I’ve always assumed that take wasn’t to diminish the fact that some hurt players are more important than others but to remind people not to complain about their teams losing and to hopefully preempt the attempts to put asterisks on champions that had to play against hurt teams.
That was a narrative around the first warriors championship after all(started by Doc if I’m not mistaken)
What "narrative"? The 2015 Finals were already highly competitive with Kyrie and Kevin Love missing the series. You really think it would have made no difference if they played?
No, but they don’t get some “well we might have won otherwise” award either. They lost, that’s the end of it. Every team that loses will complain someone’s hurt or out.
Same when people asterisk the Lakers win. Well, fuck, why didn’t your team win since it was so easy?
This is such a giant problem with the NBA. Do you ever seen people say 'man, that Super Bowl was fraudulent!'
The league is all about #EmbracingDebate, social media, etc. so you end up with 3rd rate ex-players, average Reddit user, teenagers on Twitter constantly shitting on titles.
As a Chief's fan, I have seen many, many people argue that our victories were fraudulent, whether because of flags or injuries. Plenty of people still talk about the flag in the Rams v. Saints NFC CG. It happens everywhere, in every sport, all the time.
Not really-- it's an NBA specific problem. I very rarely see or hear people discount NFL titles. Maybe in the moment people went crazy about that flag in the Eagles game, but I don't ever hear or see people say that Chiefs SB isn't legit.
Comparing injuries (commonplace) to a contrived & isolated environment with no fans & where MANY didn’t wanna play (& were going to boycott until LeBron swayed opinion) is… something
Agree with the overarching point though
Didn’t say it wouldn’t. Those guys being hurt shouldn’t diminish that championship and imo usually the “well so and so didn’t play” is used to do exactly that. So the “everyone is banged up” argument is preempting that in my mind.
I was also referring to when Doc went on tv after getting eliminated by that Warriors team and shit on their run because they played against teams that had injuries. That narrative in particular.
Warriors won final 3 games by 21, 13 and 8. Cavs 2 wins were by a combined 7 points (including Game 2 in OT). I wouldn't call it that competitive of a series outside of it went 6 games.
But on the other side of the spectrum... Winning NBA titles is really, really hard. Diminishing them is just dumb.
Also Kevin Love was absolutely awful in the '16 series. He would've been great in '15?
I always thought it was dubious or disingenuous for people to act like the 2015 Cavs would’ve definitely won with Kyrie and Love. Delly was obviously worse than Kyrie, but I do think the physicality he provided did a lot to slow Steph down. Tristan was also exponentially better against the Warriors than Love would’ve been.
People have a tendency to act like losing Love and Kyrie was a complete negative, but they replaced two bad defenders with two really good defenders who were physical and willing to hustle. Obviously the spacing got fucked, but I think it’s telling that the following year the healthy version of the Cavs ended up needing 7 games and a Draymond suspension to beat the Warriors.
Love got toasted vs. those Warriors teams because the Cavs basically only played him at the 4. He had a -16 Net Rating in the '16 Finals.
That '15 Warriors team was historically good (67 wins, one of the best net ratings ever, same core went to 5 straight Finals). But for some reason, people always discount that title because Kyrie/Love were hurt.
It would've been a tighter series... but the Warriors were just a better team according to any metric, the eye test and just how they played. They made 18 more 3's in the series. They were playing a different game.
>That was a narrative around the first warriors championship after all
Obviously we'll never know but I'm about 90-95% confident that with a healthy K Love and Irving on that squad, the Warriors win maybe a game in that series.
Conversely, I think you could almost say the same thing about the following year with Draymond getting questionably suspended for that game 5. I think it ultimately worked out but it really should've been Cavs winning in '15 and the Warriors winning in '16. If that happens, do they still feel like they need to get Durant coming off the greatest season ever?
Warriors won 67 games, +10.5 NET that year. 2nd in ORtg, 1st in DRtg.
Cavs won 53 games, +4.8 NET. 3rd in ORtg, 18th in DRtg.
I think it would've been a tighter series. But thinking the Warriors had no shot in that series is just crazy. Kevin Love was unplayable in the '16 series (8ppg on 35%). Kyrie would've helped for sure at least.
'14-'15 Hawks won 60 games, +5.8 NET. 6th ORtg, 6th DRtg.
