They ran a fundraiser for the 15th birthday of r/NBA. There was a sticky thread and a stickied comment on all threads for a while advertising it. The team whose fans donated the most would be featured for a week.

I’m with you on Jokic as an all time passer but I think it’s wrong to say he does nothing or is just scanning and then gets a pass out of nowhere. That’s certainly how it looks but a lot of comes as a result of fooling defenders with his eyes or directing his teammates where to go, sometimes possessions in advance. And especially nowadays, teams are very much reacting to his dominant ability to score which opens up more passing options as a result. It’s pretty hard to evaluate passing in isolation to a players other skills sometimes because in theory a player could be the best passer in the world but if they’re not good enough as a dribbler/scorer/shooter, you might never see it because they rarely generate an advantage. So ironically, as Jokic has gotten better as a scorer, I’ve been somewhat less impressed with him as a passer because it’s easier now.

That all said, I remember thinking even in 2018 or 2019 that he was the best passer I’ve ever seen in terms of the creativity and the advantages he creates with his passes, and it’s cool to see consensus approach that.

One other thing that’s interesting to me about thinking about passing as opposed to most other skills over time is that there are ways in which it’s gotten much easier, as teams take more threes and players are much more spread out on the court. Magic could pinpoint passes to teammates in the paint even with 7 or 8 other guys in there and nobody has to do that anymore.

Tonight I watched the end of the game with my mom, who knows nothing about basketball. There was this play in overtime where Westbrook runs after the ball playing aggressive defense guarding 3 Lakers in the back court as the pass it to each other before finally fouling the third guy in the back court.

My mom was very impressed, said wow that guy looks really good, seeing the defensive effort and energy.

Whereas to me, that’s one of the plays that lost the Clippers the game as shortly after Reaves is fouled by Tucker on a non shooting call but the Clippers are in the bonus as a result of a completely unnecessary foul by Westbrook the minute before so the Lakers get 2 points.

I liked the FIBA reviews where you could hear the refs mic’d up discussing the play and see what angles they were looking at. Reviews were still annoying interruptions but at least there you got to hear the decision making process.

I would like to ask when the bots are expected to be up again but I understand this is a volunteer project so it gets done when it gets done and software estimates are hard even without those constraints. Are you able to say about how many people/hours per week are currently being dedicated to the migration and getting bots up and running?

I’m just curious if the resources available are like 1 guy with 5 hours of free time a month or a team of people putting part time hours each week or something in between.

Kobe’s first half in game 7 of the 2010 finals was the worst basketball I’ve ever seen him play. I think there were two plays where he just dribbled the ball off his leg out of bounds or to the back court completely unforced.