Let's talk basketball!

I've been a Dubs fan since I was a kid and this season has been amazing to say the least! What are everybody's teams? Tonight's loss against the Hawks was heartbreaking, but they played such great basketball it's hard to complain.

I haven't followed basketball actively since the Sonics left Seattle but if there's two teams out there I try and make a point to watch games for with League Pass it has got to be the Warriors and The Pelicans. I like the way the Splash Bros. play the game and I am a huge fan of Anthony Davis game. He's pretty much a younger version of K.G in his prime but with a better overall game at 21 years of age. K.G didn't really blossom to become an all around dominate force till maybe his mid 20's.

The Celtics might make the playoffs out of sheer attrition which makes me happy.

I am a Knicks fan. My team is basically dead to me right now. I'd feel guilty about not keeping up with them this season but I have watched a lot of shitty basketball over the years and I just can't do it anymore. Last I heard they had a bunch of guys on 10 day contracts? I'm also one of those fans that doesn't really keep up with the league itself unless I'm watching my team on a regular basis so I haven't watched many games at all this year and that's a bummer.

I love the NBA, though haven't really been following the last couple of years since the League Pass kind of became too expensive for me. And with no other way to watch I soon stopped really following boxscores and such. Every now and then I'll check in and see where the season is at, but yeah.

I think the Generals are due this year.

Long-suffering Wizards/Bullets fan here, watching the cracks in the facade starting to grow bigger. John Wall's trying to pretend he isn't one misstep away from being done for the season (and watch the team collapse with him) between migraine headaches, a rolled ankle, and a possible Achilles' tendon issue that he keeps putting off. The team basically got rid of all the young people except for Wall, Beal and Porter and now we're just hoping the vets can all not regress back to their respective mean at the same time like Rasual Butler, Andre "Professor" Miller, Drew Gooden III and maybe Nene are doing right now. On top of that our coach seems to have this fetish with long-range 2-pointers instead of either driving to the basket and drawing a foul or taking a couple steps back and shooting a 3.

Unless things improve after the break (and Wall and Nene don't have their legs shatter again) I'm predicting a first-round playoff exit.

Celtics fan - it's been entertaining watching the development of young players like Smart, Olynyk and Sullinger as well as Coach Stevens this season. Could be in for a long rebuild but Danny Ainge has lots of assets to work with, including all the draft picks.

Watch a lot of League Pass too. Lately been checking for the Hawks, Warriors, Wizards, Suns, Raptors, DeMarcus Cousins and Hassan Whiteside. Anthony Davis is a beast as well, had a crazy game winning 3 point buzzer beater against the Thunder tonight. Basketball is the best sport.

I've seen every Bulls game this season. There have been triumphs and puzzling, puzzling losses. If we beat all the teams we should've beat, we'd have that second seed and feeling pretty content. But alas, injuries and Rose/Noah still getting back to top shape has made the past month extraordinarily frustrating to watch.

It's crazy, we had this nice home stretch against sub-.500 teams and expected to build a nice cushion. Instead, there's been a near collapse. I already had the Bears go from a defense-heavy team that started focusing on offense, with championship aspirations. But that turned into a meltdown instead. I can't handle that happening again.

Still, better to watch than the early 2000's.

Blazers fan here. Watching the Blazers rise the pst ten years has been great. They've really suffered without Robin Lopez, but he's back and the've won 2 in a row. Hoping they're out of their slump. Players look like they're trying to do far too much on the court and not playing smart. I'm hoping they can go back to playing smart, cause they're not gonna get far in the playoffs with this style if play.

Also, what are the "dubs?" I've never heard anyone call any team that... Haha wizards?

@hurricaneivan29: Actually he's referring to the Golden State Warriors.

You have my sympathies.