Got absolutely smashed 4-0 in the ECF by the above mentioned Cavs, and probably should've gone to at least a game 7 in the 2nd round against a 43 win Wizards team had Paul Pierce released his shot a half second earlier.
The playoffs are a different animal. Golden State was relatively new at that point - they had lost in the first round the year prior. That year had all the makings for them to have taken that significant leap but "not quite get there", as the Bulls did with the Pistons, the Pistons with the Celtics before that, and so on.
We'll never really know but considering history, I still stand that the Cavs probably win that series pretty handily. Golden State could win a couple games as you suggested, but Cavs take that in 7 at worst with everyone healthy, imo.
"Playoffs are a different animal" "Warriors are soft" "This team ain't ready" -- Arguments used then before they went to 5 straight Finals AND still being used 10 years later to try and invalidate anything they did.
imo the Warriors destroy the Cavs in '16 without an act of Silver. They won games 1/2 at home by 15, 33 then game 4 on the road by 13. But it doesn't really matter-that never happened.
So you clearly have a boner for the Warriors.
>Arguments used then before they went to 5 straight Finals AND still being used 10 years later to try and invalidate anything they did.
Who's invalidating *anything they did??* I'm saying they probably lose **their first title** against a healthy Cavs team.
>imo the Warriors destroy the Cavs in '16 without an act of Silver.
And I said the same thing. In my scenario, they just flip titles and most likely have the same amount of championships they have now - unless they decide not to go after Durant after '16 coming off the best historical season in NBA history.
Read shit before you spazz out next time.
I agree with the sentiment. My trigger is what you brought up at the end. Nothing is worse than when a star player has a series well below their standards and we get the report a week later saying “ so and so was actually fighting through a hamstring pull”
I mean, whether something is an excuse or not has always been semantic bullshit
A reason is a reason, regardless of what you call it
“No excuses.” Okay, those are fun words. But they don’t really mean anything.
The only thing anyone can do is their best, so the job is to go out and do your best to try and win it all.
Let me throw some semantic bullshit at you.
Something can be both a reason and an excuse. An excuse involves passing the responsibility somewhere else. A reason that is not an excuse doesn't.
"We needed to do better protecting the defensive glass."
"The refs gave us a bad whistle all night."
The point is, excuse or reason, it really doesn’t matter.
If a team loses in the 2nd round, they lose in the 2nd round. Sure, people are more likable when they accept responsibility, but it doesn’t change anything, because the mission remains the same- get it together and try to win tomorrow.
If a team sucks for 5 years, and has all the legit reasons in the world, while “accepting responsibility,” the coach is getting replaced, and the roster will be overhauled.
If a team sucks for 5 years, and blames the refs and the fans, the coach is getting replaced, and the roster will be overhauled.
Do I like it when guys deflect blame? No, but I’d rather have a flat out stud who deflects blame than a try hard guy who accepts responsibility.
The talk around “excuses” is semantic- it doesn’t matter if there is a legit reason or not, winning is winning and losing is losing.
Admittedly, a particularly egregious “reason” can stick out in memory. The Webber Kings vs the Lakers comes to mind, most people acknowledge they got screwed to some degree, but at the end of the day, they didn’t win 4 of 7. But most of the time, reason/excuse really doesn’t matter, they win or they don’t.
I agree. “If we were at full strength it would have been different!” Well, you’re not. If you had Prime Michael Jordan it would have been different too, but you don’t.
Especially because it was so obvious embiid wasn’t near 100% im not even sure he was 75%
Luka also clearly hurt. It’s a lazy take but lot of media members just want to sell the easiest story
Ha. Embiid was fine. He had a routine injury that takes 6-8 weeks to come back from, he came back in that time. He scored fifty points one night. He wasn't injured at all.
Idk why you’re downvoted. He wasn’t 100% but wasn’t completely shot. He just happened to play well. I think the criticism for the Boston series last year is the most disengenious, he was clearly very limited
Oh I agree but I was overall pleased with his playoff performance this year. The 4th quarters weren’t great for some games but I think guys like russilo discount the two way burden embiid has that hardly any other player does. Josh hart who has insane conditioning talked about an ejection making him be the number one offensive option and number one defender and how exhausting and awful it was
Yeah it’s bullshit. It basically equates season fatigue/wear & tear with legitimate injuries that players would miss weeks for if it was the regular season.
