ATL - Road teams now up 5-0 (Indy, NYK, Den, GSW)

[Bernman]

LaVine is a losing player. Can't pass, defend. Oft-injured. Budget Dame. I'd buy low on Murray. You'd have to get a 3rd team in there for me.

[BroncoBuck]

Suns owner really threw Bud under the bus publicly. Basically said coaching was the issue????

Do you think maybe having a depleted roster while having massive money invested in a net negative player who doesn't care about winning may actually be the thing?

Beal won 49 games the year before. Bud didn't coach. It looked like he was trying to get fired like Monty did in Detroit. Bud had a better roster than Vogel did.

You keep saying this, but Vogel coached the legs out of Nurkic. He got everything he could out of him and his career is over now. They got swept in round 1 with Vogel and they only got worse at center. Tyus Jones was just another **** defender on a team of **** defenders.

Defending KD and Booker is ridiculous. If those guys would’ve given effort the Suns would’ve made the playoffs. They didn’t, because they simply do not care. KD tried to trade himself midseason and then passed on a playoff team (Warriors) to just chill. No player has tarnished his legacy without a serious off-court incident like KD has.

[ShootingtheJ]

Suns owner really threw Bud under the bus publicly. Basically said coaching was the issue????

Do you think maybe having a depleted roster while having massive money invested in a net negative player who doesn't care about winning may actually be the thing?

Beal won 49 games the year before. Bud didn't coach. It looked like he was trying to get fired like Monty did in Detroit. Bud had a better roster than Vogel did.

You keep saying this, but Vogel coached the legs out of Nurkic. He got everything he could out of him and his career is over now. They got swept in round 1 with Vogel and they only got worse at center. Tyus Jones was just another **** defender on a team of **** defenders.

Defending KD and Booker is ridiculous. If those guys would’ve given effort the Suns would’ve made the playoffs. They didn’t, because they simply do not care. KD tried to trade himself midseason and then passed on a playoff team (Warriors) to just chill. No player has tarnished his legacy without a serious off-court incident like KD has.

Vogel got them to try, and Bud couldn't. Isn't that what coaching is? I'm guessing the players figure out how little the coach cares when they see the nonexsistant practice schedule.

[midranger]

Shocking that telling Bradley Beal to play more like Jrue Holiday didn’t work

[BroncoBuck]

Beal won 49 games the year before. Bud didn't coach. It looked like he was trying to get fired like Monty did in Detroit. Bud had a better roster than Vogel did.

You keep saying this, but Vogel coached the legs out of Nurkic. He got everything he could out of him and his career is over now. They got swept in round 1 with Vogel and they only got worse at center. Tyus Jones was just another **** defender on a team of **** defenders.

Defending KD and Booker is ridiculous. If those guys would’ve given effort the Suns would’ve made the playoffs. They didn’t, because they simply do not care. KD tried to trade himself midseason and then passed on a playoff team (Warriors) to just chill. No player has tarnished his legacy without a serious off-court incident like KD has.

Vogel got them to try, and Bud couldn't. Isn't that what coaching is? I'm guessing the players figure out how little the coach cares when they see the nonexsistant practice schedule.

The Suns got blown out in every game of the playoffs last year. Vogel got them to try up until they were done trying. The point differential in that 4 game series was 60.

It’s very obviously a player problem in Phoenix.

[Ron Swanson]

Silver only barely trying to dance around saying the quiet part out loud is pretty funny. This league invites every single one of the "it's rigged" accusations.

"I think you saw tremendous competition around the league, teams playing for playoff seeding, teams playing to get into the playoffs, healthy stars, a trade that attracted a lot of attention," Silver said. "A bunch of things happened in the league that generated a lot of interest."

[soxperry]

Beal won 49 games the year before. Bud didn't coach. It looked like he was trying to get fired like Monty did in Detroit. Bud had a better roster than Vogel did.

You keep saying this, but Vogel coached the legs out of Nurkic. He got everything he could out of him and his career is over now. They got swept in round 1 with Vogel and they only got worse at center. Tyus Jones was just another **** defender on a team of **** defenders.

