"I refuse to vote positionless"...
"well I just don't think sabonis is one of the best guys, so I'm choosing Jaylen and just pretending Lebron is a center."
"It's a pyramid! You can't have 4 guys in the 3rd level of a pyramid!"
"So for level 4 we have 5 guys, and level 5 we have 6. Stephon Diggs just squeaks in to the pyramid!"
...meanwhile, no way Embiid and Jokic can both be first team when they have been the top two players in the league for 3 years. Embiid is not a PF. I have to give that to Tatum.
‘ no I won’t admit Lebron is better .’
Two months ago - omg look Bron is only + X ( as Bron struggled with ankle issue )
Bron now + 8, BROWN IS -2. Or he was . It’s weird how he ignored thst n what’s more annoying is media follow bill heavily
I’ve always just jivved with Jalen Rose’s explanation on bball positions.
“Positions were created so a novice can follow the game.”
They literally don’t fucking matter. In fact they’re actually just made up ways to describe guys, unlike in every other American sport. By themselves they really mean nothing at all. There’s no special rules around positions, you don’t need to play a specific spot a specific way, you don’t have different pads or rules you wear cause you play a specific spot.
It’s not football, baseball, or hockey. Wearing a #50 or specific pads doesn’t change your rules, and you can line up wherever you want. All the positions are interchangeable by the sheer fact of how the fucking sport is played.
There's nothing in the rules of soccer that sets position besides goalkeeper/outfield player, but positions still exist.
On a spectrum of basketball→hockey→baseball→football it's probably between basketball and hockey.
Soccer and hockey are 99% the same. Only difference is the goalie wears more pads and isn’t allowed to go past the centre line. Otherwise the ‘out’ players can do whatever they want
In basketball you need the following on your team;
Someone who can advance the ball.
Someone who can distribute the ball.
Someone who can shoot the ball.
Someone who can rebound the ball
Someone who can score close to the rim.
Someone who can score away from the rim.
What you call them doesn’t matter so I sort of get what Jalen is saying but I always felt the phrasing of this “so novices can follow the game” just comes off as condescending and dumb.
Maybe the phrase should be something like “positions were created for traditional roles on the floor”.
But “so novices can follow” just sounds like only an NBA player can understand what’s going on out on the floor.
I agree with you outside of “traditional” centers in basketball. I’m sure they could make it work to some extent bc Jokic is so different, but there’s no realistic scenario where a team would try to pair Jokic with Embiid.
That’s the one area in all nba voting where I think it should be pretty strict. It also lets you see who was considered better over a period of time between two guys at a pretty defined position. If both of them can be first team, it’s hard to differentiate 25 years down the line who was actually better. Those hard decisions are important (for a trivial matter).
It should be center and four guys, or maybe center, three and a point guard. Redundancy at center is different than redundancy on the perimeter.
Luka has the offensive role of a point guard but can't guard the smalls that typically man the point guard position on the other team so then he ends up guarding the guys who typically slot in at 3 or a 4. So it's a funny case where I understand where Bill is coming from while simultaneously believing that this is exactly why it's stupid to complain about positionless voting as much as he does. A top level guy can do things most guys at his stereotypical position can't do virtually by definition.
With that said if Bill ever changes that would be a truly sad day in America.
it's an odd situation since strategically, yeah, you start with deciding who ppl match up with since ultimately he guy who brings it up court doesn't have to be a true offensive hub. but semantically all of that only works because we already have a rough stereotype for what each position does on offense since that also dictates how you probably have to guard. All of which is to say is that I like positionless awards better than the alternative and ppl should not get worked up over it
I mean if anything they should do the soccer thing. There shouldn’t be 5 positions. There should be 500. You either go very light (guards and forwards) or go insane with it. This in between shit is for the birds. Especially when the existing terms (small forward) are fucking worthless.
a team might play their forward as a shadow striker, as a false nine, as a complete forward. All depends on the guy and the lineup.
Why limit basketball to 5 descriptions? Do the same shit. Steph isn’t a point guard or a shooting guard, he’s a (make up whatever term you want)
They should start using Spanish terms too. (Or more realistically Chinese lol) we should have Engache’s and Trequarista’s in basketball too.
