all know those were very unique circumstances. Ooh I wonder if Dan Gilbert is gonna write another crybaby letter.

Well at least the Nuggets got Jokic locked up for five years. They'll probably still be a fringe playoff team next year but by years four and five of that contract I can hope the Lakers and Warriors runs will basically be over and our young guys will start hitting their primes. Houston almost certainly won't be anything special by then, Chris Paul is getting old.

STLCards1991 posted...

Ooh I wonder if Dan Gilbert is gonna write another crybaby letter.

He already said, "I'm going to get my team back once Lebron leaves"

God what an awful pointless person. I feel like LeBron would have had a much higher chance of staying in Cleveland if their owner was anybody else.

He got his team back in 2010 and look how it went. He could've had it for the last four years too, but they were obviously so scared to push back at all against LeBron's questionable wishes after he left the first time. But he still left again! Dan Gilbert is such a loser

I have an important baseball update amidst Lebron chat: Jose Bautista is hitting well for the Mets.

I didn't think Mexico would beat Brazil, but they had a chance. They needed to be more aggresive to win but they went the opposite way and played more timid than they usually do.
---

If the Raptors win it all, do they go and meet with the prime minister?

The notification for the new post in this topic won't go away wtf

Now it says there are two new posts including the one I posted myself

Oh no I'm getting it too. Even worse, it's for a chewy post!

STLCards1991 posted...

I have an important baseball update amidst Lebron chat: Jose Bautista is hitting well for the Mets.

This is weird. This is also the most Mets thing ever.

CaptainHammer posted...

If the Raptors win it all, do they go and meet with the prime minister?

I was curious about this, but there's no real precedent. I can't find if the 1992-93 Jays visited Parliament Hill (they visited the White House, but Bush Sr. was a massive baseball fan so this doesn't surprise me). I would default to yes, solely because I can't see any NBA team visiting the White House with this administration, and the Raptors have the easiest out of any team.

By the way: the fact that I had to go all the way back to 1992 tells you that we likely won't have an answer about this for a while.
---

The degree to which Bautista should have taken the extension with Toronto is pretty depressing. He probably cost himself at least $120 million.

Thank you Canadian for doing the research for me. I am now a Raps fan just to see if this happens

What about the Canadian NHL teams? I know they haven't won anything in a while but there are definitely plenty of Stanelys to their name

The Lakers got Rondo and twitter is acting like it's crazy, someone explain this to me

CaptainHammer posted...

The Lakers got Rondo and twitter is acting like it's crazy, someone explain this to me

People still think Rondo is the same player he was when he won Boston a championship.
---

Rondo, McGee, Lance

They're surrounding LeBron with all the most talented dysfunctional players they can find. Cousins would be way too fitting at this point.

Lonzo Ball might be the weirdest looking human on the planet

Oh yeah, I forgot about him. That's probably why people are freaking out about Rondo

The Lakers were in the negative for cap space and now they have about 8 million I think. There's no way they're getting Cousins or anyone close to that unless they ship off all their young players.

Uh, wtf, Cousins is going to the Warriors. This shit is ridiculous.

You know what, fuck it, they're going to win again anyway, so I don't even care if they snatch up all the good players at this point. At least when the other good teams in the league have nobody expensive left to go after they'll have cap space when the Warriors' run ends

it'll be super fun watching GSW win another title. At this point, why even play the games?

I don't think I'm watching the NBA again until either Steph or KD aren't on the team anymore. Nobody else has a chance

fuck yes I'm here for this if only because Boogie now gets to crush Chris Paul
---

Is there some kind of beef between the two that I'm not familiar with?

And let's be real, there's almost no chance that both of them won't be injured by the playoffs

Zeeky_Bomb posted...

fuck yes I'm here for this if only because Boogie now gets to crush Chris Paul

---

Chewster posted...

Is there some kind of beef between the two that I'm not familiar with?

And let's be real, there's almost no chance that both of them won't be injured by the playoffs

They took shots at each other for a bit, but that died down when Boogie got traded to New Orelans.
---

Cousins is like an even more obnoxious Draymond

Nah, Draymond is kind of dirty. Cousins is just cranky.
---

I guess it's not too far removed from when the Yankees won like 4 out of 5 world series 20 years ago but it's pretty insane to already know who's gonna win the NBA finals like a month after the last finals

This is so insane that players just go there to automatically get a ring, like it's just something you're allowed or expected to do

Yeah it was kinda fun when they won championships with their own core but it's now insanely dumb that they're just everybody's ring farm now. Even if they didn't get KD they'd probably still be the favorites each year, but now it's just impossible for anyone else to win and the seasons are pointless

That's why the nba sucks. This really isn't new. Its the way the nba has been since the 90s more or less

Or really just since always

Well in fairness they did almost lose in the conference finals last year so they're smart to keep improving, it's just completely weird and it's also weird how other players who aren't Chosen have to find other ways to win that don't work (see: Chris Paul)

Welp, the Warriors are officially unstoppable. Season over

The NBA has always been built on dynasties but there was never this level of ring-chasing. These are all-stars in their prime, who would be useful for some other team, latching onto existing champions who don't even need them.

I'm more shocked than anything else that they managed to get cousins for such a small amount so I guess he's desperate for a ring. At this point, wouldn't a ring with the warrior feel kinda cheap?

He is coming off an achilles tear; most players don't recover from that. No one wanted to pay him, so he is forced to take a one-year deal at a low price to prove himself. Warriors can afford this risk. I fucking hate basketball.

Yeah that's true but if it was another team I feel like he could get more but nobody has leverage with the warriors. Some people are thinking Durant might leave after this year though. That could be interesting

Well there was a possibility they would've gotten Dwight Howard instead, so... it could be worse? I think? I can't really even decide on that one

Steph is gonna retire with like 9 rings.

OhhhJa posted...

I'm more shocked than anything else that they managed to get cousins for such a small amount so I guess he's desperate for a ring. At this point, wouldn't a ring with the warrior feel kinda cheap?

A cheap ring is better than never getting one though. Once Durant signed with GSW all bets were off forever

The Warriors are the answer to the age-old question "Couldn't a team be really good if these guys just decided to be take less money?". I think everybody has always secretly wanted their favorite team's star players to take a paycut, but this is just absurd. I don't really know what you could even do about it except increase certain minimum contract values, but unless that was somehow a merit-based system it would just cripple most teams with a bunch of overpaid veteran scrubs. I mean the current veterans' minimum I think is only six figures and here Boogie is underpaid with $5 mil

Yeah and we also learned that you can achieve that dream by monopolizing championships. You want a ring, they're the only game in town so you get paid what they want to pay you.

It's good that players have the option to actually play where they want. It's just not good for the TV watching audience because it kills the suspense. I think the NBA will need to figure out a way to incentivize players to not so sign with the same team somehow. Considering I don't even know what their current system for that kind of stuff is I have no ideas.

I will just say that if you look at the NFL, the great players are often stuck with the team that drafted them throughout their prime because of the way the system works, and that's bad because it's just a way to take autonomy away from the players. One of many. And MLB has it's horrible qualifying offer system that causes good free agents to sign terrible one year deals all the time instead of just going to a situation that makes sense. At least NBA players get a choice.

The Timberwolves should almost just try and be bad for another 5 years