Blue is Me

Tag: opinions

  • Why do people’s opinions about LeBron James differ so much?

    It’s because there’s a big divide in how people feel about Lebron. Generally speaking, people who don’t know much about basketball and just casually watch games dislike Lebron for nonsense reasons or discredits his achievements like ‘he flops too much’ ‘he teamed up with other all stars’ ‘he says political stuff’ ‘he whines and complains’ ‘he jumps teams too much’ ‘he handpicks his teammates’ ‘he trades teammates’ ‘he lost in the Finals too much’ ‘he ruins teams’ etc

    These are all ignorant narratives because these people have no knowledge of basketball history, don’t realize that Lebron is not the only superstar that have done these things and they exaggerate these things. On top of that they generally use kiddie terms like ‘LeBum ‘LeTrash’ ‘Bronsexual’ etc should give you a general idea of the intelligence and maturity level of these haters. What makes it even more infuriating is when they tell others that they don’t know enough basketball or are ‘too young’ etc

    On the other hand, we have analysts who are not emotional and merely judge players objectively based on stats and achievements and these people rightfully put Lebron as a top 2–3 player all time and respect his achievements. These are pretty much all sports publications (ESPN, Bleacher Report, SLAM, Sports Illustrated, HoopsHype etc) as well as your usual talking heads i.e Chris Broussard, Shannon Sharpe, Nick Wright, etc basically everyone except for Skip Bayless.

    In addition I have to mention me and my friend because we both have watched countless hours of basketball. My friend has watched virtually every game Jordan, Lebron, Kobe and others have played since the 1980s, and I’ve poured through basketball footage dating back to the George Mikan and Bob Cousy era and even some footage of the ABA. Both of us have Lebron ranked in our top 2 right alongside Jordan.

    https://youtu.be/fZ9gLrPz6qw

    But I know some people will say ‘but you are not credible, you’re just a random person’. Ok, how about some popular Youtubers?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQRoaj_C2oI&t=268s

    Jimmy Highroller has Lebron in his top 2.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxI3aq48teM

    Jonny Arnett has Lebron in his top 2

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzzlvnncLOQ&t=1411s

    Ben Taylor (Thinking Basketball) has Lebron in his top 2

    https://lebronwire.usatoday.com/2019/04/08/anonymous-poll-of-nba-players-has-lebron-far-behind-jordan-in-goat-debate/

    And for all the haters who say ‘NBA players don’t think Lebron is that great’ – Lebron is at least in 2nd place amongst NBA players, which is exactly where he resides in most polls and rankings. And this poll was done before Lebron’s 4th ring.

    And the funny thing is, all these haters who supposedly ‘know more basketball’ than us, can never provide any concrete evidence why Lebron is not at least a top 3 player all time. They use irrational or emotional reasons why, which are subjective and usually ignorant and lacking context.

  • What did you think of the NBA’s 75 greatest players of all time list?

    For reference here is the list of the NBA’s 75 greatest players chosen by them

    I agree with most of this list, but there are of course players I disagree with and players who I would have rather seen in this list.

    First off, we have to mention that for the NBA, like always, ignores ABA history and ABA awards/stats which means that guys like Dan Issel, Artis Gilmore, George McGinnis, Roger Brown, Mel Daniels, Connie Hawkins and Spencer Haywood are getting neglected, as usual. This is unfair, but that NBA has chosen to ignore ABA history.

    So there’s a few players I would swap out from the list.

    -replace Tiny Archibald with Dennis Johnson. Tiny Archibald is a great player and led the league in scoring and assists in the same season, I get that. He’s also a 5x All-NBA player. However, I think DJ deserves it more. DJ has 3 championships as a top 3 player, he’s a 9x All-Def selection and considered one of the best defensive guards of his era. He also has a Finals MVP. He may not have had the raw stats of Tiny, but DJ’s impact with his teams was huge.

    -replace Dave Bing with Tony Parker. Bing was a scoring guard who put up great numbers in his era, but had very little playoff success. I don’t think he was even the best player on his own team – Bob Lanier was, who also doesn’t appear on this list. Tony Parker on the other hand, has 4 championships, as many All-NBA selections, and a Finals MVP. Parker is more deserving.