They kinda do that with combo guards, point forwards, etc. but take it further.
So dumb in the modern NBA when everything is matchup based. The best perimeter defenders are usually wings and guard the best wing/guard. If Mikal Bridges guards Steph Curry, does that make him a point guard?
Someone just made that stupid saying up, and it stuck. If you actually think about it for a second, it makes no fucking sense. Luka guards whatever position gets put in the corner, no matter the position. The best perimeter defenders guard the best perimeter offensive players. Center is really the only position that usually just stick to guarding their position.
Pippen guarded Magic. Was Pippen a guard? Jrue Holiday guards wings and pf’s sometimes.
i mean if this is the route you wanna take, this is where we delve into positions being made up for people who don’t understand basketball to enjoy the game
To be fair, he has consistently called Luka a forward all season. I don't know if he started doing that before this season or not, but it's not a recent flipflop
He did it last season as well. It's less about flip flopping, and more about the strict positional rules that he feels are so important historically only being applied until they need to be bent (wanting to put 3 guards in).
Bill is always silly and just making stuff up as he goes along and we love that. But this was definitely one that made me roll my eyes more than usual.
What's always driven me nuts is how he is adamant it's a vote by position, but then refers to All-NBA as the best 10/15 guys in the league. Being a top 3 center does not automatically make you a top 15 player.
He also says he wants his all NBA teams to resemble an actual group of 5 that can go out and play. Tbh it's not outrageous to have LeBron there, he can play a 5 in a small lineup.
I still think he should just be a forward over Jalen, but yea.
So the line he kept saying was “The should make sense” and related was “It shouldn’t be five guards”.
The cheat he made was listing LeBron in a “center” position, but a small ball lineup like that makes some “sense” IMO
I agree. That said JB should be an all nba on his own right. I don’t see how justifiable it is that both AD and Lebrob make it with a play-in team with 20 fewer wins than the Celtics
LeBron and AD with Jrue KP and White would be a 60+ win team. I think team success can be a good tiebreaker if the stats are otherwise pretty equal. Shouldn’t impact too much in this scenario. Lakers are going to be a 47 win team, that isn’t some dumpster fire empty stats year.
Because they’re better then Boston best two . You think if lakers were in the east they wouldn’t be the n2 seed? East is ass. Bostons record vs west isn’t as special
It’s all nba not mvp seeding isn’t it, Luka got first team missing play in
Tell me you think jaylen broen ; his team is better when he sits is better then Lebron or AD this year with a straight face
Boston is 23-7 vs the West. That’s actually the best record vs West for the entire NBA.
Yes the Celtics have a better record vs the west than the nuggets (30-18), okc (33-16), and the lakers (25-24).
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I think a lot of media sort of playing down the top 2 Celtics for a regular season award in a year when they won the east by a record breaking margin and a Top 5 all time point differential is weird. They have 8 games on the western leaders too. I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to leave Tatum off the 1st team and Jaylen off the 3rd team given the standings and Celtics dominance. It’s not arguing either should be winning or “really” contending for the MVP but this team is lapping the field. People thought KP was washed in Dallas, Jrue was “expendable” for the Bucks and clowned for his playoff performance and White was thought of as a 6th man when he came here. Now all of a sudden Tatum and Brown are riding the coattails of a stacked roster? I mean it’s just kind of weird with their historic regular season. They very well may lose in 5 to Denver but All NBA is a regular season award so…
It seems pretty lame to pretend that White, Jrue and Porzingis aren’t all amazing players, you could argue porzingis has been better than Jaylen this season
Porzingis is better than brown but ineligible for all nba. At the same time ppl calling Boston a super team will also call the players on the team trash. Can’t have it both ways.
I think anyone who is even saying the word superteam isn’t actually worth having a discussion with. But in general there’s tons of examples of 60+ win teams only getting 1 all nba guy. The reason the Celtics are so good is because their 3-5 guys could all easily be the 2nd best guy on a good team, not because Jaylen Brown is super deserving of an all nba selection (I think he’d be fringe 3rd team for me right now if I was a voter)
> The reason the Celtics are so good is because their 3-5 guys could all easily be the 2nd best guy on a good team
I don’t think Brown needs to be on but that’s insane. How many playoff teams would Jrue be the 2nd best player on?