I, too, am a Knick fan. This season has gone about as I expected it to go. Absolutely awful, but with a few bright spots out of the youth/randoms part of the roster. (Quincy Acy/ Langston Galloway)

However, all is not lost. Melo will sit & get surgery after the ASG. Amar'e is going to ask for a buyout, so we'll have more roster room to throw D-leaguers out there. With those moves, we're going to be worse than the Sixers, and plummet down the standings.

As long as the Knicks end up with one of the top 3 picks, they have a great chance of getting an impact dude like Towns or Okafor. That'll help Phil recruit people to NY. My only worry is that they'll sign max contract guys, instead of a few glue guys. I want them to keep a bit of money open for 2016.

In conclusion, clearly I'm a victim of Stockholm Syndrome. Pray for me.

Sadly, I have not followed basketball in years. How are the Grizzlies doing?

@rejizzle: 2nd in the Western Conference, with Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph leading the way.

I don't actively follow the NBA until the playoffs, but man... I can't remember a time where the Lakers and Celtics have both been this bad.

Weird.

I'm a huge NBA fan (I guess I would be a Knicks fan if the ticket prices weren't unreasonable and the team didn't perpetually suck in increasingly dispiriting ways). I'm a pretty big League Pass junkie and so I catch pretty much all of the must see games. I love the league having like 20 teams that are at least interesting, if not good, and 10 stocking stuffers that trade away veterans to pump the good teams up even more. This season might be one of the best ever and the sheer variety of players and styles is amazing to see. You have teams like the Warriors and Hawks whipping the ball around and playing true team ball. You have teams like the Grizzlies and Hornets grinding it out on defense and in the post. You have the Thunder playing iso ball. You have the Rockets treating 70% of the floor as if its a no shoot zone. This year is damn fun to watch. Just don't watch the Knicks, Nets, 76ers, Nuggets, Pacers, and Lakers. Charles Barkley is one more nationally broadcasted Lakers game away from a walk out.

@rejizzle: Surprisingly dominate with little few changes they've made to the team. They still got Gasol and Z-Bo at the center and pf position to score the bulk of the points. I believe they recently acquired Jeff Green (Not the Video Game Guy but the Hoyas guy) from the Celtics to add some more scoring and Conley Jr. has evolved into one of the better pg in the league.

Go Suns.

@i_stay_puft: When you have 3 very good offensive and defensive players and a hoard of good role-players you don't need to make a lot of changes.

I continue to watch the Celtics. They might be a pretty bad team, but at least they make their games interesting to watch this year.

I'm a Cavs fan, have been since the Price-Daugherty-Nance years of the late 80s, early 90s. Obviously excited by LeBron's return though it's been tumultuous. But getting a true center along with a scoring two guard has paid huge dividends for this team when it was on its 12 game win streak. A little worried about Kevin Love. Don't know if the Cavs aren't using him right, or if he's just out of his comfort zone. He plays too many invisible minutes and has been sitting during 4th quarters.

Just get me a healthy roster come late April and this team has a great shot of coming out of the East.

Timothy Mozgov & Iman Shumpert have been good pickups midseason while J.R Smith is essentially giving the Cavs what Dion Waiters was giving them off the bench before the trade. At the end of the day though it'll be Lebron who will determine how far that team will go into the playoffs. I'm not sure how Love and Irving will handle the pressure considering this might be their first year in the playoffs but Irving looked phenomenal a few weeks back with that 50+ point explosion. With Kevin Love I didn't watch many Timberwolves games the past few years so the only two things I knew about him was that he was an excellent outside shooter and rebounder. My biggest surprise watching his game is how unathletic that dude is, which is surprising consider he's been one of the more consistent dominating rebounders over the past few years. His game kinda reminds me of Charles Barkley in his twilight years with the Rockets. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing since Love is up for a new contract this upcoming summer and he's only 26.

