"joined forces to create something that appeared to inspire nobody, not even themselves. "
I think this sums up perfectly why the Nets were such a miserable presence. It wasn't simply that they were an artificial super-team (after, so were the KD Warriors,* the Lebron Heat, and the KG Celtics). It was that the guys who were supposed to make up the super team didn't even seem to enjoy themselves or have even iota of team spirit. It was hard to even root against them with vigor, because they had such a detached/bleh attitude about the entire enterprise.
*Yes, the rest of the Warriors team was made up of homegrown talent, but the addition of an MVP-level player to a 73-9 win team was....interesting.
The NBA has many problems. As it relates here, the focus on the transaction game rather than the actual game itself is a big one. This can certainly be traced, at least in part, to HOS fave Woj. Adam Silver being completely asleep at the wheel and spineless also has a lot to do with it.
This is coming from an NBA junkie - altho my interest is waning.
For mine it is the regular season being 20 games too long. Make it 58 games - home and away vs every team - and suddenly every game matters! Quality increases, resting decreases dramatically, interest increases.
Quantity over quality is the grand lie of capitalism.
Yes, like the clear path/ eurofoul, length of the regular season has been an obvious problem for years. So maybe in another decade or so Adam Silver will push for change.
I doubt that very much. Most NBA ballers actually love playing, and a lot of the resting is being driven by metrics from medical/performance staffs. 58 games would remove all b2bs and take a lot of pressure off their bodies - it would mean rest isn;t necessary. Listen to the Basketball Illuminati pod a few weeks ago with the performance coach - very revealing of how the game currently stresses bodies almost beyond breaking point.
Playing less games than ever before with less contact than ever before in less minutes than ever before with more in-game breaks than ever before isn't taxing anything to any breaking point it's just the performance coach needs a job so what else is he gonna say?
More to the point, what does the viewer actually want from this product? Dudes flying around like Westbrook on Red Bull once a week? Or competent, competitive pros giving 80% of energy on a Tues night in Sacramento and overcoming adversity to pull one out?
It's really cold up north in the winter we need basketball games three times a week
This guy is an exercise physiologist who works with athletes from every sport, not for a team, and says that of all sports, the pace of modern basketball, and particularly the changes of direction and jumping, is taking the athletes the closest to physical breaking point for tendons, ligaments and muscles. It's a highly scientific approach and if you cared about facts you'd see what he has to say before judging it.
With 58 games you'd get 3 games a week. You just wouldn't get 4, there'd be no b2bs, and the schedule would be completely fair.
Very true that the NBA has been terrible this season. The Warriors half-assing the whole year coming off of a championship makes the entire regular season seem like a massive waste of everyone's time.
I mean, we all see the NBA through this prism of our own biases. So I get it. And yes, maybe this season is more interesting (out west at least). But, one thing the national NBA media seems to completely miss, is the fact that Kyrie and KD were the face of the BK Nets. And both those players were bringing in young fans to the Nets bandwagon. If you want multi-generational fans, you gotta start somewhere. And by the Nets Organization blowing it up this year, they sure didn't do much to help foster fan loyalty, or even help support the Nets actually having a fan-base that could even potentially rival the Knicks 20-30 years from now.
The petty dude in me is happy to see ben simmons have to live on a trash roster now. Ever since your article about his “mental health” shenanigans i actively root against him.
Agreed. The New York Nets should have kept Dr. J in 1976, and the owner either sold a share of the team, or taken on more debt, used the red white and blue ABA ball on weekends ... whatever it took to keep the Old Nets in Long Island and Julius where was his home.
THAT would have created a NY team with a following, kept the Knix on their toes, and kept NY / NYC as basketball mecca.
Instead we got the New Jersey Swampdragons, a horrible looking arena 3 blocks from my high school, and this unstable nonsense roster we see now.
I'm sorry, the '22-'23 season has been terrible? I couldn't disagree more.
Jazz fan here. I've watched every Jazz game for years (crap, it's actually decades) now, and while watching my team this season has been a pleasant surprise, I've also been watching more other teams' games than I ever have before. There is so much parity. Everyone's either pretty good, or pretty bad, or, it's just kind of hard to tell, but the product has been FUN.
