#some guy who wants to get into the nba starts with a workout

[lee1504]

me remembering that one time i had to write and publish and actual book for a school project so i created a retelling of romeo and juliet except it was a gay love story and both romeo and juliet (<- who i turned into julien) were both doomed by the narrative and were never supposed to fall in love since their families were on opposite sides of a kingdom and it was a literal masterpiece but when i turned it in for the teacher to read (it had a cover and was laminated and bound and all that) she kind of had a mental break down and said "your writing is excellent and exceeded the standards, but it is too inappropriate for someone your age to read" (i didn't know if the 'inappropriate' part she was talking about was me turning it gay or the amount of blood and gore in the book)

[jrueships]

Omggg demar as kyle's sugardaddy??? I can see it! lol

(reddit nba is . A whole different BREED. like all the rare and weird twitter comments and qrts u find accidentally sometimes just gather there to spawn or something like . It's full of geniuses but. In the unethical replace your ureters with silly string kind)

BUT ANYWAYS I KNOW I REMEMBER SEEING SOMEONE PROPOSE THE IDEA OF KYLE BEING THE OWNER AND DEEBO BEING THE PLAYER WHICH IS ALSO SUPER HOT N CUTE BUT LIKE...... what if... DEEBO is the owner and KYLE is the player?? Kyle the bulldog mentality player who won't back down to nobody & deebo being the silent yet affirming and slightly cold owner of the team who's the first one to BELIEVE in Kyle. Specifically requested Kyle to be traded onto his motley crew chock full of guys who just wanna Run Away? The weather is cold.. it's so far.. it's kinda distended from the other teams..

So when Kyle comes onto the team he's on edge, staying to himself. Hates the fact that he's gotten trades. Hates the fact that he's TRADEABLE. That people can just. Leave him. Push him elsewhere whether he WANTS to or NOT. It doesn't matter because what matters is that They Don't Want Him Anymore. And it's hard to be on that bulldog never give up mentality when everyone's givin up on you.. so of COURSE he doesn't trust this 'young, entrepreneurial newish owner to the team'..

The guy's just some feel good story to give their younger demographic some hope. Probably can't even ball all that well. Just lucked into this position through connections like ALL well offs manage. How is kyle supposed to get to know demar well ANYWAYS when he's so damn quiet all the time??? This team SUCKS this OWNER sucks this PLACE sucks this SITUATION sucks and it's all gonna suck so bad, he just wants to Leave. Leave before things get worse or.. things get Better. & he doesn't want to leave. He starts learning people's names.. their habits their joys their hobbies.. & he doesn't want to leave. But then he does. Because they Traded him. Like all the teams before him. They gave Up on him. Even though he didn't give up on them. It didn't matter

BUT THATS F I N E. Because THAT'S not gonna HAPPEN this time! Kyle will make SURE of it. . . Even if Mr. DeRozan's smile is so cute.. his laugh so genuine.. his eyes so pretty. . . & his passion for the game so Real.. so Raw. You really feel connected through his love for the game. It's how he expressed himself and watches others communicate back. It's his life & his love and GOD the COMPETITIVE DRIVE DeRozan has for each GAME no matter if it's in the middle of the season or right on the verge of a break or against a 'bad team',,, he's Always Trying. Always invested. It really makes a player feel Connected. Not to some tie-cladded investor but... to a man. A real man. With real love for what you do and how you do it and every game he jokes with you in a way that makes you mad but really he's just checking in on you to make sure you're doing alright in a way he Knows won't make you feel like a burden and God the way he notices everything about you that no one's ever cared for in such a way.. explains it with multiples lights.. views.. experiences.. intelligence. Like you really are.. Valuable to him. Like he would rather give away every cent every other cherished item he has then give you away and if someone tried taking you, he'd run through 15 brick walls getting you Back. God. God.

Mr. DeRozan is so. Annoying. Hashtag he's DEFINITELY paying for our dinner after THIS workout. Lol. - kyle lowry of the championship winner Raptors

[dnowit41]

HOW LUKA DONCIC IS EVOLVING AS THE LEADER OF THE MAVS

JAN 18, 2021 ISAAC HARRIS

It was a somber day in early December when the table was set to say goodbye to a legend. It would be J.J. Barea’s final day as a player for the Dallas Mavericks.

Donnie Nelson spoke to the media and offered his bittersweet remarks about Barea’s career. J.J. took questions as it was an emotional day for everyone. In Rick Carlisle’s interview, I wanted to ask him one question.

Obviously, the day was all about Barea’s success story and career in Dallas. But at the same time, I also wondered about the young Mavericks team Barea was departing in the middle of training camp. A team that is made up of 15 players under the age of 30. With Barea’s departure, it left just James Johnson and Boban Marjanovic as the only over-30 players. On top of that, Barea was a franchise legend and beloved by everyone. He was a leader.

So the question I wanted to ask Carlisle was about that leadership baton. With Barea now departing, who gets it next? After I uttered that question to Carlisle, he responded pretty quick and in a firm manner.

“Luka Doncic is our leader,” Carlisle said. “There is no question about that.”

I had put too much weight into the age part of the conversation. In the back of my mind, like a lot of Mavs fans, the 2011 title team still feels like yesterday. This was a squad that started three guys over the age of 30 in the Finals with four more coming off the bench. It was a veteran-laden team from top to bottom. But what about a 2020 Dallas Mavericks team, that by age and experience, is built virtually the opposite of the 2011 group?

Can Luka Doncic, at the age of 21, be the leader of a playoff team in the NBA?

Absolutely—because age doesn’t make a leader.

“There are certain players who have a certain leadership personality,” Carlisle said.  “They have a charisma and magnetism. He [Luka Doncic] has that and that is no secret. Each year he becomes more and more that guy.”

When Doncic was acquired by Dallas in a draft night trade in 2018, the Mavs knew what they were getting: a European prodigy who was arguably the most decorated young European basketball player of all-time. Doncic went pro at the age of 13 at Real Madrid and over the course of his teenage years won the MVP of the Liga ACB, EuroLeague, and EuroLeague Final Four. It wasn’t just the highlights and stat lines that made Doncic stand out, it was also the fact that on a professional team with grown men, veterans such as Sergio Llull and Rudy Fernandez were deferring to the 18-year-old Doncic. And by following Doncic’s lead, Real Madrid found themselves hoisting several championship trophies in his last season in Europe.

Doncic then arrived in Dallas, a city and franchise that had been led for the past two decades by another European: Dirk Nowitzki. As Nowitzki was at the end of his career and the Mavericks still had long-standing veterans like Barea and Devin Harris, Doncic was just a teenaged rookie—no matter how accomplished he had been overseas. But Doncic, a natural leader, had respect for his new vets and didn’t want to step on any toes.

As Doncic tight-roped the rookie-role, once he was on the court, it was clear that he was a natural leader. In the first week of voluntary scrimmages and workouts he was handing out instructions and telling teammates where to go. But as his first few years in the league went on, the veterans on the team, prior to Doncic’s arrival, slowly departed. In the same week, the Mavs traded DeAndre Jordan, Wesley Matthews and Harrison Barnes. Nowitzki rode off into the sunset a few months later. Harris is working for Fox Sports Southwest and Barea is no longer on the team.

There was no doubt remaining. This is Luka Doncic’s team.

But it isn’t just because he’s the best player on the team. It isn’t like a quarterback situation in football. For a lot of NFL teams, whoever starts at quarterback is deemed a team captain by default. Some might think that for an NBA team that whoever the best player is on the team is naturally thrust into the top leadership role when that simply isn’t the case every time.

“There are instances where the best player is not a leader,” said a former scout for the Boston Celtics. “They either don’t have the characteristics of a leader, or they lead in different ways. Some players lead vocally and some are introverted and lead through example.”

The scout continued by using Paul Pierce as a prime example of that. “Pierce was clearly the team’s best player, but he was quiet for the most part and let his game and work ethic do his leading for him. Antoine Walker was an All-Star level player but not as talented as Pierce. He was the team’s backbone and heart. He did most of the talking and the players looked to him for leadership.”

Leadership is basically the process or method in which someone motivates or influences the behavior of others—but how that is done looks different for everyone. Leadership styles differ by the person. Some leaders like to direct, point and vocally coach people into reaching their fullest potential while some leaders tone it back vocally and lead by example. On a recent episode of The Old Man & the Three Podcast, Barea was talking about Dirk’s incredible 2011 run while also describing him as a leader to the team. “He doesn’t talk much,” Barea said. “If you know him, he leads by example. But he doesn’t lead by talking.”

That was Nowitzki’s style of leadership. His work ethic, hours in the gym, and play on the biggest of stages earned him the respect in the locker room. In a way, the leadership path has already been paved in Dallas for Doncic. And in the first few years of his young career, he is doing exactly that.

“He’s an MVP candidate and is a born leader on the floor as you can see,” says a former assistant coach. “He’s not one of those guys it seems that will be on everyone all day every day, but once he’s on the floor it’s a completely different story.”

Doncic set the records and served up magical highlights. He dished out fun passes and put-up stat lines as a rookie that put him with some of the greats. His play on the court earned him the respect, but it was the fun, carefree style and charisma that opened up a lane of leadership that loosened up the mood for everyone.

“He is the type of guy who leads by his play,” Willie Cauley-Stein said. “And when he does, it is fun. He’s a kid. He has fun with the game and you can tell. The way he crafts and approaches the game is fun.”

Nobody likes the uptight, all-serious boss, the one you dread seeing every Monday morning and Chick-Fil-A being open on Sunday is more likely to happen than seeing a smile on their face. That type of leadership isn’t motivating to a lot of people. But Luka is the opposite of that. When you have a leader that breaks the ice, it enables the people around them to fully spread their wings.

“For him, I think he leads by making everything fun instead of so serious all of the time…Luka is always coming in with something to lighten the mood,” Cauley-Stein continued.

When talking to Kristaps Porzingis about Luka as a leader, he too pointed not just to his leading on the court, but how that care-free mentality is a way of leadership. “It comes natural to him because he is capable of doing great things on the court,” Porzingis said. “He is leading by playing great basketball. He has that I-don’t-care mentality when he needs to. I mean that in a good way. He is not afraid of the big moments. He can be careless and that is why he can play so freely. That is just Luka.”

There is never a moment too big for Luka. His basketball knowledge is off the charts and he already has a LeBron-like ability to maximize everyone’s strengths around him on the basketball court. When he was given the Matador nickname early on in his career from former assistant coach, Mike Procopio, it wasn’t because of the Spanish background, but because of the control he has on the court and the entertaining show he puts on for the crowd. Luka has a gravitational force about him that not only draws in the crowd and fans, but teammates too. “Luka is in control from tip to final buzzer and his teammates know it,” one former assistant told me. “He reminds me of Tom Brady to be honest. Someone that was born to lead an organization and has the generational type talent to back it up… he’s a fantastic kid that people gravitate to. He’s great with teammates, coaches, fans. It’s easy to see how all of Europe loved the kid…well besides the fans of the teams he destroyed in the ACB & EuroLeague.”

Doncic is a leader, but he’s an evolving leader in my opinion. When you talk to anyone around the team about Doncic as a leader, you will naturally hear about him leading by example. After losing to the Hornets at home earlier in the season, Doncic didn’t go immediately to the ice bath nor did he leave the arena. He stayed on the court after the game getting up shots with assistant coaches for more than 30 minutes. This is what leaders do. When the team and head coach preached about defense to start the season, it is Doncic that has set the tone defensively (Carlisle’s words, not mine) for what is now a top five defense in the NBA over the first few weeks. That is what leaders do.

Doncic leads by example, but where he has evolved is in his leadership when the ball isn’t in his hands. Luka the leader looked different as a rookie. The majority of his leadership came from the play on the basketball court. But as the past year or so has gone along, Luka the leader of men has evolved.

“He has grown with his chemistry with the guys,” Brunson said. “He has been able to connect with everybody. Guys feed off his energy. That is our go-to guy. He has definitely evolved [as a leader]. There is obviously a lot on his shoulders at the age of 21 and we have to be there to protect him and help him every step of the way.”

When the Mavs went to Orlando for the bubble experience last fall, the only access to the team for fans across the world was what social media provided. Pictures and videos of the team fishing, swimming, playing pickleball and plenty of other activities circulated on social media. The Mavs became the source for fun content and the team’s chemistry was off the charts. So, who was getting the team together for all of that?

“When you got your leader in Luka, and Luka’s a guy that he loves his teammates and he’s always texting ‘hey let’s do this, let’s play cards, let’s go to the pool, let’s go fishing,” Barea said. “It’s all about the team and about having fun.”

When the Mavs were up at pick 31 in the 2020 NBA draft and selected Tyrell Terry out of Stanford in the second round, who was the first Maverick to reach out to him a short time after?

Luka Doncic.

Going back to Barea, there was more to the quote. In describing Dirk’s leadership, he said, “He doesn’t talk much. If you know him, he leads by example. But he doesn’t lead by talking.”

The second half of that quote was this.

“But that year [2011], in timeouts and before the games, he was talking. He was talking loud, pointing fingers. He was on all the time.” Barea said.

Nowitzki evolved as a leader. He picked his spots to be more hands-on and vocal. James Johnson, who has only been with the Mavericks a few short months, had this to say about Doncic as the leader of the team.

“Emerging,” Johnson said. “He is definitely emerging, if not already, as the leader of our team. He is still building and letting his game do the speaking and yet still being able to voice his own opinion in practice.”

It’s that balance that Luka is now discovering in his third season. Dirk paved his own leadership path with the Mavs for over two decades, but Luka isn’t Dirk and that is OK. He is paving his own leadership path and it’s one that brings the best out of his teammates. It maximizes their strengths and inspires them to be better. It allows everyone to have fun and brings the team together both on and off the court.

Luka isn’t Dirk or anyone else. He is Luka Doncic and the leader of the Dallas Mavericks.

[amityso-blog]

But I wasn't going to give him any of my audience

She is seen to represent her entire gender a putative Team 'The Birds' in a way men just aren't. When a bloke screws up, he's just some bloke screwing up. When a woman makes a hash of it, however, she's a cultural signifier, and basis for a million polarised debates.".

