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I got my obamafone, got lunch, and saw skyfall today. Thanks for paying ecn!!!

Based on the past 3 games? Easily Okafor.

Couldn't agree more. Chris Paul was finally more aggressive. Great to see DJ keep the same focus and energy from last night- another great game by him. It's nice to see his teammates have more confidence in him too and throw him the ball inside. J-Craw - what a great addition he done been so far! E-Bledsoe- another decent game. Hollins, Ronny and Barnes were solid too. 44-31 rebs edge - the guys have gotten the message. A really hard-fought road win. I'm glad we didn't blow it... It'll sure make a difference along the way.

Get true mass cause serious mass uses a huge huge scooper. True Mass + milk, tuna, protein bars, lots of meat, and stuff like cashews, peanuts, almonds, etc work. If you have a blender I suggest you put stuff like eggs, peanut butter, or bananas in your shake.

http://i.imgur.com/xOPBm.jpg Roasted.

If you want to see what the world looks like to someone with schizophrenia, here is an artist (Louis Wain) and his drawings of his cat as he slipped further and further into the illness. http://imgur.com/a/15A60

um yeah? just look at this elections, the numbers don't lie.

Sounds like the 47% and your average minority liberal.

yet you live at home without a job. interesting

Rand Paul please

Was there a difference between Mike D'Antoni and Mike Woodson? Last year's team was far different, and it kept most of its defensive schemes from 2010-11, possibly because of Andrew Bynum, to adjust to his inability to recover quickly. We had Kobe and Ron roaming all over the place, and it took a lot out of them every single game, and you could see it by 40 games in. Kobe's offense took a hit, and I don't have to tell you about Ron...at one point, all he was doing was spotting up and jogging back down the court (his injury played a part in that as well, but once he was healthy, he was doing the same exact thing). Nash and Fisher are both bad defensive players. Fisher wasn't THAT bad a few years ago, but before he was dealt, he was horrible. Gasol is still Gasol. Instead of Josh McRoberts and Troy Murphy, we have Antawn Jamison off the bench...and none of them play defense, especially Murphy. The effort is there, also. The Lakers are trying to win games, especially on defense. It's just that it's not working, and our players are sending their assignments to inactive sides of the basket, the pick and roll defense is as bad as it has ever been (even with Howard), and Brown's rotations are absolutely killing us. In fact, most of that is on Brown's rotations. How do you play a five-man roster without Kobe, Dwight, Artest, or even Gasol? At least Gasol has length to contest shots. Robert Sacre should be in a suit. Darius Morris should be in a suit. Jamison should NEVER play the three. Jodie Meeks should be playing. In addition to that, all five of our starters (four veterans, and one superstar recovering from a back surgery) played 36+ minutes last night...against the Utah Jazz. Last season, Kobe averaged 39 MPG, up from the 34 MPG the previous year, after saying that he needed the rest. All things point to Brown. If we raked in someone like Jerry Sloan, who would run P&R more, know how to rest starters, and know exactly who should be coming off the bench and in what positions...we wouldn't be 1-4. Not a chance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKo1Y2UDrcU He destroys Jim Buss and Mike Brown. Noticed he was wrong about the offensive and defensive rankings (maybe he didn't have the new numbers, or he wasn't using ORtg and DRtg, per 100 possessions).

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Kobe was shooting 60+ percent before last night's game against Utah, didn't have a single bad game, yet we were 1-3. In fact, our offense is ranked 7th right now. Our defense? It's 25th. Guess who is backing up Kobe as the two-guard? Ron Artest, who is starting at the three. Jodie Meeks isn't playing, for some reason. Jamison is seeing a ton of minutes as the backup SF, where he's getting roasted on the defensive end. Brown actually went with a lineup of Sacre, Hill, Jamison, Ebanks and Morris the other night, start of the fourth quarter. No starters, three D-Leaguers...and when the Pistons went on an 8-0 run and cut the lead to 24 points...Brown panicked and put all of the starters back in. All of last year, Steve Blake was playing a lot of SG. Brown is horrible. Give him a team with one dominant superstar, and he will ask John Kuester to call ISO's all night long, and rely on their athletic ability to play defense. Give him a team with four star players (two superstars, one franchise player, one all-star), that's up there in age, and he has no idea what rotations to send out, how to funnel players to Dwight, and how long he should play our starters before pulling them out of the game.

