League Circles wrote:You're forgetting the difference in vibe for the majority of the year. When a guy is on a bottom dwelling team, the entire year sucks. He never feels hope and excitement because his team is not showing any chance of even making the playoffs, which is a prerequisite for success. When a guy is on a middling team like ours, his experience throughout the year is actually much, much more similar to a being on a true contender than it is to being on a bottom 5 team. The difference is that if we get knocked out in the play-in (as opposed to the finals or whatever), his disappointment starts a few weeks earlier than it would if he's on a contender. But something like 4-5 months after it does on a bottom dwelling team, because every day sucks for those guys from like December to April or whatever. Make no mistake, these guys mostly all have delusional confidence and as long as they're in the race, they believe they are turning a couple of switches away from being a contender, and recent history kinda proves them right with teams like the Heat and Lakers making the conference or nba finals from the 8th seed.
That's fine. You just made all that up, and it's entirely based on nothing except your mental thought process about something you have absolutely 0 experience or knowledge in. Which was the first sentence of what I said that you replied to, but I'll shorten it up:
I don't know and neither do you.
What I can say is that I don't think my watching of the NBA backs your opinion. I do not see guys taking less money to avoid bottom dwellers in order to go to slightly better, but still non playoff teams. I think that would be especially true when that non playoff team has gotten worse for three consecutive years and you've been on it for that long. People generally do not likely slowly declining situations.
Also 22 year olds care faaaaaar more about money than guys in their mid 30s who have made 9 figures already. See Drummond opting into his deal last summer. He probably trivially could have made 2-3 times as much on the open market. But he probably figured hey, I have a role, we're competing, I don't hate anybody here and Chicago is a good city to play in.
I don't think Drummond could have trivially got 2-3x more money, and if he could, he'd have probably taken it. His role here is very small and again, our team is the 19th best in the NBA, and we were 20th last year. That's less competitive than the vast majority of other teams that could have signed him.
I don't think Demar or Patrick are in any way passionate about staying in Chicago, but I believe that they and most players are passionate about not playing for a terrible team especially in a garbage city unless it's the only way to get close to as much money as they can.
Not sure what your point here is, but that's exactly what I just said. So it sounds like you're agreeing with me. They're not taking a discount to play here. If a terrible team pays them more, they will go there. Not for like $5, but it won't take much, $2-3M a year is probably enough for either.
Also, players never think like objective fans or vegas. They really always believe that they can single handedly make a difference. They're often wrong (see Wade, Gasol on the Bulls), but that's irrelevant.
DeMar already knows exactly what this will be like. He's just lived it three straight years and will likely see it get worse for consecutive years at the end of this season. To the extent this is a factor, it's DeMar thinking that me on Detroit will be the same as me here because I'll lift Detroit so much and Chicago will fall off a cliff without me.
But I do find it particularly hilarious how much AKME's competitive drivel seems to have sunken in here and fans here actually think that being a the 20th best team in the league is a competitive advantage where players will want to come here for our level of play.