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[brajeshupadhyay]

All 22 teams in the NBA restart had to pack more than ever, for a road trip like none other. Teams will spend between five weeks to three months at Disney. This has made equipment managers the unsung heroes of this restart plan. Lake Buena Vista: Rob Pimental spent a good amount of time thinking about everything the Miami Heat would need for what could be a three-month trip to Walt Disney World. He is the Heat equipment manager. Every jersey, sock, sneaker, whatever the team needs, it’s his responsibility to have it ready. So, when it came time to figure out what was getting packed for Disney, Pimental came to a realisation. “Pretty much everything,” said Pimental, who confessed to having a few sleepless nights of worrying. “I’m the type of guy who wants everything on hand, so I literally packed up my entire equipment room and brought it with me.” He’s not alone. All 22 teams in the NBA restart had to pack more than ever, for a road trip like none other. Every team is assured of spending at least five weeks at Disney, and some could be there for three months. The challenges for players and coaches are obvious, but the challenge for equipment managers — among the unsung heroes of this restart plan — aren’t anywhere near as visible to those watching games from afar. “This is what equipment managers were built for, honestly,” Orlando Magic equipment manager Jacob Diamond said. “We have some of the smartest guys around the league that do what I do and at the end of the day, for us, it’s really no job too big, no job too small. Our coaches are relying on us, our players, and this is history right here. So, it’s kind of cool to be a part of it — even though it’s extra work.” For this trip, Diamond has a two-room suite in the hotel that the Magic are calling home. It’s not a perk. He needed the space. Luggage is lined up around all four walls, with more bags in the middle of the room, along with a clothes rack, a large trunk and a bunch of bright blue bags with the Magic logo stacked over by the sliding door that leads to the balcony. He knows the contents of each, where every item is, so if Nikola Vucevic needs a certain pair of socks or Aaron Gordon needs a certain type of compression gear, Diamond finds it in a flash. “I made sure I overpacked for this rather than underpacked,” Diamond said. “It’s not so easy to have things sent here. I’d rather have things here, ready to go, so here we are.” Toronto Raptors equipment manager Paul Elliott prides himself on typically taking only what he needs. He tends to take 45 bags on a standard road trip; by NBA standards, that is packing light. Not this time. For this trip, Elliott’s count was 176 bags. And while most teams only had to move their operation once — from their home facility to Disney — Elliott had to pack the Raptors up twice, first from Toronto to their pre-camp workouts at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, and then again to get the stuff up to Disney. “I looked at it as what they were going to take for a two-week Western road trip, took what I would usually pack for that, and kind of quadrupled it,” Elliott said. “I just had to make sure I had enough options for these guys to accommodate them when they need. I just want to be prepared.” More gear is on the way. By the time games start, the 22 teams will have more than 4,000 jerseys between them. Every team brought three sets of uniforms — typically, two jerseys each for each player. Then the decision was made to give players at Disney the opportunity to wear jerseys with a message raising awareness about social injustice and racial inequality, and those huge shipments are expected to arrive in the next few days. When Elliott started unloading the Raptors’ 176 bags, several staff members who aren’t usually tasked with helping with equipment ran to his aid. More bags will be going back to Toronto when the season ends; Elliott had his assistant send him empty ones to accommodate the new jerseys. “We’ve got the greatest staff for that sort of thing,” Elliott said. “Nobody’s above anything. They just want to make sure it’s done properly.” A photo provided by Orlando Magic equipment manager Jacob Diamond shows the second bedroom inside his suite at the team hotel on the Disney complex in Lake Buena Vista. 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After practices or games, equipment managers will have to load up the sweaty gear, take it back to the hotel, then call a shuttle to pick them up and take them to the laundry facility built for the restart — 66 washers and 66 dryers, all lined up inside what once was a batting cage at the Atlanta Braves’ former spring training complex. There’s also a code among the equipment managers. While the 22 teams will be trying to beat each other, the equipment staffs are working together and helping one another where possible. “We all understand each other’s daily battles,” Diamond said, “because we share the same ones.” The real comforts of home are gone for the next several weeks. The trick, Pimental said, is making sure players don’t have to worry about getting what they need. “It’s something we’ve never done before,” Pimental said. “But we’ll make it work.” Find latest and upcoming tech gadgets online on Tech2 Gadgets. Get technology news, gadgets reviews & ratings. Popular gadgets including laptop, tablet and mobile specifications, features, prices, comparison. The post NBA: As league approaches restart, team equipment managers battle the odds inside the bubble appeared first on Shri Times.

http://sansaartimes.blogspot.com/2020/07/nba-as-league-approaches-restart-team.html

[thenorthreport]

Have the Los Angles Lakers uncovered “The Secret”?

The date was November 5th, 2019, The Lakers were visiting Chicago Bulls in the United Center at the tail end of a three-game road trip. The Lakers were the hottest team in the league  coming off 5 straight wins since losing Los Angeles Clipper's opening night of the and are now sitting on top of the NBA rankings. Coming into this game I thought it was a no-brainer to who was going to win. So confident in the fact that I put a bet on them to come out with the “W”.

 All thought the first 75% of the game all I was able to think about was how much money I was going to lose. In the first three-quarters of this game, this Lakers team looked like they smoked one too many bowls. The turnovers kept raking up, the team looked lost offensively with Anthony Davis only being able to score four points in the first half and eight by the end of the third quarter (which he left early in because he got into foul trouble), and Kyle Kuzma looking like a deer in the headlights ever since coming back from an ankle injury. Also had to give a shout out to JaVale McGee for the pass in the third quarter to Otto Porter Jr. for this open three (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPjTfIdF7eU from 6:00-6:08). It looked like one of those games where the team trailing behind could not for the life of them make a push back into the game and all looked lost when the team failed to bring it back into single digits at the end of the third quarter.

 But then it happened,

 In a situation like this one, there are two types of teams: the ones that will pull their pants down and take what they deserve and the ones who will fight back with BDE. This Lakers team was the latter. Surprisingly a 5-man unit of Alex Caruso, Quinn Cook, Troy Daniels, Kyle Kuzma and Dwight Howard were the ones to score 24 consecutive points for this team starting from the end of the third quarter into the mid-way point of the fourth quarter and it was unbelievable. For starters, Kuzma played aggressively for the limited amount of time he was given to l play in that fourth quarter and was able to put up 11 points on 5/7 shooting in the fourth alone including this sweet off the dribble pull up jumper from the top of the key (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO798fl-uLo 10:04-10:12). Dwight "The Purpose" Howard was at the right place at the right time on the court coming up with big blocks and bigger rebounds throughout their fourth-quarter run. Caruso played solid on both sides on the ball including a huge steal which led to an and-one. Cook was doing his best Curry impression out there with all the backdoor cuts and off-ball screen including a potential four-point play. Finally, Troy Daniels, the fifth guy on the court who had the opportunity to watch this 14-0 run happen before being taken off for LeBron James. In the end, the Lakers took a cushioning 10-point lead in the last five minutes and didn’t look back and in the end, I won some money.

 After this game two thoughts occurred to me: 1. The bench actually resembled some NBA talent and 2. This Lakers team looked professional for the first time in almost 10 years. Now I know what some people might be saying: "This was a win against one of the worst teams in the league considering they are producing bottom 10 in the league in both offensive and defensive efficiency" and "It's too early to be saying nonsense like that" or even "Wait till January or February when Lebron is worn out, Anthony Davis is packing his bags for Chicago and Dwight is already two months released posting workouts videos on Instagram". I'm not saying this team is a favorite for the 2020 NBA finals just yet. The sports season is a long and treacherous journey with many bumps and obstacles on the way. This team will for sure be tested and will have nights where they will feel unstoppable and times where they will feel as if they hit rock bottom. I am not writing this article to jump to conclusions but to simply state facts and the fact here is the Lakers seem to have stumbled upon "The Secret".

 Know you may be asking yourselves: "What the hell is this hot shot up-and-coming sportswriter talking about and what secret is he is alluding to?" well person reading this article “The Secret” is something that has been around this league ever since it started and has been the driving force for every single NBA championship team. “The Secret” was first introduced to the general public by Isiah Thomas of the Detroit Pistons in the finals of 1989 where he offers to multiple reporters that he was going to offer the "secret to basketball". In short, he never really gave the answer to the question rather dodges it by telling stories and talking about team basketball. No one seems to mind this and for years “The Secret” isn't brought up again until the summer of 2007 by a writer by the name of Bill Simmons. There is a whole story about him meeting Isiah Thomas in his book "The Book of Basketball" which I highly recommend everyone read at some point in their lives. Back to "The Secret", this idea was eating up Bill Simmons on the inside ever since he was told the concept so when he finally got to meet him, he asked Isiah this question. Isiah impressed with Bill answered as follows: "The secret of basketball is that it's not about basketball".

  What the hell does that mean?  Well, the short answer to this is that teams were successful because teammates liked each other, knew their roles, ignored statistics and finally, put winning over everything else.

 This Lakers team is on a mission whether its LeBron writing off the haters in his 17th season in the NBA, Anthony Davis proving he can make a deep playoff run without any major injury or Howard trying to stay afloat in an NBA Which had turned their back on him. This squad is filled with veteran players who are at a point in their career where all they care about is winning a championship and/or are trying to prove they still belong in this league. This Lakers team seems to have boughten into a culture and the stats back it up.

 Something that LeBron James has been known for this past couple of years other than his bigger than basketball mentality is the lack of attention defensive end no joke the guy looks like he’s in dire need of some Adderall. Ever since his last season in Miami, LeBron’s defensive intensity and engagement dropped off a cliff which is understandable considering the offensive load this mans must carry not only day in, day out but by the season. Defense is his cruise control or self-drive (for all the tesla owners out there).

 But something changed,

 During an interview in training camp, Anthony Davis came out and told reporters he expected himself and (called out) LeBron to make All-Defensive team which at first seemed like a joke considering LeBron hasn’t been seen on the defensive end since Barak Obama was starting his second term as president. But now seven games into this season LeBron has been refreshing on that the end of the floor. LeBron’s defensive starts thus far are his best in years with his defensive win shares already almost one third he contributed in his last season in Cleveland according to Basketball Reference­—and we are only seven games into the season(note: I did not want to use his first season in LA as an example because he sat out for around a quarter of the season last year). As well he just looks like he gives more of a s--t on that side of the ball which is encouraging.  

 On a greater scale like Kanye West, this Lakers defense is going through a rebirth thanks to the coaching of 1A (Frank Vogel, 1B is Jason Kidd) and his defensive-minded attitude towards the game. This Lakers team looks poised on the side of the court everyone seems to have forgotten how to play in 2019. honors. Vogel’s defense is designed for a team like this, a squad of veteran players who know their role on the defensive end with one player who is a gifted player running or anchoring the whole thing which is Anthony Davis, and it is built beautifully for him. In the rotations alone there are six different players who at some point in their careers got All-Defensive team honors. The best example of their new defensive style can be seen when the Lakers were playing the Jazz in their second game in the season. During this game the Lakers game plan for Mike Conley was to weak high ball screen which is when you force the player the same direction every time, he is given a screen it contained him for being 3-11 from the field and 1-5 from three.

Some of the reason for this improvement from 13th in defensive efficiency rating (and before you say that isn’t so bad this teamed ranked bottom three in points allowed off turnovers and bottom ten in second point opportunity identifying these teams hustle was … sorry that was needed to be said) to 2nd is thanks to the likes of Danny Green’s “doing the little things” mentality whether that be closing out shooters, constantly being in help, or boxing out opposing big (yes this is done more than you think) and Dwight’s new “the purpose” role (I must say this is the second time I have made this joke now but can we please start calling Dwight Howard “The Purpose”?). Shout out to coach 1A for using the “no roll man left behind” scheme for Dwight Howard when he is on the floor. For those who don’t know the “no roll man left behind” is a scheme they have been using for Dwight Howard on defense where his job on a screen and roll is to make sure he stays under on screens and not to let the roller get past him to the basket as well not giving the ball handler a clear way to the basket. Other than that Dwight seems to be lighter and more active this year than in the past three seasons and is ranked second in blocks per game on the team at 2.1 behind Anthony Davis’s league-leading 3.0. Finally, the key reason behind this defensive rejuvenation is because of AD. The best way to describe Anthony Davis is a bigger, longer more athletic Draymond Green. The thing about AD on the defensive end is that he’s so gifted at reading the offense and being able to see things before they happen which is crazy to think and with his athleticism and length, he can easily tip passes, block shots and keep up with players on the perimeter. His help defense whether that is in the pick-and-roll or under the basket are elite.

As good as this defense has been there are still a couple of problems that need to be resolved if this team wants to take a deep playoff run. I still believe this team is missing a good on-ball defender to match up with bigger, more athletic wings and the Clippers have two of those. The only player matching up well with players like these is LeBron James and considering his offensive contribution and his mileage I doubt he has the energy to be able to guard a player like that and do what he does on offense. The solution to this would be to sign or trade for a defensive-minded wing-like Iggy (duh) or low-key Andre Robertson or Trevor Ariza (even though he looks like horse s—t thus far). Second, even though their defensive RTG has risen they still rank second-worst in the NBA in points off fast breaks which means they still need to improve on their hustle back to the other end of the floor. For more on this Laker's defense and to see how well they are performing, I suggest watching Laker Film Room on YouTube who do an excellent job breaking this stuff down.

 The bench productivity so far surprisingly been key to this Lakers team's success. A couple things that are needed to be improved on is their offensive efficiency off the bench which ranks in the bottom ten in the league but I also believe with Kyle Kuzma back in the rotation and staying on the bench this should improve their rating significantly. This benches defense has been their recipe to success so far so much so that their bench plus/minus is ranked second in the league only behind Dallas according to NBA.com. You can say this bench mob has put MUD to shame (only real Laker/NBA fans should get this). As long as this bench finds their groove on the offensive end and get to the middle of the pack efficiency-wise this bench has the potential to be one of the leagues best and be the key to keeping an aging LeBron and a injury-riddled Davis off the court and not needing them to play high 30’s, low 40’s minutes a night.

 After this win against this Bulls team the Lakers have shown their identity and their potential of what they are and maybe— what they can be.

[shogunchelios]

Channel Listings

Channel Listings (Click Here to read this with the videos embedded the way it should be.  Warning, it’s in three parts due to the amount of videos I embed. It’s worth it though, trust me.)

Write what you know. That’s the mantra. That’s the advice writers use to get started. When I’ve got the writer’s block going, I repeat the mantra until I can remember what I know. That’s what brought you the sin rankings. From there, I explored Sloth a lot more, by luxuriating in it for a week.

The great irony of sins is that they’re fun as hell. You avoid them so you can go to heaven, right? Then you get to heaven, and what? You’re not allowed to have the maximum amount of fun possible? What kind of eternal paradise is this? All the most enjoyable things we experience, none of that is allowed to be experienced so you can get into this utopia, where...none of that is ever allowed to be experienced?? That’s the long way of me saying, my idea of heaven involves a lot of sin.

