We talk bad NBA contracts, the Olympics, and the politics of fans.

Hosts

• Andres Alvarez (@nerdnumbers)
• Patrick Minton (@nbageek)
• Produced by Brian Foster (@boxscorebrian)

Sources

You can watch us live at twitch.tv/nerdnumbers; we usually go Tuesday or Wednesday at 9:30 pm EST. Follow us on Twitter and we'll keep you posted!

Please subscribe to Channel NerdNumbers on YouTube and like us on iTunes!

Video Show

Show Notes

Free Agency and Bad Contracts

We discuss my list of the worst top-paid players in the NBA. To clarify, to qualify a player has to be the highest paid player on their team. We discuss a few names on the list including:

• Danilo Gallinari
• LaMarcus Aldridge
• Mike Conley (not on the list, but should he be?)

I'm full of metaphors on this week's show. My first one - "If a Grandmaster chess player makes a move you don't understand, and you're not a Grandmaster, you shouldn't ask 'what the hell are they thinking?' you should flip it and ask 'what the hell am I thinking?' or 'what am I not seeing?'"

We briefly discuss JaVale McGee to the Warriors. Brian reminded me that Andre Iguodala says JaVale is very smart!

Metaphor number two: I compare good players that get banged up by injuries (e.g. Landry Fields) to an expensive car with a broken axle. Brian finishes this up saying: "You were a good car Landry Fields."

The Olympics

Brian gives a fantastic segment on the issues with the Olympics. Relevant links:

• The International Olympic Committee's corruption.
• How most countries bidding for the Olympics are authoritarian regimes.
• Brazil's cash issues in hosting the Olympics.
• Hamburg withdraws its bid to host the 2024 Olympics.
• How infrastructure for the Olympics seldom gets reused.
• The hypocrisy of "amateur" rules.
• The doping scandals.

Metaphor number three! I compare stadiums to pickup trucks. People convince themselves how useful they are when they buy them, but most have no need for them.

We briefly discuss the 2004 Men's Basketball team and why the current squad should do well.

Patrick points out how Carmelo Anthony seems like a cool and professional off the court. Sadly, these qualities don't always translate to being a star. Case in point, Michael Jordan seemed to have his fair share of being a jerk off the court.

GM Evaluation

We briefly discuss why it's hard to analyze why it's hard to evaluate how good General Managers are. For example, Stan Van Gundy wanted Donatas Motiejunas, a player we think is bad, but "settled" for Boban Marjanovic, a player we think is good. As such, it's hard to just grade on good moves when the thought process may have been flawed. (h/t to Andrew Sutton for this example.)

We briefly briefly discuss politics based on this tweet from Ethan Strauss.

One of my favorite charts because, well, it's interesting pic.twitter.com/Ovvxqrgh39

— Ethan Strauss (@SherwoodStrauss) August 3, 2016

We bring up First Past the Post voting and its problems. Also, the Freakonomics podcast discussed some fun fixes to this.

Shout Outs

Patrick shouts out Coach Nick for a non-basketball podcast on Jared going to a Trump rally.

I had Jared on the pod the other day to discuss what its like to be at a Donald Trump rally: https://t.co/mlvEodrnrS https://t.co/a5Y3HAvE8M

— BBALLBREAKDOWN (@bballbreakdown) August 4, 2016

Brian shouts out the Dota 2 2016 Championships held at Key Arena. You can follow the Twitch stream here.

Brian shouts out Maniac Bowl, a fun comedy event you can attend tonight if you're in the Bay Area! For those of you in the future, sorry if you missed it.

I shout out Netflix's Stranger Things, which definitely helped the sting of no Game of Thrones.