Category: NBA

NBA Allegedly Updates Its Logo

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I need to reevaluate my career goals and get into graphic design. Whatever the NBA paid some marketing firm to “refresh” and “modernize” its logo was way, way too much.

Seriously, I could’ve done that. I’d haven been happy to do it for no more than $20,000. I have Microsoft Office. I could’ve clicked through every font and made the decision that Arial Narrow worked better than regular old Arial. I would have lobbied hard for Franklin Gothic Medium, but I don’t know that the NBA would have gone for it.

But maybe I should be giving the NBA more credit for showing some restraint. The 1990s were great, but featured some garish NBA uniforms.

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And then there was the Detroit Pistons logo, which is the New Coke of NBA redesigns.

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If you want more information on the NBA’s updated logo, a press release describing the new “taller, leaner typeface” can be found on their website. I bet writing the press release was harder than actually updating the logo. Gotta own the story I guess.

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Avery Bradley Becomes a Cap Casualty, Traded to Pistons

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So first things first, trading Avery Bradley sucks. Especially for pennies on the dollar. Marcus Morris is a decent player. He’s 6’9″, averaged 14 and 5 the past 2 years and is due less than $11M over the next 2 seasons.  Bradley is going to be a free agent after this season and he is going to make $20M+ per year on his next deal. That is going to happen. There was just no way the Celtics were going to pay Bradley that, not with Al Horford and Gordon Hayward on max contracts and Isaiah Thomas needing to get paid too.

Danny wasn’t about to let a guy walk for nothing, not for a team that is playing the long game. Plus the C’s had to trade one of Smart, Crowder or Bradley to clear enough cap space to even make room for Hayward’s contract so everyone knew something was coming. Sucks to see him go, Bradley has been a member of the Celtics since he was 19 when he was a first rounder in 2010. The guy grew to be a key cog and a defensive stud (who got screwed out of All-NBA this year).

Bradley was a defensive pillar when he was in the game, his offense was up and down, but the guy could hit a corner 3 with the best of them. Game winner buzzer beater 3 over Cleveland anybody? And most recently when he went off in the playoffs against the Wizards this year.

But thats when he was on the court as the guy played in more than 64 games only twice in his NBA career. For a player with an ankle and shoulder injury history, it was never a long term deal Danny Ainge was going to hand out.

But Bradley was the only holdover from the Pierce/Garnett/Allen days and I don’t think that can be overstated. He helped bridge the Celtics from being one of the best teams in the NBA to a lottery team in the basement of the league all the way back to the No. 1 seed and playing in the Eastern Conference Finals. Gotta respect that, best of luck in Detroit man.

To steal a phrase from KG, Avery Bradley was all Grit and Balls.

The Boston Celtics Are Back in Business for a Long Time to Come

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What a time to be a Celtics fan. Not only is Gordon Hayward coming to Boston, but it feels like the landscape of the NBA is starting to change. And it’s changing for the better for Celtics fans.

With the Golden State Warriors, San Antonio Spurs, Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder, the Western Conference is still loaded. Plus, I’m always afraid the Los Angeles Lakers could become serious contenders again overnight. But the Eastern Conference hasn’t been this wide open for a decade.

The Cleveland Cavaliers are starting to look a lot like the Lakers at the end of the Shaq/Kobe years. Still a lot of talent there, but it doesn’t feel like everyone is buying in. It feels like there are some serious cracks in the foundation. I wouldn’t write off LeBron, but he might already be plotting out the next chapter of his career [like Shaq in Miami].

The Celtics were already the Cavaliers’ top challenge in the east going forward. Signing Hayward now makes the Celtics a legitimate threat to stop the Cavaliers from getting back to the Finals. And even if the Cavaliers can hold off the Celtics again next year, which team would you rather be for the next four years?

The Celtics will now be the prime landing spot for anyone who wants to come east and get to the Finals to challenge Golden State. It’s a good situation with a good coach and a young, talented roster. The Cavaliers still might be better on paper, for now, with Lebron, but the clock is a lot closer to midnight for the Cavs than it is for the C’s.

After the Lakers signed Shaq, they were relevant for almost 20 years. This could be a similar moment for the Celtics. This moment is bigger than the acquisitions of Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett ten years ago. Those moves instantly made the Celtics relevant, but every one knew their window was going to be short.

Even though he won’t be here for twenty years, this signing could be what sets off the chain of events that keep the Celtics relevant for the next two decades. Sign me up.