YES! Vital piece for the ship!!! Atta boy donnie.

mods and RD leave this open if u want to hear ur members voices, if the members are more important than one guy here you have to let everyone talk My Link bro u are way too involved with this forum and ur ruining it for all of us, just look at ur facebook account, look at all the stuff u put up on there like its ur forum and u have things from years ago, wtf man. u bother the mods by sending them pm after pm when someone says one thing about u and u stalk RD on facebook and act like this forum is urs. if ur gonna post here fine but just be a poster and stop with the obsession, i can speak for everyone when i say we dont feel comfortable here anymore and none of us want to post on this forum because u are in every thread posting weird shit that doesnt make sense, u hate ur own teams best players and quote posters and agree for no reason, u suck up and give reps to staff for no reason, u get butthurt by everything said just STOP before we all leave for real, leave people alone and be like u were when u first got here or just get off the [expletive]in forum

If you don't like long posts, pretend this is fairly short. Please read it all. What I'm going to address doesn't date back to this summer, but to January 26th, 2005, when I started this site. Most know the story, so I'll keep it simple: OTR was created because I wanted to get away from personal attacks on message board members. I wasn't happy reading sexist remarks, disappointed in racist jokes in AIM chats directed to those I posted with, and those attacks were never against me...but members were looking to me, as a team forum moderator, to do something about it. Well, I did. And now, I'm doing it again. Members are going to get suspended or banned for personal attacks. It has been that way forever, although I've let it go for quite some time, in hopes that it would die down as we grew as a community. Instead, the exact opposite happened, and we were way too comfortable posting here. Don't get me wrong...being comfortable here, as a poster, is what we want. We just don't want it to alter the way you treat everyone else. You can disagree with anyone you want when it comes to basketball discussion. That's your right as a poster. However, when you call someone a "f---ing idiot" if they believe that Steve Nash is an MVP candidate this year (just an example), right or wrong, you are crushing all hopes of an intelligent basketball discussion topic. If you are for or against religion, you don't need to mock others opposing your views. Are you right or left wing? Either way, don't make it a habit throwing jabs at the opposition...not in a demeaning way, or what could be considered inappropriate to our forums. As far as bans and suspensions go...guys, there is a rule: three strikes, and it's a suspension. You double that, and you're done. Our last two banned members have been suspended a combined eight times. In fact, all of this can be found in our rules below. http://www.otrbasketball.com/forums/index.php?app=forums&module=extras&section=boardrules What you won't see in those guidelines (and what you haven't seen since we restarted the board) would be a rule on baiting. But let's dip into that. Since 2005, it has been known that excessive, severe baiting will not be tolerated here. We have had baiting every other day, and it elevates during the playoffs. To date, very few members have been banned for baiting. If you want to know what excessive baiting is, go back to the Yao/Dwight topics before we were hacked. When you register here with the intention of stirring up a certain team's fanbase, or a particular member or two, you're more than likely going to be baiting our members excessively. Also, when half of your posts are directed at a member or a fanbase, you're probably in the same boat. Weeks of the same thing, with that member creating irrelevant topics about how bad a team is, making numerous repetitive posts about players, fans and teams with the intent to shake cages...that's excessive baiting. I'm sure a lot of you understand the bans and suspensions, and I'm sure some don't. That's how it should be. If everyone understood, it means that they were involved in it all the time, and we'd be lacking member activity even more, in that case...so I'm happy for that. Just something to think about, though: many of you don't like when things are being resolved with open invitation to the public. However, you point fingers and don't understand anything when things are resolved. You can't have it both ways. Both irritate you, so that might be something some need to make a decision about, and accept other members' mistakes as their own demise, rather than me just wanting to get rid of them. I have kept many along for the ride for far, far too long, even those who are notorious for baiting Lakers fans (and bangbangbang is the best example of this). And that brings me to my final point...why members are banned, and what others think they know. Members are not staff members...big difference. As a member, you don't have to deal with anything other than your own post content, and debates you find yourself glued to. The admins and mods here know why these members get banned, and we have discussions about them as well. We've talked about keeping them, despite things they've should've been banned for...and we did, two or three times, all for the sake of giving them that opportunity to post along with the rest of the guys they've been around for 4-5 years. When it's all said and done, you can't abuse that right...and there comes a time when there isn't a single person on staff that wants to take up for you anymore. You know, almost five years of this and it seems like we still have a few guys who believe they are old enough, or dedicated enough, to say what they want. Believe it or not, I'm fully aware of what a lot of people say on AIM, because for some reason, it always gets back to me, full pasted conversations. I read them quite often. I'm also aware that people will rat you out if they feel it's for the best, and that has happened a lot recently. I know that the popular thing to do (and something that has been discussed) is to get me angry, have me suspend someone, and see if members will jet because of it. I know about a "posting strike" that was put into effect, also, between a group of members. I realize that members from other sites are being asked to register and start trouble. Most forget that, despite the few that truly want this place to go down in flames, I am respected by a LOT of site owners, and I have access to plenty of databases and IP addresses. It's not hard to find out who is doing what, and get help from those owners in the process (which only hurts you in the long run, on those other sites). Yes, posting has been down. It has been on the decline since July 19th, 2009, where we fell below 500 posts for the first time since going back up (428 to be exact). Aside from what you may have thought, or what some say, the post decline has more to do with the hack than anything. Four days of 1,000 posts since we restarted...that's all...the first four days. After that 16 days before we fell to less than 500. Do the math...had nothing to do with suspensions, bans, or anything of the sort. But through all of this, we'll move on. I'll find a way to bring in new members once I get home next week. I'll start working on the player database, team pages, and everything. I'll go back to the Brandon of old when it comes to doing work, and we'll see how genuine those statements concerning this site's last days really are. The more people to rebel and leave, the more our dedicated guys have to step up, becoming bigger names in the community, maintaining bigger roles as a poster (or even a staff member), and making the contributions we've been looking for in every member that registers here. There are guys that talk about being on my bad side. They forget that there are plenty of members on my good side, and it's those that I trust the most, and those that I want standing with me when it's all said and done. It's going to take much more to bring the site down, probably three times as much to crack me...so we know what needs to be done. I'll get promotion sigs out (finally), get to work on the player profiles and such, try and post more in these gameday topics, put out some front page news and maybe a new podcast sometime in the next couple of weeks, and we'll see how well you guys work in the clutch. Something you've heard me say for almost five years now...thanks for all of the contributions, whatever you do for us (posting, moderating, administrating, promoting, etc). Nothing ever goes unnoticed.