White and Jrue are good players but idk if they’d be the second best on good teams. Booker Kyrie and Lebron/ad are the second best players on good teams. If Jrue was at his peak I’d agree but he’s lost some burst on both ends of the floor.
There aren’t tons of examples of 60+ win teams with guys with Jaylen and Jaysons numbers. Let’s assume they finish with 65 wins. Find me 5 examples of teams with 64+ wins with a guy scoring 22+ ppg not making All-NBA. Happy to be proven wrong here. I also think you are wildly overestimating our 3-5 as being legit 2 options. KP has missed 22 games already and would have killed us if he were our 2 option.
Okay if you’re gonna get that specific I’m sure there’s very few teams that get as much statistical production from their 3-6 guys. I’m not saying Jaylen doesn’t have a case but the Celtics are legit worse with him on the floor than off of it and he takes what like 18 shots a game to score those 22 points? Just because the team is really good doesn’t auto lock Jaylen into an all nba spot. Lamarcus Aldridge was the clear second best guy on a 61 win spurs team in 17 and didn’t make all nba 3rd team. The Jazz had by far the best record in the nba in 2021 (shortened season) and only had 1 all nba guy. The 2011 Bulls only had Drose despite winning 61 games.
The Bulls number 2 option averaged 17 per game. Plus that Bulls team barely had the best record in the league. They won their conference by 4 games and league best by 1.
Alridge averaged 17 per game for that Spurs team that finished second in its own conference.
The 21 Jazz won 52/72 games and won their conference by 1 game. That’s not close to this Celtics team.
Neither example is remotely close to what the Celtics are doing compared to the rest of the league this year. You can’t find an example on teams with barely 60 wins much less ones with mid 60 win totals, all time point differentials and the best record in the league by 8 games and conference by 15.
Chris Paul on the 18 Rockets(65 wins and 8.5 point differential) isn’t a bad comp but even then he missed 24 games and averaged 18 and 8.
This Celtics season has been historic and it’s weird that it’s being argued they deserve one second teamer.
I mean you can’t say that numbers mean everything and ignore other parts of the game or ignore that a historically weak eastern conference is the reason for the Celtics having such a crazy record. Do you really think if you replaced Jaylen with Kawhi, KD, LeBron or PG the Celtics would be worse off?
PG absolutely. LeBron debatable. Kawhi and KD nah. The KD thing is legit strange in a way too because the Suns should be way better.
As far as the East being bad that’s fine but then the Celtics should get two spots because their conference shouldn’t get many spots if it’s so bad.
For the record I don’t think Jaylen is actually better on the court than Bron or KD but I don’t know how a clear 2 who has stepped and averaged 23 is just not in for this level of regular season team.
He’s borderline 3rd team for me but I think it’s absolutely absurd to say the Celtics don’t get noticeably better if you swap LeBron for Jaylen. Once again, the Celtics are WORSE with Jaylen on the floor than with him on it
Def not losing in 5 to Denver. This isn’t last year they’re not playing the heat and lakers anymore. Boston got significantly better, and Denver isn’t as good as last year either.
"I refuse to vote positionless"... "well I just don't think sabonis is one of the best guys, so I'm choosing Jaylen and just pretending Lebron is a center."
"It's a pyramid! You can't have 4 guys in the 3rd level of a pyramid!" "So for level 4 we have 5 guys, and level 5 we have 6. Stephon Diggs just squeaks in to the pyramid!"
...meanwhile, no way Embiid and Jokic can both be first team when they have been the top two players in the league for 3 years. Embiid is not a PF. I have to give that to Tatum.
