Ryan Anderson can't wait to play w/ Rockets. D'Antoni excited about team.

Winning a ring on the Warriors is not better than beating the Warriors. Neither is guaranteed but he came close this year. You're right he took the easy route and that's all people are saying. The easy way out is the weak option. This game is about competition. Otherwise lets just say to hell with caps and put Lebron on the Warriors as well that should be entertaining, lol. If he had confidence in himself he wouldn't be on the Warriors.

 

The best defense is a great offense.

 

To you, the fan. To this player, winning in an environment of his liking seems to be what matters.

And I'm saying why do we only hold professional athletes to this standard of choosing a more difficult path? Is that what you do in your life? Is that what you expect the top 1% of any other profession to do? No, of course not. Why is this not a weak option for everyone else, and just for pro athletes?

This game is about winning and getting paid, and not always in that order. Durant chose the option where he could win and get paid. If it were only about competition then NBA champions wouldn't be full of stacked rosters.

 

Not sure if serious? The year that Anderson had neck injuries and was rendered "obsolete" by athletic PFs is the year Anderson scored 1.01 pts in the post and shot 36% from the 3? That's obsolete?

Also lots of players have injury risks, starting with Curry's balky ankles to BG's bum knee to Parson's back and leg combo. Why single Anderson out when other players are on even longer deals? Conley for example is making 30M for the next 5 years, that like 50% more salary and even at his current age he's nowhere near good enough for that amount.

 

Well I don't think sports and other professions are the same necessarily.

Obviously some people like challenges more than others in their professional lives and that is fine - I for one like them and actually prefer it to straightforward mind numbing work, provided of course the pay is right also. At the end of the day we are all trying to get the best paid jobs possible and get a good work/life balance.

Now I'm no professional athlete, but I do play basketball and tennis mainly - now in sports I have a different mindset - I do wanna go up against the better players and compete with them and try to beat them. I don't particularly enjoy playing against guys I know I will beat 10/10 times - that just takes the fun out of it, for me as a competitor.

I cant speak for others, but my guess is that quite a few people feel like this, when it comes to sports.

Also we are talking about Kevin Durant, who only a few seasons back stated he was tired of being regarded as the second best behind LeBron. It was not like he was on a scrub team either - they were one of the best teams in the league already.

Had he stayed put or even joined HOU, WAS, BOS, etc - that would have been different. He could have put a mark on those teams. Now he is joining a team that won the championship 2 seasons ago and made it to the finals last season. A team that was the best regular season team ever, with 3 All-Stars. A team that KD and his Thunder nearly beat in the WCF.

He is not going to come in and really put his mark on that team - It is just the safest bet to win a championship. Where is the competitive spirit? And don't you forget that KD was one of those guys complaining about MIA when a super team formed there - only difference - they weren't anywhere near the level of the GS team that he is joining now. The season before Wade, LeBron and Bosh teamed up - Miami wasn't considered a contender (GS, even without KD would have been considered a favourite to win it all next season).

 

This thread turned bad in a hurry. Am I still in the Anderson thread?

 

Haha true. My bad - I actually forgot I was in the Anderson thread when posting my reply - so many non-Anderson posts in this thread.

 

"This game is about winning and getting paid" Is this the new NBA slogan? You're reaching to make a point. I understand what you're trying to do but its wrong. Not everything in life is comparable. We are talking about an entertainment profession where yes "fans" opinions matter a lot. It's basically everything in the entertainment industry what people think of you can make or break you. Its the difference between being beloved and hated. So if you're saying Durant doesn't have to care what people think you're right. But to say what people think doesn't matter is wrong. The NBA is a product that people have to love or it will fail.

Finally and I can't stress this enough there needs to be a balance. The game has to be entertaining. So when KD does something like this it starts a trend and the integrity of the game will deteriorate. This is ultimately what people don't like about this. The NBA is not about winning and "getting paid" it's about presenting a product that people love. People love competition and watching great teams battle. Watching one team destroy the league will get boring quickly. When you put together a team in this manner that could dominate in a cheap way for years to come it cheapens the game and turns off fans. You seem to think the NBA being this popular is a given. Nothing is a given and if the game becomes less enjoyable look for attendance to fall and the game will suffer. Any basketball fan with any sort of basketball intelligence should be concerned.

 

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I agree challenge is what sports are all about. It's hard to win a championship and it should be otherwise whats the point. Entertainment and business are connected but they aren't the exact same thing.

