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Rule #1

Pacers Digest is intended to be a place to discuss basketball without having to deal with the kinds of behaviors or attitudes that distract people from sticking with the discussion of the topics at hand. These unwanted distractions can come in many forms, and admittedly it can sometimes be tricky to pin down each and every kind that can rear its ugly head, but we feel that the following examples and explanations cover at least a good portion of that ground and should at least give people a pretty good idea of the kinds of things we actively discourage:

"Anyone who __________ is a liar / a fool / an idiot / a blind homer / has their head buried in the sand / a blind hater / doesn't know basketball / doesn't watch the games"

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"Only stupid people think / believe / do ___________"

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"Remember when PosterX said OldCommentY that no longer looks good? "

In general, if a comment goes from purely on topic to something 'ad hominem' (personal jabs, personal shots, attacks, flames, however you want to call it, towards a person, or a group of people, or a given city/state/country of people), those are most likely going to be found intolerable.

We also dissuade passive aggressive behavior. This can be various things, but common examples include statements that are basically meant to imply someone is either stupid or otherwise incapable of holding a rational conversation. This can include (but is not limited to) laughing at someone's conclusions rather than offering an honest rebuttal, asking people what game they were watching, or another common problem is Poster X will say "that player isn't that bad" and then Poster Y will say something akin to "LOL you think that player is good". We're not going to tolerate those kinds of comments out of respect for the community at large and for the sake of trying to just have an honest conversation.

Now, does the above cover absolutely every single kind of distraction that is unwanted? Probably not, but you should by now have a good idea of the general types of things we will be discouraging. The above examples are meant to give you a good feel for / idea of what we're looking for. If something new or different than the above happens to come along and results in the same problem (that being, any other attitude or behavior that ultimately distracts from actually just discussing the topic at hand, or that is otherwise disrespectful to other posters), we can and we will take action to curb this as well, so please don't take this to mean that if you managed to technically avoid saying something exactly like one of the above examples that you are then somehow off the hook.

That all having been said, our goal is to do so in a generally kind and respectful way, and that doesn't mean the moment we see something we don't like that somebody is going to be suspended or banned, either. It just means that at the very least we will probably say something about it, quite possibly snipping out the distracting parts of the post in question while leaving alone the parts that are actually just discussing the topics, and in the event of a repeating or excessive problem, then we will start issuing infractions to try to further discourage further repeat problems, and if it just never seems to improve, then finally suspensions or bans will come into play. We would prefer it never went that far, and most of the time for most of our posters, it won't ever have to.

A slip up every once and a while is pretty normal, but, again, when it becomes repetitive or excessive, something will be done. Something occasional is probably going to be let go (within reason), but when it starts to become habitual or otherwise a pattern, odds are very good that we will step in.

There's always a small minority that like to push people's buttons and/or test their own boundaries with regards to the administrators, and in the case of someone acting like that, please be aware that this is not a court of law, but a private website run by people who are simply trying to do the right thing as they see it. If we feel that you are a special case that needs to be dealt with in an exceptional way because your behavior isn't explicitly mirroring one of our above examples of what we generally discourage, we can and we will take atypical action to prevent this from continuing if you are not cooperative with us.

Also please be aware that you will not be given a pass simply by claiming that you were 'only joking,' because quite honestly, when someone really is just joking, for one thing most people tend to pick up on the joke, including the person or group that is the target of the joke, and for another thing, in the event where an honest joke gets taken seriously and it upsets or angers someone, the person who is truly 'only joking' will quite commonly go out of his / her way to apologize and will try to mend fences. People who are dishonest about their statements being 'jokes' do not do so, and in turn that becomes a clear sign of what is really going on. It's nothing new.

In any case, quite frankly, the overall quality and health of the entire forum's community is more important than any one troublesome user will ever be, regardless of exactly how a problem is exhibiting itself, and if it comes down to us having to make a choice between you versus the greater health and happiness of the entire community, the community of this forum will win every time.

Lastly, there are also some posters, who are generally great contributors and do not otherwise cause any problems, who sometimes feel it's their place to provoke or to otherwise 'mess with' that small minority of people described in the last paragraph, and while we possibly might understand why you might feel you WANT to do something like that, the truth is we can't actually tolerate that kind of behavior from you any more than we can tolerate the behavior from them. So if we feel that you are trying to provoke those other posters into doing or saying something that will get themselves into trouble, then we will start to view you as a problem as well, because of the same reason as before: The overall health of the forum comes first, and trying to stir the pot with someone like that doesn't help, it just makes it worse. Some will simply disagree with this philosophy, but if so, then so be it because ultimately we have to do what we think is best so long as it's up to us.

