(NBA) Survey Says ...
A first in the history of the Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza: My link to a short burst of survey questions that I'd be hugely grateful for you to answer to help us all get ready for the new season
You never know who you will meet in the comments section or a Substack Chat session as a member of The Stein Line community.
In this case specifically I'm referring to loyal subscriber and sociologist David Purcell, who is a senior research scientist at the University of New Mexico.
Earlier this year, Dave asked me if I considered doing a survey of The Stein Line readership. I had never commissioned a survey of any kind and loved the idea instantly.
What better way to get the new season started than inviting everyone in our sphere to let me know what they like and don't like about #thisleague and #thisSubstack?
I have assembled a short menu of questions to try to cover as much ground as possible while also requiring only 5 to 10 minutes of your time to complete the survey. Your participation will enable me to gather hugely valuable feedback about what interests you most both about the NBA and my coverage approach.
This, of course, is a completely voluntary exercise. The survey has been assembled in what I hope is a concise, straightforward and quick-to-complete manner, but I totally understand if you'd rather not participate.
Individual responses will be kept confidential and I am not — stress NOT — collecting email addresses or any other data. Your privacy is highly valued. The goal is to gain a better understanding about what moves the community at large about the NBA and how we all follow it.
Please click the enclosed link to complete your survey and stay tuned for the forthcoming compilation of the results.
The link, one more time, is in this sentence …
Psyched to start my third full season covering the NBA on this wonderfully welcoming platform and with all the possibilities it provides!
The Stein Line is a reader-supported newsletter, with both Free and Paid subscriptions available, and those who opt for the Paid edition are taking an active role in the reporting by providing vital assistance to bolster my independent coverage of the league. Feel free to forward this post to family and friends interested in the NBA and please consider becoming a Paid subscriber to have full access to all of my posts.
As a reminder: Tuesday editions, on this and every Newsletter Tuesday, go out free to anyone who signs up, just as my Tuesday pieces did in their New York Times incarnation.
Time for a Dame trade?
I posted a This Week In Basketball notes column Sunday night before starting my Yom Kippur observance that was filled with lots of around-the-league stuff.
Check it out here if you missed it:
Time for a Dame trade?
The Portland Trail Blazers basically have seven more days to trade Damian Lillard. Wait a second. Let’s rephrase that slightly. They have a week to trade Lillard before Blazers Media Day arrives on Oct. 2 and the intrusion of questions and pressure from the press and public becomes a daily aspect of life for Portland for the first time since it wrapped up a 33-49 season way back in April.
Here’s one notable excerpt:
The Toronto Raptors have convinced numerous teams around the league that their interest in trading for Lillard is genuine.
The uncertainty at this point stems more from gauging Toronto's true willingness to push all the way forward with its Lillard pursuit when it's believed that the All-Star guard, behind the scenes, remains so resistant to the idea of becoming a Raptor.
A level of initial skepticism about the Raptors' appetite to make a blockbuster deal with Portland was inevitable in the wake of Toronto’s repeated inaction on the trade front in 2023 despite seemingly generating a league-leading amount of speculation about several of its players since January. But the more significant obstacle to forecasting Toronto's intentions is the reality that Lillard, having asked Portland to trade him with four seasons and nearly $220 million left on his contract, is not another Kawhi Leonard.
The Raptors' famed gamble to trade for Leonard with only one year left on Leonard’s contract in July 2018 came with plenty of risks. Yet the calculus is clearly very different this time when A) Toronto doesn’t have nearly as well-rounded a team as the one Leonard joined as a free agent-to-be and B) Lillard has so much time left on his deal and is said to be resolute in his stance to force a trade to Miami.
Do the Raptors really want to trade for the expensive Lillard, at age 33, if he doesn't want to play for them?
Numbers Game
🏀 90
The one and only Hubie Brown turned 90 on Monday. One of the best assignments I ever had in my career was working alongside Hubie from 2013-17 on ESPN Radio broadcasts. Wish I taped some of the morning meetings that I always tried to turn into Bernard King Story Time.
🏀 545
Indiana's Buddy Hield, whose availability via trade ranks as one of this season's top early storylines, has played 545 regular-season NBA games without tasting the playoffs. Hield is by far the leader in that dreaded category among active players; Utah's Lauri Markkanen is second with 348.
🏀 929
Hield is one of eight players in league history to appear in at least 500 games without a single playoff appearance. Tom Van Arsdale is the runaway leader with 929 regular-season games played, according to Basketball Reference. Hield is sixth on that list behind Omri Casspi (588) and Sebastian Telfair (564) and just ahead of Popeye Jones (535) and Eddy Curry (527).
🏀 2
Reminder! The two teams who play exhibition games abroad are holding their Media Day festivities this week: Minnesota on Thursday and Dallas on Friday. The other 28 teams are holding their Media Day next Monday. There are also several coach/GM tandems staging press conferences this week (Golden State on Monday for example, Brooklyn and Washington on Tuesday and the Los Angeles Lakers on Thursday) as the 2023-24 season draws oh-so-close.
🏀 2
Germany's recent World Cup triumph was made all the more impressive by the fact that two of its NBA players — New York's Isaiah Hartenstein and Dallas' Maxi Kleber — were not even on the team.
🏀 49,737
As tabulated recently by Clutch Points, Brazilian legend Oscar Schmidt scored 49,737 points in his career if you combined his various league scoring totals with international play. The Lakers' LeBron James is closing in with 47,734 career points if you combined his NBA regular season and playoff totals with international competition.
🏀 3
For those of you interested in team sports with no salary cap, have you noticed — as one of my all-time favorite columnists
has helpfully pointed out in more than one of his recent Substacks — how the three teams that entered the Major League Baseball season with the three highest payrolls (Mets, Yankees and Padres) will not even reach the 12-team postseason.🏀 97.1
Readers in the Dallas area — or those who want to listen online — can catch me live for an hour on Saturdays talking NBA on 97.1 The Freak. The Saturday Stein Line debuted on July 1 and can be found via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Mr Stein, love the survey! Mine is complete. Looking forward to the results. I do learn from the best though (you) regarding seeking out credit when it is due, and although I did no work whatsoever on the survey (thanks Dave the sociologist!), I was the commenter on Jul 18th from a Great Wolf Lodge in Colorado Springs who suggested it!
Hubie is an incredible advertisement for not letting your age dictate your life. I do find it funny how he’s become a defender of NBA referees as a broadcaster given how he could be as a coach.