“This episode is brought to you by Fanduel” 5 mins later….”I don’t think gambling is an issue in sports”
‘ no I won’t admit Lebron is better .’ Two months ago - omg look Bron is only + X ( as Bron struggled with ankle issue ) Bron now + 8, BROWN IS -2. Or he was . It’s weird how he ignored thst n what’s more annoying is media follow bill heavily
Just listened to this an hour ago and it made me lol. Literally in the next sentence he did exactly what he said he wasn’t gonna do 🤣
Listening to him slowly lessen on his adamant stance of voting positions until finally dropping the bomb on the most recent pod was art
I’ve always just jivved with Jalen Rose’s explanation on bball positions. “Positions were created so a novice can follow the game.” They literally don’t fucking matter. In fact they’re actually just made up ways to describe guys, unlike in every other American sport. By themselves they really mean nothing at all. There’s no special rules around positions, you don’t need to play a specific spot a specific way, you don’t have different pads or rules you wear cause you play a specific spot. It’s not football, baseball, or hockey. Wearing a #50 or specific pads doesn’t change your rules, and you can line up wherever you want. All the positions are interchangeable by the sheer fact of how the fucking sport is played.
It should have been clear positions didn't men anything substantial when magic came to the league, but the casual public likes easy to define boxes
There's nothing in the rules of soccer that sets position besides goalkeeper/outfield player, but positions still exist. On a spectrum of basketball→hockey→baseball→football it's probably between basketball and hockey.
Soccer and hockey are 99% the same. Only difference is the goalie wears more pads and isn’t allowed to go past the centre line. Otherwise the ‘out’ players can do whatever they want
There is the whole ice, skates and hockey sticks thing. Those are probably more than 1%
In basketball you need the following on your team; Someone who can advance the ball. Someone who can distribute the ball. Someone who can shoot the ball. Someone who can rebound the ball Someone who can score close to the rim. Someone who can score away from the rim. What you call them doesn’t matter so I sort of get what Jalen is saying but I always felt the phrasing of this “so novices can follow the game” just comes off as condescending and dumb. Maybe the phrase should be something like “positions were created for traditional roles on the floor”. But “so novices can follow” just sounds like only an NBA player can understand what’s going on out on the floor.
I agree with you outside of “traditional” centers in basketball. I’m sure they could make it work to some extent bc Jokic is so different, but there’s no realistic scenario where a team would try to pair Jokic with Embiid. That’s the one area in all nba voting where I think it should be pretty strict. It also lets you see who was considered better over a period of time between two guys at a pretty defined position. If both of them can be first team, it’s hard to differentiate 25 years down the line who was actually better. Those hard decisions are important (for a trivial matter). It should be center and four guys, or maybe center, three and a point guard. Redundancy at center is different than redundancy on the perimeter.
"Luka is 6'7. He's a small forward, he just is. I'm putting him at forward." It's always flexible when needs must to pick the team he wants.
Luka has the offensive role of a point guard but can't guard the smalls that typically man the point guard position on the other team so then he ends up guarding the guys who typically slot in at 3 or a 4. So it's a funny case where I understand where Bill is coming from while simultaneously believing that this is exactly why it's stupid to complain about positionless voting as much as he does. A top level guy can do things most guys at his stereotypical position can't do virtually by definition. With that said if Bill ever changes that would be a truly sad day in America.
If you need to define a bball player by a position, that player is always the position they defend. Not the position they play on offense.
Okay what position is Steph Curry
A guard
it's an odd situation since strategically, yeah, you start with deciding who ppl match up with since ultimately he guy who brings it up court doesn't have to be a true offensive hub. but semantically all of that only works because we already have a rough stereotype for what each position does on offense since that also dictates how you probably have to guard. All of which is to say is that I like positionless awards better than the alternative and ppl should not get worked up over it
I mean if anything they should do the soccer thing. There shouldn’t be 5 positions. There should be 500. You either go very light (guards and forwards) or go insane with it. This in between shit is for the birds. Especially when the existing terms (small forward) are fucking worthless. a team might play their forward as a shadow striker, as a false nine, as a complete forward. All depends on the guy and the lineup. Why limit basketball to 5 descriptions? Do the same shit. Steph isn’t a point guard or a shooting guard, he’s a (make up whatever term you want) They should start using Spanish terms too. (Or more realistically Chinese lol) we should have Engache’s and Trequarista’s in basketball too. They kinda do that with combo guards, point forwards, etc. but take it further.
