100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
No bio...
User ID: 2039
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9d ago
If a mid who uses dramatic eye makeup and slut-adjacent tattoo-ery "isn't even that hot" then the young men of America have no shot.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
10d ago
The Shiloh Hendrix case is the "free speech freshman year debate" hypothetical come to life.
"We should protect free speech!"
"Well, what if someone started shouting 'the n-word' at a child!"
And it was handled in the worst way possible. A trial over a disordery conduct charge. I really, really want to know why the prosecution decided to go to trial over this instead of dropping the charges. I believe, IIRC, the consequences are a $1000 fine and a few months of probation? In return, Hendrix has raised nearly a million in a go fund me because she has received credible death threats. The rare combination of libertarians and everyone right of center will make this some sort of cause as well.
Oh, and she's an attractive white woman. The self owns on all sides just seem insane!
I mean, what's next? A white, female muslim candidate gets into hot water for being too muslim to be gay?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
10d ago
Oh buddy that's not the cleanest shoot.
I think there's a tell as one of the other cops (male, to the left of the center of the frame) is pretty obvious giving the "mother_FUCKER" body language towards the end of the clip.
This reminds me of the kind of shoot that, 15+ years ago, the Police Union would huddle around the cop hard and find a way to keep him out of jail .... but also probably produce a non-official deal where he gets medically retired within 6 months.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
13d ago
I strongly dislike basketball and, especially, the NBA.
And - you are wrong on almost all of your points and have betrayed the fact that you don't watch much basketball.
Let's start with the whopper:
he result of this is that basketball is a highly statistical game - the opposite of soccer, upsets and comebacks in basketball rarely happen, because there are so many scoring plays, and scoring is so easy. By minute 5, you can already see which team is better, and the same ratio of points will likely continue for the rest of the game.
(Link) Literally the most recent NBA championship included the largest comeback in finals' history.
This is an embarrassingly cliche level of "truth nuke" as the kids say. Basketball is not "highlight statistical" (what does that mean?) and there's a ton of randomness. You can tell because of the length of the season. They need 80+ games to feel confident that one or more teams didn't just hit a statistical (there's that word again) improbability for a 10 game stretch.
the average for pro players is the 99th percentile.
(Link) And the Finals MVP, from this years' championship team, is 6'2"
Again. Big yikes. Sure, 6'2" isn't manlet territory, but, in relative sense in the NBA, in actually is! Brunson's whole "vibe" is that he is undersized and also not a giga-autist shooting specialist. He works his ass off and mostly focuses on ball movement and causing defense schemes to falter and break so he can exploit it. It's actually quite cerebral.
and yet 98-99% of people can never go pro no matter how hard they work or how skilled they become.
How is this not literally exactly true for MLB, NHL, NFL, UFC, Pro Soccer, Olympic Wrestling, Professional Musician, Professional Actor etc. etc. etc.
On a more serious note, the modern style of play has devolved to take advantage of these silly rules. Many plays I see in modern games are just a big player bull rushing with the ball in their hands for three steps, then leaping through the air and tipping the ball up while in midair.
(Link) Again, literally the opposite of what is happening
Mid 2000s NBA? Maybe. That's back when the typical (white) boomer Dad joke was "NBA, more like WWF!" But Steph Curry et al changed the game on such a fundamental level that a Shaq-like player wouldn't make it out of the D League today. You might be pointing to Lebron as this "bull in the China shop" And it's also true that LeBron has always received favorable foul treatment. He's also a 5x 1st-Team Defensive player and noted for his assists. Much like Brunson, interestingly enough, LeBron is so good because he makes other players on his team so good that the opposing team has to make a lose-lose choice to double up on LeBron and leave someone else open, or single cover LeBron and open themselves up to his penetration game (...hehe).
There's no teamwork beyond setting picks, no finesse, just a big flying body that the defender is not allowed to do anything about.
See above. Teamwork has never been more important. The pace at which defense (and offenses, frankly) adapt in game is so fast that incomplete team play is how you get blowouts.
it's usually a foul and free throw so just as good.
Okay, but later on you say:
(BTW, how are there professional players who can't hit free throws? What an embarrassing sport!)
So, free throws aren't "just" as good as making the basket. Hmm.