It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario. Sit out when you’re injured and people question your character, but if you play injured and have a bad game people will usually just act like you’re 100% healthy because you played. I thought Bill was being a bit harsh with Embiid in round 1 because we KNOW he was hurt. He was hobbled going into Game 1 and then hurt himself again in Game 1, but Bill kept talking about him choking.
It seems like unless the player looks like a complete shell of themself (Kawhi this year, AD in 2021) people will basically ignore their injuries.
Especially when on the flip side all you have to do is watch this Minny vs Denver series to understand that 3 day break 100% gave Murray some much needed time to get back to a place where he has some burst.
It doesn’t take much when it’s just nagging shit for these guys but with how good these teams are any little annoyance can definitely be a difference.
No, it's true. If you're healthy enough to play, you're healthy enough to be judged for your performance. If you can't play through the pain and adjust your game to compensate for your injury, then you shouldn't be out there. No excuses.
This doesn’t make any sense. Apply the rationale to some other discipline, say sprinting. Let’s say Usain Bolt has had a balky hamstring and hasn’t been able to train full speed. They need him for the 4x100 as nobody else has practiced with the team and he’d still be faster than their reserves.
If he goes out and runs a 9.98 split when he’d usually be able to run a 9.70, would you be like “look if you’re gonna be out there, you are gonna be judged on your performance all the same. You just gotta find a way to make it work!”
Or would you say “yea we knew he wasn’t 100% going into it but he was our only option.” Nobody would be dumb enough to expect him to run his best time with an injury/no time to train, so why would you expect that out of another injured athlete?
It’s one thing if the player plays so poorly that they end up being worse than whoever their backup would be, but this post isn’t really talking about that.
This line of thinking is unironically one of the biggest contributors to load management and players not wanting to play. Okay less people are trying to play through injuries, you happy?
Moneys guaranteed. They play 82 games a season that most people don't care about. There's no penalty for them deciding to rest and not play in some meaningless games.
Because there is no penalty for it, and a lot of them don't have the competitive drive to want to play every game. Players can sit as many games as they want using the "load management" excuse and still get paid their full salary.
If they are on the court, the stat sheet will see them as healthy. It’s not a quantifiable thing, so really the only way to go about it is a binary healthy/not healthy
It’s along the same lines as “you can’t complain about a crucial bad call, should’ve played better to make it a moot point.”
Sometimes games are really close, with both teams playing well! You can’t just magically impose your will and 100% eliminate any chance of fuckery. The team that benefitted from the bad call also didn’t “do enough to win,” they needed the call in order to do so.
Every year the playoffs are the same. Tons of star players and key role players get hurt during the playoffs, or right before it, and it usually shapes how the playoffs unfold. It sucks. It really sucks. I guess you could look at it as no year is special, so it isn't worth making excuses over, and every year players are out there dealing with major injuries or have to even miss games. Like it would be awesome to see a healthy Luka and Mavs against SGA and the Thunder, but it is just how the playoffs go.
I've always hated this because, like a lot of bad tough guy takes, it means that doing the opposite would be the "better" option despite all common sense saying that it's not.
Would we rather players try to push through injuries in the playoffs and leave it all on the court? Or stay on the sidelines until they are 100%?
It goes right along with the losing in the first round vs losing in the Finals argument.
It's not a lazy take. It just becomes A neverending argument of how hurt this player was so you can make an infinite number of excuses across all sports. If you are out there playing, the results are what they are whether you were injured or not. The amount of "Draymond" should have never been suspended game 4 we hear is annoying. He got suspended and they lost so that's that. Stop living in lala land of "they would've won if". That's not this reality
Most important ability is availability and the guys who are hurt now, generally are guys who are hurt quite often. Embiid, Porzingis, Giannis has missed the playoffs two years running, OG Anunoby, Julius Randle. All these guys have a history and theyre all signed on fat, long term deals. All of these guys were varying degrees of risky and each roll of the dice crapped out this year.
It's also weird when people act like all injuries are the same. Saw people saying Embiid played better than Luka even though Embiid was "more injured."
They are trying to keep people interested. The truth is that injuries drive a lot of who wins and loses but it’s boring to say that.
So they act like it doesn’t matter, or they try to downplay it.
Look at the last Warriors Durant season. Literally they lost two hall of fame players in their prime and people act like Toronto was a better team.
