Aaron McGuire

photoshop of doug christie on stilts in a purple gazing in abject horror at the basketball team he coaches, despite russell westbrook swishing a single shot at the dying of the light. (stock photo used; credit mofles.)

#hoopidea combat tanking by forcing the head coach of the worst team in the league at any given time to wear a circus suit and coach on stilts.

i think i can finally post this — earnestly thought the spurs were going to get blown out tonight. unbelievably impressive win for the lads, absolutely wild performance.

My NBA tanking fix:

-Bottom 16 teams enter a tournament
-Eliminated teams are placed on a jury to vote on top 3 pick order
-At Final 4, all teams compete in a puzzle. Winner picks one other team to debate in front of jury
-3rd/4th enter firemaking contest for last debate spot

if you see this, post a photo from your device, no explanation:

and finally, UTA is cooking with JJJ. not entirely sure i like the stew, but i respect it. really like keyonte/laurie/jjj/kessler in theory, but in practice i wonder if it UTA is building a team around countering wemby at the expense of paying attention to the rest of the conference.

IND's move for zubac is fun, too. from an "asset analyst" standpoint, kind of a weird move; if they lose a mid-lotto pick it'll sting. but zubac + hali is an AWESOME one-two punch, and will make them better than they were with turner. should compete to represent the east in the finals until 32-33ish

WAS will get ridiculed a bit for AD/trae, but i think it's fine. they haven't been over 0.500 since 2018! ceiling isn't enormously high, but should be a low-end playoff team, and that's not nothing. (also, as long as they avoid costly extensions, the AD/trae fliers cost nearly nothing.)

which brings me to what i think is the weirdest and funniest thing about this deadline: the biggest swings all came from teams who absolutely SUCK this season. (and, again -- almost all building for next season!) i actually like most of the "big" moves the NBA's deep lotto teams made, too.

meanwhile, in the west, MIN was the contending team that was most improved by the deadline. ayo should be great for them, and they didn't give up much. but, similar to the east, hard to argue anyone else got much better. could perhaps argue that mccain to OKC was the 2nd most meaningful deal.

this begs the question: how open do teams -actually- think the east is? or, is this perhaps the wrong question? is the real motivation for building for the future simply that the CBA is too restrictive, and playoff teams now only go all-in when they can reasonably win a chip?

PHI/BOS/TOR/ORL's moves were just shedding salary or acquiring assets, not actively helpful players. ATL might have gotten a tiny bit better, but imperceptibly so, if at all. and instead of acquiring helpful players, DET got a crappy pick and a "meh" player for ivey.

the way east teams approached the deadline stands in contrast to how "open" the conference is seen by the zeitgeist. of the top 8 teams, only CLE/NYK made substantial moves to improve themselves; alvarado is going to COOK in the garden and harden will be a short-term improvement. but everyone else?

in this thread, i am going to share some spot thoughts on the 2026 NBA trade deadline. just some general big picture thoughts because i am procrastinating doing my actual job by reminiscing on when i was a hoops blogger. i hope someone finds these thoughts interesting!

i think you are probably right. i suspect CHA has a chance of hopping up into that group, though; they have a lot of picks and are finally starting to cook with their young talent.

conversely, if they do not win the lotto for picks 1-4, they will still have a pretty decent gap year but will not have quite the young talent infusion you'd expect. 2027 floor is quite high now. high risk if they lose the 26 pick, extremely high reward if they keep it.

the spurs really played with their food tonight. obviously got away with it, but they have been slumping for a good while now. when you have a chance to annihilate a team you should take it.

"larks tongues in aspic part III", if we count the "part III". otherwise, probably "i'm spending hanukkah in santa monica" -- great song to sing to my daughter.

don't get it either. harden has been a shell of his regular season talent in the playoffs for his entire career. why does anyone think he'll somehow turn it around as he ages?

while simons is a much better player at this stage of their careers, vooch is slightly better shaped for what the BOS needs. but also: vooch is old as shit and turns into a tumbleweed in the playoffs. not sure this does much good or bad for their playoff ceiling.

my head-scratcher of the day is detroit's role in the conley salary dump. yes, ivey didn't want to be there anymore. but detroit is the best team in the east and offloaded ivey for a worse player in huerter and a swap that will likely amount to 5-6 slots in the 2026 draft. why downgrade for that?

cavs like “if we trade mobley for giannis and garland for harden and sign lebron next year we will win the 2019-2025 all star games in retrospect, fortune favors the bold”

i suppose harden technically has slightly better numbers this season but garland is a better player on the positive side of the aging curve. both have been playoff flunks so far but harden has done it on an insanely high sample size. what is the point of this??

my daughter turns one on wednesday, and she is happy and healthy. my wife and i haven’t screwed this up yet, i am proud of us

pretty sure you simply cannot spell Our Man Dan Devine without All The Coaches, provided you have very specific and baffling issues with spelling things.

it is nice to have a little hope

- rachel did 9/11 (very literally hijacked a plane and flew it into a building on a book published in 2001 prior to 9/11
- rachel gets split into id and ego after getting cut in half as a jellyfish
- the buffalo that gained the power to morph and just screamed a lot

i think the spurs are pretty good at basketball. maybe.

on a more serious note, i think the spurs actually really do match up well with the thunder. not quite as well with the nugs and the rockets, i think. but the thunder should really not want to see the spurs in the playoffs.

i think wemby's block streak is going to end which means the thunder get a moral victory

gotta break out a classic for this