Third, shooting baskets is stupid.
There it is.
Seriously, can someone come up with any other action in life that is remotely like shooting baskets? How much of our kids' time is wasted on this junk?Also, there's relatively little interaction involved in shooting baskets.
This is perhaps the strangest argument. Practice one's shot is absolutely a necessary part of training, but it's not the only thing you do. And eventually, you know, you're playing or practicing with other people. Specifically, you are coordinating in real time with a group of peers to accomplish a competitive goal against a common opponent. This is what makes all "sports dumb lol" arguments so tedious. Sports are one of the most effective ways to build real pro-social capability. There's a reason why college athletes have such better life outcomes (in general, across the distribution) than college non-athletes. This "shooting baskets is stupid" (literally what you said) is taking a very specific item and stripping away all of the context around it as a means to paint the entire enterprise of Basketball as vapid. It's almost a .... Motte and Bailey.
All basketball arenas should be renovated into indoor soccer arenas.
Even if I shared your potentially homoerotic inclinations for indoor soccer, I couldn't get past the fact that this is an insane de-growth position. The 30 NBA teams are worth, on average, $5.4bn each. That's About $150bn in just team value right off the top. Add in the various marketing, promotions, adverts etc. and The NBA (like the other Big 4 sports) is probably close to a half-a-trillion-dollar-per-year economic impact across the US.
Indoor soccer is not. It's not a tenth of that value. It may be a hundredth, but I don't know (nor do I care). But your position seems to be that we should turn a half-a-trillion-dollars into far, far less because you don't particularly like Basketball. But literally millions and millions of other people do and are willing to pay for it. You must make a stronger case.
Here's The Stronger Case for Why Basketball - Specifically, the NBA - Sucks
All of these are common knowledge problems. I've done enough citations above for the day. If you want to look these up on your own, you can. They are all valid.
-
Tanking. Because of how the NBA draft works, teams towards the bottom of the league, at the end of the season, will lose on purpose to secure a higher draft pick for the next season. One player can really be that important (LeBron in Cleveland being the canonical example). This means that the end of the regular season is a fucking travesty.
-
Sports Betting. In the past few years, several players (including major names and, oddly, retired superstars) have been indicted for fixing games, point shaving etc. This corrupts the game, of course, and creates is own gravity because it helps the mobile sports books make money and set better lines. It's become so ubiquitous that, IIRC, the NBA league office is hiring Cybersecurity teams to monitor and secure player devices around game times. There's probably a lawsuit in there somewhere. But the larger point is that guys making seven figures a year still think it's a smart move to get paid $50k to shave points. Which leads to point number 3....
-
Culture War (Hey, we made it!). The NBA is the most "culturally" aware of the Big 4. Baseball, Football, and Hockey dudes tend just to want to score points, win, and go home (and / or party). The Colin Kapernick saga in the NFL showed that if you really want to get hyperpolitical, you can Resist (TM) your way out of a contract (Also, side note, Kapernick really did suck as a QB, but that's a different thread). In the NBA, being "cultural" seems to be par for the course. It starts at draft night where guys are wearing the most retarded suits in the world. It extends to post game interviews where they discuss, with the media, the scientific merits of flat earth theory (look it up, seriously). And eventually you get the fuckery that is smile posing with Jay-Z while wearing comic sans "I can't breathe" t-shirts.
The issue isn't that the NBA has gone too woke (ask them how they feel about gay players!), it's that the league has become a hyperslop live action TikTok. This is the league of "dabbing each other up" before games (look it up). If Gen-Z wanted to ironically-vibe-code a sports league, it wouldn't be surprising if the "app" turned out to be today's NBA.
But that's the thing, though, right?
18 is 18. Uncle Sam has no problem getting her to sign papers that might lead to death in one direction or another. She can take out enough debt via auto-loans, college loans, and credit cards to destroy her life permanently. She can marry anyone in any state.
Either the age of majority has real, meaningful weight or it doesn't. "Yes, you're 18 now, but don't do 18 year old things for, you know, a little while longer" destroys the whole concept.
But this is all besides the point. If you're not comfortable with her being in the group, I would say something along the liens of "We're not comfortable with you being in our group."
More options
Context Copy link