The Truth

decent post, but promise me you'll never mention Pac and Wayne in the same sentence ever again... ever.

awesome. we literally traded Randolph for nothing. since we cut both Brewer and Azubuike today, you can take it a step further and say we traded David Lee for Turiaf straight up. D'Antoni doesn't know how to use his talents. he refuses to manage anything more than an eight man rotation and that's haunted us in terms of trades. a good coach makes use of all his players. had Randolph actually gotten time to play this year, we probably could've gotten a low first round pick for him. instead, we get nothing. the Knicks are so depleted in terms of big men, they simply can't afford to get rid of the mediocre Balkman. if Amare or Turiaf goes down with injury, Antonio's gonna get a chunk of minutes, unfortunately.

Blazers probably have the most hardcore fans in basketball outside of the Bulls. they're second in the league in attendance, packed arena every game.

^ obviously, but my point was that it's changing. with what happened with LeBron and Bosh - it's gonna start a whole new trend amongst players. I wouldn't be surprised if Dwight, D-Will, and CP3 left via free agency as well. although, none of this has anything to do with the topic, so I'm just gonna waive the white flag and bounce.

lol I did the same thing when they lost to Chicago a few nights ago. was waiting for you to say something.

either way, you can't just mention the last seven title teams, that's only four different teams. besides, I highly doubt that Miami team would've won a title that year without all those free agent acquisitions. free agency is definitely becoming a bigger part of today's game. it wasn't as common in the early history of the league because there were fewer teams. with what happened last summer, I'm not really sure how you can say free agency doesn't build teams.

the Lakers acquired Shaq via free agency.

crazy. karma's a bitch. gets you every time. it's not good to wish bad on anybody. god sees everything.

this is the best song I've heard since Eminem's 'Beautiful.' I like the concept of the video - literally resurrecting Dre. I'm sure he's felt 'dead' ever since the passing of his son in '08. it's hard forgetting who you are - it's happening to me right now.

what a surprise.

I'm guessing Lee guarded him?

yeah, I couldn't possibly disagree more with this damn author. no shit, Sherlock. that's the way it is in life in general, and especially sports. the young stars get all the money, girls, and attention. wtf else is new? you mean aside from the whole getting paid tens of millions of dollars and being able to play basketball for a living, right? yeah, that's called a smart business decision. he didn't have a choice? really? the C's went to him with an extension offer. how is that not having a choice? not having a choice would be trading him away without offering him an extension. they may not have offered him the world, but don't say he didn't have a choice. this article was short, uninformative, and I noticed the author started three different sentences with the word 'but.' of course, the comments were praising the article, figures.

you want to add teams? that would water down the talent level even more. we'd be seeing retired veterans like Allen Iverson and Antwan Walker back in the league. how would that add competition? that would just create less parity.

but it also makes certain teams more competitive and the league in general more exciting. not necessarily true. if you dropped the Kings and Cavs, their best players would have to sign with new teams. that means guys like Evans, Cousins, and Hickson would have to join other squads. the best teams wouldn't have the cap to sign them, so they'd still go to pretty bad teams. lol the Clips still aren't even a playoff team. that'll change eventually, but that's the way it is with all teams. yeah, but those teams would have to face stiffer competition. the fewer the clubs, the harder it is for the same teams to win every year. that's just one of the negatives. one of the positives is that with fewer of those mediocre players, the league becomes more exciting because there's more talented players on each team.

they should have either traded Rip or fired Kuester. keeping them both on the same team is a disaster for the players and the fans. I said before the deadline that if Detroit failed to trade Rip, Prince, and T-Mac, they'd become the laughingstock of the NBA. looks like I was right on point with that prediction. in all honesty, the owner should probably just trade all the players, fire the whole coaching staff, and get rid of Dumars. yeah, this team's that big of a joke. it's crazy to think they were the most dominant team in the east in the early 2000's. times have definitely changed for them.

honestly, Indiana probably deserves to be contracted more than Milwaukee. the Pacers have worse attendance and I believe their arena lease runs out pretty soon. you don't necessarily have to merge teams. you could just take a couple out of existence and let the players on those rosters become free agents for the other teams to sign. the point of this thread was to see if people think contraction should occur in the NBA. ultimately, I just wanted to see if they thought it'd be better off with 30 teams or if they should decrease that number. I know this topic was debated not too long ago, and at the time, I was in favor of not contracting. however, now, I think I'm on the other side of the fence. decreasing the number of teams in the league would aggregate talents and make the league as a whole more entertaining. fewer teams means more good players on each team, and everyone wants that. I'm not saying they should narrow it down to 24 teams. I think 26 or 28 would do the trick, and it would probably make things a lot more exciting. the only problem is that a couple cities would lose their teams and those fans would be screwed, but hey, you can't please everyone. do I think there's ever going to be less than 30 teams in the NBA? no. they'd lose money with lesser teams and that's not something that interests the league, I'm sure. although, in a perfect world, it'd probably best if the NBA consisted of only 26-28 teams total.

deal's looking better for Boston every day. running Green at the 4 with Garnett or Kristic at the 5 makes it seem even more attractive. Boston still has size, but they can mix it with speed at certain points of the game now as well.

lmao. I know Jack in the Box is a proud sponsor of Los Angeles Lakers basketball. if the Lakers win and keep their opponent to within 100 points, every fan in attendance receives a certificate for two free tacos at participating Jack in the Box restaurants. in the fourth quarter at Staples Center, it's not unusual to hear the fans chanting 'we want tacos!' they've also made Laker t-shirts that have that phrase on the back. http://i.ebayimg.com/03/!C!e6qk!EGk~$(KGrHqMOKi8EzwNljqhCBNDLTyyRjg~~_1.JPG?set_id=8800005007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgkLPS0tJaI

pretend you're David Stern. the Hornets are in your control. let's say you also just bought the Kings from the Maloof brothers. so now, you have two NBA franchises in your hands. if it was your choice, would you eliminate those teams from the league or would you keep them in existence? would the NBA be better off with 28 teams or keeping it at 30?

pisses me off that Brewer's not even on the roster. it's one thing not to play him, but to not even give him that possibility? just really frustrates me. why in the living [expletive] did we trade Randolph if Brewer was going to be just as useless for us? yeah, he totally froze up against the Cavs in a regular season game and just couldn't handle the pressure of playing the worst team in the league. Melo had 16 points in the first quarter. he was dominating, but then he had to sit out the second half to ice his sore elbow. maybe try watching the highlights next time.

they won't be a title contender by then. I think he's going to want to play for a championship caliber team his last couple years.

I meant that's when his contract expires, and I highly doubt he's going to sign another extension with Phoenix.

not always. Fish baits the refs sometimes too.

what difference does it make? a flop is a flop.

you have no room to talk. Fisher and Divac are two of most notorious floppers in NBA history.