* Like I was saying yesterday Anthony Davis is a beast. Probably the most polished basketball player I've seen at his age since Lebron. 7 Foot pf who hit the 3 to win the game. It's actually quite surprising when you read up on Anthony Davis scouting info but in high school I think up to his junior year he played point guard cause he was pretty short. Not till his senior year till high school did he sprout a foot and moved to the pf / c position. What you have here is a 7 foot guy built like Kevin Garnett / Tim Duncan but who can create shots for himself off the dribble. Fear the Brow!

I have to keep reminding myself that he's just 21. I didn't see much of him til USA Basketball and came away very, very impressed.

Since he started off playing guard as a high schooler before the growth spurt, he seems to have a pretty well-rounded game for a big man. I'm just pleased to have another Chicago native making a name for himself.

Let's go Knickerbockers!

@i_stay_puft: Seems like Cavs are using Love as a decoy some nights. They feed him in the low block during first quarters, but the remainder of his playing time is spent waiting outside the 3-point arc for a pass. He seems unsure of himself. The other night he pump faked a guy into the air on a 3-pointer, and instead of using his advantage to take a mid-range shot in rhythm, he shot-putted a sloppy pass to Mozgov underneath. Understand that it takes time to acclimate to a secondary scoring role (and he's still getting high volume rebound numbers) but Love's 3-point percentage is down and he misses a ton of open shots.

@TheFeenMachine: Credit to you for sticking with it. I'm also hoping for a top lottery pick but with this franchise's luck we may just get shafted (though if we somehow win, you know everyone will say it was fixed). I think my biggest problem is that there's no young guy on the team anymore that I enjoy rooting for. It used to be Shumpert, and then Wilson Chandler and David Lee before him, but they got rid of all those guys. I've never really seen Melo as anything more than a mercenary and hell, I don't think more than half of the team will be here when they start winning games again, so it's been hard to get invested. Hopefully some of the guys you mentioned stick around when this roster gets hacked apart in the offseason.

@i_stay_puft: I've watched a decent amount of Love when he was in Minnesota and the Cavs are using him in a much more limited way than the Wolves did. The Cavs are using him like he's Ryan Anderson and his game is a lot more diverse than that. He should be running around pindown screens (rarely happens from what I've seen), setting decoy screens before poping out behind the arc (rarely happens), posting up (they seem to just give the space by the basket to Mozgov and that doesn't seem warranted), and crashing the boards hard. Yet, most of the time he is spotting up or asking for a pass that never comes. At least his outlet pass game is coming back with LeBron healthy again. His full court passes are so damn pretty.

I would also say that J.R. is giving the Cavs more than what Waiters gave them. He is a much better spot-up guy and he doesn't dribble into nowhereland as much as Dion. J.R. shoots too much, but he usually shoots 3s he can make when he isn't asked to do too much. Dion doesn't seem to have much of an idea about how he should be playing right now.

I follow the Raptors, WeTheNorth! The 20-4 start certainly seems very far away, as the all-star Kyle Lowry appears to be tiring out and the ripple effect of Derozan's absence is still continuing. Still the second best record in the East, and if their offense clicks the Raptors are among the best. The team's bench is deep. But their style of play is too inconsistent, and it shows even during the course of a single match, where in one quarter they would go and put up a torrent of points only to watch the lead slip away as the game wears on as they become embattled and engage in haphazard iso-ball and long contested midrange shots (led by still awesome but streaky Lou Williams and Greivis Vasquez). What is confounding is that reverse can also happen where they struggle for one or two first quarters only to come back and play well enough in third or fourth to come out on top.

Be that as it may be that I am a mere fan looking in, coach Casey should have a better lineup of guys playing, especially find ways to include guys like James Johnson and Terrence Ross more, not to mention the center Valenciunas. The Hawks are the real deal, and Raptors appear to be the Hawks of last few seasons; although they are playoff-bound, it is questionable whether they will make it past the first round. I think the team is one reliable, physical big man away from getting a right balance in anchoring the inside defense and make better use of inside out game where the team shines. I really like Amir, but I think he is not truly 100%. Just hoping the all-star break gets the gears going again.