The one I’ve thought the most about is, of course, sloth. It was my number one ranked sin for a reason. So if I’ve gone up to heaven, and I’ve got my cloud mancave going, I’m obviously going to have a giant TV. Yes, it’ll have everything on demand, but I’ll be honest. As great as on demand TV is, I still yearn for the days of yesteryear, where you turn on the TV and something is already playing. Then, you press a button to see something else playing, and so on, and so forth. Channel surfing, can you believe that phrase and activity is basically gone now? It’s been replaced by the endless Netflix scroll. You know it’s not as fun.

This is why I’ve come up with my perfect TV channel broadcast schedule. I was trying to program my own channel, with no restrictions since this is supposed to be heaven. The method I use in choosing the shows at their specific time slots is based on a few factors, like nostalgia (childhood all the way through adulthood), but I also think about the standard weekday and what kinds of shows would be on at that time. It can’t be too unrealistic or my cloud mancave would descend into the uncanny valley awfully fast.

Now, without further ado, here is:

The Perfect Cable Channel

4:00 - 5:00 - Mr. Wizard’s World/Planet Earth

You awake in a stupor. You’re not sure where you are or who you are for a bit. Sometimes you’re in bed, sometimes you’re not, but it’s about 4am, and you still have time for a little snooze. Or, maybe you’re a parent and your kid just woke you up and you’re sitting there, trying to get the little fucker to fall back asleep. Who better to help, than the soft sounds of Mr. Wizard’s World.

He was teaching science before Bill Nye had pubes. Mr. Wizard is the OG of making science fun. As fun as it could be back in the late 80’s before adults decided to try to be friends with youngsters. Back then, all adults were united in being curmudgeon around children, perhaps even hitting them if need be, even if they weren’t your own.

Here’s a fun video in case you don’t remember Mr. Wizard: https://www.youtube.com/embed/jM6m9dAIEB8

I added Planet Earth as an alternative, since not everyone had the same great childhood with Nickelodeon playing non-stop on the TV, or up at 4:00am watching it.

5:00-6:00 - Fraggle Rock / Sesame Street / Eureka’s Castle

Still trying to fall asleep. Or perhaps you just woke up now, trying to be a better person by waking up early. Or maybe that damn kid hasn’t fallen asleep yet. Whatever the reason, you’re up at 5:00am and no one wants to be up at 5:00am. The only ones raring to go at 5am are soccer moms and crossfitters. Neither of them are watching TV. You are though. Because you don’t want to be up at 5am. So you turn on the TV to help ease you into the day.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/cxKC3lLhc_w

Real people are way too much to deal with this early. Muppets though? Or puppets? Is muppet only for Muppet brand puppetry? You google that, I’m going to keep going. Bright colors to help your eyes start to adjust, sweet voices to prime your ears for the day, these shows have it all. And if you got a crying kid, well, now you have a babysitter so you can go to the fridge to grab a snack or take a nap on the couch behind the kid as they learn to count.

6:00-7:00 - Morning Show / Weather / News

Now we’re getting to reasonable adult hours. Here’s where most adults getting up, and most kids are falling asleep during summertime hours. What better programming for both types than current events and weather? Kids don’t care, they fall asleep after being up all night watching TV, and adults need something to chit chat about when they get to work. When there’s no friendly morning banter, only your hard, bitter face of resentment over having to work, you get a bad rap. You have to learn to hide that face, like the rest of them. Pretend to be a host of one of these shows. You’ll end up getting promoted.

7:00-8:00 - Saved by the Bell

You go in later in the day. You’re not a part of management yet, and you’ve still got a bright future. Or maybe you woke up and forgot it was your day off. Either way, it’s early, you’re either getting dressed or about to grab a bowl of cereal. Your day brightens up when after a commercial you hear this wonderful theme song:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/fSeTiYspNGk

Zack Morris is the Dobie Gillis of the color TV generation. I think Zac Efron probably took the mantle afterwards, except I think he just did TV movies. Whatever, point being, the ideal model of what kind of teenager to be was best shown on Saved by the Bell. Zack was the number one ideal, obviously, because he was the coolest and perhaps the richest, since he had a cell phone. Perhaps the richest, because last-place Screech (RIP) had a robot, which Rocky Balboa could only afford after Rocky III.

Slater was the ideal for anyone with some athletic ability. He was hispanic on the show, but not enough for him to be a hispanic role model. I’d have to wait for Desperado to come out to get one of those. Kelly was the ideal for hot chicks, Jessie the ideal for smart chicks that like meth, and Lisa the ideal for fashion folks.

I related the best to Mr. Belding. Tries his best, but passed over because of a cooler brother.

8:00-9:00 - Wings

Wings doesn’t get nearly enough love from folks. Same for The Drew Carey Show, but one fight at a time. Wings. At this time of day, the more adult oriented shows start to play, but not too adult. They knew kids like me would tune in on sick days or during the summer time when kids never sleep. I remember watching this at my friend Rene’s house while he had breakfast. I’d leave my house at the crack of dawn to go play outside, but before that, we needed some breakfast and Wings was always playing.

Again, though, not enough folks have even heard of Wings. This Family Guy joke is fairly accurate:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/9Jqv7TlTtno

9:00-10:00 - Price is Right / Wheel of Fortune / Supermarket Sweep

By this time, if you’re still watching TV, then you’re not going to work or school. That means you’ll need to get your brain some stimulation in a different way. Competing along with the folks on the TV, your brain gets the same kind of workout it would’ve gotten at work. The whole time you watch, you also get to feel superior, because for sure you would’ve gotten that last question right. If only you could be a contestant one day.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/fnTbO26u9bQ

When I was a kid, I called one of those numbers they advertised in commercials so you can play at home. I liked dialing numbers I saw to see if anyone would answer. I would freak out my fellow 7-year olds by dialing all these numbers and suddenly there was a voice, asking them if they were ready to switch brands of deodorant. They’d freak, hang up, and we’d laugh and laugh. The time I called that game show, I hung up, and the fuckers called back! I hung up again and hid under the bed. A few weeks later, my dad had to yell at me because they charged him five bucks, even though I hung up. I definitely learned my lesson.

Only call these numbers from payphones.

10:00-11:00 - Morning Cartoon

Believe it or not, but I have notes for the stuff I write. I try to plan things out, like a real writer would, except about dumb things like this. I mention that because I have ‘Morning Cartoon’ written in this spot here, but knowing that it’d be surprising that I even have notes, not surprising is that I’m not sure what I meant by my note. There’s a few things that spring to mind right away.

First, this is where the morning block of cartoons would end if it were Saturday. From 10:00 to 11:00 is when the worst cartoons were on anyway. That was the signal that things were ending and that it was almost time to go play outside. Stuff like Beakman’s World, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, NBA Inside Stuff. Sure, they’re all fine programs (Beakman is my second favorite science show. That’s right, Bill Nye doesn’t even rank with me, how do you like me now), but they’re not cartoons. So, if this were a Saturday, here’s about the time where you’d be wrapping up your cartoon session. Maybe doing that one quick chore, so you can go outside and play, ‘but mom, look, I even made my bed!’

Otherwise, if this were a weekday, I guess here would be a good spot for a Saturday morning style cartoon. Spiderman, X-Men, maybe, since they had the best theme songs. Getting this one-two combo back to back, this will gear you up for the midday slump in daytime TV.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/DZGN9fZvQhc

https://www.youtube.com/embed/sAkL2-vh2Sk

11:00-12:00 12:00-1:00 1:00-2:00 - Classic Cartoons/Sitcoms/Movies

This part of the day is the slowest time for TV. If you’re into daytime talk shows or soap operas, then nevermind, you’re having the time of your life. If you’ve been up for a while and watching TV, here’s about the time where you start looking for something else to do. Or you start thinking of lunch. Or maybe you just woke up now, hungover as hell. Either way, comfort is the way to go here.

Uncle Buck is the best example of a movie to be played around this time. Imagine you’re hungover, and you wipe the crunch out of your eyes as the TV turns on. “I’m Buck Melanoma. I’m Mole-y Russel’s Wart.” Headache or not, you’re going to be smiling.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/xEt5dEOcW0I

The alternative here could be a Looney Tunes marathon, or if you’re not an oldster like me, then maybe some Nicktoons. Sitcoms like Taxi or Who’s the Boss go great here, or, again if you’re not ancient, then you can go with Friends or King of Queens here. Whatever passes the time as you try to recover from that hangover.

2:00-3:00 - Catch-Up Time / Start the binge

You have an extra lunchtime at work today, so you go home and eat. You have the extra time so why not, turn on the TV and enjoy your lunch. If you’re with your spouse, then right now is a good time to watch the rest of that show you were watching the night before. As usual, one of you fell asleep and didn’t see the ending, so here you both watch it, and then you can discuss it afterwards.

If it’s a weekend and you’ve already got your daily errand out of the way, then now would be an ideal time to start on a new binge or to continue the extra long binge you’ve been on.

3:00-4:00 - Game Show

You got out of work early so you get to enjoy a bit of Family Feud or even an early Jeopardy! Maybe it was a slow day, or you’re about to start a three day weekend, but here’s where you can crack open your first beer. You don’t need those qualifiers of course, but they’re good to have when someone wants to call you an alcoholic.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/HeGVeBWECu8

4:00-6:00 - Catch-Up Time / Start the binge

What’s that? I’m repeating myself? Look buddy, I don’t know where you get off telling me how to do my bits, but I’ve had enough of ya. Beat it, and don’t let me catch you around here again. Ok, now that I got rid of that wiseguy, yes, this is a repeat, but that’s because now is when you actually got out of work. Still a good time to catch up on that show from last night, right before you start on dinner.

Not many folks watch TV as soon as they get home from work. Everyone has their own unwinding routine. That’s why I had to repeat this part. If you really want a specific show here, then consider a cartoon that’s aimed at older teens, like Daria, or Gravity Falls/Steven Universe which I haven’t seen, but I hear they’re good. If you’ve had your fill of cartoons, then newer sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother or Seinfeld or The Office.

6:00-7:00 - Sports Pre-Show / New Drama

Depending on the time of year, this is usually when we’re watching the pregame to something or other. If it’s the weekend, maybe it’s the undercard of a fight. During the week, probably football or any other sport you might enjoy is coming up and right now are the highlights and the talking heads.

If it’s spouse TV time, then this is probably when you start your favorite broadcast drama, like Chicago Fire, or Law and Order or This is Us. Perhaps watch the last episode because you forgot what happened because one of y’all fell asleep. All the best stuff starts at 7, so think of this as your appetizer hour.

7:00-8:00 8:00-9:00 - Wrestling / Football / Current Prestige Show / Movie

Date night, Date night. If you got yourself a lady/fella, right now is when you’re watching something that they like. You’re trying to make a move so you want to put them in the right mood. Now’s the time to take care of spousal duties and get through that romantic comedy they’ve been wanting to see.

If you all have been together for a while, then this is when you watch your current favorite prestige TV show. Anything on HBO can qualify here, like Big Little Lies, Mare of Easttown, Game of Thrones. If wifey is out, or if you’re a modern hip couple that does separate activities, this is also when you’re watching football or wrestling.

You demand very little, but watching football and wrestling live are parts of those demands. It doesn’t matter how good the game or show may be, if you’re watching it after it airs, it just doesn’t hit the same level. As much as I try to avoid spoilers, I just can’t help but check my notifications or twitter, and sure enough, there’s the score or the big reveal in wrestling. Once you know who wins the match, no matter how great the match is, the tension is gone. Same with football. The tension is why you’re there. You’re watching this stuff live to get a rush. At this time of night, you’re deciding what kind of night you’re going to have. You need something to match up.

Date night? Romantic movie, some wine, then here comes the smooches, then the snoozes. Single life? Bro movie to get you amped up to go out, like Wolf of Wall Street. Regular domestic night? This is the part of the day where you get your rush. Prestige TV with some murders or lots of t&a like Game of Thrones. It’s all about the rush in this timeslot.

9:00-10:00 - Personal Favorite / Guilty Pleasure show

Around this time, the wife is going to get up to start her bedtime routine, which can take anywhere from half an hour to about an hour and a half. Makeup removal, picking out clothes for the next day, a crapload of creams. Who knows what else they’re up to in that bathroom. So now’s your chance to watch that show that she hates. You know the one, maybe it’s too dirty, or too violent, or too abstract. This could be something like a Cinemax show like Banshee or Strike Back.

If you’re alone, then this is the show you watch because you heard from your friend that it’s good. You want to try something new so now you check it out. It could be something like Letterkenny, or Lupin, or Dave. If you’re with the spouse and they’re not going to bed, maybe you all are living large and are forgoing the sensible bedtime, then respect, my friend, that’s the way to live. Here is where the two of you are watching reality shows like 90 Day Fiance, Married at First Sight, or Real Houswives of Wherever. Yeah, you say you don’t like them, but you can’t help to get invested in these folks.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/iRtbJXNM-aw

10:00-11:00 - Night Show

Folks have jobs and need to wake up early to get ready, so by now, you should be in bed. You’re just watching so you don’t feel so lonely in the dark. That’s why it’s important to have a good friend with you and nowadays, you have so many choices. Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Conan, The Daily Show. They’ll tell you the news, crack a few jokes, give you a funny skit or two. Here’s where you can steal some material to share with the office tomorrow.

Before smart phones and memes, everything would need to be acted out. Part of the fun was the bad impressions and terrible re-telling of jokes from the night before. That’s all gone. Now it’s just ‘did you see that funny bit last night on Conan? Here, watch the video.’ The person watches, laughs politely, hands the phone back, and ask you if you remember the whole Conan vs Jay Leno stuff. You say yes, agree that it was so crazy, then you both go back to your cubicles to wait for the sweet release of death.

11:00-12:00 - Late Show

Still up, huh? I hope you don’t have to work tomorrow, or you’ll be dragging ass when you wake up tomorrow. Oh, you do work tomorrow? Just one more show before bed? Ok, fine. That article you googled says to turn off everything when you’re trying to sleep, but apparently you wake up when you turn off the TV, so you might as well keep it on. You’ll watch with one eye closed so the other eye can get the hint.

To be frank, I lost track of who’s on the Late Show circuit ever since Conan left way back when. Who is it? Seth Meyers? James Corden? But you’re up and you have to watch something. You can’t watch one of your shows and get a jump ahead of your spouse. You can’t watch your guilty pleasure because what if you fall asleep and miss all the important stuff. You have to watch something self-contained but not too challenging so your mind can drift off.

I just hope you’re already drowsy by the time the second guest is coming on.

