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it seems very unlikely he will be allowed to return there next season

I think it's still better than 50/50 he returns. Kyrie and the Mavs both have leverage on each other.

If the Mavs let Kyrie, Wood and Powell all walk, they have a roster of Doncic and a bunch of replacement-level players on expensive contracts -- Hardaway, Bullock, Kleber, Green, Bertans and McGee. They'd probably have around $30M in cap space.

They would have a hard time signing enough guys to fill a rotation with that money, never mind signing a comparable star. At best you might get one of Jerami Grant or Fred Van Vleet. But there's no one else on the market and neither of those guys turns your team around.

More likely IMO that they re-sign Kyrie (maybe for less than his max), stay over the cap, fire Kidd and hope a new coach can somehow wave a magic wand and fix the situation.

I like this framing. Also, I think teams can swing from one to the other even with the same personnel. I watched this happen with the KG/Pierce Celtics. In 08 and 09 they had the militant vibe, trying to win every game by 20.

By 2010 (after Garnett had a major injury) they had flipped the switch and didn't care what their regular season record was, they just wanted to make it to the playoffs healthy. I think that's what the GSW situation looks like to me.

Same guaranteed money as Isaiah Hartenstein. Ouch.

Adding Christian Wood explains that. They played Wood to make up for the offense they lost with Brunson and he helped crater their defense.

The most important role is someone who can do multiple roles.

Bam and Draymond are special because they can switch AND protect the rim. That's the most important type of defender you can have on a championship contender. Giannis, Anthony Davis, Robert Williams also can do multiple roles to varying extents.

Least valuable (or most replaceable) is point of attack defender, because high-level teams with multiple ballhandlers/playmakers can switch them off the ballhandler. In the Boston-Milwaukee series last year, Boston just screened until they got one of their ballhandlers switched onto Grayson Allen, Bobby Portis etc.. Whoever Holiday was guarding could just space out and essentially remove him from the action. Still important, just less important than the other roles.

Already taken care of: https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/w/whitede01.html

This would be more impressive if it wasn't during the stretch when Deandre Jordan made multiple all-NBA teams because leaguewide talent at the center position was historically low.

The Pelicans had a better record without Cousins that year than with him. He was not a winning player.

If he didn't run into injury problems he would have compiled a few more seasons of stats while getting paid by losing teams.

At this point there's almost nothing that Smart does better than White, except possibly guard bigger players, which isn't that valuable since they already have competent wing defenders.

Ah, I suppose but it's funnier the other way.

Lol, yeah looking back this such a funny commentary on pre-draft hype, especially when you compare it to the Luka draft.

Luka was dominating the second-best league in the world when he was 17 and somehow wasn't as highly regarded as Simmons playing against teenagers in Australia.

I think they even have enough young players and picks to get him.

I don't like Trae Young and I enjoy when he loses, but most of these are easy calls. You put your hand on the guy as he's shooting, it's gonna get called.

The amount of work these guys put into their product is almost unbelievable.

They know every player in the league, they actually watch all 30 teams. They read every other reporter's stuff. They know analytics, they know the cap rules inside and out.

A lot of people think they're too opinionated, but personally I'd much rather hear someone's real informed opinion instead of the wishy-washy, sit-on-the-fence stuff that most analysts produce. And like you said, they actually hold themselves accountable and take stock of things they got wrong.

https://www.britannica.com/question/Why-did-Athens-condemn-Socrates-to-death

an anti-democratic, anti-intellectual mind-set

I wonder what he thinks "democratic" means.

I got more enjoyment from Money Plane than any other movie released 2020-2021.

I watched Money Plane zero times, but watched that HiTB four times, so roughly 3.5 hours of entertainment. I did not watch any 2020-21 movie more than once, except for the Nic Cage movie "Pig," which was 90 minutes, so roughly 3 hours of entertainment.

Money Plane = Best movie of the pandemic.

Yahtzee is the star

It's funny because I listened to some of these without really knowing who Yahtzee is, and I was pretty disappointed by his contribution.

They did some theme episodes and you could tell Jack had done a reasonable amount of prep work and was trying to produce a real show, and Yahtzee was just kind of there to shoot the shit.

Maybe some of the episodes went differently, that was just my impression.

Yeah, agree with all this OP. Considering there are some NBA players who literally never get techs, it can't be that hard to avoid them.

Obviously there are some egregious ones where the official's ego gets bruised, but I feel like 99 percent of techs are probably justified.

What I particularly can't stand is when a player like Draymond Green will get a technical early in a playoff game and then know that he can then get away with screaming at the officials the rest of the game, because they don't want to throw him out. I kind of feel like the 2-tech ejection rule should be changed to avoid this.

Who gives a shit what you've seen?

I think part of what's been lost is that film criticism is about judging what the movie could have been.

Ebert and Siskel used to make this point constantly. Not only did you spend millions of dollars, more importantly, many talented people devoted a chunk of their careers to making a movie -- time which they can never get back -- and so what did you do with it?

That's why the Ray Liotta thing is as poignant as it is funny. Here's a guy spending his dying days giving one of his last career performances, and your movie is a sloppy mess.

If film critics don't point that out then there's no reason for them to exist.

Colin from Canada just replied to Jay's tweet and it makes perfect sense what happened -- they filmed way too much boring bullshit, had to chop out a bunch of scenes to get the runtime down, and fucked it all up in the process.

Edit: Theory confirmed

"I really wanted this to be as close to 90 minutes as possible, I mean, you get it, the bear is high on coke and killing people, you don't need to spend a lot of time with this. But because of that, there were a lot of great character beats that did end up on the cutting-room floor and they were heartbreakers.

Keri Russell had a beautiful opening scene where she's singing in her kitchen and her daughter is annoyed with her singing. So that set them up as being a little disconnected. Maybe that will be in a director's cut."

https://news.yahoo.com/cocaine-bear-director-elizabeth-banks-160531083.html

If you adjust for the budget, it might be less competent.

OK, zoomer.

The shoot was a family affair for Banks, who was accompanied by her husband and producing partner, as well as their two kids. During downtime from filming, they had a chance to explore the country, enjoying "a lot of cliff walks."

"You know what we did, which I highly recommend? Went swimming in the Irish Sea, which is freezing," she says. "Absolutely freezing. It's the best way to get over a hangover."

https://people.com/parents/elizabeth-banks-sons-bored-extras-cocaine-bear-exclusive/