 

Gordon Hayward Joins the Celtics and #WycFireworks are ON!

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Holy hell what a start to Free Agency. Blake Griffin as a potential Celtics target was already off the table before I even had a buzz on Friday night. And then the Pacers flipped out and dealt Paul George to the Thunder for peanuts. So before I went to bed on Friday night I was already rattled and blogging in a panic as the Celtics had firmly placed all of their eggs in the Gordon Hayward basket. If Danny didn’t land Hayward then the Celtics were basically smoked.

Then comes the 4th of July and its reported that Hayward is a Celtic! Wait, nope actually Hayward hadn’t signed with anyone yet!

Was he having second thoughts about leaving Utah? Was he pissed off the news leaked before he could talk with the Jazz? Did that fucking snake Pat Riley swoop in and steal Hayward at the 11th hour? Nah, turns out he was just checking his Players Tribune article for AP style and hadn’t hit publish yet.

Burn those #20 jerseys Jazz fans because ya boy is officially shipping up to Boston.

Isaiah Thomas. Al Horford. Gordon Hayward. Avery Bradley/Marcus Smart. Ante Zizic (?)
Is that a team that can beat the Golden State Warriors? Probably not. Is that a team that can beat LeBron and his suddenly on the verge of imploding Cavs? Definitely. And thats all you can ask for. Lets get to the fucking Finals and cross that Warriors bridge when we get there. The fact that Danny has landed two legitimate All-Star max contract players in back to back offseasons without having to trade any of our top picks is a fucking feat and he should be commended for it.

BUT, as the Wolf once famously put it:


As Felger likes to say, this team may very well be the Bridgies, the team that gets you to the team that wins a title when all your young guys grow up. And that may be true, but I’d much rather have a Bridgies team thats going to the Finals and competing for titles WHILE YOU’RE STILL GETTING BETTER AND STILL BUILDING. The future is bright in Boston. The future is bright and it is green. #WycFireworks for everyone.

PS – All of this excitement was dampened a bit because we had to say goodbye to the one and only Kelly “Maple Jordan” Olynyk. C’s had to renounce his rights to make cap space. Don’t cry because its over, smile because it happened.

The Celtics Free Agency Plans are Crashing and Burning and Free Agency Hasn’t Even Started Yet

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I swear to christ, Celtics fans need their own personal J. Walter Weatherman. Blake Griffin re-signs with the Clippers, Paul George gets traded to the Thunder, and now the Celtics free agency plans are spiraling out of control.

We are now BANKING on Gordon Hayward signing with the Celtics or we are all fucked. I forgot my own rule to never get excited about rumored #WycFireworks until the pen was put to paper. This could all have been avoided if Danny Ainge had only left a note.

The NBA Offseason is the Offseason We Deserve

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The NBA Offseason is a goddamn rollercoaster of emotions and its the only thing keeping me entertained until football starts up again. We got Chris Paul to the Rockets, Paul George and Gordon Hayward possibly to the Celtics, Carmelo Anthony trying to get a buyout from the Knicks, the Porzingis trade rumors, the Celtics trading the No. 1 overall pick, the Lavar Big Baller Brand bullshit, and not to mention Phil Jackson getting shitcanned by the Knicks.

The NBA offseason is literally overflowing with storylines and gives us the juice we need. It beats the hell out of every other sport’s offseason where big moves are few and far between.

I don’t really care to get into every team in the NBA’s salary cap situation because that is a goddamn rabbit hole. So I know half these teams either don’t have the cap space or the assets to bring in max guys, but now we got teams like the Rockets reportedly trying to bring in Paul George. Ya know, the same Paul George that the Celtics are trying to trade for and pair with Hayward, IT, and Horford.

Basically all the reports are saying that the Celtics need to wait until the start of free agency to sign Gordon Hayward before they can (or would even want to) trade for George. So I guess I’ll just sit here with my dick in my hand until July 1st.

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Phil Jackson Shown the Door Before Being Able to Burn the Place Down

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BASKET-US-KNICKSNew York Times – A little more than three years after being brought in as the savior of the Knicks, Phil Jackson is out as team president. Jackson was informed of the team’s decision on Tuesday.

Jackson, 71, who won 11 N.B.A. championships as coach of the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers, never came close to even approaching that type of success with the Knicks. In fact, in their three full seasons under Jackson, the Knicks had a combined record of 80-166, which was among the worst in the league for that period.

