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Very exciting news. Huge for the franchise.

Freddy looked really good today.

The “let them shoot 3s” strategy sure looks good when the opponent goes 6 for 35. Although even if OKC hit 10 more the Bucks would have won anyway.

Well yeah, but some improve more than others...

I really thought they were going to stink this year and after the first two months there was little evidence to the contrary. Now I’m really excited to see what this team can do in the tourney. They might not even need a favorable draw to win some games.

Nope.

Yep they are probably around 6-seed territory now and might sneak into the top-25. Big one at Michigan this week.

There's no way Giannis has made up his mind. He would be crazy to. There is too much of an opportunity to see what options are out there for forming a superteam. Which he will have to weigh against all of his other priorities for career, family, etc.

What's the over/under on number of days after the opener until they make a roster move? Will they even make it a week with the opening 26?

I think it's much more than 50/50 he stays. I think it's 95/5 and honestly it might be stronger than that. He's said he doesn't want to fraternize with other superstars because he doesn't want their influence on his decisions. He turned down an offer from LeBron to be in Space Jam, he won't practice/work out with other superstars in the off season, he avoids all those situations. He's said he's turned down many endorsement opportunities, I think mainly because he values his time and his normal routine over the distraction of flying out to different places to shoot commercials. I think he also is being careful with the products he wants to represent. It would take a huge shift in his thinking to leave IMO. Is it possible? Of course, people change their minds all the time. I think the 2 biggest factors in his decision will be his family and whether he believes the Bucks will continue to chase championships. I think the Bucks are taking care of their end. The unknown is if his family wants to stay in Milwaukee as badly as he theoretically does. I read a story about Kobe meeting with Giannis, it sounded like Giannis came super prepared to the meeting and quizzed Kobe on all sorts of in-game situations where Giannis thought he needed to improve. It certainly fits the general theme of him chasing a championship above all else. I think the equation could change significantly depending on if the Bucks win a championship or not. As long as Giannis does not have a championship he is going to do whatever it takes to get one and if a team puts together a compelling proposal there is reason to think Giannis would leave Milwaukee. We know that Giannis likes Milwaukee and if he thinks he can win championships here, and does, he will probably stay. But maybe after winning one he will start thinking more about other aspects of his career, endorsements, movies, etc. Who knows.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

It is the tradeoff for the massive TV contracts that everyone signs--exclusive rights to the market. Most now accept that this is terrible for the long-term health of baseball, particularly attracting new and younger fans. But at the current time the TV contracts are too valuable to get changes.

Can we expand this thread to include anyone who got LASIK in the offseason?

I use MLB.TV through Fire TV. And on my laptop. It's great. I have few buffering issues despite running it over Wi-Fi. I will note that the broadcast tends to be about 20 seconds behind other sources so if you find that annoying it could be a downside.

People will move on when the season starts and there is some actual baseball news other than this scandal. Except for opposing fans when the Astros are in town.

100!

Middleton is single-handedly getting them back in the game.

The conferences are essentially even right now in head-to-head record. The Raptors might be a bigger threat to the Bucks than anyone in the West.

We have no idea what is happening within the program. We have no idea what was experienced by past players. We do know that the UW-Madison campus has numerous ongoing issues with diversity. It was just in the national news a few weeks ago. I don't want this thread to spin into politics but we have to acknowledge that there *could* be underlying issues in the program that we are not aware of. I mean a coach just got fired for using a racial slur, and a departing player cited issues going back several years. That sounds like a pretty big deal!

I was looking into Mariners Opening Day tickets and there are about 20,000 left to choose from.

MLB is the opposite of large-market centric. MLB is local. Nobody watches national broadcasts of MLB games. MLB's entire revenue model is driven by local fans watching their local team's games. The push to get more teams in the playoffs makes a ton of sense when you think of it from that perspective.

I don't get what you're saying...MLB's proposal would be the most favorable for the 1-seed in any sport. I suspect the NBA will be the first one to reform their season/postseason format. Almost the entirety of MLB's proposal was poached from ideas that have been floated for the NBA.

At the end of the day ownership only cares about maximizing profits and strictly adhering to the demand curve. The #1 thing that they could do to increase the number of people watching baseball is to make the product more widely available through TV and streaming services in the local market. The #1 thing that they could do to increase attendance is to lower ticket prices. Neither approach maximizes short-term profit. Both approaches significantly damage long-term profit and I strongly believe that there is nothing they can do from a game/rules perspective to reverse the current trends.

As an out-of-state Brewers fan, the Wisconsin presales are really annoying. It was a problem for playoff tickets last year, I was going to fly in and it made it harder to get face value tickets. Plus, the majority of Cubs fans that come to Miller Park clearly live in Wisconsin anyway.

The 80-win teams would have won more than 80 games if they were trying to make the playoffs for the whole season.