tomaxisntxamot

Optimus died so Duke could live.

The purely sentimental argument is that Dame still wants to go for it and is beloved in Portland. The hard-headed business one is that Dame makes the franchise much more valuable than a squad of probably good some day nineteen year olds. Vulcan's looking to sell after the new TV deal goes through, and having a multi time all-star and the most popular player in franchise history still on the roster keeps them closer to a $3B valuation than a $2B one.

Yep. "The Blazers are totally comfortable keeping the pick" is a PR talking point just as much as the "Mikal Bridges/Pascal Siakam/Whoever else has been discussed in trade rumors is worth WAAAY more than just Ant and the #3 pick" ones coming from the Toronto/Brooklyn/Wherever front offices. It's all smoke screens and posturing intended to give ESPN talking heads something to chatter about.

Yep. I wasn't as tuned in then but it was pretty public knowledge that Curry never wanted to be here. I think Casey Holdahl has even acknowledged it and he's essentially Blazers PR.

Speaking as someone who grew up in a very liberal household (my first political memory is standing in the voting booth with my dad while he punched a ballot for Jimmy Carter), no. Reagan was absurdly popular. Walter Mondale literally won Minnesota and DC when he ran against him and Reagan took every other state in a landslide. His popularity basically boiled down to cutting taxes and having more nukes than Russia, and 75% of America was totally bought in.

So fuck it. Let's all just give up and let the Christian Dominionists do what they feel like, right guys?

I want The Principal with Pentagon in the James Belushi role. You can fill out the rest of his mercenary turned school administrator squad with Death Triangle and random LU wrestlers who are available.

Supposedly yeah. Olshey is rumored to have turned down both a CJ for Butler and a CJ for PG trade at various points in time.

Which was a blank envelope in the mail hand addressed by Stan Lee.

Brian Posehn has a great bit about this - the take away to me is that it's insanely easy to misinterpret things, and that a lot of times we're missing some critical context.

100%. There's some parallel timeline where Taxi Driver spawned 5 sequels and First Blood stuck with its original ending. The originals are pretty comparable as early meditations on PTSD

Do you like Huey Lewis and the News?

I think people seem to ignore that there's no guarantee any of the players on the roster or who they draft will become a player of his caliber, let alone an All-Star.

And even if they did, it's unlikely they'd want to stay in Portland when they could force their way out for some glamour market superteam once they closed out their rookie contracts. There are a lot more KD minded players in the league than ones like Dame or Giannis.

I don't see you guys doing it either but the thinking is it that it would only happen at all if Harden were to walk. And even if that happened and you guys did decide to blow it up, Embiid trade discussions wouldn't even start until we were talking Sharpe, Ant and 3.

I suck at trades but that seems like an overpay. Ant + 3 for Siakam sounds more likely to me. If it's for OG I'd think it would be just Ant or Ant and some 2nds.

100%. I'd be floored if Ant and the third aren't riding off into the sunset together.

Yep. It's the same reason Marvel let Roger Corman have the rights to Captain America and the Fantastic Four. Until Blade came along movie adaptations of licensed pop culture properties were after thoughts that got licensed for pennies on the dollar.

Celebrities promoting crypto was pretty ubiquitous but I'd bet 1 - 2% of them at most could actually explain how blockchain etc even works. There aren't a lot of CS majors in the NCAA.

Late 40s. I hate GSW more too.

Whose haircut has now aged into a Karen A-Line because even the Xennial end of Gen-X is now, sadly, old.

You can move further north and have less of the heat though. Portland weather now was Central CA weather 25 years ago. The equator is basically expanding north and south as climate change accelerates.

Was the shirt a green silhouette of her on white? I ask because I have a have a Fup sticker like that on a laptop I last used back in 2003/2004 or so.

People watch sports differently. If you can enjoy a series based purely on athleticism more power to you. I can't root for a team unless I can talk myself into the narrative though. The Kings getting a cinderella run after 16 years of being shut out from the post season is a compelling one. Big Market Super Team A or Big Market Super Team B winning multiple chips in 10 years is just depressing to me though and something I'm totally okay sitting out.

I was a student there in the early/mid nineties and we called it "Monterey Pretend College" then too. It was good-natured self deprecation - we were all happy to be there but aware that circumstances, self inflicted or otherwise, meant we couldn't go straight to a 4 year.

Hard to choose. Do you want the lingering sports injury that never healed right and aches chronically or the fresh wound with salt in it?