12:00-1:00 1:00-2:00 - Drunk or High Movie / Commercials

Oh, you’re not drowsy? Just can’t sleep? Been drinking too much caffeine there? Or maybe you just got home from a few after-work cocktails. It’s midnight, you’re up, not too sleepy. Some folks go for illicit substances for the quick fix. Maybe a beer or two, a couple of pills, a joint. Yeah, all the articles you read about sleep say that even though those substances can knock you out, the sleep isn’t genuine so you don’t get full benefit. There might be something to that. I often wake up in the middle of the night after a night of drinking or smoking. I think it’s when my liver is done processing all the junk.

Or you just got home from doing all that and you’re looking for something to watch while you eat a couple pounds of fast food. TV shows aren’t great here because there might be references to things you don’t remember because you’re blasted out of your mind. Movies are the key here. There’s always a great movie playing around this time. Rated R comedies, like Super Troopers, Wedding Crashers, Superbad, Beer Fest, great party movies to watch while intoxicated. If sober, they’re familiar and safe because it’s on Comedy Central and it’s censored.

Be careful the movie you pick here. One time, I couldn’t sleep and stumbled upon a movie about some Mexican American fellas. Oh, someone’s named Miclo, must be that movie everyone references. So I start watching this movie, Blood In, Blood Out, though it was labeled Bound By Honor in the TV Guide. Shit, that movie is 4 freaking hours long! So, find the movie playing on basic cable.

Besides, it’s what’s between the movies that you’re starting to focus on more. Those damn commercials, somehow it’s always when they’re playing that the wife wakes up. She sees sexy college girls that are waiting for my call and turns to me, as if I can control the commercials on the TV, but she doesn’t give a damn. Turn the TV off and go to bed. Ok, jeez, not like I was even paying attention to the commercials.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/kfVA8iSGgDc

2:00-3:00 - History Channel

You tried to sleep, but it’s still not working. You want to put something on that’s safe, so if anyone wakes up, there’s no chance of anything even remotely inappropriate. Even if there’s no one else there, you don’t want to start getting worked up this late at night. Then you’re off on a bender, trying to find some perfect scene to watch while you go to town and then the belt comes out and now you’re dealing with all these new logistics and at this time of night, it’s just too much stimulation.

Nice safe History Channel. Sure, there’s some stuff about aliens on there, but everything is presented in the same way, with lots of big words and names of places and dates. Everything that put you to sleep in school, but now while you lay in your nice comfortable bed. Hopefully soon the sandman comes for you.

3:00-3:30 - Google Deep Dive

The sphinx was constructed around 10,000 BC? No way. I have to get to the bottom of this. Gobleki Tepe? Better check out this YouTube video of when civilization began.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/czgOWmtGVGs

3:30-3:45 - Infomercial

You’re back in bed, it’s so late and you know tomorrow is going to suck. Oh shit, you mean today. You’re not going to get enough rest and you’re going to be so tired at work. Nothing is working. Except turning the TV off, can’t do that and just lay in the dark. That’s when the monsters come.

You would think informercials are great for putting you to sleep, but I always got excited watching them. If I was some sorta rich kid with a credit card, we would’ve had so much crap at home. Ron Popeil was my homeboy and he always had some awesome invention. I think the first one I saw was one I wouldn’t have needed at the time.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/2GeF7A05zQ8

The first one I saw that I pictured myself having was the food dehydrator. I had no idea how it worked though, because I had no idea what that word meant. I would see the contraption, but I couldn’t figure the mechanism. He would lay some meat out on one of the trays, then say he waits a week, then it was jerky. And I’m like ‘HOW?’

https://www.youtube.com/embed/rN1XvTJNrXU

Oh, and don’t get me started on the pasta maker. GREEN pasta?? What?? Yo, don’t even..don’t..Chocolate...CHOCOLATE pasta?? Oh Ron, come on, how can an eight year old kid order one of these?

https://www.youtube.com/embed/j8WMXyXBGpM?start=93

Ron Popeil, the Edison of our time. All these awesome inventions and guess what? It’s never going to cost as much as you think. What? A thousand dollar value? You’ll never pay a thousand dollars. All you’ll ever pay is? FOUR EASY PAYMENTS.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/B0NS44D7MYo

https://www.youtube.com/embed/JHInK-FRD9I

3:45-3:59 - Damn those commercials

Damn it, go grab the belt. Going to have to rub one out to release the sweet sleep chemicals in the brain. Uh oh, be careful, the belt is stuck, you’re going to pass out. It’s getting d..ark...you .. breathe...can’t...almost...there…..breathe..cant..d.

…. .gasp .. .. .. ….a .. .

. ……. gasp. . . .. ……… … . ...r . ….. K… .. ….

*the belt slips off the doorknob. Your body crumples to the floor. Gaaaasp.

You awake in a stupor.

[junker-town]

NBA mock draft 2020: Our writers make picks for their favorite teams

Our latest mock draft is from those who know each team best.

The Minnesota Timberwolves are finally on the clock. After a nearly five-month delay because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2020 NBA Draft is set to be held on Wednesday, Nov. 18. While this isn’t considered the strongest draft class in recent memory, it is still full of young and exciting players who will one day help shape the future of the league.

As the draft approaches, the SB Nation NBA community sites have held a mock draft. One representative from every community made the pick for their team. No trades were allowed this year because of the league’s delayed salary cap announcement.

Click the related link to each SB Nation NBA community for further analysis of the selection, and join the discussion in the comments. In a draft with little consensus at the top, there’s certainly going to be plenty to debate. We begin the draft with Canis Hoopus selecting for the Wolves.

1. Minnesota Timberwolves - Anthony Edwards, G, Georgia

Sans the ability to trade picks in this Blogger Mock Draft, this becomes the most logical move for Gersson Rosas at the top. The Wolves currently have their cornerstone PG/C duo (for better or worse), so selecting either James Wiseman or LaMelo Ball doesn’t appear to make much sense for Minnesota. While Edwards does carry the slight risk of becoming Andrew Wiggins 2.0 in the land of 10,000 lakes, his overall athleticism and offensive potential are too good to pass up for a team desperately in need of talent on the wing.

- Kyle Theige, Canis Hoopus

2. Golden State Warriors - James Wiseman, C, Memphis

Because we can’t trade the pick, I went with the player who is the best available and fills a big need for the Warriors. Wiseman has all of the tools to be a very good center in the league. He is one of the best athletes available and will develop into a solid rim-protector. Although his college sample size is small, Wiseman has apparently been killing it during workouts. General manager Bob Myers can focus on adding a wing via free agency and take a flier on a cheap PF/C to fill out the roster.

- Jas Kang, Golden State of Mind

3. Charlotte Hornets - LaMelo Ball, PG, Illawara Hawks

The Hornets are in talent acquisition mode, and LaMelo Ball might be the most talented prospect in this draft. Ball is positionally redundant with the Hornets’ current two best players, but his size allows him to share the floor with either Terry Rozier or Devonte’ Graham, and even both for stretches. His ability to create looks for others will open up scoring opportunities for both of the other Hornets guards, who were often overburdened on the offensive end last season. He would also bring a superstar presence to a franchise that’s always struggling to attain media relevance.

- Jonathan DeLong, At the Hive

4. Chicago Bulls - Killian Hayes, G, Ulm

Like Charlotte, Chicago is also in talent acquisition mode and should be aiming to take the best player on the board. That player is Killian Hayes. He also fits Chicago’s need for a lead guard who can get everyone into the right spots on offense along with creating some scoring of his own, especially with his shooting off the dribble. Hayes has already shown he can play over in Europe and has the tools to be a good player in the NBA. With Coby White viewed more as a two guard, Hayes will easily slot in as Chicago’s point guard of the future. There is a lot of upside with this pick.

- Vijay Vemu, Blog-a-Bull

5. Cleveland Cavaliers - Onyeka Okongwu, C, USC

For the record, Deni Avdija and Isaac Okoro were the other options strongly considered here. But the Cavs desperately need a defensive presence for now and the long-term. Andre Drummond just isn’t that. Okongwu’s ability to cover ground, rotate correctly and play smart defense is needed for a franchise that has been historically bad on defense for the past two seasons. What his offensive game looks like is a mystery and it’s hard to pass up two wings - another position of need. But Okongwu’s upside and ability to fill a need is just too good to pass up.

- Chris Manning, Fear the Sword

6. Atlanta Hawks - Isaac Okoro, F, Auburn

This is a draft class in which many of the prospects are bunched tightly together, meaning that a lot of the picks in this range come down to personal preference. The Hawks would’ve considered Killian Hayes as an upside swing if he fell to No. 6, but with him off the board, the decision came down to Okoro and Devin Vassell. There isn’t a massive gap between those two players in a vacuum, but Okoro brings an intriguing skill set, with athleticism, strength and defensive upside. Offensively, he can attack close-outs, finish at the rim, make plays as a passer and serve as a secondary creator. His jump shot is a work in progress but, if he can become a league-average perimeter shooter, the sky is the limit. Even if he can’t, his other skills, headlined by his defense, will carry the day.

- Brad Rowland, Peachtree Hoops

7. Detroit Pistons - R.J. Hampton, G, New Zealand Breakers

This was an incredibly tough decision based on how important it is for a franchise desperately in need of top-end playmaking and talent to reach in the draft for a player with the potential to fill that goal. Do you take a player with all-around skills you are confident in or do you evaluate who might have that small chance of being a No. 1 option? That was the great Patrick Williams vs. RJ Hampton debate in the Pistons war room. In the end, we decided first-year GM Troy Weaver should swing for the fences on guard R.J. Hampton who has athleticism and playmaking skills to lead the Pistons offense at the one or the two, whichever he naturally fits best. Williams, meanwhile, would be a great complementary piece, but Detroit really needs that piece he’d be complementing. Other factors in Hampton’s favor are a) his youth, b) that Hampton has been working to remake and transform his shot into something that would work at the next level. If he can become a potent perimeter shooter, he could be an incredibly successful offensive player in the NBA and while he has a lot to work on from a defensive perspective, he has the athletic tools to be successful with dedicated development time.

- Sean Corp, Detroit Bad Boys

8. New York Knicks - Devin Vassell, G, Florida State

The Knicks need a little bit of everything, but one thing they need most is outside shooting. Devin Vassell shot over 40% in both of his seasons at Florida State, and is a certified genius in team defense. He rose from outside the top 200 in the high school recruiting rankings to a top-10 pick in two years, so we’re betting there is still some upside to be had.

- Joe Flynn, Posting and Toasting

9. Washington Wizards - Tyrese Haliburton, G, Iowa State

The Wizards need defensive help at every position. We were hoping for Okongwu or Okoro to be at No. 9 but both were gone. In addition, Precious Achiuwa was more of a reach with the No. 9 pick and we can’t trade down. While Avdija seemed tantalizing since he fell to No. 9, Washington does need another guard who could play a major role if the team gets into firesale mode in a year. And if the team starts winning many games, he can still be a strong option off the bench. Halliburton is a strong three point shooter and can be a good point guard option for the Wizards in a post Wall/Beal world. But he can also help right away with their playoff hopes which the Wizards want to do in the immediate term.

- Albert Lee, Bullets Forever

10. Phoenix Suns - Kira Lewis Jr., G, Alabama

The Suns really need a point guard of the future to take over for Ricky Rubio in 2021 or 2022, and that PG is Kira Lewis Jr. He and Booker can share the ball handling duties, playing off the ball next to each other as well as leading the second unit when the other is resting. Lewis has a bright future as a combo guard who can even get minutes his rookie season playing off ball next to Rubio in Booker-less lineups. The Suns got a steal here, in my opinion. Lewis could be one of the very best players in this draft.

- Dave King, Bright Side of the Sun

11. San Antonio Spurs - Deni Avdija, F, Maccabi Tel Aviv

Coming into the draft with an appetite for frontcourt talent, the Spurs were surprised to find themselves with a handful of appealing, and contrasting, options at 11. Those included Avdija and Obi Toppin, both guys they expected to be off the board, and the raw Patrick Williams. They went with the Israeli prospect, who exists somewhere in the vast ocean that spans Toppin’s ready-made offensive game and Williams’ two-way potential. Avdija’s playmaking and versatility are welcome complements to a Spurs youth movement that’s heavy on guards and light on shot creation, and his professional experience makes him the rare Spurs rookie that can expect a role early in their career.

- Bruno Passos, Pounding the Rock

12. Sacramento Kings - Patrick Williams, F, Florida State

Williams’ numbers aren’t eye-popping but he provides something the Kings desperately need: toughness. He has plenty of room to develop and with Sacramento still a while away from contending for a playoff spot, the team can be patient with him. The Kings could lose Alex Len and Harry Giles in free agency, so they need to bolster their frontcourt. Williams is a very good team defender who will help strengthen the back line of the team’s defense. He makes up for his lack of athleticism with a high basketball IQ, but he will need to work on his explosiveness in order to have an impact on the offensive end.

- Sabreena Merchant, Sactown Royalty

13. New Orleans Pelicans - Aaron Nesmith, SG, Vanderbilt

With the futures of Brandon Ingram and Zion Williamson in mind, the Pelicans would be happy to score a high end role player in a weak draft devoid of booming potential. Aaron Nesmith fits the bill perfectly as his extraordinary shooting skills (52.2 percent from three-point range on 8.2 3PA) will keep driving lanes open for years to come for the two New Orleans cornerstones. Mentoring under JJ Redick could prove invaluable, and between Van Gundy’s teachings and Aaron Nelson’s training staff, a good chance exists for the 6’10 wingspan of Nesmith to reach his ceiling as an above average defender.

- Oleh Kosel, The Bird Writes

14. Boston Celtics - Obi Toppin, F, Dayton

The Celtics have three first-round selections, and must thread the needle between taking best player available and filling the need for immediate impact. An unforeseen slide of Obi Toppin makes him a high-value draft pick, both in trade markets elsewhere and in how he can make an immediate impact in Boston. Toppin is a freak athlete, shot above 39% from 3 and has the inside-outside offensive game needed in a hybrid big man. While there are legitimate defensive concerns, the talent and impact was too much to pass on at 14, and Boston provides him the opportunity to play the 5, likely his best NBA position

- Adam Spinella, Celtics Blog

15. Orlando Magic - Cole Anthony, G, North Carolina

It’s no secret that the point guard position has been a hot topic for the Orlando Magic over the last few years. While Markelle Fultz showed some positive signs last season, the Magic still need some depth at the position, especially with both D.J. Augustin and Michael Carter-Williams hitting the free agent market. Taking Cole Anthony gives the Magic a guard that can create his own shot, and can shoot the ball from beyond the arc some as well. Anthony will give the Magic the needed depth, and the ability to run out some two point guard lineups as well.

