BGleas

One man's opinion who is both an NBA and college basketball fan. 1. Are the players better? Absolutely, 100% 2. Is the basketball better? Not even close, the NBA play is far superior 3. Are there more divas/beefs/mock tough guys/drama? Sure, I'd lean NBA here, but I think it's much, much closer than most college fans would like to admit. Isn't it being a diva to an extent that coaches have to pander to handlers, AAU coaches, family member, etc., when recruiting a kid, and then do it all over again every offseason to convince them to stay? Coaches have to worry about every kid that things don't go perfect for entering the portal? All that stuff makes it challenging and creates drama, we just don't always hear about all of it as college fans compared to the NBA because the NBA is a national sport and college is more regional, etc. I know this makes it sound like I don’t like college basketball, but I love it. I love the pageantry, the history, the game environment, the rivalries, etc., but IMO the actual game play isn't really that good.

Thought this was funny 🤣

It's been an issue with Tatum and Grant Williams for awhile. Udoka has talked about it a lot this season. But clearly Milwaukee made it a focus to exploit that, because many of the 3's referenced were after made Celtics baskets and Milwaukee would rush the ball up, almost like a 5-on-4 break and take/make quick 3's.

Tough loss for my Celtics last night. The Bucks certainly made some big plays, but I'd say the Celtics choked that one away more than the Bucks won it. Tatum's shot selection was horrible and obviously giving up offensive rebounds was huge, but another huge reason we lost was this tweet below and most of these 3's were off of Celtics made baskets...Just unacceptable.

Yeah, I just thought the 2023-present thing was funny.

I saw a reply somewhere that over that time Purdue bigs have scored a total of something like 48 points in the NBA.

Purdue said 2023-Present 🤣🤣

🤣🤣

I haven't listed to the podcast, so maybe Hunter was more specific and I'm wrong here, but I would add that working on perimeter skills doesn't mean JG will be a starting wing or even playing the wing. One thing that has plagued IU since probably Troy Williams was here is our 4's lacking perimeter skills. How much better is IU if JG can bring his rebounding and shotblocking defensively to the 4 spot, while offensively knocking down open shots and even taking other 4's off the dribble effectively. With the way the game is played now, everybody needs to have perimeter skills.

My favorite part of the night!

The 2nd time in the game yesterday that Rob Williams face committed a foul 🤦‍♂️

It was awful! Wanted someone else to bring it up first. Giannis is the best player in the world right now and he's also a really likeable star, but with that said he is being officiated differently than any other player. What he's allowed to get away with is crazy.

His daughter will be a freshmen at IU in the Fall.

Reminds me of the annual video from Ben Simmons every summer of him making a few jumpers 🤣

Agree, especially when talking about the NBA. A lot of fans don't understand the "gather step" in the NBA.

Joey Crawford is crazy! When I worked for the Celtics I would sometimes do the scorekeeping. I was doing the scorekeeping during that Celtics-Pacers series when Pierce was talking trash with Al Harrington and he hit that 3 at the end of the 3rd quarter in one of the games. Anyways, during one of the games in that series a Celtic hit a shot that was called a 2 but the Celtics owner (essentially my boss) thought it was a 3. During a timeout he comes over and is yelling at me to change it to a 3. Joey Crawford sees this and comes over and starts yelling at me at the same time asking "who the F is this guy telling you to change the score? This is my F'ing game and I make the rules!" A bit of an uncomfortable spot for me 🤣.

Steph's real first name is Wardell also.

Agree on all fronts. At the risk of turning this into an NBA discussion, the other issue the Sixers and Harden are having is that they haven't surrounded Harden with shooters, which is something he needs for spacing, especially while being a step slower. Danny Green is cooked, and Niang and Thybulle aren't shooters. They really need Seth Curry.

A huge step this year for the NBA was eliminating all of the baiting of fouls they used to let offensive players get away with. It's not completely out of the game, but they have really reduced letting shooters leap into defenders and calling the foul, letting drivers yank their head back to bait fouls and letting drivers basically hook the defensive players arm to bait fouls. They also eliminated the sweep and lift where the guy with the ball would sweep through the defenders arm and then flail to draw a shooting foul. They still call the foul but it's not shooting anymore, which has reduced offensive players even doing it. Along with being out of shape, I actually think these rule changes are a huge reason why James Harden has fallen off so much. But, these changes have really improved the NBA this season.

Absolutely, and you bring up a very good point about the TV and radio network contracts as well as the shoe/apparel deals. Professionals absolutely get a revenue share of those contracts. Appreciate the reminder on that, that part had slipped my mind when I was responding.

I'm not disagreeing with you here, but we also need to draw the distinction between PR and advertising/marketing. Your name getting mentioned during a game broadcast or being interviewed pre/during/post-game is PR. You don't get compensated for that. Your highlights getting show on SportsCenter or calling into the ESPN morning radio show is PR. You don't get compensated for that. Now, where I agree with you and NIL is that all of that "free" PR builds your marketable value and players should get compensated if Company X wants to leverage a players notoriety to market their products or if ESPN wants to put a player in a commercial to market their college basketball coverage or promote on of their sponsors, etc. But, you don't get paid for the interviews or in-game stuff.

First, Giannis is phenomenal! But with that said, it is crazy how he's allowed to basically truck defenders like a RB trying to plow over a corner and it's always called on the defense.

Juwan Howard needs to get a hold of his team. These guys are ridiculous. TT only has one open scholarship, so the TT coach is supposed to hold up filling that scholarship all summer long because Michigan won't admit this kid unless he's a grad transfer? So TT is supposed to lock up a scholarship the entire summer to cover a kids courses who is leaving? The kid can pay for his own summer classes if he wants to go to Michigan so bad. This will be spun negatively on the TT coach, but that is ridiculous.