3 Comments

I don't see how $21 million a year is going to empower Dillon Brooks to be *less* of a possession vacuum on offense. The fact that he's a slightly less shameless chucker than Malik Beasley doesn't change how much he takes off the table - the only player to take more shots than Brooks last year with a lower FG% was...Van Vleet. In 2021, just two players shot more and worse, and in 2020 it was just Devonte Graham.

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Feels like Udoka is betting on being able to coach him into line (in fact my initial thought was that this signing was as much about the Udoka redemption narrative as anything on-court.) But does he really want to be dealing with Dillon’s issues while also trying to figure out just what the hell the Rockets are?

Now that I think about it, the move certainly feels of a piece with the way they hired Udoka and were just like “we looked into it and it was NBD” about how he got fired in Boston.

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Thanks for the Ray Ratto link. I was fascinated by journalism long before basketball took up my reading bandwidth. The New York Times has become an economic juggernaut that follows the rules of business instead of journalism. Instead of improving your product, identify corners to cut and convince your demographic to buy New Coke. If the Times would promote its sports the way it flings the Food, Games, and Wirecutter content they could Turner the Athletic into an elite journalism organization. Instead they've chosen the 21st century model, control labor as aline item cost instead of seeing it as a resource.

Apps are cheaper than humans. For now.

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