- Zach Oliver, Orlando Pinstripe Post

16. Portland Trail Blazers - Saddiq Bey, F, Villanova

The late-lottery, boom-or-bust prospects were off the board when this pick arrived, forcing this selection in the direction of the safe route. In a draft class filled with uncertainty, Saddiq Bey is on a short list of safe bets. Depending on how the offseason rolls out in Portland, it is possible that Bey could push for minutes as a rookie. There is always room for tertiary scoring alongside the Blazers’ star-studded backcourt. Again, this isn’t a flashy pick, but it is one that falls inside Damian Lillard’s prime.

- Steve Dewald, Blazer’s Edge

17. Minnesota Timberwolves - Tyrese Maxey, G, Kentucky

One of the core competencies at Canis Hoopus is simple: Pick Kentucky Players (shoutout John Meyer). Maxey’s speed, athleticism, and ability to finish around the rim would instantly be a huge boost to Minnesota’s second unit, and if his stroke from deep can (consistently) develop, he would immediately become the next Wildcat alum to take a sizable leap from college into the pros.

- Kyle Theige, Canis Hoopus

18. Dallas Mavericks - Aleksej Pokuševski, F, Serbia

With the 18th pick the Dallas Mavericks select perhaps the most polarizing player in the 2020 draft. The Mavericks won’t have a pick this high (or a pick, period) for years, so this is their last chance to add raw and young talent to their roster. Does he make sense for the short term? No. But if Poku can add weight and perform against better quality talent, he might just be ready for Dallas right when Luka Dončić’s rookie extension kicks in and it gets more difficult financially to add pieces to the Mavericks. His skill set and size it just too much to ignore at this point in the draft.

- Kirk Henderson, Mavs Moneyball

19. Brooklyn Nets - Precious Achiuwa, F/C, Memphis

This pick is all about size and athleticism. Having a big like Achiuwa who is super athletic, quick, can defend and rebound the basketball slip to No. 19 is a nice get here. For his size, to be able to keep pace with the likes of Durant and Irving, plus being able to provide an extra body on the growing list of athletic fours in the game; you can see where Achiuwa and his 7’2” wingspan can come in and make an impact right away.

- Tom Lorenzo, Nets Daily

20. Miami Heat - Jalen Smith, F, Maryland

At No. 20, the Heat are looking for a contributor to their core. Jalen Smith provides the length, defensive versatility, and shooting they lacked to pair with or behind Bam Adebayo in the playoffs. Smith’s 7’2” wingspan paired with some Culture will make him someone with immediate impact.

- Matt Pineda, Hot Hot Hoops

21. Philadelphia 76ers - Desmond Bane, G, TCU

In their never-ending search for perimeter scoring, the Sixers go with TCU product Desmond Bane. Bane was a four-year player at the NCAA level which may scare some other teams off, but Philly is pretty smitten with how things turned out with Matisse Thybulle (also a four-year player). Bane has the size and athleticism to hold his own defensively, and if his career 43.3 percent mark from three-point range translates to the next level, he’ll contribute out of the gate. Longer term, he could be a perfect complement to Ben Simmons as a secondary ball-handler.

- Kevin Love, Liberty Ballers

22. Denver Nuggets - Tyler Bey, F, Colorado

The Nuggets take the local kid, grabbing a forward who reportedly registered a 43.5” vertical jump in his combine measurements. Bey is an athletic defender whose skills as a rebounder help strengthen one of the Nuggets strengths. He doesn’t have to come in as a shooting threat, and his ability to score around the rim plays well next to Nikola Jokić, Michael Porter Jr., and potentially Jerami Grant. If Grant leaves, Bey can slot in as the forward defender the team needs. He could have a lot of highlight reel plays finishing lobs on a loaded Nuggets team.

- Daniel Lewis, Denver Stiffs

23. Utah Jazz - Josh Green, G, Arizona

After their disappointing finish in the playoffs, Dennis Lindsey said Utah’s goal in the offseason would be to improve their defense while not sacrificing spacing. Josh Green should help with both those things. Green has great size at the wing standing 6’6” with a 6’10” wingspan and uses it well on the defensive end filling lanes and playing good on-ball defense. Green also shot 36 percent from three and has a nice looking shot that should only improve with time.

- James Hansen, SLC Dunk

24. Milwaukee Bucks - Theo Maledon, G, AVSEL

Milwaukee is searching for more dynamism in their backcourt after yet another playoff flameout and Maledon offers the upside and playmaking potential that could fit the bill. While his iffy shooting figures provide some pause, the hope is that Bud’s staff can give him a salvageable deep ball to accompany his nifty passing skills to ease Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton’s playmaking burden. With 6’9” length, if he improves his body he could follow in George Hill’s footsteps as a solid guard capable of scoring capably on several levels offensively.

- Adam Paris, Brew Hoop

25. Oklahoma City Thunder - Leandro Bolmaro, G, Barcelona

He can give the Thunder a point forward off the bench so Dennis Schroder doesn’t have to be fully responsible for creating all the plays for the bench unit. He’s versatile and he’d be a solid addition to the team.

- Sarah Dewberry, Welcome to Loud City

26. Boston Celtics - Tyrell Terry, G, Stanford

Another guy with lottery rumors falling to our pick, Terry has the potential to be the long-term point guard of choice next to Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. A sharpshooter with a brilliantly quick release and deep range, Terry would add a Curry-esque dynamic to this offense. While his point guard skills and on-ball defense are in need of seasoning, the Celtics have proven capable of blanketing a smaller point guard in the past. Expect a few minutes off the bench early in his career while he’s groomed to be a floor spacer around Boston’s core in the future.

- Adam Spinella, Celtics Blog

27. New York Knicks - Malachi Flynn, G, San Diego State

The Knicks haven’t had a legitimate point guard since...well, it’s been awhile. Malachi Flynn was one of the best players in college basketball last season, a pick-and-roll maestro who can shoot it from anywhere. He might start for this Knicks team.

- Joe Flynn, Posting and Toasting

28. Los Angeles Lakers - Grant Riller, G, Charleston

Riller is a three-level scorer for a team that could benefit significantly from an on-ball creator, as outside of LeBron James and Anthony Davis to an extent, no other player on the team was a dependable source of perimeter creation in the halfcourt (Playoff Rondo notwithstanding). Riller’s push skills are whether his passing can catch up to his shotmaking, and whether his defense looks better when not asked to take on such a large offensive load — Riller showed flashes of the latter, albeit inconsistently this past season. Would still handicap the pick as likely to be traded on draft night, but Riller would be a solid addition who could likely have a fair shot of contributing in the short term at a spot of need for a defending title team.

- Ben Rosales, Silver Screen and Roll

29. Toronto Raptors - Jaden McDaniels, F, Washington

It’s a bit of a surprise to see McDaniels still on the board, and since the Raptors promised to be aggressive in their mission to add talent to their young core, he’s their guy at no. 29. Listed at 6’10” and 200 lbs, 20-year-old McDaniels has the talent and two-way potential to propel his way into the conversation as one of the better players in this year’s draft class. He also presents the Raptors with another multi-dimensional option on the wing, giving coach Nurse even more lineup flexibility with which to tinker. In all, it’s not hard to bet on Toronto’s ability to develop McDaniels with the right mindset and along the best path to unlock his full potential.

- JD Quirante, Raptors HQ

30. Boston Celtics - Isaiah Joe, G, Arkansas

The Celtics didn’t enter this draft expecting to take three domestic players, but we can finagle things to make room for the right three. If there’s one theme in our picks, it’s that shooting rules the roost. We have a superstar scorer, some great slashers and enough defensive versatility and firepower to remain a threat. Isaiah Joe could easily end up the best shooter in this class, and bringing he and Terry to Boston, as well as a pick & pop threat in Toppin, should open up the floor plenty for Tatum and company.

- Adam Spinella, Celtics Blog

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How NFL Blitz Became the Best Arcade Football Game Ever Made

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Football is violent and fast. Brutal injuries are inherent to the action when 300-pound bodies slam into one another like cars at a demolition derby. In the late 1990s, no video game simulated that feeling more than the most anti-sim football game ever made: NFL Blitz.

Unfortunately, the world may never see a game like Blitz again. To be sure, football video games are as popular as ever—or at least EA Sports’ Madden franchise is, since it’s the only football sim officially licensed by the NFL. Spiritual successors to the Blitz brand of arcade-style football have come along here and there, with EA’s former NFL Street franchise and the 2017 reinvention of Mutant Football League by Digital Dreams Entertainment the most noteworthy. Even 2K Games plan to return with an NFL-licensed non-sim in the near future, and Madden NFL 21 has a new backyard-football mode called The Yard. But the marriage between the NFL and such over-the-top gridiron action as the original Blitz titles from Midway Games may have been unique to its time.

Two decades ago, arcade cabinets were still a lucrative proposition. Thanks to the arrival of Midway’s iconic NBA Jam in 1993, sports games in particular could be major money makers. NBA Jam raked in $1 billion in quarters during its first year. That’s billion with a ‘B,’ and it’s a figure even the game’s iconic announcer, Tim Kitzrow, still has trouble wrapping his head around.

“I happened to see an article that was posted on the bulletin board in the cafeteria. It said ‘NBA Jam breaks all records. Makes $1 billion in revenue this year,’” Kitzrow tells Den of Geek. “I just, I laughed and thought it was one of the guys with a sense of humor in the office who had typed that up as kind of a joke. I still can’t believe it. No one could believe a billion dollars [in] a year.”

Mark Turmell, creative director of NBA Jam, says that he and his team certainly enjoyed the fruits of their labor after the game’s success. With a team that included lead artist and game designer Sal DiVita, Turmell noted they were all “pretty young” and bought cars and “did silly things,” but that there was little room to rest on their laurels before working on the next game. With a steady stream of hits like the Mortal Kombat and Jam games, “we kind of kept our nose to the grindstone.”

Indeed, Midway Games enjoyed a golden age in the ‘90s. However, up until the team took up the project that would become NFL Blitz, their games existed in only two dimensions. But the gaming landscape was changing. Three-dimensional arcade games were nothing new by 1997, when Blitz released, and they were proliferating the market at a rapid pace. That was especially true of the home console market, with both the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 becoming the dominant players in that space.

The opportunity to work in 3D was new and exciting for Turmell, who noted the “hardware that could actually put enough stuff on the screen to get away with 3D, the horsepower” had arrived.

“If you look at the NFL Blitz models, the players, it’s only a few hundred polygons,” he added. “Kind of rectangular arms, biceps and more of a square-ish head and so forth. There was not a lot of resolution or detail, but it was still, the hardware was strong enough to run at 60 frames a second, which is just a necessity on really any game.”

Leaning into the Action

With the hardware and programming capabilities in place, that allowed the lifelong Detroit Lions fan the chance to create a Midway-style game for his favorite sport. That meant making some big changes to the gridiron game, most notably cutting the number of men on the field for each team from 11 to seven. The number of players wasn’t just chosen at random.

“We knew we wanted to focus on offense, so with the quarterback, a couple of wide receivers, a running back, that burned four characters there,” Turmell said, “and to have only one guy as a lineman or two, you really needed three for somebody to hike the ball and be at the line there. Three linemen was the thing that eventually dictated doing seven-on-seven.”

To juice the speed of games and keep things moving at arcades, quarter length was dropped to two minutes, and time ticked down at an accelerated rate — start to finish, a game of Blitz lasts about 12 minutes. Teams would need to advance 30 yards for a first down, a huge jump from the standard 10 yards. Extra points were (usually) automatic with the press of a button.

Oh, and no penalties. No pass interference. No holding. You want to tackle the receiver before the ball comes his way? Totally legal. As were Hulk Hogan-style leg drops after play was whistled dead. All of the motion capture for these moves was done by DiVita, a veteran of mo-cap who portrayed several Mortal Kombat characters, such as Nightwolf and Cyrax.

“It was kind of a new era, and because of the success of [NBA Jam] and the NBA connection, then the NFL was just a total natural to essentially try to do the same thing. Catch on fire, break the rules, a subset of the rules, multiple behind the line of scrimmage passes, those kind of little rule changes we did.”

As with NBA Jam, Midway brought back Kitzrow, a midwestern comedian and Second City alum, to lend his voice to the on-field action. Unlike with the two-on-two hoops classic, NFL Blitz was the first game he had worked on in which he contributed to the writing. Improved technology also meant the ability to include more speech than in NBA Jam. Rather than one- or two-word sound bytes, Kitzrow could mix more comedy in. Among his favorites: “He just ripped his head off! No, it was just his helmet. Darn it.”

“Tim’s amazing,” Turmell says. “His energy, his ad lib ability. He just totally nailed it on Jam, and then nailed it on Blitz, as well. He was the only guy we called.”

When the time was right, Midway initiated talks with the NFL to get the official go-ahead. They built a demo, telling the NFL that they were aiming for a “quicker-hitting [game], not a deep simulation,” according to Turmell.

“They were of course familiar with the consumer games of that era, and Madden football, where it was more of an 11-on-11, the simulation, the stats,” Turmell said. “We were trying to lean into the action, the arcade, the fast-paced gameplay, that I think the NFL felt like, ‘Okay, that can actually open up a larger fan base.’”

“Too Violent”

Thus, development of NFL Blitz began, largely without interaction between the league and the development team. As was common for the time with arcade cabinets, Midway was already testing the game for profitability at select arcades, and with about a week before final sign off, the NFL rolled into Midway’s headquarters in Chicago to see what Blitz looked like.

It didn’t go well.

“We played the game for them. We showed them the game, and they said, ‘Can you excuse us for a moment?’” Turmell said. “We left them in an office alone. About 15 minutes later, they came out, and they said, ‘We have to wash our hands of this product, and we’re going to give you your money back, and we can’t go forward with this product. It’s just too violent.’” 

When Turmell asked what elements of the game crossed the line, the league reps indicated a few animations in particular, which would trigger during the small window after plays were whistled dead and players could pile on with elbow drops and other over-the-top hits. 

“I had one where you could pick the player up by the face mask and shake him,” Turmell said. “I had a kick where you could actually kick the player when he was down, and then I had a tackle that was more of, like, a piledriver. You’d kind of grab the guy from behind, jump up in the air, and flip him backwards, so his head hits into the ground.” 

Den of Geek reached out to the NFL to hear its side of the story but the league did not respond to questions regarding NFL Blitz in time for publication.

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With their work in jeopardy, Turmell regrouped with Midway Games chief executive officer Neil Nicastro. Turmell came up with a new plan: to remove the “offending animations” and test the game on location.

“If it still earns the money that it was earning already on [the] test, then we will know that it’s not about the violence,” Turmell told the league reps.