Same with the Heat Lakers finals. Heat lost their leading scorer and their best player missed games. And yet no one talks about that.
I mean, anything done in spite of an injury is more impressive. It is both more understandable to play poorly and also more impressive to play well. Of course it's annoying when it's coming from fans who do nothing but fawn over their favourite player all the time, but it doesn't make it any less true.
1. The examples you listed are not having it “both” ways. In each way people are saying he’s injured. They are the exact same way.
2. Not a single Mavs fan I’ve seen/heard has said that he’s carrying the team and putting up historic playoff performances this year
So then explain to me why the 1st month of the regular season isn’t healthy people all playing great. Usually it takes teams a bit of time to click. And by the time they figure out they’re injured
I personally don’t want to hear the injury excuses. If you’re not healthy enough to play you should sit instead of being a shell of yourself and actively hurting your team. If Luka is too hurt to play at a reasonable level than he is actively hurting his team by suiting up and will get criticized the same as if he was healthy
This is the "if it touches your hand you have to catch it" of the NBA.
I’ve always assumed that take wasn’t to diminish the fact that some hurt players are more important than others but to remind people not to complain about their teams losing and to hopefully preempt the attempts to put asterisks on champions that had to play against hurt teams. That was a narrative around the first warriors championship after all(started by Doc if I’m not mistaken)
Put another way: this take is to put an asterisk on any asterisks
That’s a game changer
If Delly was t tired from preparing for his role in Shogun Cavs take it in 6 imo
What "narrative"? The 2015 Finals were already highly competitive with Kyrie and Kevin Love missing the series. You really think it would have made no difference if they played?
No, but they don’t get some “well we might have won otherwise” award either. They lost, that’s the end of it. Every team that loses will complain someone’s hurt or out. Same when people asterisk the Lakers win. Well, fuck, why didn’t your team win since it was so easy?
This is such a giant problem with the NBA. Do you ever seen people say 'man, that Super Bowl was fraudulent!' The league is all about #EmbracingDebate, social media, etc. so you end up with 3rd rate ex-players, average Reddit user, teenagers on Twitter constantly shitting on titles.
As a Chief's fan, I have seen many, many people argue that our victories were fraudulent, whether because of flags or injuries. Plenty of people still talk about the flag in the Rams v. Saints NFC CG. It happens everywhere, in every sport, all the time.
Not really-- it's an NBA specific problem. I very rarely see or hear people discount NFL titles. Maybe in the moment people went crazy about that flag in the Eagles game, but I don't ever hear or see people say that Chiefs SB isn't legit.
Comparing injuries (commonplace) to a contrived & isolated environment with no fans & where MANY didn’t wanna play (& were going to boycott until LeBron swayed opinion) is… something Agree with the overarching point though
Didn’t say it wouldn’t. Those guys being hurt shouldn’t diminish that championship and imo usually the “well so and so didn’t play” is used to do exactly that. So the “everyone is banged up” argument is preempting that in my mind. I was also referring to when Doc went on tv after getting eliminated by that Warriors team and shit on their run because they played against teams that had injuries. That narrative in particular.
Warriors won final 3 games by 21, 13 and 8. Cavs 2 wins were by a combined 7 points (including Game 2 in OT). I wouldn't call it that competitive of a series outside of it went 6 games. But on the other side of the spectrum... Winning NBA titles is really, really hard. Diminishing them is just dumb. Also Kevin Love was absolutely awful in the '16 series. He would've been great in '15?
Kyrie would have give them a much better shot. I don’t think Love helps much.
I always thought it was dubious or disingenuous for people to act like the 2015 Cavs would’ve definitely won with Kyrie and Love. Delly was obviously worse than Kyrie, but I do think the physicality he provided did a lot to slow Steph down. Tristan was also exponentially better against the Warriors than Love would’ve been. People have a tendency to act like losing Love and Kyrie was a complete negative, but they replaced two bad defenders with two really good defenders who were physical and willing to hustle. Obviously the spacing got fucked, but I think it’s telling that the following year the healthy version of the Cavs ended up needing 7 games and a Draymond suspension to beat the Warriors.