    -replace Pete Maravich with Tracy McGrady. Pistol Pete was a dynamic showman and a terrific scorer for his era, and he and Tmac both share some similarities in that they were both high scoring guards whose careers were shortened by injuries. Neither of them went very far in the playoffs. However, Tmac was a more complete player. He was a better defender, had better playoff numbers, more scoring titles, more all star appearances and more All-NBA selections. I rank Tmac higher than Pistol.

    -replace Earl Monroe with Sidney Moncrief. Monroe was basically Pete but with less stats in every category. I get that he was a champion with the Knicks, but he was also playing on a loaded team. He was 1x All-NBA. ONE time. He was roughly about equal to Gail Goodrich, who didn’t make this list. Moncrief on the other hand has 4 more All-NBA selections, made 5 All-Def teams, and won 2 DPOYs. He deserves to make it over Monroe.

    -replace Reggie Miller with Adrian Dantley. Dantley was an incredible scorer who led the league in scoring 2 times and was the most efficient midrange scoring forward ever. He has more All-Star appearances than Miller and made 2 All-NBA 2nd teams, whereas Miller never made any All-NBA 1st or 2nd teams. He averages 6 more PPG than Miller does. I think Dantley deserves it more.

    -replace Lenny Wilkens with Pau Gasol. Pau is a 2x champion, made 2 All-NBA 2nd teams and was a crucial part of the Lakers 2-peat in the late 2000s. Wilkens was a player who had a decent prime where he was leader of the Sonics, but he never went to a Finals, nor was he ever All-NBA. Gasol deserves it over Wilkens.

    -replace Nate Thurmond with Dwight Howard. I get that Nate the Great was an all time great defensive player and rebounder, but he was never All-NBA nor did he win anything. I realize that is because he played with Wilt, Kareem and Russell in the league, but still, his resume is a bit lacking. Dwight Howard is also an all time defensive presence and great rebounder, except with 3x DPOY, 8x All-NBA, 5x All-Def and a championship, also led a team to the Finals as the main guy. He has a better resume and he deserves it over Thurmond.

    -replace Bill Sharman with Tom Heinsohn. Heinsohn was the more accomplished player out of these two, who both played on Russell’s Celtics. Heinsohn won 4 more championships, and was a top 3 player on 6 of his 8 championship teams. Sharman was not a top 3 player on any of his championship teams, in fact if you look up the stats, Heinsohn consistently did better than Sharman when they were both playing in the same Finals.

    -replace Robert Parish with Nikola Jokic. This one might be a bit more controversial but remember that Damian Lillard made this list ok? Jokic is the league MVP. He is easily the best passing big man since Walton and Sabonis. He is one of the most unique centers in NBA history. Parish has never had these kinds of abilities, he was simply a solid third option on a great team that played for a really long time. So I would replace Parish with Jokic.

    –replace Bill Walton with Neil Johnston. This is a player that most modern fans have never heard of, but he was the best center between Mikan and Russell. His accomplishments include: 6x all star, 5x all-nba, 3x scoring champ, 1 championship as the second best player on the Philly Warriors, led the league in win shares an astounding 4 years in a row, had a PER of 24.7 which is one of the top 5 highest PERs in NBA history, and a WS/48 of 0.241 which is also top 5 in NBA history. But because he played in the 1950s, nobody remembers him. Bill Walton of course, was a top 2 center in the league when he was healthy. He had one of the most impressive seasons ever in 1977 when he won the title and Finals MVP. However, he only had 2 healthy seasons. I don’t know if 2 healthy seasons is enough for top 75 all time. I would take Neil Johnston over him.

    So those are the changes I would make. The rest of the list is ok to me.

  • What is wrong with our society today?

      • A considerable amount of people suffer from hive mentality, have narrow minded beliefs and lack critical thinking skills

      I do a lot of social media, I’m on Youtube, Twitter, Quora, Instagram and Facebook a lot, and I’ve noticed about the majority of people is that they are very prone to believing falsehoods, or they are ignorant about a topic but are very outspoken in their opinions. This is a problem when you end up having to correct so many people every single day, and it’s a complete and total waste of my time because it’s near impossible to convince them of their fallacies.

