niremetal

I actually predict JJ will not make it. Only one All-NBA appearance (and on the Third Team). Never appeared in a conference finals except a few garbage time minutes in Houston in his last season. He racked up a ton of career points, but I think he'll go the same way as Mark Jackson and Tom Chambers--respected and with great career totals, but not elite enough at his peak to make it in. He's a close call, but I just don't see him quite making it. I think the sad part is that with just a bit of work and a mental adjustment late in his career, he could have been a lock. With his shooting ability, length, and strength, he could have easily become a very good 3-and-D player in his later years if he ever put the work in--Shane Battier, but with a bit more offensive pop. That would have both extended his career and raised his efficiency. If he retired with 22,000 career points with 46/39/80 shooting numbers instead of 20,405 and 44/37/80, I think he'd have made it. But he never learned to play without the ball in his hands. Instead, he just became a slower version of who he was in his prime. Mind you, I'm saying this as a dude who bought 2 JJ jerseys and defended his max contract to the bitter end. He was my favorite player in the whole league for a good while. But I think he ends up in the Hall of Good* rather than the Hall of Fame. * Hall of Good is a thing on FiveThirtyEight, @Sothron and @bird_dirt...the full title is "Hall of Pretty Damn Good Players." It's mostly baseball players, though. Most famous Atlanta guy in there is Andruw Jones.

FWIW, this was an interesting read on the subject: https://www.med.uvm.edu/home/2016/07/12/cushman_discusses_why_elite_athletes_can_get_abnormal_blood_clots Any of these could apply to Goody:

Crazy. I was just thinking a couple weeks back about how clotting disorders seem surprisingly common among basketball and tennis players (kinda like @JayBirdHawk, I was thinking in particular about Bosh and Serena). I was wondering if that is because there's something about the constant grind on their lower bodies, which I have to think does weird stuff to blood flow...or if it's simply a matter of, "clotting issues are common in everyone, but we catch them more often in pro athletes because pro athletes are more attuned their bodies and/or because they have a team of medical professionals that keep a constant eye on their physical condition." Hope Brandon can get a clean bill of health--ideally clean enough for him to play professionally again but, if not, at least enough that he can be healthy and happy.

Wonder if Lemon Pepper Lou could pull some...strings...at Magic City to sweeten the pot. https://www.complex.com/sports/adult-site-free-membership-kyrie-irving-vaccine/

I don't think the 6ft number is completely arbitrary, despite what one person (who probably pushed for 10ft and is irked that he lost that argument) might have said. Six feet is the recommended distance that people with cystic fibrosis are supposed to stay apart from each other to prevent cross-infections, for example. At least, it's no more arbitrary than any other line that you could draw...I mean, any time where useful guidance requires picking a number, the number you pick is bound to be somewhat arbitrary (because 6ft is not meaningfully different than 6ft and one inch, 10ft than 10ft and one inch, etc).

(1) I think both of those statements would be true--that is, an employer could inquire into whether the employee has COVID or another infectious disease (or if they have taken precautions, such as vaccination, against the disease) in those two situations. For (2), the answer is also yes, other such situations exist. In fact, pretty much any health-related question to any employee is okay under the ADA as long as it doesn't seek info about disability status--and most COVID inquiries would not be viewed as seeking info about disability status. Even if a question does seek info about disability status, that's still okay as long as the inquiry is "job-related and consistent with business necessity," which has been interpreted pretty broadly to cover most situations where there is potential health/safety risks to other employees involved. FWIW, I personally think employers have too much leeway to collect data on workers, pry into their lives, and control them. But historically, the default rules governing employer/employee relations in the United States are drawn from the old, pre-1776 British rules governing the relationship between (I kid you not) masters and domestic servants. As a result, while employees are on the clock, employers have very few limits on what info they can gather on employees, and employees' right to privacy is extremely limited. There has to be a specific law passed by Congress or a state legislature to limit employers' rights in that space. And unlike in Europe, the US has no general law granting workers a broad right to privacy. So the only real limits on what questions employers can ask come from laws with fairly limited scope, like the ADA.