If you see a problem that we haven't addressed, the best and most appropriate course for a forum member to take here is to look over to the left of the post in question. See underneath that poster's name, avatar, and other info, down where there's a little triangle with an exclamation point (!) in it? Click that. That allows you to report the post to the admins so we can definitely notice it and give it a look to see what we feel we should do about it. Beyond that, obviously it's human nature sometimes to want to speak up to the poster in question who has bothered you, but we would ask that you try to refrain from doing so because quite often what happens is two or more posters all start going back and forth about the original offending post, and suddenly the entire thread is off topic or otherwise derailed. So while the urge to police it yourself is understandable, it's best to just report it to us and let us handle it. Thank you!

All of the above is going to be subject to a case by case basis, but generally and broadly speaking, this should give everyone a pretty good idea of how things will typically / most often be handled.

Rule #2

If the actions of an administrator inspire you to make a comment, criticism, or express a concern about it, there is a wrong place and a couple of right places to do so.

The wrong place is to do so in the original thread in which the administrator took action. For example, if a post gets an infraction, or a post gets deleted, or a comment within a larger post gets clipped out, in a thread discussing Paul George, the wrong thing to do is to distract from the discussion of Paul George by adding your off topic thoughts on what the administrator did.

The right places to do so are:

A) Start a thread about the specific incident you want to talk about on the Feedback board. This way you are able to express yourself in an area that doesn't throw another thread off topic, and this way others can add their two cents as well if they wish, and additionally if there's something that needs to be said by the administrators, that is where they will respond to it.

B) Send a private message to the administrators, and they can respond to you that way.

If this is done the wrong way, those comments will be deleted, and if it's a repeating problem then it may also receive an infraction as well.

Rule #3

If a poster is bothering you, and an administrator has not or will not deal with that poster to the extent that you would prefer, you have a powerful tool at your disposal, one that has recently been upgraded and is now better than ever: The ability to ignore a user.

When you ignore a user, you will unfortunately still see some hints of their existence (nothing we can do about that), however, it does the following key things:

A) Any post they make will be completely invisible as you scroll through a thread.

B) The new addition to this feature: If someone QUOTES a user you are ignoring, you do not have to read who it was, or what that poster said, unless you go out of your way to click on a link to find out who it is and what they said.

To utilize this feature, from any page on Pacers Digest, scroll to the top of the page, look to the top right where it says 'Settings' and click that. From the settings page, look to the left side of the page where it says 'My Settings', and look down from there until you see 'Edit Ignore List' and click that. From here, it will say 'Add a Member to Your List...' Beneath that, click in the text box to the right of 'User Name', type in or copy & paste the username of the poster you are ignoring, and once their name is in the box, look over to the far right and click the 'Okay' button. All done!

Rule #4

Regarding infractions, currently they carry a value of one point each, and that point will expire in 31 days. If at any point a poster is carrying three points at the same time, that poster will be suspended until the oldest of the three points expires.

Rule #5

When you share or paste content or articles from another website, you must include the URL/link back to where you found it, who wrote it, and what website it's from. Said content will be removed if this doesn't happen.

An example:

If I copy and paste an article from the Indianapolis Star website, I would post something like this:

http://www.linktothearticlegoeshere.com/article
Title of the Article
Author's Name
Indianapolis Star

Rule #6

We cannot tolerate illegal videos on Pacers Digest. This means do not share any links to them, do not mention any websites that host them or link to them, do not describe how to find them in any way, and do not ask about them. Posts doing anything of the sort will be removed, the offenders will be contacted privately, and if the problem becomes habitual, you will be suspended, and if it still persists, you will probably be banned.

The legal means of watching or listening to NBA games are NBA League Pass Broadband (for US, or for International; both cost money) and NBA Audio League Pass (which is free). Look for them on NBA.com.

Rule #7

Provocative statements in a signature, or as an avatar, or as the 'tagline' beneath a poster's username (where it says 'Member' or 'Administrator' by default, if it is not altered) are an unwanted distraction that will more than likely be removed on sight. There can be shades of gray to this, but in general this could be something political or religious that is likely going to provoke or upset people, or otherwise something that is mean-spirited at the expense of a poster, a group of people, or a population.

It may or may not go without saying, but this goes for threads and posts as well, particularly when it's not made on the off-topic board (Market Square).

We do make exceptions if we feel the content is both innocuous and unlikely to cause social problems on the forum (such as wishing someone a Merry Christmas or a Happy Easter), and we also also make exceptions if such topics come up with regards to a sports figure (such as the Lance Stephenson situation bringing up discussions of domestic abuse and the law, or when Jason Collins came out as gay and how that lead to some discussion about gay rights).

However, once the discussion seems to be more/mostly about the political issues instead of the sports figure or his specific situation, the thread is usually closed.