The plan worked. The NFL agreed to the proposal, and NFL Blitz earned the same revenue during the test as it had before the animations were excised. After cabinets were released in the fall of 1997, it became another smash arcade hit for Midway. Turmell estimates the game raked in about $650 million in its first year, very impressive for a two-player game which cost 50 cents per quarter of play, per person. That placed it around the top three of games at the time, he said.

Blitzing Consoles

With a mountain of quarters in their pockets, Midway Games successfully ported NFL Blitz to both Sony and Nintendo consoles in September 1998, as well as PC the following month. According to NPD Group’s TRSTS Video Game Service, which tracks total units sold as reported by major retailers, Blitz was the top new N64 game and the No. 3 new game on PS1 for September. 

The tagline in ads for the console launch summed up NFL Blitz pretty accurately: “No refs. No rules. No mercy.” Commercials visually drove home the over-the-top violent hits the game allowed. In perhaps the most infamous 30-second TV spot, then-Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Kordell Stewart works on his throws alongside a coach. Within seconds, we see that Stewart is targeting members of the marching band whose music can be heard in the background of the workout. The ad inspired outrage from music educators.

Turmell, who says he loved the ad, pointed out that the league gave the okay to run the spot. But, after the negative response, the ad was removed from the airwaves. Fortunately, like so many old commercials, it still lives on YouTube:

As far as the game itself, NFL Blitz was a faithful port of the arcade hit, especially on the N64. On the Nintendo console, all the fun of playing a quick and irreverent game of football at the arcade came home. The graphics were virtually identical, unlike what the visually-inferior 32-bit PlayStation could produce. And the game’s most fascinating feature could only be found on N64: an easy-to-use Play Editor which allowed players to create custom alignments. These plays could even be brought to the arcade on an N64 Controller Pak to be used on the sequel, NFL Blitz 99, plugged directly into the cabinet. Cutting edge stuff for the late ’90s, to be sure.

In what may come as a surprise from the creator of the revered NBA Jam, Turmell actually points to the arcade’s Blitz 99, released in fall 1998, as “the favorite game that I’ve developed, and it’s because of the tuning on the plays, the interesting things that can happen.” 

“There’s a running push that we introduced with that game, and the original NFL Blitz, when you would do a push, you would stop and do it from a stationary position,” Turmell explains. “Blitz 99 did this running push, just the tuning on the dives, the entertainment value of the tackles, the variety of a tipped pass, a doinked pass, a fumble that goes up in the air, people diving for it. Dancing as they’re running down the last 20 years to the end zone, somebody comes up from behind. You could play that game today and it holds up, and you would say, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen that happen before,’ or you’d find moments to scream, and it’s competitive, it’s tight. It was quite a tuning fest. We really tuned it well, because we’d just play it nonstop.”

By this point, the NFL had really gotten squeamish about the game’s violence, particularly the late hits. The league told Turmell that Midway could still put out Blitz 99, but late hits had to go. Hoping to preserve what he referred to as “a cornerstone of the product,” Turmell got the NFL on board with a workaround.

“I said, ‘What if we did a secret code that gave the player a one second window to do a late hit?’ Just like what happens for real in the NFL. Players have that fractional moment where they do a dive, they do a tackle, where they’re a little bit late. They might get penalized for it, maybe not,” Turmell recalled. “And so they said, ‘Okay, if you put it in a secret code, then you can continue for that very small window of time.’”

The late hits code was simple to input: Just one press of the jump button and up on the control stick during pre-game loading activated the feature.

“The game basically continued to allow late hits, and we put a little message up that said, ‘Late hits activated,’” Turmell said. “I think the NFL was not happy that their concern over late hits didn’t really change.”

“Strategic Mistakes”

NFL Blitz 2000 Gold Edition became the final arcade release, the third consecutive year with a new cabinet. Turmell referred to the annual release schedule as “part of our strategic mistakes.” It was not an unexpected result, but Midway aimed to counteract it with its other sports titles.

“We knew it would be an issue, and we tried to start with our different sports titles to alternate years, go fresh, NBA Showtime, and go to the MLB Slugfest, do the baseball game. We had a soccer game called RedCard Soccer that we were working on. We wanted to have a portfolio of what we called over-the-top sports games that we could alternate. That’s tough to do, as well, developing so many products, consumer marketplaces changing, coin-op is drying up.”

But Blitz soldiered on, with yearly releases neither raved about nor widely panned by players and critics. NFL Blitz 20-02 and Blitz 20-03 saw the series jump to the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube console generation, leaving the dying arcade market behind. 

Eventually, pressure from the ironically violence-averse NFL prompted major changes to NFL Blitz. A year after Blitz 20-03, Midway released NFL Blitz Pro in October 2003, which abandoned the series’ trademark arcade-style play for an 11-on-11 football semi-sim setup. By this point, Turmell had shifted away from the franchise and was working on the streetball-styled NBA Ballers.

“The NFL started to threaten not renewing the license, and so we kind of backpedaled and said, ‘We’re going to compete on the sim front and start to push into that direction,’” Turmell says. “It was going to take, no doubt, a number of years to get robust, but it was kind of the first foray into trying to come up with a product, a series that you could actually continually develop like you continually develop the NFL Madden-style product.”

In January 2005, the NFL gave Electronic Arts the exclusive rights to use the official teams and players anyway, leaving Blitz without NFL support altogether after already selling its over-the-top gridiron soul. Now, Midway was free to do as it pleased with the gameplay and leaned heavily into violence and the darker side of the sport with Blitz: The League. 

Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor, whose career and post-football life has been rife with controversy and trouble with the law, lent his likeness and voice to the game, which released in October 2005 and became the first football game to be rated Mature by the ESRB. Driven by a salacious campaign mode that included gambling, drugs, and prostitutes, the unlicensed football game was still received about as well as the most recent arcade-style NFL Blitz games. A sequel, Blitz: The League II, followed three years later for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 to a more mixed reception.

Behind the scenes, however, Midway Games was crumbling at the foundation. Turmell points to the 2003 appointment of David Zucker as president and CEO, replacing Nicastro, as a turning point. He identified game partnerships with Snoop Dogg and Shaquille O’Neal under Zucker’s watch as costly errors.

“It was pretty clear, once they started making these big financial mistakes, that we had the wrong guy in charge,” Turmell says.

In February 2009, Midway Games filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, ending the run of one of the most notable game development houses of the ’90s.

Back on the Field

With the remains of Midway scattered to various major games publishers, it was EA who acquired the rights to all of the sports games, including NBA Jam and NFL Blitz. Turmell was offered the chance to join EA Sports in Orlando to relaunch the Jam and Blitz franchises.

“The fact that [the games’ rights] were available and Midway was going through bankruptcy, it probably just made sense, from EA’s standpoint, to gather up those properties, anyway,” Turmell said, “but I think that me being involved was good icing on the cake.”

Turmell described his role with the 2010 edition of NBA Jam as more of a consultant for the EA Vancouver team. With NFL Blitz, he was more hands-on in its development as creative director. Looking back on his time working on the game, he marvels at the well-oiled EA machine that produced the game.

“EA is amazing,” Turmell said. “They are very disciplined, because these sports games do come out on a 12-month cycle, so they’re very production-oriented, very organized. The engineers and the artists know exactly what they have to do in each sprint, in each period of time to launch the product.”

But Turmell’s time with EA was short, as he accepted his current role as the creative director at mobile game developer Zynga. In fact, he left less than two months before Blitz released in January 2012. Reiterating that he “loved EA,” Turmell said the decision was fueled by seeing “where the business was going” with regard to mobile gaming.

“It was a tough decision for me because that’s not the type of guy I am, to leave a project,” Turmell said.

Unfortunately, Turmell said that those final few weeks, when he was no longer around to oversee development, yielded critical changes to NFL Blitz. He says the NFL reviewed the game and eliminated late hits, “so they removed content.” It left him feeling “a little disappointed” in the finished product.

“I wasn’t there for whatever ugliness happened with that, but the game wasn’t the same,” Turmell says.

Kitzrow, who had been brought back by EA Sports to do both Jam and Blitz, could hardly contain his disgust with the handling of the Blitz rebirth, especially with regard to the league’s stance on late hits.

“Unfortunately, the NFL was right in our face about all the late hits, the violence, the concussions,” explains Kitzrow, who shared commentary duties on the EA Sports Blitz with longtime friend and fellow comedian Brian Haley. “Like, dude, this is a cartoon. This is a video game. It’s not really happening. But they didn’t want that kind of extracurricular activity. So it took [out] a lot of the stuff that we grew up playing, having so much fun with the late hits and the craziness, the over-the-top sense of humor. That’s what made it NFL Blitz. It was so watered down that, as much as I wrote a lot of dialogue and a lot of stuff, the speech was very sparse in it. I think it sounded kind of repetitive. As far as I’m concerned, it didn’t really live up to the Blitz title.”

A representative of EA could not be reached for comment.

Legacy

Kitzrow had been given the impression that EA intended to release a new version of NFL Blitz the next year as well. However, despite favorable reviews and tight controls that had been adopted from the Madden engine, the PS3 and Xbox 360 digital release of the game remains the last of the franchise, more than eight years ago. It’s still available for purchase on both consoles’ digital storefronts, with disgraced former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice still representing the game as its cover athlete.

The closest successor to NFL Blitz is 2017’s Mutant Football League from developer Digital Dreams, for which Kitzrow lent his voice. The actor raves about MFL, but he’s pessimistic that EA Sports will revisit Blitz or Jam again in the future. Turmell, although no longer involved with the franchise or the company who owns the rights to it, often hears rumors of a revival and hopes to see it rise again one day. He even believes a great Blitz game can be made without the late hits, a feature which the NFL likely will never greenlight again.

Although Turmell believes that NFL Blitz had a harder time developing the same personal connection that people have with his more renowned NBA Jam series, he knows it holds a special place in the hearts and minds of gamers who flocked to arcades or brought it home for their N64s in the late ’90s.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

“I think Blitz … for the people playing in that two- or three- or four-year window, would remember it fondly, had great, competitive sessions with their brother or their buddies. I get a lot of people saying, ‘When I was in college, that’s all we did. We spent so much money on that and got into so many fights.’ You get those kinds of stories. It’s just a smaller crowd.” Still, Turmell adds, “It sure was a hell of a lot of fun to play.”

The post How NFL Blitz Became the Best Arcade Football Game Ever Made appeared first on Den of Geek.

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What Kind Of Exercise Make You Grow Taller Surprising Useful Tips

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You can use if you want to grow taller by adding a few more inches on in high school because of that, I urged him to search for stuff that can help you look taller than them.It is a hub for the really credible reviews that will definitely look taller than you.This is because as a pull up on your way.Well there are human growth hormone is produced throughout your lifetime, the glands will secrete HGH.A lot of people who have trouble with their natural height.

How To Use Ashwagandha For Height Increase

This explains why you should eat in the fetal position.Once collected, mulberry fruits in your height despite being born short of height!Some people have gained at least three inches to your height despite being born short of height.A diet made up of amino acids and vitamins D and A. Protein is needed for growing taller is a one hundred percent natural method which targets three main areas, numbering: Sleep, Exercise and Adequate Rest - Exercises, especially stretches help lengthen your back sags more and allow your body to achieve your full growth in humans that work can take on the market that help you grow naturally, adding every single surgical procedure ranges around the tall ship model.Every human body can determine your muscle mass, which in turn helps the body to develop longer legs.

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There are different types of surgery come with a certain age, and after many, many factors such the kind of food.These methods have given up on your back.The results of this galaxy, so any sort or form of traction this often happens to be one of the major ways to correct this position, do you more success with the height that I do not even bother to exert more effort than any other meals.Of course, you have been new ways to grow taller.The food you take should be growing the most important components of a car, sitting at a lower self-esteem than those who feel they are not compressing your body effectively and easily grow taller formula are just so many height growth hormones secreted by various surgical methods like surgery.

The reality is that they can, in fact, gain height desperately.Especially when you're young can be done while you should always exhale while bringing your spine aligned and long.With this, we wish you could compromise your growth plates located at the end of long bones and muscles grow every night to some extent, we really have to follow a simple stretching exercise is the most surprising and effective working of internal systems properly.The more you stretch, the bridge and basic postures like tadasan, when done wrongly.So, without wasting time I give you sufficient training sessions on these routinary activities to be tall.

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Grow Taller After 18 Blindsiding Ideas

But is there are lots of meat and poultry but from fish, whole eggs, legumes and nuts.It would be to shop for maternity jeans that properly fit tall women.This kind of food eaten can have peace of mind and body strong.Cobra Pose: This is why people in this article you will not benefit from your bones.

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Diet plays a part in achieving your height by leaps and bounds.What happens then is this: the spinal exercise.You may wonder what caused such inconsistency.There are also great ways to do so without having to spend a lot of money.Longer bones add more stress to your height.

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Can Protein Increase Height

Lots of people mostly do everything in growing taller, this probably because from the options for health supplements that will make your body under unnecessary strain and compression on your toes.Like what has been a constant problem with these crucial nutrients would be easier if these don't answer your how much sleep you produce more human growth hormone so it's true that being tall in the sense of style, look for the day to day life.We all know thinness gives an impression of being short?In performing this exercise, you could possibly search for.Consulting your physician before opting for any person who has made a lot of vegetables and drink your milk.

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East Healthy Food - Nutrition is a belief that it's good.The program also tackles ways of growing taller, you would expect, our body a whole lot of that sweet stuff.That is why it is possible to become tall, this easy tip cannot be ignored when it comes to the right path of getting taller.Another factor in growing taller, its not impossible.Doing workout and healthy increase in length gradually as you can do anything about it.

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OKC Thunder’s Chris Paul Sheds Light On The NBA’s Current Situation

SALT LAKE CITY, UT – OCTOBER 23: Chris Paul #3 of the Oklahoma City Thunder looks on during an … [+] opening night game against the Oklahoma City Thunder at Vivint Smart Home Arena on October 23, 2019 in Salt Lake City, Utah. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Alex Goodlett/Getty Images)

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Chris Paul joined a teleconference on Wednesday in which he gave his thoughts on the current state of the NBA and how COVID-19 has affected the 2019-20 season.

Paul is not only the leader of the Oklahoma City Thunder, who are the current 5th seed in the Western Conference at 40-24, but he is also the President of the National Basketball Players Association. He has always been a leader in the league as a whole and has a very influential voice in regards to the present and future of the league.

As expected, one of the main things he discussed was life during the absence of the NBA and his thoughts on what to expect going forward. He mentioned that players will play a big part in what happens if the season were to resume.

“I’m just letting you know, and I don’t think the league would do it anyway, but if they were like, ‘Hey, you got two weeks, and then we’re going,’ that’s not going to happen…Whatever the amount of time is, just know that players will have input and the say-so, because we’re the ones playing. That comes first. We don’t ever want to put guys in a situation where their injury risk is higher than ever before.”