Removing post count numbers doesn't change anything. It doesn't encourage you guys to post more, and when a new member registers to a 100k post forum, he is fully aware that he's starting out at zero. Are you guys saying that someone is less likely to register at RealGM to discuss basketball, and stay on there, just because they show post count numbers in topics? JBB removed the post counts from the left pane, and it didn't do anything. NBAD removed them, and nothing. People are going to want that at this time (meaning those who are already here) because it helps me find out how active members are over time, as you also see the registration month and year. It also assists me in finding those here just to spam their site in their sig. If I see that they are making short posts that really make little sense to the topic, and see the site link, I look over and notice they have 35 posts or so...and it's a quicker way to lure me into checking in on the rest of their posts, and comparing it to how active they are on their own site. New members don't stay because of how they are treated. If it's a Lakers fan, the comment is, "Great, another Lakers fan!" If it's a member who dives into a religious topic the first week he's here, there's no chance he wants to stick around. It's been that way for five years. Removing left-pane post count view doesn't change anything.

LOL, just no Christmas bonuses this year. I dished out way too much last December.

Well, I really should be able to avoid this stuff to begin with, but with the recent bans and suspensions, people want answers. The only thing I can say to that is that, when they ask me to deal with members they don't like, bans are most definitely up for discussion in their minds, and a great example of this would be this small sentence from a PM I got two months ago: "I doubt OTR even recognizes his absence in the first place, tbh. He doesnt contribute to the forum, so you might as well hang him out to dry." But, when I banned Slaven, this same exact member had a problem with it on AIM, said something about how things should be let go every once in a while, that nobody is ever offended (basically speaking for everyone on the site). That's not how it works, and everyone should know that. I have done far too much keeping a lot of our dedicated guys at bay, yet pulled the trigger much quicker for the new members...and that's where the problem was. New members have felt insecure about their stay here because, for one, it's tough to fit in when posts are strongly influenced by how long you've been registered here, and two, they find that OTR is more of an off-topic site where discussion is triggered by either comedic actions, personal attacks or anger. We were moving in the wrong direction. We need to spin around and change our pace and intentions ASAP.