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Posts posted by thecampster
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Denver in 5.
Denver won the season series 2-0
average score 118 - 113.5.
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FYI, if you haven't seen the movie....its a good example of all we're talking about here.
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50 minutes ago, Diesel said:
Where to begin...
I'm from a Military family and so is my wife. Her dad was in Korea. Saw so many horrors that he came home "Shell Shocked" is what they called it. They had nothing for him as a veteran not at the VA during that time... He self medicated with Alcohol until he died at the age of 48. They allowed him to be buried in the military ward of the cemetery but they didn't give him a soldier's funeral. No Military Honors. His wife fought 13 years for his death gratuity. He wasn't dishonorably discharged. In fact, at the time of his death he was retired reserved..
My great-grandfather fought in WWI and died. Damn near the same thing.
My Uncle fought in Vietnam and came back a little different. He believe he was hit with Agent Orange. He asked his doctor about it and his VA appointed Dr. Shrugged his shoulders.
Camp in the AA community, there's a love hate relationship with the military.. it has gotten tons better because My Brother serves and I am surrounded by others who serve... But when you consider the treatment of our forefathers who served, fought and came back to the US and found out that they were treated better overseas than here.....
Sometimes, the best you can muster up for young men and women who are putting their life on the line is Thank you for your service. It's not because you're relieving guilt... It's because you are sincere and in your sincerity you hope that America Keeps her word to these young men and women. Because she hasn't always done so.
My whole thing is if you appreciate me / others for their service show it. Your story has me seething. That should have never happened....I am sorry. But the story is all too familiar. We pay lip service to appreciate service members but all too often discard them when they get home....line them up 2 days a year and then put them away.
Not everyone who says the words is wrong....but far too many use it as an empty platitude.
I was asked about this recently and I said "you have no idea what you're thanking them for". Person gave me a chance to explain what being deployed is and it changed their whole perception of what they were saying.
To be deployed is to look at those you love, wife, kids, mom, dad and say, "I'll be back", knowing full well that is not under your control. Its giving up every bit of your self, every bit of your autonomy and many times (like your wife's father) for people who will put you away the second you get back.
I was helping a guy do interviews some time ago and after one of the interviews, he admitted he didn't want to hire the best candidate because he was former military and "those guys can snap at any time." He then uttered a few anti military tropes. I held my breath and told him "I'm a veteran". Guy went terrified 'white'. But that's a bunch of the bias these guys feel all the time. We see them homeless on the streets or standing in the line at the VA for therapy.
My deployment, my military life was easy. I sometimes feel embarrassed talking about it. I was a broadcaster. But I met so many young kids, just tools of the machine. I say the things I say for them. It has nothing to do with me....
I know someone right now (I won't say who) and his job was to interpret audio/written coms to provide targets for drone strikes. Yah.....he's got a few issues to work out. He's the guy who could use more than an empty platitude.
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You can ask me about this.
The place I called home for 8 months.
Or this...that little 6x10 , 5 foot high plywood enclosure was my sleeping quarters for 8 months. When you thank me for my service, this is just a small part of what you're thanking me for....why its insulting for people to say it and move on....they just don't understand.
Or this - Tent City and the outdoor showers.
Or this - The clearing barrel....every time you leave post, come back you remove your magazine, check the barrel for a bolo in the chamber then fire into the sand in this barrel. If your weapon fires, its an article 15 punishment. No chambered rounds on base unless under attack. Safety first.
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And we have stories.
I'd rather not type it out, but ask me about the time I was sneezed on by an Oxen while escorting a Serbian journalist onto an air base.
or
Ask me about my 2 week apprentice DJ.
or
Ask me about the gal who used photos of stick people to talk to when doing her radio show.
Ask me about mistaking a thunderstorm for an uprising (yes, I did this).
Ask about my heartbreak laying my eyes on the Sava River in Sarajevo for the first time.
Ask about my dislocated shoulder playing Frisbee Football, the kids on the side of the road yelling "give me lunchbucket" to get the M&Ms or chocolate sauce out of our MRE's.
Ask about the woman missing 1.67 fingers on one hand and who did it to her.
Ask me what its like to be away from your wife and kids for 8 months.
Ask me about not knowing my student loan repayment expired 10 years after my last service date (I went back to college 11 years later).
If you catch me at a game, ask me about my service, people I served with. Just don't thank me for my service and walk away feeling like you did me some grand favor.
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Just now, bird_dirt said:
Squawk isn’t a democracy or a publicly traded company. You have no vote. You aren’t required to pay anything and participation is completely voluntary. You don’t own any content you provide to the site, either.