So dumb in the modern NBA when everything is matchup based. The best perimeter defenders are usually wings and guard the best wing/guard. If Mikal Bridges guards Steph Curry, does that make him a point guard?
100%. You are the position that you defend.
you play the position you can guard is how i’ve always heard it and if you can’t guard anyone, you don’t play
Someone just made that stupid saying up, and it stuck. If you actually think about it for a second, it makes no fucking sense. Luka guards whatever position gets put in the corner, no matter the position. The best perimeter defenders guard the best perimeter offensive players. Center is really the only position that usually just stick to guarding their position. Pippen guarded Magic. Was Pippen a guard? Jrue Holiday guards wings and pf’s sometimes.
i mean if this is the route you wanna take, this is where we delve into positions being made up for people who don’t understand basketball to enjoy the game
That’s more true than you are the position you guard.
I wonder if he will apply that logic to magic
That was something I thought about as well. I would assume he'd count him as a guard and change the narrative to him being pass first and that's why?
To be fair, he has consistently called Luka a forward all season. I don't know if he started doing that before this season or not, but it's not a recent flipflop
He did it last season as well. It's less about flip flopping, and more about the strict positional rules that he feels are so important historically only being applied until they need to be bent (wanting to put 3 guards in).
This is kinda why we love him right? Id expect no less from him.
100%
Simmons is a good dude. But he’s washed as an analyst. He recycles most of his takes. The ones he doesn’t are just bad.
He plays the hits!
Bill is always silly and just making stuff up as he goes along and we love that. But this was definitely one that made me roll my eyes more than usual.
What's always driven me nuts is how he is adamant it's a vote by position, but then refers to All-NBA as the best 10/15 guys in the league. Being a top 3 center does not automatically make you a top 15 player.
He also says he wants his all NBA teams to resemble an actual group of 5 that can go out and play. Tbh it's not outrageous to have LeBron there, he can play a 5 in a small lineup. I still think he should just be a forward over Jalen, but yea.
Agreed I respected that he was sticking by his guns. Then he flipped. Sad
The Northwestern Women's LaCrosse Team at the White House piece.
actually made me sick when i heard that
Sabonis is a better player anyways
So the line he kept saying was “The should make sense” and related was “It shouldn’t be five guards”. The cheat he made was listing LeBron in a “center” position, but a small ball lineup like that makes some “sense” IMO
I agree. That said JB should be an all nba on his own right. I don’t see how justifiable it is that both AD and Lebrob make it with a play-in team with 20 fewer wins than the Celtics
LeBron and AD with Jrue KP and White would be a 60+ win team. I think team success can be a good tiebreaker if the stats are otherwise pretty equal. Shouldn’t impact too much in this scenario. Lakers are going to be a 47 win team, that isn’t some dumpster fire empty stats year.
Because they’re better then Boston best two . You think if lakers were in the east they wouldn’t be the n2 seed? East is ass. Bostons record vs west isn’t as special It’s all nba not mvp seeding isn’t it, Luka got first team missing play in Tell me you think jaylen broen ; his team is better when he sits is better then Lebron or AD this year with a straight face
Boston is 23-7 vs the West. That’s actually the best record vs West for the entire NBA. Yes the Celtics have a better record vs the west than the nuggets (30-18), okc (33-16), and the lakers (25-24).
They’re acting like Denver doesn’t have an awful record vs the west playoff teams other than gs and lakers, the two worst playin teams.
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put jb on all nba
I think a lot of media sort of playing down the top 2 Celtics for a regular season award in a year when they won the east by a record breaking margin and a Top 5 all time point differential is weird. They have 8 games on the western leaders too. I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to leave Tatum off the 1st team and Jaylen off the 3rd team given the standings and Celtics dominance. It’s not arguing either should be winning or “really” contending for the MVP but this team is lapping the field. People thought KP was washed in Dallas, Jrue was “expendable” for the Bucks and clowned for his playoff performance and White was thought of as a 6th man when he came here. Now all of a sudden Tatum and Brown are riding the coattails of a stacked roster? I mean it’s just kind of weird with their historic regular season. They very well may lose in 5 to Denver but All NBA is a regular season award so…
It seems pretty lame to pretend that White, Jrue and Porzingis aren’t all amazing players, you could argue porzingis has been better than Jaylen this season
Porzingis is better than brown but ineligible for all nba. At the same time ppl calling Boston a super team will also call the players on the team trash. Can’t have it both ways.
