AROUND the NBA: Pat Bev Suspended 4 Games Next Season| PHX Fires Vogel

[KillerLeft]

Love you Chicagojk, so I don’t mean it personally, but I couldn’t disagree more. Halliburton saying these were the biggest games of his career just makes me feel sad for Halliburton that he hasn’t had the opportunity to be in any bigger games! I don’t see the tournament ever being anything. It is literally almost meaningless in its current configuration. You could make the argument that it benefited the Mavs not to have to play a better teams than Utah and Portland. And we got extra rest on either end.

This is what I thought going into this season, but the players ARE taking it very seriously. Even the group play games were played much harder than random early season games usually are. I actually think the tournament has done quite a bit to make the first 3rd of the season more watchable, though I never would've expected that. 

I think it's the money. I think there's a card-playing, gambling, competitive culture in the NBA and that money on the line is worth playing hard to get for these guys. Half of them actually need the money, and the half that don't are treating it like they're playing golf for $1K per hole. It's just extra competition for the most competitive people on Earth.