Defending KD and Booker is ridiculous. If those guys would’ve given effort the Suns would’ve made the playoffs. They didn’t, because they simply do not care. KD tried to trade himself midseason and then passed on a playoff team (Warriors) to just chill. No player has tarnished his legacy without a serious off-court incident like KD has.

Vogel got them to try, and Bud couldn't. Isn't that what coaching is? I'm guessing the players figure out how little the coach cares when they see the nonexsistant practice schedule.

not at the nba level it isn't. not when you're talking about superstars. i have no idea how important coaching actually is, but Ishbia is very clearly attempting to salvage his season ticket holder pricing for next year.

[emunney]

I know your mind is running wild.

I laughed.That was good.

The guy I wanted to fleece from them was Fox. We’ll see how Dame does this playoffs. Lavine and Keegan match up salary wise.

Keegan and Markkanen, LaVine and picks to Utah?

[emunney]

Looking forward to the dumb mid-season decision-off between Memphis and Dallas tonight. Which dumb decision will knock a talented team out of the playoffs?

Rooting for Dallas as I'd prefer to trade Kuzma to Dallas before Nico gets fired.

[MickeyDavis]

Sorry to see this. Most likely never coaching again. I always liked pops

Read on Twitter

[chonestown]

Hoping the best for Pop. Most coaches wear out their welcome the longer they are in the game. Pop is one of those guys who hasn't.

[German Athens]

Looks like Mobley is going to win DPOY, and the Cavs have the 8th ranked defense which is quite unusual for the award.

The awards almost always goes to a team that finishes in the top 3 on defense, and will be the first time since Tyson Chandler won it that a player on a non top-3 defense won it. New York was 5th that season. You’d have to go all the way back to 2007 when marcus camby won it to find a player winning on a worse defensive team. Denver was 12th that year.

Crazy award season.

[pifhluk23]

Suns owner really threw Bud under the bus publicly. Basically said coaching was the issue????

Do you think maybe having a depleted roster while having massive money invested in a net negative player who doesn't care about winning may actually be the thing?

I mean I'd expect that a team that had 75 games of Booker and 62 games of Durant would at least be .500 no matter who the other 13 guys were.

[pifhluk23]

NBA TV ratings are a fraction of NFL ratings. Would a reduction in the number of games mean an increase in TV ratings enough so they could raise the rights fees to match the revenue loss of less games? I'm guessing no. And neither the players or owners will agree to less money/less games. Reducing the number of games to say 60 is 14.6% less games. Each team would have 11 less home games. TV networks would have less games to televise. There isn't a way you can reduce the number of games without reducing revenue. It's a no go unfortunately.

Agree you won't make up the ratings enough. But assuming each new team sold for 6B then that's 400M directly in the pocket of each owner. Average revenue per game is 1.8M but that's revenue not profit but since that's the only figure I can find I'll use that. That's 222 games of lost revenue or 22 years of lost revenue if you go to 72 game seasons. It's likely much much more since I only have revenue figures and not profit, but this is how I would pitch it to the owners if I was Silver.

[ShootingtheJ]

The problem isn't too many games, it's too short of season. Start the season early enough to eliminate all back to backs.

[dbrodz7]

The problem isn't too many games, it's too short of season. Start the season early enough to eliminate all back to backs.

I don't think we need more than October to June, these guys need an offseason. If you're getting rid of back to backs some of the games have to go.

[ShootingtheJ]

The problem isn't too many games, it's too short of season. Start the season early enough to eliminate all back to backs.

I don't think we need more than October to June, these guys need an offseason. If you're getting rid of back to backs some of the games have to go.

Starting the regular season earlier in October works for me.

[MickeyDavis]

Sure eliminating B2B would be nice but I have no interest in stretching the season out even longer.

[MartyConlonOnTheRun]

can't believe we almost missed a chance to the finals due to a young-led hawks team

[MartyConlonOnTheRun]

Sure eliminating B2B would be nice but I have no interest in stretching the season out even longer.

Even just eliminating road black to backs would be fine. Get ride of 2 preseason games and it doesn't add any time.