A couple answers to that. First--you're moving the goalposts. Before you were talking about official COVID death statistics. Now you're asking why "people" say Freddie Mercury died of AIDS. It should be obvious that "what people say" is not the same as what epidemiologists include in mortality statistics. That said, it's all about cause and effect. If the UK's mortality recordkeeping is like here, Mercury's death certificate probably has bronchial pneumonia as the immediate cause of death. But If the medical examiner determined that the bronchial pneumonia would not have happened but for Mercury having AIDS, then it would also say that the bronchial pneumonia was a result or consequence of AIDS (possibly with one or two intervening causes in between, e.g. an infection that he wouldn't have been susceptible to absent AIDS). At that point, AIDS is considered the cause of death because AIDS caused the bronchial pneumonia. That's why it would be counted as an AIDS death (though it might also be counted as a bronchial pneumonia death if the UK separately tracks such deaths). The same would not be true if, say, Freddie Mercury died in a terrible car accident two days before he otherwise would have actually died. In that case, his death certificate would probably say something like "multiple organ failure" as the cause of death, as a consequence of/resulting from blunt force trauma, etc, as a consequence of/resulting from a car accident. His death would be counted as due to a car accident. The fact he had AIDS might be mentioned in the notes, but it wouldn't be a cause of death. He would have been counted in the car accident mortality stats but not the AIDS mortality stats. So with COVID. The death certificate would mention COVID if it's in the chain of causation, regardless of what might have been going on in the person's health in the background. That's not unusual. It's how epidemiological stats work.

It's just not true that if someone had a terminal illness but then died faster as the result of an acute illness, that the terminal illness would have been considered the immediate (much less the sole) cause of death. That's never been true, either medically or legally. Medical examiners would list the acute illness as the immediate cause, and only list the terminal illness if it appeared to play a direct role in the chain of causation. Either way, the acute illness would be listed as the more immediate/prominent cause of death. Legally, it's even more cut-and-dried. If you drive drunk and kill someone who would have died the next day from terminal cancer, it's still vehicular homicide. In any event, most of the people dying of COVID aren't terminally ill. There might be other risk factors involved that make many people more likely to die of COVID if they contract it, but that's true of pretty much any disease.

You asked for @AHF, but as the junior employment lawyer on the Squawk... (Note: I'm trying to make this not-too-technical, but lemme know if something isn't clear.) Nationally, the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) is the main law that restricts employers from asking employees health-related questions. (There's also HIPAA, but that actually doesn't cover most health-related questions in the context of employment, and that includes questions relating to COVID vaccines ) In theory, the ADA only protects workers with disabilities. But in practice, since an employer doesn't know (and usually can't ask--see below) which employees have disabilities, employers have to be pretty careful when asking workers about health-related stuff. That said, when it comes to transmissible diseases and things that can affect other workers, employers have more leeway to ask health-related questions. Here's a bit more detail. The ADA limits an employer's ability to require employees to undergo "medical examinations" or to ask if the employee has a disability (or what type of disability an employee has, how bad it is, etc). Those restrictions aren't absolute, though--an employer can require a medical examination or ask about disability status if they have a legitimate job-related reason for doing so: (Link) Obviously, there are a lot of terms in there ("medical examination," "inquiry," "job-related," etc) that have kind of fuzzy/imprecise meanings. But relevant to this conversation--based on my experiences working on cases involving the ADA, I'd be shocked if courts or agencies decided that the COVID pandemic did NOT give employers a good enough reason to ask employees questions related to COVID vaccination status, especially given the CDC guidance on vaccination status (to say nothing of the impending OSHA rules about vaccination for larger employers). AHF can let me know if I'm missing anything nationally. If you've got a question about a specific state, I think between AHF and me, you have a ~1 in 10 chance that one of us will know the answer offhand