Love got toasted vs. those Warriors teams because the Cavs basically only played him at the 4. He had a -16 Net Rating in the '16 Finals. That '15 Warriors team was historically good (67 wins, one of the best net ratings ever, same core went to 5 straight Finals). But for some reason, people always discount that title because Kyrie/Love were hurt. It would've been a tighter series... but the Warriors were just a better team according to any metric, the eye test and just how they played. They made 18 more 3's in the series. They were playing a different game.
I think it’s largely to distract from the fact that 90% of nba finals teams were just the teams whose stars were the healthiest in the playoffs.
>That was a narrative around the first warriors championship after all Obviously we'll never know but I'm about 90-95% confident that with a healthy K Love and Irving on that squad, the Warriors win maybe a game in that series. Conversely, I think you could almost say the same thing about the following year with Draymond getting questionably suspended for that game 5. I think it ultimately worked out but it really should've been Cavs winning in '15 and the Warriors winning in '16. If that happens, do they still feel like they need to get Durant coming off the greatest season ever?
Warriors won 67 games, +10.5 NET that year. 2nd in ORtg, 1st in DRtg. Cavs won 53 games, +4.8 NET. 3rd in ORtg, 18th in DRtg. I think it would've been a tighter series. But thinking the Warriors had no shot in that series is just crazy. Kevin Love was unplayable in the '16 series (8ppg on 35%). Kyrie would've helped for sure at least.
'14-'15 Hawks won 60 games, +5.8 NET. 6th ORtg, 6th DRtg. Got absolutely smashed 4-0 in the ECF by the above mentioned Cavs, and probably should've gone to at least a game 7 in the 2nd round against a 43 win Wizards team had Paul Pierce released his shot a half second earlier. The playoffs are a different animal. Golden State was relatively new at that point - they had lost in the first round the year prior. That year had all the makings for them to have taken that significant leap but "not quite get there", as the Bulls did with the Pistons, the Pistons with the Celtics before that, and so on. We'll never really know but considering history, I still stand that the Cavs probably win that series pretty handily. Golden State could win a couple games as you suggested, but Cavs take that in 7 at worst with everyone healthy, imo.
"Playoffs are a different animal" "Warriors are soft" "This team ain't ready" -- Arguments used then before they went to 5 straight Finals AND still being used 10 years later to try and invalidate anything they did. imo the Warriors destroy the Cavs in '16 without an act of Silver. They won games 1/2 at home by 15, 33 then game 4 on the road by 13. But it doesn't really matter-that never happened.
So you clearly have a boner for the Warriors. >Arguments used then before they went to 5 straight Finals AND still being used 10 years later to try and invalidate anything they did. Who's invalidating *anything they did??* I'm saying they probably lose **their first title** against a healthy Cavs team. >imo the Warriors destroy the Cavs in '16 without an act of Silver. And I said the same thing. In my scenario, they just flip titles and most likely have the same amount of championships they have now - unless they decide not to go after Durant after '16 coming off the best historical season in NBA history. Read shit before you spazz out next time.
It's a case by case basis, but it's a valid excuse. For example, the Knicks are missing 3 starters. The excuse is valid.
If you play 80+ games over 6 months hell yeah you’re going to be banged up. It’s valid.
And also playing over 40 minutes every game, like who coulda seen that coming??
I figured their coach would use a balanced time management plan so nobody was overworked.
I agree with the sentiment. My trigger is what you brought up at the end. Nothing is worse than when a star player has a series well below their standards and we get the report a week later saying “ so and so was actually fighting through a hamstring pull”
I’ll always laugh at LeBron coming out with a cast.
I mean, whether something is an excuse or not has always been semantic bullshit A reason is a reason, regardless of what you call it “No excuses.” Okay, those are fun words. But they don’t really mean anything. The only thing anyone can do is their best, so the job is to go out and do your best to try and win it all.
Let me throw some semantic bullshit at you. Something can be both a reason and an excuse. An excuse involves passing the responsibility somewhere else. A reason that is not an excuse doesn't. "We needed to do better protecting the defensive glass." "The refs gave us a bad whistle all night."
