Jake

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 02:07 PM) I'm not saying I care, but this would slow the games down, and it doesn't seem like they're gonna do stuff that slows the game down for a while. This was my first thought as well. More players inevitably means more substitutions, which will degrade watchability further. They can look into tweaking the rules regarding call-ups and what have you if they think more flexibility is necessary.

I try not to make whether the players are motivated against bad teams a top criteria for evaluating a coach. There's only so much the guy can do and he might sacrifice whatever other positive influence he can have by going too hard after the small stuff

If there really is a big problem with Thibs and the FO and/or players (which I'm not fully convinced of), it's not an obvious decision how to resolve it. You can't just fire Thibs; he's one of the very best coaches in the league. You can't start canning people in the FO - they've put together a truly excellent roster and have demonstrated a really steady, patient hand that has kept the team consistently good with a lot of young talent. It will be even harder to try to divine which players might be too blame for the disconnect.

Someone has to figure out how Poppovich has maintained such success

The main thing with Rose tonight was that he let the refereeing get to him. He had several spurts where he looked great but he got hosed a few times and never regained his temper

I've gotta say it feels like the refs are trolling Derrick Rose

This team is GOAT!

Jimmy Butler is so damn good

Rose is at the scorer's table waiting to come in. We better feed Jimmy either way

Rose grabbing the knee

Pau is very, very bad on defense.

I thought most projection systems use arithmetic mean, which is typically best when searching for expected value.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 02:15 PM) That Peavy trade just keeps amazing. Avisail Garcia, Frank Montas, Cleuluis Rondon and JB Wendelken in exchange for 1.5 years of Peavy when the team was rebuilding anyway. Sure looks like a steal right now. The Tigers are the big loser in that trade, which is what sane people have said since it happened

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 28, 2015 -> 04:22 PM) Well I've pointed out the main reasons - private lenders versus the government, and re-payment options. The government also can't selectively choose who it loans money to. The only requirement, that i'm aware of, is whether the person is going to school. A person could be dirt poor with no prospect of paying it back and the government is still giving them money. Private lenders can appreciate that risk and build it into the loan and/or their business. Same with credit card companies. The government can't. Bear in mind that "being in college" is supposed to be a bar that is cleared that makes the person somewhat likely to pay back. This is part of the reason there has been some push towards stopping public loans to for-profit colleges and other particularly unsuccessful institutions. The government is also making money on these loans, so as it is they've built enough risk into the disbursement of them that they aren't being gamed on a large scale. Still, I don't think it should be a program based primarily on whether the government can break even on the loans. The outcome for society - more education, economic stimulus, etc. - should be the goal and the costs just have to be reasonable given those goals. This is opposed to we must have some arbitrary cost with little regard for the level of benefit derived from it.

I've seen it hinted that Lynch might have some sort of social anxiety disorder, which is why he dislikes talking to the media. Taking the questions seriously would make him very nervous, etc. I recall Marion Barber was very shy as well, though he came off better than Marshawn

Beckham's role on this team is totally redundant with Bonifacio unless the plan is to have one or the other start in the infield. C Flowers 1B Abreu 2B Sanchez 3B Gillaspie SS Alexei LF Melky CF Eaton RF Avisail DH LaRoche BN Backup catcher BN Bonifacio BN Backup OF BN Beckham SP Sale SP Q SP Samardzija SP Danks SP Noesi RP RP RP RP RP RP RP 7 relievers, doesn't matter who. That's 12 pitchers and then you dedicate your bench to two guys who are iffy bats but play the IF. Beckham has a worse bat, possibly worse glove, and is not remotely useful as a baserunner outside of just getting your slowest guy off the field. To me, he only makes sense if you want no rookie 2B on the roster. Then, you need a guy like Viciedo to give you some kind of bat off the bench.

It's worth noting that state support of public universities is dropping dramatically, which is a very big contributor to the rise in costs. It's not the only one, since these universities are also under intense pressure to add more and more services. Most of the day-to-day operations of a big university have little to do with education and more to do with taking care of people. That stuff costs money.