Jackson had two years and $24 million remaining on his contract.

Let me get this straight. A 71-year-old man who already has Eleven Rings™, and who attempted to trade the Knicks’ best player purely out of spite, doesn’t have the patience for a complete and total rebuild?

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If the Knicks were a bar on Bar Rescue, Jon Taffer would have walked out by now. The boss is living in the past, has no real strategy going forward and only comes in to work to annoy and harass his employees. Not a winning formula.

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There’s a lot of talk in baseball about free agents getting paid for past performance. That’s why Albert Pujols will be making $30 million in 2021 and why Pablo Sandoval might get paid more than $40 million from the Red Sox just to GTFO. Past performance is exactly why Phil Jackson got a five-year, $60 million deal from the Knicks in 2014.

While some coaches make bad teams good (see Brown, Larry), Jackson was never one of them. Jackson made good teams great. You can’t argue with Eleven Rings™, but don’t tell me he wasn’t in the right places at the right times, with three of the twenty best players of all time as center pieces of his championship teams. The Knicks team Jackson took over might not have had three of the top twenty players in the league at that time, never mind all time. Everyone should have seen this train wreck coming from miles away.

So take your money, Phil, and go home and play with your triangles. Maybe LeBron will give you a call the next time he fires a coach.

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Lets Officially Clear Up What Makes a Super Team in the NBA

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I am tired of everyone pointing out the other Super Teams around the NBA just to make LeBron feel better. They had multiple great players, see they’re a Super Team too. LeBron “I’ve never been on a Super Team” James can cut the shit.

People pointing to the 2008 Celtics as an example of one is what really drives me nuts. Listen, in my mind a Super Team is a team created when the AAU super friends get together, whether its at the Olympics, offseason events, or riding banana boats together with your besties, and decide hey lets all work together to put ourselves on the same team. Which is exactly what LeBron, D Wade and Bosh did with the Heat. They constructed that shit themselves intentionally.

You ever play Madden with a Fantasy Draft team and just ROLL through the league? Yea while it sounds fun going 19-0 with some fake team, you don’t really feel the same accomplishment than when you scrap by as a Wild Card team and win the SB on All-Madden with your auto-generated backup QB because Tom Brady broke his fucking wrist in Week 4.

The 08 Celtics were a team put together by the GM through trades. Danny was shaking hands and kissing babies to put together that team.

Sure they had 3 Hall of Famers on the same team, but one of them didn’t even want to come here in KG. Thats a great, championship winning team built through trades and the draft (who do you think Danny traded to get Ray and KG?).

Rather than 3 assholes sitting on a boat saying you know what forget this team and this city, lets all join up and play together! And as much as I’ll always be like a disappointed parent in Durant going to the Warriors, even that team was built primarily through the draft. Super Team is the new buzzword of the NBA, but however you define it LeBron you sure as shit were on a few of them. End rant.

Rapid Reaction to the Celtics Draft Night: #WycFireworks Postponed (Again)

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So after all the hype, the rumors, and the Woj Bombs I think a lot of people were expecting the Celtics to make a trade Thursday night, but ultimately they stood pat and drafted their guy Jayson Tatum at No. 3. Again.

Look I fully admit I’m not a college basketball expert so I wasn’t going nuts over who they should draft. It sounds like Tatum will be a good fit, a guy who can get to the basket and create offense on his own, which is exactly what the Celtics need.

But, now we’re hearing rumors about the Celtics STILL being in on a potential Paul George trade.

All I’m saying is, the last 3 years have been full of trade speculation and Wyc shouting from the rooftops to expect fireworks.

Well, I don’t know how much more of the “Celtics are in on player X” I can take. First it was Jimmy Butler (who got traded to Minny last night), then it was Paul George, then it was Kristaps Porzingis. In years past it was Kevin Love and Carmelo Anthony. Now everyone’s already got Gordon Hayward penciled into the starting 5 next season, despite the fact that he’d have to eat like $30-$40 million dollars to leave Utah. Its a merry go round and I’ve been on it way too long. I’ll keep my Woj notifications on, but I refuse to get hyped for anything until Woj tells me its happening. Anthony Davis is not walking through that door.

The 300s Drive Time

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Don’t have time for a full podcast? Then we’ve got some bite size content for you in the first episode of Drive Time. Are the Knicks really gonna trade Porzingis? Is Danny gonna sell the farm or trade *down* again? Why is the entire NBA losing its collective mind right now? Tune in, its good for you.