I've never really been a teams guy, I was for a brief moment with the NFL but mainly I gravitate towards players. I really feel for Melo this season, he's been my favorite for a while. The Pelicans continue to intrigue me but I've never been big on Eric Gordon, his entire career has really baffled me. They've been my team on NBA 2K this year but in my franchise I immediately traded him for Victor Oladipo and Ben Gordon when the Magic gave me that offer.

I got rid of my cable and have been working most of the nights NBA is on TV this year so I haven't kept up too much other than Grantland articles/podcasts, but I have to say I'm enjoying how wild this season's seemed so far. The Cavs are in trouble, the Lakers and Celtics are trash, the Thunder might miss the playoffs and the Warriors have the best defense in the league? Man, I can't wait for the playoffs/final few weeks of the season.

@nodima: Cavs corrected themselves since Lebron James took 2 weeks off and they made the trade for Mozgov, JR Smith and Shumpert. I think they lost last night but they had a 11 to 12 game winning streak happening.

@redyoshi: Honestly, if the Knicks end up top 3, they'll get a talent who could make a huge difference next year. (Obviously, Okafor is the gold medal, but Towns and Mundiay are not slouches.)

Shumpert was a maddening player to me. The fan-base LOVED him to no end. He had moments of brilliance. However, his offensive game was spotty at best, and he never improved from his rookie season defensively. It's so tough to watch a player come in and immediately play at what turns out to be their ceiling.

Melo is who he is, which is to say not a teams savior. My favorite comp is Tracy McGrady without the defense. He's a HUGE mercenary, as evidenced by him "wanting to go to NY immediately" a few years ago, which forced them into a franchise gutting trade. He only did that because he wanted the advantageous positioning of re-signing pre-lockout.

Next year, the Knicks will have very few players from this years roster. And they'll be MUCH better off for it.

Dishonorable mention: Andrea Bargnani. That is all.

This is what Heat fans are experiencing with Norris Cole. He came in and was more than what everyone could hope for from a rookie. Since then he hasn't progressed at all, in fact some would say that he's regressed. The entire team is in shambles, or coaching staff is being exposed (like all of us expected them to be), everyone who needs to produce either isn't or is injured, and, since losing to San Antonio, we've fallen out of the 8th seed to the Nets.

Hassan Whiteside is the only bright spot on our team and who knows how long he'll be able to produce.

@TheFeenMachine: I definitely get what you mean about Shumpert. I guess I just always have a soft spot for a guy that we drafted who turns out to be decent, and though he never quite broke out the way I was hoping that he would, he was at least entertaining to watch (with his big, dumb eraser head haircut) and I never lost hope with him.

The less said about that 7-foot, suit wearing, expiring contract, the better.

Hawks and Warriors in the finals book it.

Lakers fan here. I'm from the Netherlands where basketball isn't nearly as popular as soccer but basketball always was my favorite sport to play growing up. I was 14 when Shaq and Kobe started to make their run to three consecutive NBA Championships and a few people started to wear Shaq jerseys in school. Maybe that makes me a bandwagon fan, all I know is that I still support the Lakers even if the last two or three years have been challenge to watch. Still, I stay up late (when they are playing on the East Coast) or set my alarm really early (if they play at home or play another opponent in the West) to watch their games. I've been following the NBA more intensely the last three or four years thanks to League Pass and it has replaced soccer and Formula One as my favorite sport to watch.

I've been a Warriors fan since I was little. the 07 We Believe team was probably my favorite time as a sports fan.

I'm curious if any of you play some ball.

I'm almost 30 so I don't do anything organized anymore, but we play pick ups games every Wednesday at my old grammar school. We don't really have set positions, but I stick in a small forward role and freakin' love playing defense. Honestly, one of my favorite parts of the week.

Anthony Davis was mentioned earlier, and watching this Bulls game since he went out shows just how valuable the guy is. It was fairly close, but now we're up by 29. That guy really does carry his team.

