Friday, Feb 21st, 2020

  The Opening Tip

• Kyrie Irving’s season is over after 20 games

• Trae Young and Atlanta seem to go together

• A reminder of Minnesota’s top-to-bottom incompetency 

• Catan set. Celtics locker room. Never used.

Tonight's must-watch games

1. The Lead: How else the Nets could have spent Kyrie and KD’s salaries

Kyrie Irving will have shoulder surgery that'll end his 2019-20 season, the team announced Thursday.That means, in the aggregate, the Brooklyn Nets will have paid roughly $69 million to Irving and Kevin Durant this season for a total of 20 games played (all by Irving), for which the Nets went 8-12.Brighter horizons might be coming for the Nets. In the interim, though, $69 million for almost as many social media controversies as games played seems like a bad ROI.A few other ways Brooklyn could have spent its $69 million …1. Buy everyone in New York City a chopped cheese$69 million divided by $8 -- today’s going rate on a chopped cheese -- equals 8,265,000.There are roughly 8.6 million people in NYC. As long as 400,000 turn down the offer, this could be a reality.2. Replace all of Flint, Michigan’s old lead water pipesAccording to this 2018 Guardian article, the estimated cost of removing and replacing the lead water pipes in Flint -- which the city is in the process of doing -- is $55 million.Plus, Brooklyn could turn around and sign a nice veteran player with the remaining $14 million.3. Send all of Scott’s Tots to collegeAccording to the math done by this Reddit user, it would have cost roughly $526,350 to send all 15 of Scott’s Tots to a state college.4. Swipe 25,090,909 people into a NYC train stationUs first.5. Buy enough tickets to actually sell out BarclaysTo start the year, the Nets poured a bunch of money into their in-game experience in an effort to go big time. They had smoke portals for their shiny new All-Stars. They doubled down on the Biggie stuff -- they gave out Biggie bobbleheads last month -- even though Biggie was a Knicks fan.They generally made an effort to shed their small-market, cheap ticket vibe. And, now, they’re back to low-energy games and future first-round exits in an empty-ish arena. Least they could do is give away a few tickets.

2. Trae Young crosses Iggy, nails a 3  

Trae Young scored a career-high 50 points last night and hit some truly outrageous shots, and the Hawks beat the Heat, 126-124.Young is now the fourth youngest player in NBA history to score 50 points, with Devin Booker, LeBron James and Brandon Jennings being the others.We will never say the Hawks did the right thing in trading Luka Dončić for Young (and a pick that turned out to be De’Andre Hunter), but Young has given the Atlanta Hawks crowd a pulse, which is one of the hardest things in the NBA to do.

3. The worst basketball-related tweet on the Internet

This childish tweet was sent on Nov. 14, 2019, when the Timberwolves were 7-4.Since then, they’ve gone 9-33.

4. Grant Williams and his love for Catan

Image via Barry Chin/Boston Globe

Nicole Yang of the Boston Globe wrote this story a few days ago, on Celtics rookie Grant Williams, his love for strategy board game Settlers of Catan, and the fact that he can’t get any of his teammates to play with him.It’s a lovely story with great pictures, and well worth your time, especially for Celtics fans who watch Williams on a nightly basis.This snippet stood out:

Inside the game room at the Auerbach Center, Williams has donated Catan as well as two special editions, Catan: Starfarers, and A Game of Thrones: Catan. Since getting drafted in June, however, he hasn’t had much luck in persuading his teammates to play.Fellow rookies Carsen Edwards and Romeo Langford both say Williams doesn’t ask them because he knows they are not “board game guys.”“Grant is his own person,” said Langford. “I’ve never met anybody like Grant. It doesn’t matter what we’re doing, his nerdy side comes out.”Williams tries to be strategic with his requests, approaching only those he feels are likely to say yes. Jayson Tatum, he says, is a long shot. Gordon Hayward would be a promising option, but he knows Hayward has three young daughters at home.

That, folks, is why newspapers and storytelling is worth paying for.

FYI:

Catan is the game a subsect of your friends play and

really

, almost cultishly love, and try and get you to love, too, but you try to play once and don’t really understand it and they just end up getting mad that you let someone else cultivate sheep on your road -- GET OVER IT, KYLE --  so you settle instead for being a little jealous of how into it they are, and how much fun they seem to have playing it.

 5.  Quick hits 

• Charles Barkley, yesterday on PTI: “You know, growing up in the projects of Leeds, Alabama, I never thought that I would make it to the NBA. And now, I'm getting paid to watch basketball. I have exceeded all my expectations, and I'm just lucky and blessed, man. I'm the luckiest guy in the world.”

• From Reddit:Hassan Whiteside’s three blocks per game this season are more than what the Cavs’ entire team averaged last year.

• Joel Embiid’s eurostep on DeAndre Jordan last night was pretty filthy. 

• Watch LeBronperfectly recall the final play of the All-Star Game.

• This split screen of Kevin Garnett and Isaiah Rider telling the same KG-MJ story side-by-side is fascinating.

 6.  Off the press 

• The most miserable (and hilarious) coaching flameouts in NBA history [The Ringer]

• Jayston Tatum is becoming a superstar before our eyes [SB Nation]