Just the parity of the game, the injuries, the salary cap...I think it is going to be a lot harder to develop those newer narratives or polarizing players.

lol. I rewatched for a second time and it was more unwatchable than I remembered

That was fascinating. The refs loved blowing their whistles. Chamberlain was definitely too injured to continue. Bill Russell as head coach/player is pretty cool.

brown won 7-4 if anyone cares

think a lot of people just made their minds up before game 5 and didnt really care what happened in a game celts were up 3-1 and at home

still a surprising decision to me

Best thing to happen for Jaylen Brown's legacy is Tatum sucking ass

arguing for mvp tatum is a weird hill to die on when he shot 39% with 3.2 turnovers per game. and 7.8 rebounds & 7.2 assists isn't exactly overwhelming evidence either. he was straight up bad in 3/5 games, arguably 4*.


i assume this kind of performance is similar to ones kobe had when he lost in the final, except tatum was on a good team here. the better one. lucky him

bad by his own standards? i guess.....guy went 22-8-7 in a low scoring series that his team dominated

but he's clearly the best player on the team and had the best #'s in the series

seems like the voters just didn't wanna weight gm 5 much thinking the series was basically over when tatum got his



hill to die on? meh, ain't much else to talk about with this series and few people itt had $ on it. Only time ever a guy lost leading in p/r/a and his team won, you would think they had Duncan/KG on D for something like that to happen. Not another wing that went 21-5-5.

what was the argument for brown winning, i was also surprised when he won ecf mvp as well

guarded luka, better games earlier in series which mattered more, played closer to his expectations than tatum did to his (which shouldn't matter but it did), like i said brown had nice lead going into gm 5 and a lot of voters probably just didn't care tatum crushed gm 5 in a series they felt was over at halftime. Tatum had to shoot well in gm 5 just to get to 40% on the series, Brown was over 50% most of the series until awful games 4-5

atleast in the ECF he hit a 3 to send gm 1 to OT i guess

fair enough


yeah i think you're right that ppl decided because brown was better early in the series, but tatum didn't really do enough to overcome that. he just straight up wasn't very good in the final, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I hope tatum never wins an mvp of any kind.

why do people hate tatum?

i guess hes just so plainly boring/unspectacular i think it just feels lame to people hes the best player on the best team, especially compared to best players on basically every other great team of the past 50 years, save for a few

He named his son after poop

oh, baby!:

beard 2-3 years away from being woat oat, can't wait

Unless Wemby or Antman (or hopefully both) become those dudes...

I'm not saying there are no concerns. When Jordan was done Phil Jackson went to LA and got started immediately on another dynasty featuring global superstars. The Spurs popped up with some great teams and seasons, while the Pistons were a team that perfectly encapsulated the themes of the specific period in terms of brutality and slow pace. Ron Artest's deciding three came a few weeks before the Decision and then it was LeBron's decade with Steph and KD mixed in before Kawhi delivered an improbable Championship, the last before COVID.

It was all ****ing epic. In reality, it hasn't been nearly as great since the bubble. But that was the most ridiculous run for a pro sports league. From the Showtime Lakers to We The North. 30 years of pulsating narratives flowed from one team and player to the next seamlessly.

Hopefully, this period will be rewritten as the gestation of the next great player or dynasty. In 2010 nobody was predicting that the Warriors would play the Cavs in four straight finals. We can never say for certain what's around the corner...Tatum may even win an FMVP next year

I dont like him cuz he’s so gassed up and thinks hes a real mvp candidate.

His idol is Kobe and he has all the bad qualities of him with few of the good.

yeah you never know what comes next....Curry was just a great shooter with bum ankles until about 2013-2014

but I do think nba has just declined in cultural significance

kinda part of bigger picture issue nothing is really monoculture anymore....mlb is dead, hollywood is dead, prestige dead feels like sun has set on it a bit


NFL is the last thing to get all the eyeballs (and politics i guess)

Tatum hate is stupid but I can see coming from a Knicks fan. Good thing that team will be a steaming pile of **** for another 5 decades

Didnt everyone think the league was boring AF between Kobe/Shaq and the Decision?

The last two years of GSW/CLE was boring AF too, everyone knew what would happen from the beginning of the season.

I think social media allowing access to stars is part of and a big thing towards Hollywood and sports not being as big anymore.

Which of Kobe's bad qualities does Tatum have? For that matter, which of Kobe's best qualities does Tatum have?

They aren't that similar. Tatum isn't a killer like Kobe was. But he also isn't as much of a selfish gunner as Kobe was.

Tatum isn't the best player in the league, and he almost certainly never will be. But he is good enough to be the best player on a championship team, which puts him in a group of maybe 10 players in the league. Certainly no more than 15..

if it was about "who would you rather have for a playoff series?" i'd probably have tatum closer to 12-15

but in real life, the season starts in mid october and ends in mid june and a lot of those 15 guys (bron, curry, KD, embiid, AD, butler, kawhi) get hurt a ton and tatum is more likely to help you get the #1 seed (besides embiid) which helps tremendously with the grind of it all. Then once you make the playoffs he is less likely to get hurt than all of them. He can basically fit into any team. This makes him closer to top 8-10ish in terms of overall value. But his tiebreaker is basically durability/reliability against a bunch of old guys. Then the best players are just clearly better than him and he just has by far the best supporting cast.

He's just a very high floor/low ceiling type player, which doesn't exactly lend itself to people waxing poetic about you


and obviously pretty lame way to get over the hump when you get a bye to the finals then don't even have to play that well in the finals because your team is so stacked/superior to the other team kinda makes people hate on him more. They just want a better story arc than that with the best player on the best team.


That is about how i'd sum him up