      Most people on social media will start their argument with either a falsehood or a lie, a logical fallacy, a false co-relation, or some other irrational belief and they will say “FACTS” or “prove me wrong. I’ll wait.” – and when I do show them counterexamples, hypocritical or contradictory information, or prove them wrong they will either deflect to something else, ignore my response or resort to personal insults. They refuse to be convinced, even when shown empirical evidence otherwise. That’s how I know these people have narrow minded beliefs / brainwashed, or they lack critical thinking skills because a person who is open minded, not brainwashed, and have critical thinking skills, are able to absorb new information, react to differing evidence and form a new mindset with this new opinion. They are able to be convinced. Whereas with the majority of social media users, they are too entrenched in their established dogmas to ever change them.

      Some examples of a few key groups on social media I noticed that have been like this include: Kobe Bryant fans, Trump supporters, Chinese nationalists, hardcore Christians, *some* Apple fans as well, etc These groups of people generally have a very rigid belief, and no matter what evidence you show them to the contrary, they refuse to change their minds and will instead deflect to something else, put up strawman arguments or insult you. These are the most frustrating groups of people I have had the displeasure of dealing with online and it’s almost always a complete waste of time trying to talk to them because you cannot convince them of anything different from their beliefs.

      Another thing shared in common with these groups is that they see the world in almost black in white; i.e if you do not agree with them then you are the enemy and must be against them. I.e if you do not like Kobe then you MUST be a Lebron fan. If you do not like Trump then you MUST be a liberal socialist democrat. If you do not like the Chinese government then you MUST be a brainwashed Westerner that loves America (and a traitor as well in my case since I have Chinese blood). Which goes hand in hand with what I mentioned before which is these people have a very narrow world view, and do not believe in any sort of grays in the world; everyone must be either on one side or the other.

      • Today’s generation is all about instant gratification and have the shortest attention span of any generation and as a result this has led to a decline in quality in all forms of entertainment

      I’ve noticed that most people today get easily distracted, have very little patience generally, have higher and higher needs to be satisfied, and are almost constantly complaining or whining about something. Much of this has to do with today’s instant technology like smartphones, which is a natural result of the technological progress we made. Back in the day, people had black and white tvs, record players, radios, and rotary phones. Now, we do everything with a smartphone, high speed internet, GPS, turn by turn navigation, stream music and movies instantly, purchase everything from the comfort of a home, have any show or movie they want on demand, etc

      So naturally this technological evolution led to a change in habits amongst todays generation. I know, I’m a Millenial so I’m guilty of it too. However, what I do lament is the seemingly degrading quality of art in today’s society as a result of these habits. It seems to be, that there is a focus towards style over substance in nearly every artistical category of today’s generation, which really accelerated sometime in the mid 2000s, coinciding with the rise of high speed internet and smartphones.

      Take a look at today’s novels, music, movies, video games, etc. All the mass forms of entertainment. They’ve all trended towards more style and visuals as the focus instead of actual substance or content. At least the mainstream stuff. Don’t get me wrong – there’s still plenty of talent in today’s world – it’s just that now most of this talent is concentrated in the indie scene. Mainstream entertainment has significantly declined in quality from the days of before.

      I’m mostly going to speak to American mainstream entertainment, but the quality of books and novels since the 1970s have significantly decreased. Ever wonder why all the American classics were from the 1850s – 1960s? Because sometime after the 1960s a more immediately gratifying form of entertainment came by – Television – that significantly took a hit on the amount of people who demanded quality 1000+ page novels. Ask any Millenial or Gen Z’er how many of them are going to read a book longer than 200 pages? Moby Dick? Huckleberry Finn? 20,000 Leagues under the sea? War of the Worlds? Lord of the Rings? Forget about it.

