Four Corners: Which NBA storyline are you sick of hearing about?

We’ve reached the halfway point of the 2016-17 NBA season. While the rest of the campaign promises to feature plenty to get excited about — the continued emergence of a new crop of young stars, the Golden State Warriors’ run at a second straight 70-win season, the location tag on Joel Embiid’s next Instagram post — there are also some plotlines and developments that we’d kind of rather be done with, if we’re being honest.

The topic for this week’s Four Corners roundtable: Which 2016-17 storyline are you already the most sick of? The BDL staff made its picks for things we wouldn’t mind seeing hit the back-burner for the rest of the season. Let’s hear yours in the comments.

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Draymond, still kickin’ up dust

I enjoy a 6-foot-8, 250-pound LeBron James flopping and resting his head in the crook of his elbow as though he’d been leveled by a Clothesline from Hell just as much as the next guy. But Draymond Green’s antics afterward — the initial disgust at the call, engaging Richard Jefferson, mocking the flop and shaking his head throughout the replay process — was just as tiresome.

Because it was a flagrant foul. And that’s the thing. Whether Green’s literally or figuratively being a pain in the groin, you get the feeling there isn’t much forethought going into either, and what’s worse, there’s always an excuse to follow. The only time Green has taken responsibility for one of his many groin-related activities is when he shared a picture of his on social media.

We spent the offseason debating whether Green’s punch to LeBron’s groin and subsequent suspension for Game 5 of the NBA Finals cost the Golden State Warriors a second straight title. Reports since have indicated Green’s antics can cause rifts in Golden State’s locker room, to the point where Warriors coach Steve Kerr and general manager Bob Myers openly acknowledged that the two-time Defensive Player of the Year runner-up needs to find that boiling point between playing with the emotion that’s made him so successful and steaming “over the brink.”

Meanwhile, Green got arrested over the summer for allegedly bumping a Michigan State football player in a bar, asking, “Do you know who I am?” and slapping him across the face, among other accusations. Questions about his judgment earned this response: “Being me has gotten me this far.” Soon afterward, he Snapchatted a picture of his nether-regions to his followers.

Green kicked and punched his way through so many NBA groins that the league made it a point of emphasis for referees this season … and yet, the Second Team All-NBA forward promptly entered 2016-17 with one more kick in the direction of Portland Trail Blazers guard Allen Crabbe’s coin purse. He’s since graduated to kicks to the head, at least in the case of the one that caught Houston Rockets star James Harden, and may have cost the Warriors a double-OT win.

Just stop kicking people, man. It’s not cool, and it’s not natural, no matter what you say.

LeBron baited Draymond into that Game 5 suspension, and while Monday’s result wasn’t as dramatic as a 3-1 Finals collapse, James got Green to bite again in a sequence that briefly gave the Cleveland Cavaliers life in an eventual 35-point defeat. As a result, Green is one step closer to a suspension for both flagrant and technical fouls, and that’s a bummer. I’d much rather talk about Green’s play on the court than debate whether his behavior cost the Warriors once again. — Ben Rohrbach

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Market overcorrection: The new CBA enforces a star status quo

DeMarcus Cousins could — could! — sign a massive extension with his beloved Sacramento Kings this summer, a deal that would pay him well over $200 million (about $80 million more than he’d make signing even a maximum-salaried contract elsewhere) and keeping him a King until 2023. Stephen Curry sees no reason to leave the Bay. You shouldn’t even call Indiana Pacers general manager Larry Bird about Paul George, and Chris Paul needn’t worry about his latest setback, because the Clippers point guard will make bank as a free agent this offseason.

All could be ushered back home by the new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) reached last month by the NBA and its players, due to the dollar disparity between the maximum contract you can earn with your current team and the top dollar you can earn with a new club as a free agent — even if your current club hasn’t a dollar’s worth of space under the salary cap.