The site owner and the people they leave to manage the site have complete autonomy to do with it whatever they wish.But @kg01 told me I had a quota???? Rethinking all my life choices.
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24 minutes ago, AHF said:
I came on due to a complaint from a board member about this thread and the general tone of things over the last couple days. I’ve got sick people in my house and haven’t been on much this weekend and I’m not stepping into what looks to be a situation rife for drama. However, when I come back on (1) I will provide context for the issues brought up in this thread (racist comments on one thread and attacks on the insider thread) and (2) will let people have their say on this issue and try to think about the best spot for that in light of the complaint about this being on Homecourt.
Please everyone try to be kind and respectful towards one another in the meantime.
I think (am hoping) its mostly tongue in cheek. Good strategy to allow some cooling off. I think its just pushing the envelope kind of a thing.
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2 hours ago, kg01 said:
That actually did happen.
FYi, pretty sure your mailbox is full....delete the porn!!!
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17 minutes ago, Spud2nique said:
With all due… ok with some respect 🫡 this is cliche bs to me. Frankly, I’d be offended (if you came up to me).
As a veteran and with many veteran associates, there is a lot of this sentiment.
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43 minutes ago, Diesel said:
If I could trade Dereck Lively for Jalen Duren or Mark Williams, I would easily do that. I believe that the bigs from the last class were much better than Lively and much more NBA ready. However, I love that we got AJG. I believe tht Griff Money is going to be as big as Kobe if he is allowed to grow.
People that say JJ > AJG need to have their BBIQ examined.
I don't think you can make that decision either way at this point.
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Short version in case you don't want to read the article.
Don't use "thank you for your service" as a guilt relieving platitude or a device to get past that part of the conversation.
Rather than "thank you for your service", ask the vet what he or she did in the service. Ask for a story from their service. Ask where they were, when they got out. Ask them what they learned from serving.
Respect their sacrifice by educating yourself on issues and voting based on what matters to you.
Support veteran causes (I can't stress this enough). Support the V.A, local veteran's services.
Be mindful of what you say the other 364 days of the year.
https://amuedge.com/why-saying-thank-you-for-your-service-offends-some-veterans/
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9 minutes ago, thecampster said:When Quinn came in, almost every player bought in immediately with the exception of Dre. Dre saw himself as a defensive stopper, ultimate team guy. Quinn's coaching was about recovery, that offense is best played when its a 5 v 1 game and so too defense can be played in a similar dance. Dre was by far the most lock in to 1 player type of a player and would ignore most other parts of defense (dig downs, quick doubles, cheating, anticipating the shot to get in position for a rebound, etc). Dre was coached up on making defense easier and he took it personal. But it was made to seem like a much bigger thing to me that it really was.
On this topic (and it showed on the floor), Trae bought in immediately and practiced it. Specifically helping with quick doubles, dig downs and anticipating passes not to his man but within reach to disrupt. We saw his "pest" factor jump substantially under Quinn and right away. Dre was slow to buy in because it was counter to the good man and switch defense he'd learned his whole career. Felt singled out. But the rift was significantly smaller than I was originally told and why it never made it to the board. It was just an example.
The Dre thing was/is hard to swallow because he should get the sequel to Everybody Loves Raymond called "The World Loves Dre". Dre loves everyone and has a reputation of being extremely easy to coach.
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One interesting thing I heard but didn't discuss with anyone is that Quinn has learned from his few failures in Utah, specifically over reliance on Gobert for interior D and ignoring his deficiencies guarding centers with range. It wasn't just Gobert didn't guard the perimeter well but that when he drifted out to guard his man, they had little else inside.
He also feels he over-relied on Mitchell offensively. He'd like more movement, more pick n rolls (one of the reasons the Hawks job appealed to him), more diversity offensively. The phrase thrown around (and you may hear in the media soon) is "3 level scoring". Being able to score 10 feet in, 10-22 and 22+ with equal efficiency.
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2 hours ago, JayBirdHawk said:can you provide more information on this little tidbit?
When Quinn came in, almost every player bought in immediately with the exception of Dre. Dre saw himself as a defensive stopper, ultimate team guy. Quinn's coaching was about recovery, that offense is best played when its a 5 v 1 game and so too defense can be played in a similar dance. Dre was by far the most lock in to 1 player type of a player and would ignore most other parts of defense (dig downs, quick doubles, cheating, anticipating the shot to get in position for a rebound, etc). Dre was coached up on making defense easier and he took it personal. But it was made to seem like a much bigger thing to me that it really was.
