I have not been following the Pacers this year, but how are they this bad? They made the finals last year. I know that Hali is out for the year, but he doesn’t seem to be a great enough player to turn the worst team in the league into a playoff favorite.

Did I miss the news when they sold off all of their rotation players or is the coach intentionally throwing games?

That is not sufficient cootie protection. A properly trained physician will follow it up with

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Now you have it everywhere

A lot of the Lakers luck has nothing to do with league tampering and everything to do with the fact that players’ licensing income does not count against the salary cap. Do you think a guy would rather make $1,000 shooting an ad for Big Bill’s Discount BBQ or get $5,000 to make an appearance on opening night in Dr. Dre’s new club? Do you think a player prefers to spend his day off shoveling snow from his driveway or go swimming on Venice Beach in the morning and then film a fight scene in the next Fast and Furious? Do you think his wife would rather shop at the mall or Rodeo Drive?

The Lakers don’t get players gifted to them, they sign big name free agents at a discount and trade for expiring contracts knowing that the player will take an extension. They get traded so many players because they are on every players’ preferred list of destinations because every agent makes sure it is there because the agent wants a cut of any Hollywood cameos and rap album features their player gets.

The Pau Gasol trade is a perfect example of this. He did not get traded for nothing. He got traded for his brother, Marc. Pau wanted to get out of Memphis, so the teams made a deal with him: if he could nag his baby brother into moving from the Euroleague to the NBA, Pau would get to win a ring with Kobe.

I like the idea of allowing more teams to be draft eligible, since it gives hope to teams stuck in purgatory, not good enough to seriously contend for a title but too good to draft guaranteed talent in the draft.

I don’t like the idea of limiting the lottery eligibility of a team that finishes at the bottom for consecutive seasons (if they are not already ineligible for getting a high pick). It seems like unnecessary cruelty for a team to finish in the basement (because their best players all got old or left in free agency or something), then they lose the lottery despite good odds, and get told that next year they won’t get a good pick either. At that point, the team would have to spend 2 years with a roster of bench warmers.

Hopefully, if there are more strict anti-tank rules, they can get rid of the rules against resting star players. The restrictions are arbitrary and enforcement is random and unpredictable.

This was already widely known. If a Waymo taxi does not know what to do, it stops in the middle of the road and calls a support center where a human plots a route for it. The tech media has been reporting on it for years. The only fact in that article that I have not heard is that they are outsourcing the jobs to the Philippines.

It is rated as water resistant, capable of withstanding a jet of water.

Repairability depends on what breaks. If water getting into the phone fries the CPU, it does not seem fixable. Glancing at the site, I could not find a part on sale, probably because the cost of a replacement part would cost almost as much as replacing the phone.

In the US, libel requires you to prove that the writer knew that what they were writing is not true and that they did it to hurt you. Doing lazy research and trusting an AI is not going to meet that standard.

I would hope, but I would want to check reviews to be sure.