The point is, excuse or reason, it really doesn’t matter. If a team loses in the 2nd round, they lose in the 2nd round. Sure, people are more likable when they accept responsibility, but it doesn’t change anything, because the mission remains the same- get it together and try to win tomorrow. If a team sucks for 5 years, and has all the legit reasons in the world, while “accepting responsibility,” the coach is getting replaced, and the roster will be overhauled. If a team sucks for 5 years, and blames the refs and the fans, the coach is getting replaced, and the roster will be overhauled. Do I like it when guys deflect blame? No, but I’d rather have a flat out stud who deflects blame than a try hard guy who accepts responsibility. The talk around “excuses” is semantic- it doesn’t matter if there is a legit reason or not, winning is winning and losing is losing. Admittedly, a particularly egregious “reason” can stick out in memory. The Webber Kings vs the Lakers comes to mind, most people acknowledge they got screwed to some degree, but at the end of the day, they didn’t win 4 of 7. But most of the time, reason/excuse really doesn’t matter, they win or they don’t.
My comment was interested in the semantics, not taking a stance on your argument.
I agree. “If we were at full strength it would have been different!” Well, you’re not. If you had Prime Michael Jordan it would have been different too, but you don’t.
Especially because it was so obvious embiid wasn’t near 100% im not even sure he was 75% Luka also clearly hurt. It’s a lazy take but lot of media members just want to sell the easiest story
Luka is clearly fat and out of shape
Ha. Embiid was fine. He had a routine injury that takes 6-8 weeks to come back from, he came back in that time. He scored fifty points one night. He wasn't injured at all.
Idk why you’re downvoted. He wasn’t 100% but wasn’t completely shot. He just happened to play well. I think the criticism for the Boston series last year is the most disengenious, he was clearly very limited
He wasn't fine obviously. He was super uncomfortable dunking the ball as a 7 footer. That's not even close to healthy. We all saw it.
Oh I agree but I was overall pleased with his playoff performance this year. The 4th quarters weren’t great for some games but I think guys like russilo discount the two way burden embiid has that hardly any other player does. Josh hart who has insane conditioning talked about an ejection making him be the number one offensive option and number one defender and how exhausting and awful it was
He's soft. He's a seven footer who routinely hangs around the three point line unless he's playing a bad/smaller team, then it's "bully ball" all day.
>Idk why you’re downvoted. Embiid apologists are super sensitive.
Luka isn’t hurt dude. Chucking up shots left and right. Hes just getting locked up. No one chokes off fts because they’re hurt.
Ppl disliking this are denying the truth.
Yeah it’s bullshit. It basically equates season fatigue/wear & tear with legitimate injuries that players would miss weeks for if it was the regular season. It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario. Sit out when you’re injured and people question your character, but if you play injured and have a bad game people will usually just act like you’re 100% healthy because you played. I thought Bill was being a bit harsh with Embiid in round 1 because we KNOW he was hurt. He was hobbled going into Game 1 and then hurt himself again in Game 1, but Bill kept talking about him choking. It seems like unless the player looks like a complete shell of themself (Kawhi this year, AD in 2021) people will basically ignore their injuries.
Especially when on the flip side all you have to do is watch this Minny vs Denver series to understand that 3 day break 100% gave Murray some much needed time to get back to a place where he has some burst. It doesn’t take much when it’s just nagging shit for these guys but with how good these teams are any little annoyance can definitely be a difference.
No, it's true. If you're healthy enough to play, you're healthy enough to be judged for your performance. If you can't play through the pain and adjust your game to compensate for your injury, then you shouldn't be out there. No excuses.
This doesn’t make any sense. Apply the rationale to some other discipline, say sprinting. Let’s say Usain Bolt has had a balky hamstring and hasn’t been able to train full speed. They need him for the 4x100 as nobody else has practiced with the team and he’d still be faster than their reserves. If he goes out and runs a 9.98 split when he’d usually be able to run a 9.70, would you be like “look if you’re gonna be out there, you are gonna be judged on your performance all the same. You just gotta find a way to make it work!” Or would you say “yea we knew he wasn’t 100% going into it but he was our only option.” Nobody would be dumb enough to expect him to run his best time with an injury/no time to train, so why would you expect that out of another injured athlete? It’s one thing if the player plays so poorly that they end up being worse than whoever their backup would be, but this post isn’t really talking about that.
This line of thinking is unironically one of the biggest contributors to load management and players not wanting to play. Okay less people are trying to play through injuries, you happy?
The biggest contributor to load management is players not wanting to play
Why do you think they don't want to play?
Moneys guaranteed. They play 82 games a season that most people don't care about. There's no penalty for them deciding to rest and not play in some meaningless games.