Another interesting point Paul made was the fact that not every player has equal opportunity during these times. Without access to gyms and team workout facilities, players are forced to adapt to what they have at their home and is easily accessible. 

“I get what we’re dealing with right now, a lot of hypotheticals, but I don’t know, this is the thing with having 450 players in the league and being in a situation like this, where some guys have access to weight rooms, some guys don’t. Some guys have access to facilities where they can train or do this or can run. That’s why, whatever happens…we always go back to the players.”

Paul has the luxury of having an outdoor goal at his home in Los Angeles. Other players around the league, like reigning MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, mentioned at the start of the NBA hiatus that he did not. This puts players around the league in very different situations across the board. If there were a resume to the season, perhaps a short training camp before resuming play would be a necessity.

Jimmy Butler of the Miami Heat made sure his teammates were not at a disadvantage like Antetokounmpo. Just last week, he sent basketball goals to all of his teammates to continue to stay in shape and get shots up. Prior to Butler doing this, Goran Dragic was the only player on the team with a basketball goal of his own.

Regardless of who is able to get shots up or whether there will be a short training camp, there is still no plan of action to resume NBA action. While several ideas have been discussed by members of the media around putting the league in a ‘bubble’ and away from the outside world, Keith Smith of Yahoo Sports had an interesting suggestion — Disney World.

The NBA season was suspended on March 11. Now, six weeks later, we still don’t know if or when it will resume. Every single day, the landscape of the entire world changes as breakthroughs are made in testing while the number of cases continues to rise. Paul made a very interesting comment in the teleconference, mentioning the virus itself is in complete control rather.

“This is a situation where no one knows. The virus is actually in complete control.”

There are endless hypothetical scenarios that the NBA is considering as they look to get the 2019-20 season back up and running. Regardless of the logistics, Paul and other players around the league are itching to get back on the court.

“We’re just want to play. We’re trying to figure out what that looks like. Right now, I’m just focused on playing, playing in some form or fashion.”

As much as NBA fans want the season to resume, the players want to play just as much, if not more. It comes down to safety and making sure the situation is handled the right way. 

As every region of the country has different timelines of returning back to normal, things get extremely tricky. The league would like to make sure that the resume of play is permanent and another suspension doesn’t happen if things do not go right. Any day could be the day that we get more information on the road forward, but for now, we are still in the dark and left wondering what will happen to the 2019-20 NBA season.

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A Q&A with Bucks guard Pat Connaughton during quarantine

A Q&A with Pat Connaughton of the Milwaukee Bucks.

A Q&A with the Milwaukee Bucks guard as the NBA season has been paused indefinitely over the coronavirus pandemic.

Six weeks ago, Milwaukee Bucks guard Pat Connaughton was coasting through the fifth year of his career as a rotation player on one of the best teams in NBA history. He’d just competed in the NBA’s Slam Dunk Contest, and had a story about his real estate development company published in the New York Times.

Today, as Covid-19’s rampant sweep across the United States has placed the rest of the 2019-20 season in jeopardy, there’s a chance Connaughton — a free agent this offseason — has already played his last game with the Bucks.

Most people have been forced to adjust to a different lifestyle. That includes this 27-year-old NBA player who would otherwise be preparing for a playoff run, while fulfilling his second career in different ways than he currently can.

In a wide-ranging phone interview with SB Nation on Monday, Connaughton opened up about free agency, why it’s important for professional athletes to prepare for life after retirement, Giannis Antetokounmpo’s future in Milwaukee, the Netflix series Tiger King, and so much more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

SB NATION: I’ll begin with a question I find myself asking just about everyone I talk to these days: How are you staying safe? And, did you consider traveling home once the NBA allowed its players to do so, or just bunker down and stay put?

PAT CONNAUGHTON: I stayed in Milwaukee. I tried to look at it from a variety of different angles. For me, I’m from the Boston area and Massachusetts was arguably hit worse than the majority of other places, so going home didn’t really make sense for me, for my own health but also for the safety of my family.

We’re fortunate to be in the NBA. We might as well stay close to our team just in case, God forbid something does happen and we need access to doctors, we have team doctors. If we need access to food for some reason, the chefs are trying to help us out when they can. There’s different things that I think teams are doing to help their players that stick around.

I also wanted to do my best to stay in shape, and when the facility shut down I was able to work with some of our strength staff to get some free weights into my apartment, to get a bike, to at least have some workouts that I can do outside, running up hills near the lakefront where I live, things of that nature so that I can keep myself sane.

SB: What’s been the biggest difference for you, going from the 100 miles per hour schedule you were on as an in-season NBA player to just shutting everything down as quickly as you did?

PC: I really do believe it’s a simulation of retirement. Obviously guys still want to stay in shape and work out because basketball will be back at some point in time, but it is a mini simulation of it. Our working careers end by 35, 40, if you’re fortunate, so you’ve still got 35, 40 years of life, and what are you doing day in and day out?

For me, I love doing different things with real estate. I try to work with my best friend who’s our project manager who lives with me out here in Milwaukee, we’re working on ‘Hey, how can we grow the real estate company?’ It’s similar to what I do in basketball, learning from Giannis on a daily basis. How can I use the same competitive skill-set in the business world during this time off, because when the ball does stop bouncing I still want to have another successful career in another field.

SB: How about your daily schedule. I’m just curious how you’re filling spare time, being that I’m sure you have even more of it now with the season on hold.

PC: I wake up, I’ll scramble some eggs, cook some bacon, have a few pieces of toast, yogurt, smoothie, whatever it might be. I’ll then workout, whether it’s outside, inside, bike, weights, whatever I have access to, however creative I can be. By that time I’ll have lunch, and while I’m having lunch I’ll check my emails. I’ll check some of the work stuff I’m doing as far as the business outside of basketball for a few hours, do some stuff there.

By that time it’s probably dinnertime. We’ve been making dinner at home. Tacos. Homemade pizzas. Ramen noodles. We’re fortunate: My best friend’s fiancee also is with us and she’s a little bit more expertise in the kitchen than we are, but we’re learning.

At night, it’ll vary. Sometimes we’ll watch Billions. I’m a huge Billions fan. I’m catching up on it now because the new season is coming out in May. We checked out Tiger King. Some nights we’ll play video games. We’ll play NHL. I grew up with all hockey players. I was the only basketball player, so I didn’t have a choice on learning how to play hockey video games, now I actually enjoy it. Sometimes we’ll watch a movie. Sometimes I’ll read a book before bed. So I think it kind of varies depending the night, but before you know it, it’s 9, 10 o’clock, and if I want to try to continue to simulate what it’s going to be post retirement to get a feel for it, then I try my best to get to bed at a reasonable hour, get up in the morning and do it all again.

Photo by Michael J. LeBrecht II/NBAE via Getty Images

SB: I will never forgive myself if I don’t ask this super-serious followup question, but what were your thoughts on Tiger King?

PC: [Laughs] I was a huge fan of seeing the tigers, the lions, the ligers, the animals. Those things fascinate me. I used to watch The Lion Whisperer on Youtube. There’s this guy who is out with wild lions, in Africa or wherever they live, and he’ll just go up to them and they love him. So I’ve always been fascinated by the size of them, the size of their heads, the size of their paws. Actually the background on the lock screen on my phone is a lion. So I loved that.

As far as the personal life of my man Joe Exotic and some of the characters in it, I was a little bit puzzled. My facial reactions were a little bit, like, giggle-worthy, as my buddy and his fiancee said. They’d look at me when something was happening and I’d look at the screen like ‘what the heck is going on?’ Never in my life would I have sat down to watch that otherwise, so I think that’s all part of the experience. I’ll look back on this hopefully in five, 10 years and be like ‘Hey remember that pandemic we went through? Yeah, remember that show we watched with that guy who got put in jail, and there was that other lady who might’ve fed her husband to a tiger?’

SB: I could honestly ask you one million questions about Tiger King but I think it’s best for everyone if we move on to topics that actually matter. We don’t know when or if the season will come back, but how difficult do you think it’ll be to ramp your body back into game shape? There’s really nothing that can perfectly simulate what an NBA game is like. Does that concern you?

PC: Not for me, personally. I don’t think there’s any way to simulate game shape, but the ironic part about that is every offseason there’s also no way to simulate game shape, so in reality that’s not really a big difference, in my opinion. I’m more concerned about not having access to a gym. I can’t go into the facility. We’re not allowed to go into public gymnasiums. Unless you’re a guy who has a personal court in your house or live in nice weather and can shoot around in your driveway ... I’ve got a few balls in my house and I’m dribbling around but I’m sure the people below me and to the side of me aren’t thrilled about the dribbling that goes on at night, you know what I mean? I think that is something that will be on my radar as the season comes back around.

The in-shape thing, some of the workouts that I do, I’m laying on the ground dead afterwards. And as far as I’m concerned every time I’ve run up and down a court and played in a game I’ve never ended up laying on the ground in the locker room afterwards, like, purely exhausted. So I think the in-shape stuff, I can mitigate that worry, but I think the skill-related stuff, shooting, that’s something you’re gonna have to focus on a little bit more, pending when and if [the season] comes back.

SB: Is there anything the Bucks have communicated with you to try and combat that?

PC: When I think about what I can do, I think back to when I wasn’t in a gym every single day as a kid. We weren’t allowed to be. You had practice two, three, four times a week, depending on how many teams you were on. You weren’t necessarily in a basketball gym for hours upon hours every single day. Especially for me, playing baseball. I just think about the stuff that I used to do around the house. Dribble the ball around until my mom yelled at me. Lay in bed and shoot the ball up in the air, like you saw Pistol Pete do in that movie or whatever it was. Simple things like that to just keep your feel of the basketball at least somewhat normal.

SB: How did you find out the season was suspended and what was your first reaction?

PC: I was sitting in my apartment, actually just finished making tacos with my buddy and his fiancee. We were playing the Celtics the next day, and I was on League Pass waiting to watch the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Utah Jazz game. And it never came on. So we were like ‘when was the last time an NBA game didn’t tip off at tip-off time?’

So we went straight to Twitter, and for the next two hours we were watching Twitter as if it was the night of the NBA Draft, back when [Adrian Wojnarowski] used to drop the tweets before the draft picks came out. We might as well have thrown the Twitter feed of my phone up on the TV screen and just watched it that way because it was just fascinating.

I was just kind of like ‘this is wild.’ I didn’t think much about it at the start, as far as, this could end the season or anything that drastic. I was just like ‘wow this is having a serious effect on this one game.’ And then the Pelicans never even started their game and the Mavs finished their game, and we were supposed to play the next night? Will they [cancel] another game? The Celtics had just played the Jazz, so we kind of thought that our game wasn’t gonna last, but we didn’t get the official word for no shootaround until later on that night. And then we didn’t get the word about no games until the next day.

It was just kind of fascinating how quickly it unfolded, and how the NBA was ahead of everything. The NBA honestly set the precedent, in my opinion, for not just the rest of the sports world, but almost the rest of the world itself, to start taking this thing seriously.

SB: It’s hard to think about where we would be in this country had Rudy Gobert never tested positive, and we’re still so far behind.

PC: We’re far behind as far as the world is concerned. As a sports league, we were ahead of where the U.S. was, which is wild and scary to think about.

SB: Being part of such a special season with the Bucks, how often do you think about the possibility that the season is over, and how you might never get an opportunity to finish what you started? How difficult would that be, given all the hard work that was put in and what the expectations were?

PC: It’s tough because you look at it from a few different lenses. You think seasons like this don��t come along every year, so if it ends that’s gonna suck. To be honest. But when you look at it from the lens of an athlete you’re like we, as a team, are very good. What is preventing us from doing it again next year? Obviously we would be disappointed, we’re having a great year, etc. But maybe it just makes us hungrier next year. Maybe it’s fuel on the fire, as opposed to something else. Giannis will be a year older, a year more skilled. We’ll all be getting better. If you look at it that way you can throw some positive light to it.

The other light you look at it, just being open and honest, there are guys that are on contract years. There are guys that, I mean, personally I don’t have a technical contract for next year or anything. So you look at it like how does it affect free agency? How does it affect the salary cap? What does our team look like next year if the season were to end and not continue, and the playoffs weren’t to happen and there weren’t a champion to be crowned. I think all of those are unknown.

I could sit here for 24 straight hours and put down a sheet of paper, pros, cons, all these different scenarios, but I don’t think that does me any good. We don’t know. Nobody knows. The NBA is full of much smarter people than myself. Adam Silver is great. The owners are all very smart guys. The general managers are very smart guys. Obviously the player’s union, Michelle. Chris Paul. All them are very smart. I believe the best interest of as many players as possible and all the teams and the league itself will be what’s most important and what will be accomplished. So for me to worry about those sorts of things, sure, but at the same time it’s not gonna help me. I’m not gonna figure out, sitting in this apartment in the next month and a half, what the answers are.

Michael McLoone-USA TODAY Sports

SB: I wanted to ask you about being a free agent this offseason, and, as you said, we don’t know what will happen to the cap but there’s a chance it drops, given the hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue that will be lost — which could limit the amount of money teams are able or willing to pay. Respective of your own situation, I’m sure you’ve thought about that, and then also the idea that you might’ve played your last game with the Bucks. How difficult is it to cope with such an uncertain future?

PC: I definitely think about it but in the most simplistic terms. That’s one of the reasons I’ve always made sure I do other things outside of basketball. I’m not saying it’s because my basketball career is about to end, I’m just saying my dream was always to play in the NBA. Would I like to make a lot of money playing in the NBA? Absolutely. But if the cap gets affected there’s nothing I can do about it.

I want to continue to play in the NBA. I want to continue to be part of the Milwaukee Bucks as a championship contender, and I want to continue to help my team eventually win a championship, two, three, four, whatever it is. What my contract looks like while I’m doing that? If it was more money and more guaranteed years, absolutely, I’d love that. But as long as I’m here, as long as I’m playing, as long as I’m doing my job to continue to be an NBA player, a dream that I wanted to accomplish since I was a kid, it’s quite possible I make more money outside of basketball than I do in basketball when it’s all said and done.

The way that I’m trying to set up the real estate venture, the way that I’m trying to set up business outside of basketball, with, hopefully the relationships that I’ve built and will continue to build while I’m involved in the NBA, hopefully there’s a career after basketball. Maybe it’ll definitely be real estate, but maybe there’s something else. Maybe there’s a consulting role. Maybe there’s a front office role. Maybe there’s a league role. Maybe there’s something else for me because I don’t put all my chips in one basket. I can only control what I can control but I think the way that I’m setting up my life will at least allow me to have some flexibility as far as making money in the future, and continuing to play in the NBA for, hopefully, 10, 15 years.

