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I support this DJ Khaled rant. His SNL performance was just him, distilled. Standing around doing nothing but yelling his three catch phrases over the top of people. The worst. He's also manipulating charts by recycling singles with a lot of streams on a "new" album, which has become pretty common among people who are low on talent but high on marketing and ambition.

Anyhoo, last night was fun because we got The Fred VanVleet Game in the same week or so that we also got the Meyers Leonard Game. I love when random guys have banner nights in big games.

Also I think Kawhi is the best player in the East. During the regular season I thought it was fairly equal between him, Giannis, Embiid, but Kawhi has pulled away. He shoots threes very well (38% career) and does everything else at an elite level. He's more mature, better under pressure, in better shape, and more widely skilled than Embiid by a bit. He can shoot and defend better than Giannis, and Giannis is an excellent defender. Also compared to JoJo and Giannis, Kawhi isn't being slowed by the long season and going deep in the playoffs--he's been there before, is in championship run-shape and can go 100, 105, 110 games if needed to get to the finish line. He's really a marvel, and I think a lot of people forgot about him with the weird year last year, but here he is on the cusp of taking another overachieving team to the Finals. When the playoffs come you really see the guys who have that extra gear, that extra edge, that fifth and sixth wind. There aren't many of them, maybe 5 in the league, but Kawhi is one of them along with Curry, Durant, Draymond and LeBron.

freds also a world class actor


fun fact i used to work with one of the referees

BottenFieldofDreams wrote:
Is modern mainstream rap his fault?

Probably a tie between him and Kanye for the 808s & Heartbreak album.

Assuming there will be a new season of Hip Hop Evolution, I'm looking forward to them going through the 90's and early 00's. Then turn and drive straight off a cliff around 2010.

That was on the jumbotron early in the game and it was the biggest fan reaction of the night in a night with plenty of fan reactions. Right up there with Giannis hitting a three with like 2.5 min remaining to tie it up.

Paul Pierce just admitted that he was wheeled off the court in a wheelchair 11 years ago was because he had to poop.

I'm beginning to think Golden State isn't as good without arguably the best player in the NBA.

InvincibleCakeEater wrote:I'm beginning to think Golden State isn't as good without arguably the best player in the NBA.

If they had no KD but had Klay and Looney back healthy I'd still like their odds.

33anda3rd wrote:
Let's wait til the dust settles and we've had 6-7 games of Houston-GS and we've had BOS-MIL and we've had SAS-POR and we've had POR-GS/HOU and then let's check in on TV ratings.

Dust is settling

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/l ... ssion=true

Through three games, the 2019 Finals' 10.1 average is down about 20 percent vs. a year ago (12.6). The first two games have averaged 13.6 million viewers vs. 18.07 million a year ago, a drop of about 25 percent.

Toronto doesn’t move the needle apparently

Tim wrote:

33anda3rd wrote:
Let's wait til the dust settles and we've had 6-7 games of Houston-GS and we've had BOS-MIL and we've had SAS-POR and we've had POR-GS/HOU and then let's check in on TV ratings.

Dust is settling

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/l ... ssion=true

Through three games, the 2019 Finals' 10.1 average is down about 20 percent vs. a year ago (12.6). The first two games have averaged 13.6 million viewers vs. 18.07 million a year ago, a drop of about 25 percent.

Toronto doesn’t move the needle apparently

TV ratings don't include international viewers. 1 in 5 Canadians is watching.

TORONTO — The NBA correctly anticipated that television ratings would dip for Game 1 of the NBA Finals, for two very important reasons.

There’s no LeBron James.

And Canadian numbers don’t count.

ESPN said Friday that the Game 1 of the Toronto-Golden State series drew a 10.1 overnight rating, the lowest for Game 1 of a title series in a decade — though all the numbers come with a serious catch. Canadian viewership does not count toward the metered-market ratings formula used in the U.S., and it was the most-watched NBA game in Canada’s history.

“Put aside perception, there is the actuality of the ratings,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said Friday. “Of course, I pay a lot of attention to those. I also pay a lot of attention to the numbers in Canada, where we set an all-time record for viewership. In the U.S., I recognize it’s a changing television marketplace. We knew we would be down a bit by virtue of both not having two U.S. markets and we’ve come off eight years of having LeBron James in the finals.”

Meanwhile, the first finals game for a Canadian team was a smash north of the border.

It was the most-watched NBA game on Sportsnet, reaching 7.4 million Canadians — basically 20 percent of the nation’s population. The average size of the Canadian audience, Sportsnet said, was 3.3 million viewers and peaked in the final minutes of the game with 4.1 million Canadians tuning in to see the finish.