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Jan 28, 2015 -> 11:21 AM) You income out of the tax deduction on student loan interest pretty quickly. I haven't been able to take it in years - and I definitely consider myself squarely within the middle class. If I were changing student loan policy, I'd do the following: 1) Increase the amount of direct loans you can take in a school year. When I was in law school, the combination of subsidized and unsubsidized direct loans I could take in a given year barely covered tuition plus rent for the year - and I had a scholarship. The goal should be to continue to provide low-interest loans to students - in my experience, the private loans have higher lending costs (taking away one of the above referenced incentives from Jenks); 2) Make it easier to discharge student loans in bankruptcy after a time. Something like no discharge unless (1) you've been out of school for greater than some number of years (so students can't graduate and immediately head into bk); (2) you've made consistent payments over those years (with exceptions for hardship cases); (3) your current income falls below a certain threshold; and (4) you have made reasonable efforts during those years to find a job in your field. Almost any other debt you can make go away when circumstances change and you can't afford it anymore. Lost your job? Surrender your house in foreclosure, get rid of the giant deficiency in bankruptcy. Credit card interest killing you? Get rid of it in bankruptcy. Business gone belly up, get rid of those personal guarantees in bankruptcy. The fact that student loan debt - which is basically a necessity - is given such preferential treatment - is mind boggling. As a result, I'd be strongly in favor of a system that provided an out from under student loan debt for people who were struggling under it. Further, I don't think there would be significant abuse of the system. For me, I'd love to get rid of my student loan debt. But I wouldn't intentionally tank my career to get rid of it. To Reddy, on the income based repayment, how frequently do you have to update your income information with the feds? We could also do what governments are supposed to do - not try to profit from public programs like student loans. Do what Warren's bill proposed - lend at the same rate the Federal Reserve does to banks (0.75%) - and you have a great economic stimulus that better aligns with the purposes of the program. Last year the CBO reported that we made about 14% profit on student loans. This is a thing where it would be better to lose money than to make money. It's not a tax, it's a benefit!

QUOTE (Reddy @ Jan 27, 2015 -> 07:32 PM) I see no reason why anyone should pay a different percentage of their income than anyone else. Doesn't make sense to me. As has been mentioned, you can't look at it quite that way. Mark Cuban could lose 10% of his current take-home income and not even notice. If I lost 10% of my income, I'd have to make big changes to my lifestyle to accommodate it. There is also the vague notion that people who make more money tend to be more reliant on public goods and other people. If I'm going to, say, let Google Fiber do all kinds of digging in my town, then I think they owe society more for that use than does the person who pays Google for the Internet. Wal-Mart's business falls to shambles if we have inadequate transportation infrastructure - both in that they need to move goods from place to place AND that they need customers who can reach them. When someone uses food stamps to buy food at Wal-Mart, W-M has lucked out tremendously that the state has ensured this person can be their customer. It doesn't always work out in such black and white ways, but you get the idea. A person's wealth is not much stronger than the society it rests on, so they both need and should want to pay it back for their good fortune. Then the quibbles come down to what is enough payback, what should this payback be spent on, etc. which is just your liberal vs. conservative take on things. Side note about poor people losing chunks of their income: Over a quarter of American households have limited or no access to banking services. These people use check cashing services, prepaid debit cards, and occasionally payday lenders to access their money. Of these households, they spend more on financial service fees (like the portion of your check that a check cashing service takes from) than they do on food. These are by and large fees just to access their own money. This is why there have been murmurs of the government using USPS offices as minimal profit banks; it is estimated that a scheme that would aid the financial stability of the USPS would still save this underserved population 90% of their current financial fees costs. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116374/...f-and-help-poor

In fairness to Derrick's effort today, I thought he made things really tough on Curry defensively. Offensively, he was clearly winding Curry too, which probably harmed Curry's offense. That Curry still had an okay offensive game is just a testament to how good he is

QUOTE (daa84 @ Jan 28, 2015 -> 01:08 AM) good god I'm forced to watch this crap on nba tv with the horrible GSW announcers. Brutal The color guy reminds me of Wimpy so much that I find him endearing

f*** you Golden State! Bulls forever!!!

This is probably the best bad game I've ever seen Derrick play

Woah, woah. The refs said Derrick was fouled. Must have been a mistake

Derrick's shot has been trending towards that result all night