 

While i hope they prove me wrong, gordon and anderson are horrible signings. i cant believe im saying this, but maybe morey is done. The rockets, barring some crazy trade or something, will not be good for a while. So frustrating.

 

but sports isn't really the real world. it's 5 guys trying to put a ball in a hoop while preventing 5 other guys from putting a ball in a hoop. and other people, the fans, for some reason forming an emotional attachment to this endeavour even though it's completely meaningless. there are all sorts of things that go into how this strange dynamic works and what we want and expect from it, and how we expect the actors in this game to behave based on all of the emotional attachments we have to watching, talking about, dissecting, discussing, debating these things. taking the easy way out doesn't have the same context as in other pursuits.

and that's because of another key difference. why do we all take the easiest way out in our jobs?

a) because we don't actually want to do them. i mean we might like our jobs, but if i could wake up every day and not go to work and still get my paycheck, i certainly would do that. i assume kevin durant wants to play basketball, and this isn't all just keeping him from his true love, human resource manager.

b) achieving high pay, big promotions, and short commutes are the actual goals of our jobs. maybe not for our employers, but certainly for us. it's not the easy way out, it's the goal. winning a championship as easily as possible is presumably not kevin durant's actual goal. to be better than everyone else is probably one of his goals. and to win big games by outplaying his peers is probably another. now it's hard to set that up perfectly, but i would guess winning without having to do much isn't really what he wants out of his nba career. let's face it, achievements feel greater when we weren't actually sure we could achieve them.

am i saying durant should go play for the sixers just for the challenge? no. but he probably shouldn't join the 73 win team that was already the favorite anyway. and even if durant doesn't want that challenge, it is what fans want for athletes. it may not be "fair," but it's certainly how it is and why people will react this way, including when they did it for lebron, though i did not because i didn't think the degree of the bandwagoning was the same, but maybe that's just part of that irrational rationalization that comes from that emotional attachment of fandom.



edit: i see MistaK and SF3isBack mostly already said what i said.

 

Yep. We've basically used our cap for the next 2 years.

Then Harden will be a free agent.

Are we gonna say "Please stay for the last two years of 31 year olds Ryan Anderson and Eric Gordon"????

 

Love his attitude. May not like what we are paying him, but I'm glad he's openly saying that Harden is a guy he's wanted to play with for a while, and that Harden wanted him here as well.

It will be interesting to see Anderson get some actual wide open looks. When watching the Pelicans in the past it looked like even quite of few of his 3's had to be rushed or semi forced. To be able to watch him get some real quality looks at andecentnratw, should be interesting to see.

 

Andecentnratw - some 3's.

Horrible phone typing.

 

Dude, please! You're the one who should take your own advice and learn reading comprehension before you try to call someone else out on it. Your so-called position against KD is exactly the same one SAS was putting out there on Monday - that KD was "weak" for leaving a championship caliber team to go to the team he had 3 - count 'em - 3 chances to beat in the WCF. Oh sure, you state that KD didn't need to stay in OKC and then you rip him for doing so. Which is what SAS and all of the folks around here calling KD names are doing.

And I stand by my point that what you, SAS and the rest are whining and judging KD is because you simply don't like the idea of him joining GS to form a super team - which, BTW, is exactly what LeBron did. Players have always done this. Moses Malone left the Rockets to chase a ring. Shaq left Orlando to chase a ring. KD realizes that his career will never be considered complete without that championship ring so he's going for it. And, when that career is over, folks like yourself who sit in judgement will be sure to point out his lack of one. After all, I don't see folks around here giving extra kudos to guys like Bob Lanier or Karl Malone for staying with teams that couldn't win it all.

 

What does all of this have to do with Ryan Anderson? Considering that we weren't going to get the big fish, I'm fine with honing in on some solid performers that wanted to be here. Morey has a little money left and a few assets he can deal. Let's see where we are when training camp starts.

 

Yikes, that's harsh.

 

Enough, people. This is an Anderson thread in a Rockets forum. I know there's not enough in this thread to get angry about, and you're on the internet, but all you need to do is click on the NBA Dish and vent your extreme frustration/opinions about another man's life THERE. Thx.

 

If he can stay healthy I think he will have one of his best years next to harden. I've wanted to break my tv watching jones/Ariza/BREWER brick wide open looks for the last 2 seasons. We finally have a player that can make these shots.

Can we win it all? Hell no. But I think we could have a surprisingly good year that could attract another star next season. Morey can make the money work if a player actually wants to come here.