On this topic (and it showed on the floor), Trae bought in immediately and practiced it. Specifically helping with quick doubles, dig downs and anticipating passes not to his man but within reach to disrupt. We saw his "pest" factor jump substantially under Quinn and right away. Dre was slow to buy in because it was counter to the good man and switch defense he'd learned his whole career. Felt singled out. But the rift was significantly smaller than I was originally told and why it never made it to the board. It was just an example.
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5 hours ago, JayBirdHawk said:So I guess we are tampering?
if this happens, I suspect the NBA will now be imposing heavier fines instead of a slap on the wrist.
If it's a trade this summer, then he's declining his super max extension from Boston. He will then have to wait 6 months to sign an extension with us (non supermax).
If he signs that super max extension then he cannot be traded for 6 months, then he'll be even more costly not just players and picks but the salary we'll have to send out.
@bleachkit I don't see the cost going down.
**Camp scratches head, composes himself......breathes......
About 75% of the league openly wants to play for coach Quinn. Oddly, there is a small faction of the league that doesn't want to play for him at all. Hiring Quinn attracted attention whether we openly solicited it or not. That said, players talk.
There are a lot of players in the league who do not like Trae (old schoolers mostly). Young players love him.
Bogi is extremely popular around the league. So is JC. This doesn't make the above 3 safe but it does lay the groundwork for attracting talent. For example, Bey was ecstatic with coming here. He loves the ATL vibe. He's likely to leave in free agency if we don't make moves but I could see him taking a small discount to stay.
There is a very good core of players here the league wants to play with and that means as much as anything.
Side note: 1/2 the league+ has called about Jalen since the season ended. Just testing our commitment to him. He's highly valued around the league. Teams see him as a future 2nd/3rd option. They see his upside potential as Robin, his floor as long term vet starter.
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A note on my method before posting.
Many times I hear things and dismiss them out of hand. I've been burned by this a few times.
Sometimes I hear things and bounce them off of people I know with some possible insight.
when it graduates to "plausibly >50% true", I drop it in the insider private thread. About 75% of the time Sothron has heard similar. About 1/2 the time Supes has heard similar.
Example: In the insider thread, I bounced off the guys what I heard about Dre and Coach having friction when he first got here. Coach wanted more/different out of Dre, Dre took it critical. Soth had heard similar, Supes rejected it out of hand. I waited. Found out that though true, it was not as "prominent" as the source made it out to be. I sat on it so as to not rouse the board.
Usually when one of us hears something, we put out feelers to those we know....sometimes takes days for them to get back and it breaks in the news first. Sometimes we beat the news. When there's greater than yes/yes/no....like yes/maybe/maybe or yes/yes/maybe in our talks, whoever brought it first or whoever has the most info will drop it to the board.
Or then there's this: Supes does it more than me who does it more than Soth. We get something, we're so confident about it, we drop a message in the insider thread and don't wait for validation, we just post it to the main board thread. This last update is in this category. I updated the insider message thread with a few more details then I put here but then posted my update here without the need for validation.
So why not all details.....exactly what happened this time around. People like to sit around and call scoreboard when things vary. So I post as much as I'm confident about, withhold what I see as rumor/conjecture.
The one thing you might want to consider is a few weeks ago, people on this thread were asking, a few begging, for dirt and I said "none will come out until the finals or later". We could just post for clicks or fame in situations like that, but I had nothing and had no reason to post.
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1 minute ago, RedDawg#8 said:All of this makes sense and says to me JJ and OO have more value to us than JC and CC.
Dre and Bey are switchable but not as effective creating turnovers and extending possessions as mentioned.
JJ is the lone player who checks all these boxes as stated. He is in for a major bump in minutes if this is true.
JJ did not guard 1-3 well last year. He got blown by a lot. He's someone told he needs to work on perimeter D....on ball D on smaller players. Bruno didn't see the floor much because he can't guard on the perimeter at all and has been told to work on it all offseason (if back).
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Let me explain that "momentum" thing with a few screen shots.
FGA/game - Hawks are golden here at 92.4/game with a respectable 48.3% FG%...but 30.5 3PA/game at 35.2%
Now look at opponent 90.2 shots per game at 48.6% and 33.5 3PA/game at 35.6%
The takeaway is we got more shots due to less turnovers and more offensive rebounds (thanks Clint/OO) but even though we were a top offense in the league, we also made everyone else equally good or better on offense.
In games, it meant teams never quit on us. They always felt they could get back in it (the OKC comeback stings). The other team came down the floor, got into a set, targeted someone on defense, switched and scored. That simple and they did it fast, very fast. Which is why the assessment. This is part of the reason he wanted a completely new assistant coaching staff, to eliminate voices that could slow the change.