WTF was that article? Suns fans so much better than Nets? I looked at attendance 2012 to 2020 for both teams (pre-covid)- the paid attendance results are almost identical. My neighbor who has a house in Nor cal and a condo in phoenix would go to suns- warriors games in phoenix and pay 50 to 60 bucks to sit in lower seats. Great sun fans? Yeah sure. Neo-liberal team? The definition of that term is less government intervention and more capitalism. NBA is socialist- not as socialist as NFL but- draft-cap- luxury tax divvied to cheap teams. What did happen, if you step back is playing with friends. Russ and Harden, fail. KD and Kyrie -fail. Kat and Delo -fail. Russ and Lebron- fail. That's the analysis- the only time it worked was Dwade-Lebron-Bosh and only because strong culture and 2 stars and even Lebron adjusted their game to win championships. Even then it was non-sustainable , making the Warriors run all the more unique. As to this year- I have watched many entertaining games- and when watching college basketball it is apparent how incredible the pros are. Who could be bored with Jokic- every game is a clinic on how to run an efficient offense- like the old Jazz half court offense. OKC written off as tankers have beat the best teams all year and the Shai-Giddy backcourt is great. The Grizzlies are a great villain to root against and the Westbrook implosion is also a trainwreck in real time(now mercifully ended) . The league has never been more wide open and the playoffs will be total wild card. On the downside the injuries and resting players on back to backs skew the view of what team will emerge as it seems a lot of teams look at the season like a 1500 meter race where they all are bunched and on cruise control then must switch gears and run to the finish. That still beats the clang, clang, clang of painfully watching a college game.
Also, I know it hasn’t clicked yet, but the league needs to keep trying to market Giannis. He’s an all time great in his 20s, is overpowering like prime shaq, and has a comfort food personality.
Adam silver should employ the dark arts to get him to drop the last name in public. Just Giannis on the Jersey. People like saying Giannis!
Just have to say that 2 months ago when the Warriors were faltering I said to everyone I know that they should trade Wiseman for GP II and Eubanks. Pity they couldn't also snag Eubanks - they need an energiser bunny with size like him on their bench - but don't under-estimate the power of GP to bring that team together. He was their lucky charm in the Finals (not to mention how well he flustered Brown), perhaps he can be their magic talisman again this year.
PS I am a Spurs fan, so I have no skin in this game. I just really enjoyed watching both GSW and BOS's run to the Finals last season.
"joined forces to create something that appeared to inspire nobody, not even themselves. "
I think this sums up perfectly why the Nets were such a miserable presence. It wasn't simply that they were an artificial super-team (after, so were the KD Warriors,* the Lebron Heat, and the KG Celtics). It was that the guys who were supposed to make up the super team didn't even seem to enjoy themselves or have even iota of team spirit. It was hard to even root against them with vigor, because they had such a detached/bleh attitude about the entire enterprise.
*Yes, the rest of the Warriors team was made up of homegrown talent, but the addition of an MVP-level player to a 73-9 win team was....interesting.
The NBA has many problems. As it relates here, the focus on the transaction game rather than the actual game itself is a big one. This can certainly be traced, at least in part, to HOS fave Woj. Adam Silver being completely asleep at the wheel and spineless also has a lot to do with it.
This is coming from an NBA junkie - altho my interest is waning.
For mine it is the regular season being 20 games too long. Make it 58 games - home and away vs every team - and suddenly every game matters! Quality increases, resting decreases dramatically, interest increases.
Quantity over quality is the grand lie of capitalism.
Yes, like the clear path/ eurofoul, length of the regular season has been an obvious problem for years. So maybe in another decade or so Adam Silver will push for change.
C'mon.
If they have 58 games scheduled they'll play 45.
I doubt that very much. Most NBA ballers actually love playing, and a lot of the resting is being driven by metrics from medical/performance staffs. 58 games would remove all b2bs and take a lot of pressure off their bodies - it would mean rest isn;t necessary. Listen to the Basketball Illuminati pod a few weeks ago with the performance coach - very revealing of how the game currently stresses bodies almost beyond breaking point.
Playing less games than ever before with less contact than ever before in less minutes than ever before with more in-game breaks than ever before isn't taxing anything to any breaking point it's just the performance coach needs a job so what else is he gonna say?
More to the point, what does the viewer actually want from this product? Dudes flying around like Westbrook on Red Bull once a week? Or competent, competitive pros giving 80% of energy on a Tues night in Sacramento and overcoming adversity to pull one out?
It's really cold up north in the winter we need basketball games three times a week
This guy is an exercise physiologist who works with athletes from every sport, not for a team, and says that of all sports, the pace of modern basketball, and particularly the changes of direction and jumping, is taking the athletes the closest to physical breaking point for tendons, ligaments and muscles. It's a highly scientific approach and if you cared about facts you'd see what he has to say before judging it.