It's absurd to say that unless a vaccine is 100% effective at preventing infection, it doesn't "work." Almost nothing in medicine (including "natural" medicine, holistic health, etc) has 100% efficacy. Aspirin doesn't get rid of every headache. Penicillin isn't 100% effective against any bacterial infection. Acupuncture doesn't always cure...whatever acupuncture is supposed to cure. It's especially absurd to hold vaccination to that standard, because vaccination is most definitely not like a head It's absurd to say that unless a vaccine is 100% effective at preventing infection, it doesn't "work." Almost nothing in medicine (including "natural" medicine, holistic health, etc) has 100% efficacy. Aspirin doesn't get rid of every headache. Penicillin isn't 100% effective against any bacterial infection. Acupuncture doesn't always cure...whatever acupuncture is supposed to cure. It's especially absurd to hold vaccination to that standard, because vaccination is most definitely not like a headache, or tetanus, etc. It's an extremely transmissible disease, which means a single vaccinated person can infect many others. That means a person's choice not to vaccinate affects many others. It's very much a public health issue, not just a private health issue. It's not like whether someone takes aspirin. It's more like whether someone washes their hands before handling food (which also isn't 100% effective at preventing the spread of foodborne illness, but it helps a whole heck of a lot). We basically eradicated smallpox and polio in the United States by requiring everyone to get vaccinated. We had basically eradicated measles too--one of the few illnesses as transmissible as COVID--by requiring measles vaccines, until critical masses of anti-vaxxers created enough of a public health gap to allow small outbreaks to occur. It honestly baffles me that vaccination has become politicized. Definitely not. The first major groups of anti-vaxxers that I knew about were anti-corporate/anti-pharma leftist types. The west coast (which is where I live) had the first measles outbreaks in decades as a result. Most of those folks are, far as I can tell, anti-vax about the COVID vaccine as well. But in terms of sheer numbers, the number of people resisting the COVID vaccines are an order of magnitude more, and thus not predominantly drawn from that "original" anti-vax population. I suspect the phenomenon that's happening among NBA players that this article discusses stems from different stuff (there is understandable skepticism of traditional medicine in the US among some in the Black community), as the Rolling Stone piece kind of hints at. But since we don't know for sure what players are unvaccinated (Kyrie aside), no way to know.

I'd say "all the better for the Hawks, since they're 100% vaccinated." But in reality, there are rare-but-there breakthrough cases and probably some of the Hawks have family members are immunocompromised and can't get the vaccine at all. These players are framing it as a personal choice...but it's not just a personal choice; it's a choice that affects everyone around them (and everyone who is around everyone who is around them). Sadly, ignorance and disregard for others often go hand-in-hand. (Separate note, one of the things I'm proudest about for my Hawks is that they have the first arena in pro sports with a space for people who have sensory needs, in part because Nique has two kids--one with spina bifida and the other on the autism spectrum--who have such needs. As someone with two kids who also have sensory needs, that kind of attentiveness to accessibility and inclusiveness made me even prouder to be a Hawks fan.)

First three letters of my username is an homage to Nirvana.

Really? None of the 17 teams that picked before us were in a position to take a swing? Golden State (with two top-15 picks) couldn't? San Antonio (which took a big swing at Primo) couldn't? Memphis? OKC with its multiple lottery picks? None of them could afford to take a swing on someone who has the talent you think he has? And for him being "a slam dunk so far"--he has accomplished nothing so far, so that's just a weird statement. I think Jalen was a great pick precisely because if he turns out to be a bust, it'll be no biggie given where we were picking in the draft and the amount of young talent we already have. But there's no way to know which he is until we see him for an extended stretch against NBA rotation players (assuming he earns that opportunity, which in itself depends on how well he plays in the preseason and in College Park).

I'll make mine: (1) Bogi finishes top 10 in 3P%. (2) Neither JJ nor Coop average more than 15mpg over a full month (barring major injuries or a consolidation trade). (3) Schlenk wins Executive of the Year.

My caveat is that if Gallo's contract is needed to acquire a star, we obviously could/should move him before the deadline. But I'd imagine that if we do that, Clint, JC, or Bogi might be more likely than Gallo to be the key salary-matching piece.

