BGleas

I'm going to lose my mind in the next round when the Celtics play the Bucks. I'm a Giannis fan, but my God does he get away with charging all night long and the refs never call it. He literally plowed through a Bull at the end of the 1st quarter and it was called a block. Donovan challenged and even on replay, where it was 10000% a charge, they didn't overturn it.

Giannis is absolutely on track to be in the conversation for all-time top 10. He's not there yet, but definitely on the track. 2 MVP's 1 DPOY 1 Title 1 Finals MVP 5x All-NBA (should be his 4th all-nba 1st team this year)

There's a lot more to the game then being the best 1-1 scorer. Yes, he gets docked in most peoples mind because he joined Golden State to win his titles, but time changes things. If he had stayed there and won 2-3 more titles things can potentially changed. People used to rag on LeBron for joining Wade and Bosh in Miami but they don't really do that anymore. As it is, people do put an asterisk on those titles though. Maybe Durant was the best talent, but those were and are Curry's teams. Curry had won a title and been to another Game 7 without Durant. Durant hasnt done much without Curry, except for that one Finals appearance with OKC. The bottom line is the NBA is measured by playoff success and in this era LeBron, Curry, Kobe if you count him in the era, and now Giannis have more.

Agree, but it doesn't really matter. It's not our money and there isn't an NIL cap per school or anything. So it doesn't really matter if DD gets $10K or $900K.

I hear what you're saying, but I think you have to go Giannis when looking at the entire body of work (including playoffs).

Yeah, Durant needs to get at least one as the best player or in a situation where it's "his team." The Nets experiment has been a complete disaster. There are definitely a lot of things outside of his control that factor into it, but even just the choice to "partner" with Kyrie and Steve Nash over Steph and Steve Kerr was just a bad career move.

Here's the thing with Durant. He's an all-time great player, no debating that, and he's an all-time great scorer. But, when you look at his legacy to this point, he's never been the best player in the league at any one time. In his era, he's arguably the 4th or 5th best player. LeBron, Steph, Giannis are all definitely ahead of him. You could argue Kobe crosses into Durant's era as well. Looking at the best small forwards ever, he's absolutely behind LeBron and Bird, and you can argue Dr. J should be ahead of him. Dr. J won two ABA titles and also took the Sixers to 3 Finals appearances as the best player on his team before finally getting over the hump and winning it when Moses joined. Durant has the 2 titles with Golden State, but those were Steph's teams and I think almost everyone has a little mental asterisk on those championships for KD. He's not a top 10 all-time player when you really begin listing guys out. Top 20 sure, but not top 10 at this point.

This might be the post of the year!

It's a complete myth that IU/Woodson ran a "2 lineup system". It didn't happen. We're there times that we had 5 subs on the court together, sure, but Woodson never mass-substituted. He phased the bench guys in and then phased them out. 5 bench guys would be in together for a few minutes at most and it was almost exclusively in the 1st half. Michael Durr didn't play in 5 games and numerous times didn't play in the 2nd half. JG had several games where he didn't play in the 2nd half and Bates had some too. Then you add in that Phinisee missed 10 games and Galloway missed 15. This two lineups/mass-substitution thing gets way overblown IMO.

Not sure all of the details, but it has something to do with the T-Wolves owner and animal rights. It's been happening at their games. I think it was Game 1 of this series where someone chained themselves to one of the hoops.

AAU is crazy. I coach my son's 12U team and last weekend we were down 5 with about a minute to go. I'm trying to call timeout and the refs are literally ignoring me. No lie, I was at mid court jumping up and down screaming "timeout" and they ignored me while play went around me. It was insane.

The reason would be if Painter just doesn't want to deal with it. He might not. I think we'll see a few longer tenured coaches get out of early with how NIL and the transfer portal are changing things.

I guess blasting players on Twitter and Instagram is ok now too, right? Again, I don't advocate for doing that, but these guys are basically pro's now?

Interesting that we were able to pull Reneau away from Miami?

I'm not advocating for this, but certain things have always sort of been off limits in college sports vs pro sports. You don't typically boo college kids. The coach gets booed, but you don't typically boo college kids like you do pros. Yes, I know it happens occasionally, but it's not the norm. So, now that these guys are getting paid 6-7 figures, like professionals, do those things go out the window? Do they stop being treated different than pros?

Paying Nigel Pack $800K to go to Miami is not the same as competing with Duke to get Zion Williamson. In the past, Painter wouldn't normally being going after guys he had to compete like that for, now he has no choice.

I've seen numerous posts over the years from posters citing IU players in the 80's and 90's driving some pretty sweet rides over the years. Not saying Knight was cheating, but it's also naive to think IU was the bastion of clean vs. the evil cheaters. Also, Knight going up against a few powerhouse cheaters for a few 5* players is not the same as everyone and their brother being able to throw six figure deals at transfers and end of the bench guys.

Confused on what Bob Knight has to do with this? Otherwise, you don't "dig in" if you don't have interest in digging in. Painter didn't just lose out on a 5* player to Duke. He lost an in-state Kansas St transfer to freaking Miami over an NIL deal.

Agree. I can't imagine Painter is long for staying in coaching at this point, unless he's able and willing to pivot Purdue into something like a Wisconsin model and remain winning.

I'm not against NIL, but the repercussions are going to be interesting to monitor the next few years. Definitely upside with more guys staying in college, and we should experience upside for IU basketball, but I can see a lot of good coaches following guys like Jay Wright and Roy Williams in getting out of the business. Don't get me wrong, I hate Purdue like you all do, but if you're Matt Painter today you have to wonder why you're still doing this. Sure, some guys have always been getting paid, but not like this and not a guy like Pack. I would assume if this transfer had happened even as recently as two years ago, Pack would be at Purdue.

Damn...that cuts deep! Gotta admit though, I was thinking the same thing while watching the Grizz last night.

This is an excellent point/question. I know the narrative is always how bad Kopp and Stewart were and how many minutes they played, but those minutes weren't nearly as high when Galloway and Phinisee were both healthy. I didn't look it up, but just browsing some box scores, there were a lot of games where at least one of Kopp/Stewart had minutes in the teens when everyone was healthy. Didnt Galloway even start for Stewart one game right before his second injury?

There are a couple candidates, but I think Bates is the guy. It would be great if he could make a big leap this offseason and come back on the way to realizing the potential of a top 30-40 recruit.

I would say he was good at calling games. Like you said, he understands the game and was really good at analyzing teams and players. But two things started to impact how good he was. 1) as his stock rose at ESPN, he started to have a shtick instead of being himself (happens to a lot of announcers) and 2) as his sort of beef with IU grew or his sensing that his radio ratings rose as he criticized IU that began seeping into his announcing of games. What I mean by point two is that he'd be announcing games completely unrelated to IU, not even Big Ten games, and go on these weird, random IU rants. It made no sense.