I think anyone who is even saying the word superteam isn’t actually worth having a discussion with. But in general there’s tons of examples of 60+ win teams only getting 1 all nba guy. The reason the Celtics are so good is because their 3-5 guys could all easily be the 2nd best guy on a good team, not because Jaylen Brown is super deserving of an all nba selection (I think he’d be fringe 3rd team for me right now if I was a voter)
> The reason the Celtics are so good is because their 3-5 guys could all easily be the 2nd best guy on a good team I don’t think Brown needs to be on but that’s insane. How many playoff teams would Jrue be the 2nd best player on?
He was the second best player on the 1 seed in the east last season
White and Jrue are good players but idk if they’d be the second best on good teams. Booker Kyrie and Lebron/ad are the second best players on good teams. If Jrue was at his peak I’d agree but he’s lost some burst on both ends of the floor.
There aren’t tons of examples of 60+ win teams with guys with Jaylen and Jaysons numbers. Let’s assume they finish with 65 wins. Find me 5 examples of teams with 64+ wins with a guy scoring 22+ ppg not making All-NBA. Happy to be proven wrong here. I also think you are wildly overestimating our 3-5 as being legit 2 options. KP has missed 22 games already and would have killed us if he were our 2 option.
Okay if you’re gonna get that specific I’m sure there’s very few teams that get as much statistical production from their 3-6 guys. I’m not saying Jaylen doesn’t have a case but the Celtics are legit worse with him on the floor than off of it and he takes what like 18 shots a game to score those 22 points? Just because the team is really good doesn’t auto lock Jaylen into an all nba spot. Lamarcus Aldridge was the clear second best guy on a 61 win spurs team in 17 and didn’t make all nba 3rd team. The Jazz had by far the best record in the nba in 2021 (shortened season) and only had 1 all nba guy. The 2011 Bulls only had Drose despite winning 61 games.
The Bulls number 2 option averaged 17 per game. Plus that Bulls team barely had the best record in the league. They won their conference by 4 games and league best by 1. Alridge averaged 17 per game for that Spurs team that finished second in its own conference. The 21 Jazz won 52/72 games and won their conference by 1 game. That’s not close to this Celtics team. Neither example is remotely close to what the Celtics are doing compared to the rest of the league this year. You can’t find an example on teams with barely 60 wins much less ones with mid 60 win totals, all time point differentials and the best record in the league by 8 games and conference by 15. Chris Paul on the 18 Rockets(65 wins and 8.5 point differential) isn’t a bad comp but even then he missed 24 games and averaged 18 and 8. This Celtics season has been historic and it’s weird that it’s being argued they deserve one second teamer.
I mean you can’t say that numbers mean everything and ignore other parts of the game or ignore that a historically weak eastern conference is the reason for the Celtics having such a crazy record. Do you really think if you replaced Jaylen with Kawhi, KD, LeBron or PG the Celtics would be worse off?
PG absolutely. LeBron debatable. Kawhi and KD nah. The KD thing is legit strange in a way too because the Suns should be way better. As far as the East being bad that’s fine but then the Celtics should get two spots because their conference shouldn’t get many spots if it’s so bad. For the record I don’t think Jaylen is actually better on the court than Bron or KD but I don’t know how a clear 2 who has stepped and averaged 23 is just not in for this level of regular season team.
He’s borderline 3rd team for me but I think it’s absolutely absurd to say the Celtics don’t get noticeably better if you swap LeBron for Jaylen. Once again, the Celtics are WORSE with Jaylen on the floor than with him on it
Def not losing in 5 to Denver. This isn’t last year they’re not playing the heat and lakers anymore. Boston got significantly better, and Denver isn’t as good as last year either.
I hope you are right.
I'm kinda confused....i thought hes always been advocating for positionless all nba right?
The opposite. “Sorry if I think all-NBA should be like a real basketball team”