Rule #8

We prefer self-restraint and/or modesty when making jokes or off topic comments in a sports discussion thread. They can be fun, but sometimes they derail or distract from a topic, and we don't want to see that happen. If we feel it is a problem, we will either delete or move those posts from the thread.

Rule #9

Generally speaking, we try to be a "PG-13" rated board, and we don't want to see sexual content or similarly suggestive content. Vulgarity is a more muddled issue, though again we prefer things to lean more towards "PG-13" than "R". If we feel things have gone too far, we will step in.

Rule #10

We like small signatures, not big signatures. The bigger the signature, the more likely it is an annoying or distracting signature.

Rule #11

Do not advertise anything without talking about it with the administrators first. This includes advertising with your signature, with your avatar, through private messaging, and/or by making a thread or post.
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David Aldridge and the Demise of the Shootaround

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  • David Aldridge and the Demise of the Shootaround

    From his longer blog:

    http://www.nba.com/2009/news/feature...s=iref:nbahpt1


    Don't Sleep On It

    Bill Sharman may be sad, but Charles Czeisler is happy.

    It was Sharman, the Hall of Famer, who is generally credited with creating the morning shootaround -- the hour-long, day-of-game practice at the arena that has been an NBA staple for most teams since the early 70s, when Sharman coached the Lakers. (Wilt Chamberlain, not a devotee of the practice, was said to have to responded, "you tell Coach I'm coming to that arena once today.") The idea was, and is, that it's good for players to get their blood flowing early on a game day, and get thinking early about what their opponents would be trying to do that night.

    But the shootaround may be going the way of the set shot as more teams are trying to figure out how to get their players more rest.

    The Knicks have eliminated morning shootarounds at home, determining it was too much of a hassle for their players to get to their suburban New York facility, go home for an hour or two, then haul it back downtown to Madison Square Garden for an evening game. The Knicks now have their players come to the Garden an hour or so earlier than their usual 6 p.m. arrival time (for a 7:30 game) for shootaround. The Celtics have eliminated almost all shootarounds and pushed their non-game day practices back to noon, joining the Trail Blazers, who changed their patterns last season, and the Spurs -- who got rid of all shootarounds, home and away, two years ago, and pushed all practices back to 3 p.m. local time.

    It's all music to Czeisler's ears. The Baldino Professor of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School, he's spent the last quarter century studying the effects of sleep deprivation on an increasingly sleep-deprived world (www.understandingsleep.org). In the NBA, he's known as "The Sleep Doctor," working with the Celtics, Blazers and a handful of other teams in the past couple of years.

    Most people under 30 need between 8.2 and 8.4 hours of sleep every night, but more and more of us are getting fewer and fewer hours. And that's doing a number on our health, Czeisler believes, citing these stats:

    • Sleep-deprived people are five times more likely to catch a cold when exposed to a rhinovirus;

    • If you shave two to three hours of sleep from your normal amount per week, at the end of the week, you have the same level of impairment than if you stayed up all night and didn't sleep the night before. And that is the equivalent of a blood alcohol level of .01.

    • Motor skills that are learned as a result of practice or repetition -- like, say, learning how to play a piano piece -- are ingrained into the brain during sleep. When you don't get enough sleep, you literally forget how to do what you've just learned. But when you do get enough sleep, according to Czeisler, you can improve your performance at a given task, even if you don't practice it any more, by 20 to 30 percent. This would come in handy if you were, say, trying to improve your crossover.

    But almost every innovation of the last two decades, from the Internet to i-Pods to Blackberrys and big screen TVs, have conspired to keep us up later, and sleep fewer hours. We Tweet all night, never turn off our computers or televisions and wonder why we're so tired when the kids wake up the next morning.

    "We are a 24/7 society," Czeisler said by telephone Thursday. "Nobody wants to miss anything."

    That includes NBA players, whose workday resembles that of your basic third-shift worker at a plant. They have to be at their most alert late at night. And when they're done working, it's hard to just shut down the brain and go to sleep. Players don't eat meals before a game, so after two hours of running, they're obviously hungry. If they're at home, they'll go out to eat, and after eating a full meal, it's hard to go right to sleep.

    But Czeisler is, slowly, getting NBA teams to change long-established habits. Last year, he convinced Blazers coach Nate McMillian to try to stick to a Pacific time schedule when they came East for a road trip. Instead of leaving Portland early in the morning for their cross-country flight after just a couple of hours of sleep, landing in the late afternoon and immediately going to an off-day practice around 6 p.m. Eastern time, the Blazers slept in, didn't leave Portland until noon local time, got to Orlando (their first stop on a five-game road trip) around 9 p.m. and went straight to practice, around 10 p.m.

