Was psyched to go see the Pacers tonight. I think Halliburton, Turner and Siakam can be a legit Big 3. Was not expecting a #blazers win. Especially without Ant and Sharpe. Great game! #trailblazers#ripcity#pdx#nba
@caravan oh you were there, nice! Amazing win. And yes I more or less expect Siakem to do for them what OG has done for the Knicks. But not last night I guess!
@mrcompletely Halliburton was off too, luckily for us. I think he picked up some points in the end. But Brogdon and Grant were on and we played well for once. I was impressed. Fun one.
@caravan@mrcompletely I need to jump in with this NBA talk. That Nuggets-Celtics game was a thing of beauty, and not because my Nuggs won (though that has to color my perception). Man, the Golden Age is now! There are ballers balling all over the League. #NBA#Nuggets#Denvernuggets
@FateMusic@caravan best regular season for me since the nineties. Easily. Watchable games every night. Multiple teams getting better mid season. Good players everywhere. No single dominant style, team or player. Basketball heaven really.
@mrcompletely@caravan yes yes yes. Same. I am older than you. I remember the '83 copy of #SI#sportsillustrated with Dr. J on the cover and title "The Sixers are Going for 70" - it changed my life. I had that cover on my wall. I was a Warriors fan all those years they were terrible, but obviously the #NBA through 80s, through 90s, was always amazing. Hell, I moved to Miami 2000-2005 for Shaq and DWade. The NBA has always been #1 for me.
@FateMusic@caravan we're about the same age ish - I grew up on UNC/ACC ball, saw MJ, Worthy, Perkins, Samson, Bias, that whole generation all in person, followed MJ into NBA fandom (no one in Carolina watched nba before that). After MJ left the Bulls I became a freelance NBA fan and have picked up Blazers fandom since living here. I basically root for every good team except the Lakers and whoever is playing the Blazers. I love the league as a whole, the season as a whole
@mrcompletely@FateMusic In the 80s I was all in on the classic NCAA battles (Hoyas, Heels, Wolfpack etc) with some Knicks games thrown in but mostly stopped following basketball by the 90s. When I moved to Portland in 2005 I picked back up with the Blazers, being the only game in town, and now I’m all in on NBA.
@mrcompletely@caravan I was born 11/3/70. There was no particularly generalized interest in Cal or Stanford. We used to go to St. Mary's games, but that was no different from a high school gym. So NBA was it, and the Warriors sucked.
@FateMusic@mrcompletely I’m just a little bit older. We would go to Knicks from time to time but my dad was (and still is) an NCAA junkie without too much interest in NBA. He’s insane for it. Watches games all day and night. Knows nothing about the NBA but name the most random NBA player and he will spit out their college stats and some facts.
@caravan@FateMusic I used to be pretty into college ball but these days I think it's terrible. The lack of continuity and conference shuffles have destroyed everything good about it
@FateMusic@mrcompletely I’ll follow the tourney once it gets down to 16. Always some incredible upsets. And plan on taking my kids to the women’s tourney at Moda this year (we get Sweet 16 and Elite 8 at the end of March)
One of my weird memories of being @ U of Michigan was a lecture on the Holocaust in a class l was TA'ing. I was sitting in the back row. Michigan playing their first game, in the early afternoon.
Prof giving a really powerful, difficult lecture about sheer horror.
At least a dozen laptop screens showing the game as students pretended to be paying attention.
@mrcompletely@harveyroad I am always shocked at how low the quality is of all but the most elite college matchups. It's like watching a different sport than the NBA and not in terms of less acrobatics but in terms of the fundamentals. I swear the college game used to be better.
@drewphish@harveyroad oh the college game used to be the place to go to see good, crisp, well coached team ball on both sides. Highly connected defenses switching in and out of multiple zones vs smart, pass oriented offenses probing for an opening. Superbly played games that end 78-72 or something. All that seems to be gone. The college games I see look like pickup ball
@mrcompletely@harveyroad@drewphish Fun thread to get caught up on. As someone who loved college hoops so much more than the NBA, I wish I could disagree. But college bball has gotten so inexplicably bad.
@chopaganda@harveyroad@drewphish I was an absolute college hoops fanatic as a kid. Prime era for ACC and Big East ball. I feel you. It's a disaster and I blame the NCAA for the most part, though it's been a tricky environment
@mrcompletely@harveyroad 💯 The leagues have evolved in opposite directions, starting with the one-and-done talent drain and culminating in the space and pace and freedom of modern NBA vs. the slow grind and domineering coaching of NCAA. Now the only college games I watch are UNC-Duke, which have lost luster, and the tourney, which is still exciting (gambling helps).
My dad still prefers college and complains about traveling every time we watch an NBA game together.
@mrcompletely@harveyroad that's true though NCAA refs are worse than NBA (my dad gives them an earful too, so much that I sometimes stick up for them). But I'll accept a degree of human error over the awful game-stopping reviews, especially in the final minutes of tournament/playoff games.
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