With 58 games you'd get 3 games a week. You just wouldn't get 4, there'd be no b2bs, and the schedule would be completely fair.
nah son
Very true that the NBA has been terrible this season. The Warriors half-assing the whole year coming off of a championship makes the entire regular season seem like a massive waste of everyone's time.
Very glad to see the Nets' great experiment blow up in their faces. Seems like the perfect logical end of the Superteam era.
Yeah, I know the Suns look like a superteam as presently constructed, but it won't last long. Chris Paul is 38, after all.
I mean, we all see the NBA through this prism of our own biases. So I get it. And yes, maybe this season is more interesting (out west at least). But, one thing the national NBA media seems to completely miss, is the fact that Kyrie and KD were the face of the BK Nets. And both those players were bringing in young fans to the Nets bandwagon. If you want multi-generational fans, you gotta start somewhere. And by the Nets Organization blowing it up this year, they sure didn't do much to help foster fan loyalty, or even help support the Nets actually having a fan-base that could even potentially rival the Knicks 20-30 years from now.
The petty dude in me is happy to see ben simmons have to live on a trash roster now. Ever since your article about his “mental health” shenanigans i actively root against him.
Agreed. The New York Nets should have kept Dr. J in 1976, and the owner either sold a share of the team, or taken on more debt, used the red white and blue ABA ball on weekends ... whatever it took to keep the Old Nets in Long Island and Julius where was his home.
THAT would have created a NY team with a following, kept the Knix on their toes, and kept NY / NYC as basketball mecca.
Instead we got the New Jersey Swampdragons, a horrible looking arena 3 blocks from my high school, and this unstable nonsense roster we see now.
I'm sorry, the '22-'23 season has been terrible? I couldn't disagree more.
Jazz fan here. I've watched every Jazz game for years (crap, it's actually decades) now, and while watching my team this season has been a pleasant surprise, I've also been watching more other teams' games than I ever have before. There is so much parity. Everyone's either pretty good, or pretty bad, or, it's just kind of hard to tell, but the product has been FUN.
WTF was that article? Suns fans so much better than Nets? I looked at attendance 2012 to 2020 for both teams (pre-covid)- the paid attendance results are almost identical. My neighbor who has a house in Nor cal and a condo in phoenix would go to suns- warriors games in phoenix and pay 50 to 60 bucks to sit in lower seats. Great sun fans? Yeah sure. Neo-liberal team? The definition of that term is less government intervention and more capitalism. NBA is socialist- not as socialist as NFL but- draft-cap- luxury tax divvied to cheap teams. What did happen, if you step back is playing with friends. Russ and Harden, fail. KD and Kyrie -fail. Kat and Delo -fail. Russ and Lebron- fail. That's the analysis- the only time it worked was Dwade-Lebron-Bosh and only because strong culture and 2 stars and even Lebron adjusted their game to win championships. Even then it was non-sustainable , making the Warriors run all the more unique. As to this year- I have watched many entertaining games- and when watching college basketball it is apparent how incredible the pros are. Who could be bored with Jokic- every game is a clinic on how to run an efficient offense- like the old Jazz half court offense. OKC written off as tankers have beat the best teams all year and the Shai-Giddy backcourt is great. The Grizzlies are a great villain to root against and the Westbrook implosion is also a trainwreck in real time(now mercifully ended) . The league has never been more wide open and the playoffs will be total wild card. On the downside the injuries and resting players on back to backs skew the view of what team will emerge as it seems a lot of teams look at the season like a 1500 meter race where they all are bunched and on cruise control then must switch gears and run to the finish. That still beats the clang, clang, clang of painfully watching a college game.
Trade deadline was a colonic for the league.
Leagues should loosen trade rules bc fans seem to dig the chaos of it
Also, I know it hasn’t clicked yet, but the league needs to keep trying to market Giannis. He’s an all time great in his 20s, is overpowering like prime shaq, and has a comfort food personality.
Adam silver should employ the dark arts to get him to drop the last name in public. Just Giannis on the Jersey. People like saying Giannis!
Just have to say that 2 months ago when the Warriors were faltering I said to everyone I know that they should trade Wiseman for GP II and Eubanks. Pity they couldn't also snag Eubanks - they need an energiser bunny with size like him on their bench - but don't under-estimate the power of GP to bring that team together. He was their lucky charm in the Finals (not to mention how well he flustered Brown), perhaps he can be their magic talisman again this year.
PS I am a Spurs fan, so I have no skin in this game. I just really enjoyed watching both GSW and BOS's run to the Finals last season.
this nets outcome seems worse than the paul pierce / KG era
Can't wait for the Ishbia/KD battle in a couple of years