    The practice lasted a couple of hours, as McMillian put in all the things he normally would have done at shootaround the next morning. But when it was over, around midnight Eastern, it was only 9 p.m. Pacific time. The players were encouraged to stay up until the time they would normally go to bed at home. If they went to sleep at 1 a.m. Pacific, they should do the same in Orlando (4 a.m. Eastern). There was no worry about missing shootaround the next morning, because there was no shootaround the next morning. The Blazers wound up winning seven of their nine games in the East last season, their best showing in years.

    "If you're going to Europe," Czeisler says, "and if you're up all night, and your reaction time goes from 250 mlliseconds to 750 milliseconds when you're looking at the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, it's not that big a deal. But if your reaction time triples when you're an NBA player, that can be the difference between a win and a loss."

    Czeisler got involved with the Celtics this summer, after Boston's athletic trainer, Ed Lacerte, met him at a conference in New York. On the train back to Boston, they compared notes. Lacerte set up a meeting with Doc Rivers.

    "I was like, get the [bleep] out of here," Rivers recalled. "I'm not going to see a sleep doctor. Are you kidding me? Really. I was skeptical as everyone else. And then he told me to call Nate and Monty Williams [the Blazers' assistant coach], who played for me. When I called them, the way they talked about him, they had a lot of passion about it. So I thought, I may need to sit down with this guy."

    When Rivers heard the information, he was sold. But he had to sell it to his players.

    "They didn't want to do it at the beginning," Rivers said. "Kevin [Garnett] and Ray [Allen], they're set in their ways. Now, they love it."

    Said Allen: "We get a lot of rest. You don't wake up in the morning feeling groggy. When you practice in the afternoon, when you got up and you're able to be around the kids early in the morning, take them to school, pick 'em up, whatever it may be, as veteran players, we have an opportunity to watch your body. You've got to take care of your own body, get your running in and get your weights in. We have a pretty mature group of guys. Even the young guys know how to get their workouts in [now]. That's what I really appreciate."

    When Czeisler asked teams why they plan their schedules the way they do, he's gotten a lot of blank stares and muttering about how this is the way we've always done it. He's hoping that these small moves are starting a trend in the other direction.

    "If people are going to be open to modifying their schedule of events in order to get more sleep," he said, "it's a whole new ball game."

    And, before you ask, he gets between 7 1/2 and 8 hours of Zzzs a night.
    I predict we will be one of the last teams to get on board with this unless we have new management that is younger and more open to this change.

    I would love to be proven wrong though because I think this makes a lot of sense and will only help improve the quality of basketball being played.

    The sooner the entire league gets behind this, the sooner the product of the game is improved.

  • #2
    Re: David Aldridge and the Demise of the Shootaround

    I know O'Brien is a big believer in shoot arounds as was larry Bird. But I know O'Brien has cancelled a couple this season already

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: David Aldridge and the Demise of the Shootaround

      Originally posted by Unclebuck View Post
      I know O'Brien is a big believer in shoot arounds as was larry Bird. But I know O'Brien has cancelled a couple this season already
      But, my understanding was that O'Brien ran full practices, instead of the walk-through shoot around that many teams use.

      This would indicate that his tendencies run counter to the trend.

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: David Aldridge and the Demise of the Shootaround

        Originally posted by count55 View Post
        But, my understanding was that O'Brien ran full practices, instead of the walk-through shoot around that many teams use.

        This would indicate that his tendencies run counter to the trend.
        That's what I thought.

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: David Aldridge and the Demise of the Shootaround

          Originally posted by count55 View Post
          But, my understanding was that O'Brien ran full practices, instead of the walk-through shoot around that many teams use.

          This would indicate that his tendencies run counter to the trend.
          Yes and Bird did the same thing with a very veteran team. My source for this was Bird's book he wrote while he was our coach. Excellent book by the way. Bird had them taped up and running at practice speed as does O'Brien

          is the trend to end Shoot arounds or just move them to later times.

          I know carlisle went to more and more shootarounds in the late afternoon, i think the players were required to get to the game early for the shoot arounds.

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: David Aldridge and the Demise of the Shootaround

            I think the concept makes a lot of sense. Warming up hours before the game and then
            cooling down does not make a lot of sense. Plus a rested body will be physically and mentally more alert and it heals better. Plus it makes for a better life for the players
            and that can only improve morale.
            {o,o}
            |)__)
            -"-"-

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: David Aldridge and the Demise of the Shootaround

              In the Pacers' case it still is a talent and/or coaching issue no doubt...but I do feel it's more than a coincidence that the Pacers run out of gas in the 3rd and 4th quarters.

              It was also my understanding O'Brien ran full a.m. practices on game day, too. And even if Bird ran game-day practices, apparently most of the league did then...and if the trend is moving away from that, even a little edge another well-rested team had on us could make a difference between a win and loss.

              Comment

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