HE'S SPINNING THE BALL ON HIS FINGER!!!

JUST TAKE THE BALL!!!

@csl316: I still play from time to time

@TheFeenMachine: Andreas Bargnani is the softest player I have ever seen in the NBA. I don't like to throw that word soft around cause it really doesn't mean a whole lot especially in today's NBA and Bargnani did have the persona as a sharpshooting scorer when he entered the nba. If you look at his stats since joining the Knicks, heck look at the few seasons he was with the Raptors before the trade and you can see his shooting percentage and 3 point shooting percentage trended downward. He is shooting below 30% atm from three. If I had to compare Bargnani to someone I would compare him to Shawn Bradley which is a disservice to Bradley who'd throw elbows if he had to and would be down to fight when he had to. Sure he was considered the poster boy for posterizing moves and was often given the nick as the gentle mormon. At the same time Shawn Bradley threw them bows when he had to.

@gorillamopena: We'd get taken out of the draft... how is that a good thing !?!?!?!?!?!?

...also, I thought the thread title said baseball... *walks away disappointed*

If you just want to watch awesome basketball, then check out this youtube channel. I think it has just about every big performance of the last several years.

If you want to follow a team through a whole season but don't want to pay for League Pass, the NBA D-League has been streaming its games for the last couple of seasons and they have highlights. When I can, I try to watch the Reno Bighorns because they have John Stockton's son, David and this giant Indian player named Sim Bhullar who I really want to be the next star center.

(if it's not cool for me to post videos like this, I apologize, and I can pull them down)

My new dream is to have this thread rival the Wrestling or F1 one.... or to have an Official Sports Thread some day.

@csl316: That's probably not going to happen unless there's a sport for larping dota.

@redyoshi: I remember when the Bargs trade news first broke, and there were a few conflicting reports about number of draft picks, and which way they were headed. I thought it was a bad trade when I thought NY was getting 2 seconds and a first alongside Bargs. Imagine my surprise when I found out that we were GIVING those picks away...

Though, without Bargnani, (who autocorrect still tries to turn to Bargain, mockingly) I never would have experienced THIS!

(Bonus FACT: Ever since the moment in that GIF (Jan 23, 2014), Bargnani has played in two games. One he was in for 9 minutes, one for just 1 minute.)

No offense intended here, but I struggle to sympathize with the plights of a team that has made the last four consecutive NBA finals. (Clearly, you're referring to the Heat's future prospects, but at least you have recent success to cushion the blow.) Being a fringe playoff contender after losing the best player in the game isn't half bad after all.

But yes, Norris Cole is similar to Shumpert in that respect. He's also an UFA after this season, right?

@TheFeenMachine: I'm confused here but I was always under the impression that Norris Cole and Shumpert as your defensive stoppers in the role that Bruce Bowen was with the Spurs and Tony Allen currently is with the Grizzlies. They aren't going to garner you a whole lot of points except for some spot up jumpers and an occasional drive. Where their real value is on the defensive end guarding the other teams top scoring wingman so their teams star doesn't have to expand that energy.

@leejunfan83: That would be amazing to see! We'd really have to work on our defense against Teague, Horford, Korver, and Co. if we wanted the title. The way both GS and Atlanta play is ridiculously entertaining to watch. Every time I see Curry or Thompson go on a run, I feel like they're just having fun. I remember watching the Lakers v. Spurs semifinals in 2004 when Derek Fisher made the ridiculous game-winner. My dad, being a lifelong LA fan, always brings this up and I definitely want the Dubs to come up with a similar glory moment this season. Curry's shooting has definitely been clutch in the past, but there are few moments that top that crazy Derek Fisher play.

Heat fan here living in WI so between the Bucks and the Heat the season's been pretty bleh for me. And I enjoy watching Notre Dame so that game a day or so ago was pretty rough.