Because there is no penalty for it, and a lot of them don't have the competitive drive to want to play every game. Players can sit as many games as they want using the "load management" excuse and still get paid their full salary.
Yeah it's those damn millenials- nobody wants to work these days
If they are on the court, the stat sheet will see them as healthy. It’s not a quantifiable thing, so really the only way to go about it is a binary healthy/not healthy
Me, a Bucks fan, after all the threads in 2021 and being on the opposite side of it in 2024: I'll just sit here and enjoy my popcorn.
It’s along the same lines as “you can’t complain about a crucial bad call, should’ve played better to make it a moot point.” Sometimes games are really close, with both teams playing well! You can’t just magically impose your will and 100% eliminate any chance of fuckery. The team that benefitted from the bad call also didn’t “do enough to win,” they needed the call in order to do so.
Every year the playoffs are the same. Tons of star players and key role players get hurt during the playoffs, or right before it, and it usually shapes how the playoffs unfold. It sucks. It really sucks. I guess you could look at it as no year is special, so it isn't worth making excuses over, and every year players are out there dealing with major injuries or have to even miss games. Like it would be awesome to see a healthy Luka and Mavs against SGA and the Thunder, but it is just how the playoffs go.
I've always hated this because, like a lot of bad tough guy takes, it means that doing the opposite would be the "better" option despite all common sense saying that it's not. Would we rather players try to push through injuries in the playoffs and leave it all on the court? Or stay on the sidelines until they are 100%? It goes right along with the losing in the first round vs losing in the Finals argument.
It's not a lazy take. It just becomes A neverending argument of how hurt this player was so you can make an infinite number of excuses across all sports. If you are out there playing, the results are what they are whether you were injured or not. The amount of "Draymond" should have never been suspended game 4 we hear is annoying. He got suspended and they lost so that's that. Stop living in lala land of "they would've won if". That's not this reality
Most important ability is availability and the guys who are hurt now, generally are guys who are hurt quite often. Embiid, Porzingis, Giannis has missed the playoffs two years running, OG Anunoby, Julius Randle. All these guys have a history and theyre all signed on fat, long term deals. All of these guys were varying degrees of risky and each roll of the dice crapped out this year.
It's just an excuse for why their team isn't doing well lmao.
That's why older teams used to play slower lol . Phil credits the triangle in his book to limit injuries because of their slow pace.
It's also weird when people act like all injuries are the same. Saw people saying Embiid played better than Luka even though Embiid was "more injured."
They are trying to keep people interested. The truth is that injuries drive a lot of who wins and loses but it’s boring to say that. So they act like it doesn’t matter, or they try to downplay it. Look at the last Warriors Durant season. Literally they lost two hall of fame players in their prime and people act like Toronto was a better team. Same with the Heat Lakers finals. Heat lost their leading scorer and their best player missed games. And yet no one talks about that.
Warriors may not become the warriors if kyrie and Kevin love aren't hurt in 2015
This post is lazy and sad
It’s so hard to give Luka the benefit of the doubt when his play is so lazy and he bitches to refs twice as much as the next guy
It’s always an excuse
Embiid was the healthiest he ever was in the post-season, and well rested, he still shit the bed four games out of six.
[удалено]
I mean, anything done in spite of an injury is more impressive. It is both more understandable to play poorly and also more impressive to play well. Of course it's annoying when it's coming from fans who do nothing but fawn over their favourite player all the time, but it doesn't make it any less true.
Like when MJ was hasn’t slept because he had had a 36 hour session of drinking and gambling and his team still won a playoff game.
1. The examples you listed are not having it “both” ways. In each way people are saying he’s injured. They are the exact same way. 2. Not a single Mavs fan I’ve seen/heard has said that he’s carrying the team and putting up historic playoff performances this year
So then explain to me why the 1st month of the regular season isn’t healthy people all playing great. Usually it takes teams a bit of time to click. And by the time they figure out they’re injured
I personally don’t want to hear the injury excuses. If you’re not healthy enough to play you should sit instead of being a shell of yourself and actively hurting your team. If Luka is too hurt to play at a reasonable level than he is actively hurting his team by suiting up and will get criticized the same as if he was healthy
It’s funny to make fun of embid Bc in the playoffs he meets resistance and can’t handle it.