SB: How has this pandemic impacted Beach House LLC, your real estate development company?

PC: We have a few job sites here in Milwaukee, we’ve got one that’s still moving forward. We got permission from the city because it’s right next to another building so for safety reasons they want us to make sure we get the foundation in and get some things there so it’s not just sitting as an open hole throughout this time. So I try to go by it once a day.

The name [Beach House LLC] might be changing soon, but one of our goals with real estate development is to mitigate risk. We’re trying to find distressed properties, we’re trying to find land, we’re trying to find things that we can create value in. My dad is a general contractor, I’ve been around it. So it’s not your typical real estate investments where you’re just investing in a property and banking on everybody that’s paying rent to at least cover the mortgage and give you a little bit of a return. We’re doing that but we’re doing it after we’re developing, fixing up or renovating a property. So in reality we’re kind of on both sides. We’re creating value in the property so the appreciation grows quicker, faster, more. And then we’re holding onto the asset and trying to cash flow it so it’s also making some money year after year. But in the long term, in the 10-year window, in the 15-year window, that’s when it really starts to make money.

I think as a professional athlete, the reason others have gotten involved is because we’re fortunate to have another source of income. How do you use that income to set up another source of income when that other source of income falls off? Aka, when your career is over, is there a way to utilize the money you’ve made in this career to set up another, arguably equal or close to equal, source of income afterwards. I think that’s kind of our goal with this.

In the short term, does [coronavirus] have an effect? Yeah, potentially. Does it also have an effect where you’re able to buy some property because prices drop? Potentially. I don’t really know how it’s going to fully affect it but in general it continues to go up over long periods of time. I think that’s what gives us an advantage in that world.

SB: Why change the name?

PC: I want it to reflect the story behind it. Beach House was an LLC that my father had for a house that he did back in Florida, way back when. I’d like to put it in something that shows athletes in business, something that’s unique about this actual story, because at the end of the day, if I’m able to do what I want to do in the business world I think it will be a unique story.

My main goal is, after seeing the 30 for 30, Broke, to shed some light, get some professional athletes involved [or] give them advice even if they don’t want to be involved and kind of help change the stigma that professional athletes go broke after their careers because they don’t know how to manage their money during, and shortly after.

SB: Have other players reached out for advice or even made requests to get involved over the past few weeks?

PC: I’d say a few have. I wouldn’t say as many as you’d think with all the time on our hands, but that’s also partly because I haven’t reached out to anyone either. What I’d like to do during this time is really think about what is that next growth for the real estate development company. We have five to 10 [professional athletes] involved in a number of different projects that we’ve done, so those are great one-off projects.

What is the next growth for my company? Is it raising a fund, or getting a bunch of guys together at a certain dollar amount? Is it trying to incorporate the pro athletes that I have with some of the businessmen that I’ve known and put them together for a fund or partnership where there’s a surplus of money, and now I’m going out, developing, buying, doing different things so that when one of the players in the NBA comes to town to play the Milwaukee Bucks next year, they’re able to go by the job site that we’re doing, and they’re able to see how it’s being built. They can see it in person and say ‘Hey, I own that.”

What is that next growth step for the company? That’s kind of what I’ve been utilizing my time and energy on during this hiatus, and hopefully in the next week or two I’ll have that answer and I’ll start to put something together for it. I’ll start to reach out to some players, or field some calls from some players and try to start to make it a bigger operation. Make it a bigger business.

SB: Are you mainly focused on properties in Milwaukee or looking to expand in the future?

PC: Location is the most important thing in real estate, so I want to expand to different areas. It’s just going to depend on the location in those different areas. I have two buildings, one that’s being built and one that’s gonna start being built in a few months around Notre Dame. I obviously know that area really well. We were able to get locations that are right near campus. You can probably hit a driver off your porch to campus.

There could be some similar growth in the future for the company. Some of the projects [Portland Trail Blazers guard CJ McCollum] is involved in, there’s no reason we couldn’t do a similar model around Lehigh. He’s obviously the biggest name to come from Lehigh in the professional sports world, so there’s no reason we can’t do some of those things. Those are the business ideas I love thinking about. But in the short term it’s about areas that we know and areas we have influence in and can get to relatively easily. We’re not locked to one city, is the short version of that answer.

Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports

SB: Circling it back to your playing career now, you competed in your first NBA Slam Dunk contest at All-Star Weekend last month. What was going through your head when the judges gave you a 45 after your first dunk?

PC: Honestly, I was ... that’s a great question. I don’t think I was as appalled at the time as a lot of people that I know. Did I think it could’ve been a little higher? Absolutely. But I wasn’t necessarily outraged, like, I like to think I’m pretty realistic. I like to think I’m relatively humble. That was my first dunk in an NBA dunk contest ever in my life. I was happy that I got it down on the first try, pulled off the White Man Can’t Jump thing pretty well, and then been able to share that moment with [Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich] and Giannis and Khris [Middleton] and Thanasis [Antetokounmpo] and my teammates. I thought it was pretty cool, so I was less concerned about one of the eights that could’ve been a nine. And by one of them I mean the only eight that could’ve been a nine. But that’s neither here nor there.

SB: Speaking of Giannis, you’ve been his teammate for a while and have a good relationship with him. With his upcoming free agency being one of the larger stories in the sport, do you ever talk about whether he��ll stay or go, or does it not really come up?

PC: It’s something I would talk about with him. We’re close enough friends where we definitely could. And I think our team is so close and so great as far as talking about things other than basketball, and business, and world issues, social issues. Kyle Korver brings a great element to those sorts of things. I think we have a very close knit team in our locker room.

I think sometimes it gets brought up randomly in passing and things like that, but I think at the end of the day, for us, it’s not as big of a deal as it is for the rest of the world. Obviously the city of Milwaukee, the team, everyone wants Giannis to be here forever. But Giannis has put himself in a position to provide for his family from growing up with nothing in Greece, and I don’t think you can fault Giannis for whatever decision he ends up making, that he believes is the best decision for him, his family, the people who are closest to him.

I’ll support him regardless of what he does, and I think the entire team will support him regardless of what he does. I think we’re building something pretty cool in Milwaukee so that will play a role, but it’s his decision and all of us will support what he does, whenever that decision comes to light.

[womenofcolor15]

All The Self-Care & Fitness Suggestions You’ll Need To Get Through This Coronavirus Crisis

Now is the perfect time for some unapologetic self-care. Your usual schedule is a distant memory and you’re adjusting to your new normal as the world fights a global pandemic.

  We're not about to lose our minds - or our skin we've been working so hard on - becasue of all the global & political foolery happening.  Here are a few things you can do to help ease you through the Coronavirus crisis…

It’s been scientifically proven if you take time out to “take care” of yourself, overall you’ll be in better health. Checking in and attending to physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and professional needs can make you feel better. And during a time like this, it’s uber important (even when we're more worried than ever).

There is no one-size fits all approach for stress relief. However, there are things you can do to help ease the self-quarantine pains.

You've also likely have been experiencing grief due to this new world order of sorts, and not even realize it. David Kessler - known as the world’s foremost expert on grief - talked to Harvard Business Law about feeling different types of grief.

HBR: People are feeling any number of things right now. Is it right to call some of what they’re feeling grief?

Kessler: Yes, and we’re feeling a number of different griefs. We feel the world has changed, and it has. We know this is temporary, but it doesn’t feel that way and we realize things will be different. Just as going to the airport is forever different from how it was before 9/11, things will change and this is the point at which they changed. The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air.

You said we’re feeling more than one kind of grief?

Yes, we’re also feeling anticipatory grief. Anticipatory grief is that feeling we get about what the future holds when we’re uncertain. Usually it centers on death. We feel it when someone gets a dire diagnosis or when we have the normal thought that we’ll lose a parent someday. Anticipatory grief is also more broadly imagined futures. There is a storm coming. There’s something bad out there. With a virus, this kind of grief is so confusing for people. Our primitive mind knows something bad is happening, but you can’t see it. This breaks our sense of safety. We’re feeling that loss of safety. I don’t think we’ve collectively lost our sense of general safety like this. Individually or as smaller groups, people have felt this, but all together this is new. We are grieving on a micro and a macro level.

What can individuals do to manage this all this grief?

Understanding the stages of grief is a start. But whenever I talk about the stages of grief, I have to remind people that the stages aren’t linear and may not happen in this order. It’s not a map but it provides some scaffolding for this unknown world. There’s denial, which we say a lot of early on: This virus won’t affect us. There’s anger: You’re making me stay home and taking away my activities. There’s bargaining: Okay, if I social distance for two weeks everything will be better, right? There’s sadness: I don’t know when this will end. And finally there’s Acceptance. This is happening; I have to figure out how to proceed.

Acceptance, as you might imagine, is where the power lies. We find control in acceptance. I can wash my hands. I can keep a safe distance. I can learn how to work virtually.

You can read more here.

With your usual schedule getting knocked out of whack, you’re likely not going to bed at your usual time. The gym is closed, so you may not be getting in your cardio and weight training. You don’t have to leave the house, so you’re likely lounging around in sleepwear all day. Well, it’s time to get out of the rut and try and make the best of the cards we’ve been dealt.

EXERCISE: Even if it’s something mild – do something. Walking, jogging, yoga, HIIT, body weight exercises – all of these things will help your body FEEL better. Avoid the gym though.  When you exercise, your body releases endorphins, which trigger positive feelings in the body. And who doesn’t want that?

Actress Tia Mowry isn't letting the pandemic stop her from staying healthy.

"Day 8 of #saferathome. Wanted to make sure you are guys are keeping your #health and #mentalhealth in check," Tia wrote on Instagram. "Just a few of the ways I’ve been doing just that. Apps such as @calm has helped with mediation, FaceTiming family and friends, and just letting my feet touch the grass (becoming one with nature) known as #grounding has helped with #peace of mind. When it comes to my #health, I’ve been focusing on things that support my #immunesystem system. Not forgetting to eat my veggies (frozen) and fruits loaded in vitamin C including supplements with Zinc, garlic, and iron @shopanser just to name a few. I’m also #workingout out to help with #immunity. It’s amazing how many incredible apps are avail to help keep your body moving! Also, in my Instagram stories, I’ve been giving some recipes and activities I’ve been doing with the kids to help keep us all sane. Ps, YES those are stretch marks and I’m freaking proud of them!"

NBA baller Serge Ibaka and Olympic Gold Medalist volleyball player Kim Glass are getting in their cardio inside the house:

  Cardio day at home pic.twitter.com/LzSRGBnzwk

— Serge Ibaka (@sergeibaka) March 18, 2020

          View this post on Instagram

                  Quarantine Chronicles: A 4 Exercise Full Body Circuit to add to your next Home Workout!! Tag a Friend, Save it, & Do it next workout! 1. Sumo Squat Shuffle (3 x 8) note: 2 sumo squats-2 shuffles repeat 8 times/4 each way) 2. Squat Jumps (3 x 6) 3. Tricep 8’s (3 x 24) 4. SL DB Pullover Crunch (3 x10-12) #homeworkouts #fullbody #quarantinechronicles #workout #igfit #fitness #instafit #workoutmotivation #workfromhome #WhenYourDogDoesntWantYouToBeGreat

A post shared by K͙I͙M͙ G͙L͙A͙S͙S͙ (@itskimglass) on Mar 20, 2020 at 4:38pm PDT

  SLEEP: You're likely not going to sleep at your usual time now that you have more time on your hands. You should change that. Keep a regular sleep schedule by going to bed and waking up at the same time each day. This helps your body know when to expect sleep, which helps your body clock sync up with when you need to feel awake and when you feel sleepy.

Also, be sure your room is dark and cool. Science tells us that we sleep better in cooler temps.

STRETCHING: Activities like yoga helps the circulation of blood to various body parts and gets everything moving. It also reduces muscle tension, increases energy levels, and increases the range of movement in the joints.

MEDITATION: Taking a few minutes out of your day to calm your brain and relax during this stressful time can be very beneficial. Meditation reduces stress, promotes emotional health, and helps control anxiety. If your kids are home with you all day, taking a few minutes to meditate can definitely help you keep your cool. Our fave apps? Breethe, Calm & Meditate (available on your SLACK app).

GET OUT OF THE HOUSE: Yes, we're social distancing, but that doesn't mean you can't go outside for a minute for fresh air! Make it a habit to get outside and soak in some fresh air and sunlight - but not in groups.

LEARN SOMETHING: Now that you have more time on your hands, it's a good time to do some research on whatever it is you've been meaning to research. Look up information on things like starting a new business, stocks and bonds, retirement funds, etc. Now is the time to soak in all the information you can, make a plan and take action. Plus, most of the Ivy League universities are offering free online courses. 

CLEAN: Go ahead and put spring cleaning into full effect. You're already wiping everything down and disinfecting, might as well clean out all of the junk you have laying around from the holidays to kick off spring with a fresh start. Need help cleaning out your closet? Stylist Lili Morton will virtually guide you through the process of cleaning out and organizing your closet. Find out how here.

If you haven't already (or have been forced to), now would be a good time to reschedule beauty services. States are shutting down non-essential businesses left and right, which would include hair salons, barbershops and nail salons. If you're hairstylist/nail tech hasn't canceled or rescheduled you yet, they likely will as experts say the Coronavirus pandemic will get worse before it gets better. The federal government hasn't shut down these establishments, but states are and more will likely follow suit.

“People need to consider whether the necessity of the appointment or trip to the overrides the risk of being in public,” Dr. Robert A. Norton, a professor of Public Health at Auburn University told PEOPLE. “That is a personal decision, but social distancing is a wise move for now.”

“In areas with few or no cases, the risk is not zero (the virus is here), but generally less than the risk encountered in areas and regions where the case numbers are higher,” Dr. Norton continued.

Salons, barbershops and nails salons are already shutting down, so if yours hasn't yet, be prepared for when it does. And you could also use this as a time to learn to do your own cuts, washes, blowouts, braids, manis and whatever else.  You never know where your money saving talents may lie...

Also, we've created a Netflix list of TV shows and movies that will kinda curb your anxiety. Check it out HERE.

Listen, we're social distancing, but we're doing it together. Stay strong Fab Ones. We'll get through this!

Photo: David Prado Perucha/zulufoto/Shutterstock.com/Tia's IG

A SERIOUS MATTER: YBF CELEBS PREPARING FOR CORONAVIRUS!

[Read More ...] source http://theybf.com/2020/03/23/all-the-self-care-fitness-suggestions-you%E2%80%99ll-need-to-get-through-this-coronavirus-crisis