I think it's 3. Remember, the fact that his contract is guaranteed for $5M doesn't mean that $5M would actually be on our books. Instead, Gallo would become a free agent, and his cap hit for the Hawks would be partially reduced by whatever another team signs him for: So realistically, unless Gallo suffers a bad enough injury or regresses to the point that no team is willing to give him at least the taxpayer MLE ($5.9M this season and likely a fair bit more next season), going with option 3 means his cap hit will be a good bit less than $5M.

You're braver than me--Delon and Lou bang knees in practice three days before the break and you could have a pooping elephant as your avatar for awhile

Josh was also a mediocre-at-best on-ball defender. Had trouble moving his feet on the perimeter and bit on too many pump fakes in the post. It's the reason why he was never taken all that seriously for all-defensive teams despite being perennially among the leaders in blocks and getting lots of steals for a forward too. Jalen doesn't have Josh's instinctive nose for the ball on help D, but he has the potential to be a much better on-ball defender if he has the work ethic, perseverance, and discipline. We'll see if he does.

I mean, if it's what I think it is, it's a prediction I agree with. The Hawks' depth makes them a good bet to do well in the regular season (which I think will still have more players missing games than usual because of health/safety protocols, etc). But depth is less important when rotations shorten in the playoffs.

I think Kerr has to be the frontrunner for the USAB head coach slot. I honestly hope it's not Nate. The Hawks aren't good/experienced enough yet to be put on cruise control while their coach's attention is divided.

Does this mean you think they'll finish with the best regular season record, but may not live up to that seeding in the playoffs?

It's a dice roll, but personally, I'd put anyone on our roster (except Trae) on the table in a trade for MPJ. His ceiling is--no exaggeration--as high as anyone in the league right now, including Luka and Trae. He has superstar potential. That's true of no one else on our roster aside from Trae. I love Dre and Cam, but I don't see them turning into All-NBA caliber players even if everything breaks right. It's kind of crazy, but MPJ is the only player in league history to average 40% from deep over his first two seasons while also averaging more than 5 rpg. He blew by those numbers too--he averaged 44% and 6.1 rpg. The risk is, of course, that he's something of a modern-day Derrick Coleman, blessed with an unmatched combination of size, athleticism, and shooting ability, but never willing to focus on his game enough to reach anything resembling his potential. The fact that he doesn't play defense and doesn't pass are red flags. I'd leave to TS and MPJ's old AAU teammate who just happens to be our franchise player to decide whether he can mature and work on his game to the point where he can reach his insane ceiling. Anyway, moot point. Denver ain't letting him go.

Kind of perplexing to me, even if he's a more skilled player than Solo. Wing is the position where we have the biggest glut in terms of guys under (guaranteed) contracts--Bogi, Hunter, Cam, and Huerter are primarily wings, Wright can play the 2, and then JJ and Solo (and even Gallo) can play the 3. Makes me wonder if the Hawks are worried about how Hunter's rehab is progressing, or that there's an unreported lingering issue from the playoffs with Bogi or Cam

Definitely a reasonable position. But my take (and presumably TS's, since he seems in no rush to fill that last spot) is that there's no real difference between the guys left on the market now and the guys we'd be able to scoop up in a few weeks or months, if we get hit with a frontcourt injury. Better to keep the flexibility than tie up a roster spot with a guy who, if we ever had to actually play him in situations that mattered, we'd be in trouble.

Sorry, but guys don't just go from Montenegran League rejects to NBA rosters without something that triggers a pretty radical change in their valuation. What Hamilton is "looking for" doesn't matter as much as what teams are willing to give him. No one is offering him a roster spot, so he's not in a position to turn his nose at a G-League offer if he wants to stay stateside. Capela and Dieng will be just fine for 3 months. Collins can slide over to the 5 as needed, like he did last year. Even Gallo can play the 5 in a pinch. Small ball is a better option than being forced to play a scrub. If one of the two true centers gets hurt for an extended period, we can cross that bridge when we come to it and probably find someone better than Hamilton on the waiver wire.