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A few rumors I consider valuable to state here. Please for the love of everything spicy, do not run off the rail with these.
Hawks are interested in trading out of the 15th pick to combine with a vet for a roster upgrade. They are not convinced the 15th pick can help them in the next 2 seasons. If no one intrigues them at 15, they may trade it for future picks to make up for what they've traded away beyond this year.
Quinn is valuing the ability to guard 3 positions to stop teams from hunting players in switches. Player movement will center around moving players who can't guard 3 positions. Quinn feels Trae turns a mediocre offensive player into a functional offensive player. Turns good into great. He's willing to downgrade offense to get more complete defensive players around Trae.
Specific players on the roster have been given marching orders to work on their perimeter defense if they want the minutes they think they deserve. Bigs need to be able to guard down on the perimeter. Smaller players need to get better at dig downs and doubles in the post.
Offseason players being targeted will be targeted because they can do the above and cause changes of possession (turnovers and blocks) as well as can create longer clocks. This is the interesting thing I was told. It was how quick other teams possessions were against us. He wants opposing offenses to have to work for their scores to slow momentum.
On momentum. Teams could score quickly on us through isolation, targeting and forcing switches. It led to them erasing leads quickly and limited our "pressure" on the scoreboard. Teams didn't fear the Hawks getting up by 10 because they felt they could erase that in 4 possessions in a minute and a half. Quinn wants teams to feel uncomfortable when we get a lead. More forced turnovers, longer possessions on defense. Players that can create that.
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21 hours ago, AHF said:
I think it is extremely unlikely a team would offer what Atlanta had already offered knowing that Atlanta would just match that. But I concede that I can't produce any evidence that a team didn't offer a comparable package.
What I can say with extreme confidence is that no team offered even $.01 more than Atlanta did. So I think JC went around and got a lot of "no bids" from teams because they weren't interested in exceeding what Atlanta offered and/or believed that Atlanta would just match. It is clear no one was willing to do a "Bogi" where they exceeded Atlanta's offer and called their bluff.
As far as why a team wouldn't want to let a player shop themselves around after getting a generous contract offer, it is extremely common in negotiations to say "this is our last, best offer and it is off the table if you leave this room." In the context of the NBA, that offer is made to say that if you want to go shop yourself around the league we will just match whatever offer you get so you can either take our offer or the best you can get from another team. That is, in fact, what I think Atlanta should have done. This isn't an uncommon tactic to rely on other teams to set the market price, although I'll grant that it is perhaps more common for a team not even to make an offer but to simply let the player shop themselves and match whatever they are offered at the end of the day. This is exactly what the Hawks did with Jeff Teague who signed a sheet with the Bucks.
IMO, it is really stupid to offer something that is likely over what a RFA would get in the market and allow them to shop themselves around. That is the worst of both worlds where you risk overpaying with your initial offer and then remove the downside to that player potentially driving the price up even higher. At that point, you should just let them shop themselves to start and match ala Teague.
I still marvel at the ludicrousness of adults arguing the fairness of a grown man getting paid "XX" million to play a kid's game.
But market value.....yahdee, yahdee.
But collusion....yahdee, yahdee.
But he could have walked if he found a better deal....yahdee, yahdee yah.
He's making more in 1 season than 99% of the population will make in their lifetime. I'm not going to cry crocodile tears for or against it. You make $25 million "PER YEAR", you go try to earn that paycheck. Anyone trying to say he's lived up to $25 million a year is watching highlight videos. If he can fetch back more in trade, you do it. If he can improve his play and live up to $25 million/per....you keep him. But the 2nd half of the season, Jalen outplayed him at 1/7th the price.
That's it...that's the bottom line on John. I think the finger still affects him. It may continue to affect him. He's lost the ability to control the ball backing people down in the post. Jalen moves better on the slash, passes better on the move, can put the ball on the floor. John has to step up or Jalen is going to take his spot.
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18 hours ago, Gray Mule said:
Being raised on a farm, I understand about the green grass and why theirs has a deeper green tint. It's usually due to the fact they spread more BS on their gress than we do.
Post of the century (no ageism intended
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On 5/23/2023 at 7:57 AM, JayBirdHawk said:
I think this has been established/considered Prime/Peak years.
Be careful, I made the statement on this board years ago to wait longer on big men to mature and got called a racist (still trying to figure that one out). 25 folks. Really shouldn't judge any player until they hit 25. Stuff's just different after 25.
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Checking in from checking out.
The Official NBASupes, Sothron, and theCampster Insider Thread - NBA 2022-23 Season
in Homecourt
Posted
Okay so that's an interesting take!