Polls! America is obsessed with polls. Not Polish people, or metal or wooden tubes that sometimes people writhe upon, but surveys, votes, the heart of the Sports Blog Nation’s Electoral Process. If SBN had one. After a pretty boring, and chalk draft, where few indefensible decisions were made, thus generated little drama, NBA trades and to some extent, free agent signings have come through for us. The ongoing NBA soap opera* that is the NBA has lots of emotive singing, and plots that would seem utterly
contrived, if they didn’t, in fact, actually happen.
Let’s start with this one, that asks the SBN reader “Do You Want Your Team To Sign LeBron James”. As you know, LeBron is still the NBA’s leading soap opera* star. LeBron has created little scandal or controversy in his 24 year NBA career, but he doesn’t want any drama. He instead demands, requires and utterly insists upon drama. Usually about what he’ll do next. Even at 41 LeBron can keep the soapy audience of the NBA entertained. But what are the results?
Wow. So fans like the drama, but have a clear mandate for NOT signing LeBron James. Where will he go? Maybe Philadelphia? I have no idea, but rumors have been that the Rockets are not interested in bringing James to the Bayou City.
What’s next? How about “Which of the most prominent traded or signed players will have the biggest impact on their team?
I personally disagree with the results here. I think Giannis will have a bigger impact in Miami. Even if he doesn’t play a lot. It’s difficult to overstate how much better Giannis is than the players in Miami he’s replacing. I’m sure the 76ers will have far better forward play than they had from Paul George (minus the last few weeks of the season) but there’s a kind car wreck of usage coming. Brown, whether he’s a good or bad player analytically speaking, is a high usage player. So is Tyrese Maxey, so is Joel Embiid if he plays. The 76ers will also want to feature VJ Edgecombe as well, I would think. It’s not that there’s “only one ball” so much as “there are only so many attempts”. So while I think the 76ers will improve, I’m just not sure how big the delta between Paul George playing well and Brown will be. That said, Brown typically always plays. That’s subject to the usual caveats, but 76 games of Brown WILL improve the 76ers, especially on defense.
Next up? Who wins the Finals? Can you guess what people said? Probably.
I’m not a New Yorker, or a Knicks fan, but that’s some disrespect. WTF? Seven percent picked the Knicks? Seven? The Knicks will return pretty much everyone except their one key player they actually drafted, Mitchell Robinson. Robinson played great minutes for them, but doesn’t strike me as someone who couldn’t be replaced. The Knicks came within a whisker of sweeping the last three rounds of the NBA playoffs, including the Finals against the favorite (by 4x over the Knicks) Spurs. That seems like it should garner more than 7% of votes.
Guess what? You can put your money where your mouth, is on this one, with Fanduel, if you live in a place that allows such things. By “putting your money where your mouth is” I mean, maybe don’t spend more than a fancy sandwich and drink? Show that you, too, heart NYC or something, if that is something you choose to do, here.
Finally we reach the Rockets.
I think The Great People Of Rocketsia are being too generous here. That’s us all over, though, generous.
Smart has never been a great player, questionable DPOY aside, but he IS an Ime guy, so hooray for that. If there’s one thing this team needs, it’s an avatar of Ime on the court.
Bogdan Son of Bogdan, or as I like to call him BogBog, looked, ah, washed, last season, and also didn’t shoot well. If a shooter who moves only slightly faster than continental drift can’t shoot, it’s hard to see what he’s good for, no matter how tall he is.
I’d give this signing a “Pandering To Ime For Inexplicable Reasons – C- ”. It’s not an “F”, but you just know that Smart is going to play over better players, often. He wasn’t good last year, a couple of playoff games notwithstanding. I don’t think he’s a misunderstood rebel like Dillon Brooks, I think he’s a 32 year old fake point guard who hasn’t been good in years, and was overrated when he was good, roughly four years ago. Silver lining? Smart spends a lot of time being hurt.
So that’s your check in with the 250 year old project that is SBN NBA internet democracy. Stay cool, Shakers.
*What IS a “soap opera” anyway? Settle down, you, younger readers may not know. How would they? Anyhow, back when people rode dinosaurs to work and women were all “trad” (they weren’t), and there were only three channels of television, there were daily dramas that aired every weekday afternoon. These usually involved the turgid, overblown, schemes and machinations of several families. People got married, had torrid affairs, got divorced, and remarried all the time. Since the shows aired in the afternoon, the primary audience at the time was “housewives” (plus the elderly, incarcerated, insane and children) they were sponsored, and often produced, by soap companies, for example Proctor and Gamble (the Cincinnati Soap Monster) that wanted to sell things to women, in large part, soap. Soap was something pretty much everyone watching bought, to clean the dishes, themselves, their kitchen, etc. If the same sort of thing is shown at night, but features truly awful men, expensive settings, and few jokes, it’s not a soap opera, it’s “Prestige TV”.
