Monday Bolts – 7.20.15
Charles Barkley: “I hope he stays in OKC,” Barkley said. “I would love because he’s a terrific player and a terrific kid, I would love to see him stay in OKC his entire career. But you know, man, these guys do what they want to do. I wish them all the best, but for some reason they all want to play in big cities like you’re going to be more famous winning in a certain city. If you win a championship in Cleveland, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, you’re going to be just as big. So, I hope he stays in Oklahoma City. I wish him nothing but the best. I just hope he gets healthy.”
From r/nba: “To make matters simple, I will just be looking at all his shots from 0-3 feet from the basket. Surely Dion will be screaming AND-1! When he launches his floaters or long twos from the free throw line but that overlaps with too many brinked jumpers to include. So Dion took about 33% of his shots from this range while shooting a ghastly 48%. Dion was taking 12.9 shots per game. This comes out to roughly 4.3 layups a game. Dion is only making 2.1 of these per game. Dion played 80 games this last year but only 70 and 61 the years before. So we’ll assume Dion will play in 70 games this next season. Obviously Dion isn’t always wrong when he claims someone fouled him. To be fair we’ll set a standard deviation of ±1 to account for this. Extrapolating all of this data we have Dion getting about 147 AND-1!’s within a range of 77-217 AND-1!’s.”
Really enjoyed this Reddit thread on dumbest quotes.
Jorge Castillo of the Washington Post: “Homecomings have become a league trend this summer — Pierce, Aldridge, LeBron James and Deron Williams are among those who decided to return to their hometown teams. It didn’t take long for NBA TV’s summer league broadcast to highlight the #KD2DC movement that has percolated among fans in the District for the past year. During the second quarter of Washington’s loss to the D-League Select Team last Sunday, a sideline reporter delved into a post by Bullets Forever, SB Nation’s Wizards blog, that highlighted connections, both legitimate and far-fetched, between Durant and every member of the Wizards’ summer league squad.”
Devin Booker played well yesterday, for all you hindsighters.
Bobby Marks for HoopsHype: “Teams that spent money either retaining their own free agents or landing a key player this past summer already have an edge going into 2016. For Golden State, Cleveland, San Antonio, Miami, Oklahoma City and the Los Angeles Clippers paying the luxury tax might prove expensive in 2015-16. However, all six teams will bring back the core nucleus of playoff teams next summer – especially with the likelihood of LeBron and Durant staying put with the Cavs and Thunder. The rise of the luxury tax threshold in 2016-17 to a projected $109 million will offset any taxes spent this season.”