      In Movies the decline is even more obvious. From the 1940s – 1990s we had a litany of all time classic films that focused on great storylines and actual substance. Casablanca. Vertigo. Rear Window. High and Low. Lawrence of Arabia. 2001 A Space Odyssey. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Platoon. Schindler’s List. Shawshank Redemption. Even the blockbusters back then like Back to the Future, Empire Strikes Back, Aliens, E.T, Jurassic Park, Terminator II, Robocop etc combined a great storyline with exciting visuals. This continued until the late 90s – early 00s with classics like Magnolia, Memento, American Beauty, Mulholland Drive, Almost Famous etc but then in the mid 2000s we got hit with the trend of ever more visual movies that promised special effects, explosions, action etc – at the detriment of a good storyline! Almost all the superhero movies are guilty of this (with some notable exceptions like Interstellar and The Dark Knight which are actually good movies). Fast and the Furious, the Star Wars sequel trilogy and Transformers are particularly guilty of this. They are terrible movies story wise, but they make big bucks because of today’s instant gratitude generation that want to see action, explosions and CGI immediately. Ask any Millenial or Gen Z’er if they want to watch Gone with the Wind or Bridge on the River Kwai or The Searchers and watch as they squirm and probably get bored within the first 2 minutes of the opening. Which is a shame because as I said, this generation prefers style over substance. Even animation suffered; hand drawn 2D animation of the past that all had distinct art styles reflective of their creator like the old Looney Tunes, Hanna Barbera, Don Bluth movies, Disney movies etc turned into all the same 3D crap. All the 3D characters in movies look very very similar because they were all done with a computer. There’s no charm left.

      In Music, we can see a pretty easy decline too. In the 1940s-1950s we had great solo artists like Billie Holiday, Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Ellen Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis etc and then into the 1960s with the evolution of brands like The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Allman Brothers, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, The Beach Boys, Rolling Stones, The Temptations etc then into the 1970s with a diverse array of artists like ABBA, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Marvin Gaye, The Carpenters, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Queen, Bee Gees, etc and then into the 1980s with more artists like Michael Jackson, Hall & Oates, Prince, George Michael, Madonna, U2, Elton John, Van Halen, Guns N Roses, AC/DC etc then even into the 90s/early 00s with a even more diverse array of artists like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Tupac, Jay-Z, Eminem, Oasis, Coldplay, Radiohead, Green Day, Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls, Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Linkin Park etc but again starting from the mid 00s, the music became more produced, more artificial and everything started to focus more on the visuals than the actual raw quality of the music. I think the culmination of that is the current popularity Kpop and EDM. Now I’m not saying the artists today aren’t talented – just that they lack substance compared to the artists of yesterday. Kpop is literally visuals first, singing second. EDM is literally just completely produced, computer generated music. What happened to artists actually you know, performing their music? So yeah, ask any Millenial or Gen Z’er to listen to some Oscar Peterson or Stan Getz or Jimi Hendrix’s Third stone from the Sun and they would probably react with a very confused look on their face. They wanted immediate gratification, heavily processed music, more visuals and incredible music videos.

      In Video Games, we can also see it. In the 1980s this was the golden age of arcade games. Atari 2600 ruled the home market. Atari’s games had very crude graphics and was literally just about getting the highest score. Arcade games were about getting the highest score. Nobody played Space Invaders or Pacman for the visuals, it was all about the gameplay. Then the NES came with classics like Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros, Contra, Megaman, Bomberman, Metroid, etc and with the 90s I think video game really reached its peak as far as substance (gameplay) was concerned. the SNES and Genesis took it to a new level with games like Sonic, Super Mario World, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, Megaman X, Earthbound, Gunstar Heroes, Streets of Rage, Final Fight, Zelda Link to the Past, Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Donkey Kong Country, Pokemon etc for the 2D games and Goldeneye 007, Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Ocarina of Time, Tomb Raider, Tekken, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy 7, Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Crash Bandicoot etc for the 3D games and an absolutely incredible decade of genre defining PC games like Doom, Quake, Half-Life, Duke Nukem 3D, Commander Keen, Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft, Myst, System Shock, Jazz Jackrabbit etc and going into early 2000s with games like GTA 3, Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, Diablo II, Counterstrike, Warcraft 3, Deus Ex, Half Life 2, Halo, Knights of the Old Republic etc but just with the other industries starting from the mid 2000s, there was again the trend of focusing on more style (visuals) than substance (gameplay). Now you got games that are pretty much just a movie with very limited interaction and very linear gameplay. Call of Duty and Assassins Creed are probably the games I want to call out the most for accelerating this trend, but games like Uncharted and Last of Us might as well just be interactive movies right? Now it’s just like the other industries; the current generation just cares about framerates, resolutions and great graphics over everything else so the major game studios prioritize that. Gone are the days of caring about gameplay and high scores above everything else. Ask a Millenial or Gen Z’er to play Battletoads or Double Dragon or Megaman 2; they’ll complain that there’s no instructions or handholding, the graphics suck, die in the first 10 seconds and never want to play again.

      Even sports are affected; As a basketball fan, I lament the days in the 80s and 90s where we would see players battle it out on the court, rivalries were deep, players genuinely hated each other, and there was a balance of interior and perimeter game and solid fundamental plays from most players; now it’s all perimeter game, everyone is buddy buddy with each other, everyone wants to do flashy fadeaways and dunks like Jordan without thinking about the fundamentals and breathing on another player is a foul. What happened to the game I used to watch and love?

      Now, keep in mind I’m just talking about *mainstream* entertainment – the indie entertainment scene is still all well and good and do generally focus more on the substance than the style ( or maybe a mix of both), but I do feel like today’s instant gratification generation has pretty much ruined mainstream entertainment compared to the previous generations.

  • Some of my insights into life

    My view of women and how they pick their guys:
    You women always want the perfect guys. You always go for the handsome, jock types who are the most likely to hurt you then when they cheat on you or dump you, you get all emo because you wonder why all men are jerks. Well we arent all jerks, you just pick the ones that tend to be jerks. All women are like this. They will never pick the nice, shy guy to ask out in favor of the athletic, good looking ones. And you pay for it. Big time. This is just my opinion but I really do think all women are like this based on continuous observation. Yes I know sometimes I do go for chicks that are out of my league and yes I do get rejected but so what? You aim high, you will be successful, aim low and you stay low.

    my view on humanity/life in general:
    Humans are tragically flawed in that they are deceiving, provacative and extremeley judgemental of others. This is the immanent nature of the human condition. Another deluded concept is that of life. Life can be a titanic struggle, if you choose it to be. I am usually optimistic and I believe that whatever happens was meant to happen. If you be pessimistic, then your whole life will be filled with woes and unhappiness. However, either way, life is seldom worth it. For the first 18 years of your life, ever since you have been conceived, you are placed in an academic institution designed to teach you morals, rationality and to prepare you for life as an adult. This is called education. A further 4 – 8 years are then spent in an institute of higher learning in order to obtain a job, occupation or career. Then for the rest of your life until you are 65, you are working your 9-5 job with little or no time to enjoy anything. Getting married? Having kids? It all makes it more harder in the long run. when you retire at 65, then you get to enjoy life, but really whats the point? You’re too old to do anything by then. Heck I don’t even know If I’ll survive that long. Point is, Life is a vicious cycle, where you are born, and basically work your whole life to die a forgotten with little or no legacy. This is not how I want to live my life. I want to be remembered and recognized so that my memory will survive on something other than a tombstone in an obscure graveyard, reduced to ashes or bones.

    My thoughts on religion:
    I find it very bizarre, being an unreligious person, to place a certain human being, whose existence is debatable, on a pedestal above all others and treated as a deity. We all need something to believe in, but to accept this as truth is quite a different story. Furthermore, why would we base our measurements of time on his death and rebirth? BC stands for before christ, and AD for anno domini. Not everyone is christian, so why should we all conform to a time based measurement based upon his life? Also, is the Bible even factual or just a cleverly disguised book of lies? I ponder this quite often and I wonder the validity of religions, especially that of christianity. Note that I am not an atheist as I do believe in one person, and that is myself. I am the only person that I can trust, because I am the only one who truly knows how my mind works.

    My thoughts on justice:
    We think we are progressing, that we are improving technologically, mentally and physically, that we are superior beings. Yet the very things that we seek to abolish; Poverty, injustice, racism, inequality, discrimination and sexism, among a host of other abhorrences, are ever present. They cannot and will not be dissipated because the rich will always get richer, the poor get poorer, humanity constantly fooled under the specious name of democracy, the end of one war signalling the beginning of another. Peace and Justice are all but impossible because the human race is inherently filled with conflict and strife. It is necessary for us as humans to progress. Conflict and revolution generates a reactionary chain that causes us to evolve. Humans will ultimately destroy each other, as death is the only way out of this vicious cycle, as it consumes all. I quote ‘to be or not to be: that is the question’. Indeed it is, as death is the universal solution to all our gifts and curses, all our problems. What is beyond death could only be imagined.

    Please respond with your comments, remember that this is all my opinion so feel free to respond with your views.