Starting in the mid-1980s with the introduction of “Bird rights,” and heightened in the 1995, (especially) 1999, 2005 and (triple especially) the 2011 and 2016 CBAs, the NBA has created a system in which players would have to turn down an All-Star career’s worth of millions in order to jump to a different team. Presumably, a better team. One that would, presumably, make the player happier along the way.

This isn’t horrid. Continuity is great, and we’d like to see all the stars listed above work it out with their current squads (lord knows Curry and those Warriors had their issues before reaching the peak of the sport) prior to giving it all up to join a new franchise at a cut rate. Ideally, those teams would get their acts together, build around the superstars they have in house and send said stars as much money as possible to play.

Ideally, though, Cousins would have been in the postseason by now. Ideally, George would be a consistent Eastern combatant for LeBron James, as opposed to only clashing every few years. Ideally, Paul would have already won it all in Los Angeles.

Instead, there’s no guarantee that Cousins will even make the postseason as a King between now and 2023. (What’s a few more years on a postseason-less streak that has run for over a decade?) George may never again stare down LBJ down in an Eastern Conference final. Paul might retire as, in more ways than one, his generation’s John Stockton.

Ideally, in this spot, there should only be winners. Instead, the attempts made by the NBA and National Basketball Players Association to clear the win-win lanes for takeoff have provided us with more rumor-mongering and understandable gnashing as we attempt to consider what life as a King (or Pacer, or Clipper, or even Warrior) would be like in 2022.

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Don’t pity the poor player, having to weigh the pros and cons of $200 million and full freedom. But do wonder if the reaction — with the last two CBAs coming on the heels of perhaps the two most shocking signings in NBA history: LeBron James with Miami in 2010, Kevin Durant with Golden State in 2016 — has shuffled over into the realm of overreaction. Players will chase the money, as they should, and incumbent teams should chase the players, because striking it rich in the trade and free-agent markets often means landing a player you only hope can approximate the gifts of Boogie, CP3 (even at his age), George and Curry.

This doesn’t add to the pressure for the league’s general managers, because the pressure to create a champion is both already daunting and already there. (Sacramento is still up for debate. Those guys don’t seem too stressed.) Now, though, we have clearer timestamps, such as in the first few decades of free agency in baseball, for the GMs to get it right. There will be deadlines.

This is good, as player movement is key and (for the moment) rather American. There will be trade demands, though. There will be standoffs, as we see in New York, with Carmelo Anthony attempting to wait out the Phil Jackson era at an average of $27.9 million a season. Players used to get coaches fired; now, even the GM could go before the player does. Roll over, Jerry Krause, tell Michael Jordan the news.

This won’t always be bad news. What will be, though, is the sustained understanding of a player’s placement, once he rightfully picks money and security (and $80 million more) over a fresh start with a better team (and $80 million less). We’ll have to grit our way through the resultant “money vs. winning” columns that result. We’ll have to (as the players do) talk ourselves into a wholly undeserved sense of optimism in the incumbent team’s chances to turn it all around. We’ll have to work our way through the passive-aggressive trade demands.

How in the hell did the NBA talk itself into believing that creating these sorts of contracts, these sorts of settlements, would lighten the landscape? It was good for Durant to leave the Thunder, and great that LeBron got out of the pit in Cleveland back in 2010. Their proper moves weren’t worth tilting the NBA over, weren’t worth opening that chasm between contracts even further.

We understand why the league and its players settled on making the stay-home max contract so dear, for all involved. But we might not enjoy the fallout. — Kelly Dwyer

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No one will truly challenge the Warriors and Cavaliers for a spot in the NBA Finals

I am not sick of this storyline because it’s wrong — to the contrary, I find it very hard to believe that either Golden State or Cleveland will miss out on a third straight trip to the Finals. What I reject is the implied point that such certainty makes the rest of the NBA dull. An unavoidable outcome does not have to render the rest of the season boring or force us into manufacturing drama where none exists. On a very basic level, watching non-contenders can be plenty exciting.

Just look at the best stories of this still-young NBA season. Russell Westbrook and James Harden are putting up numbers we’ve never seen before. Giannis Antetokounmpo is a bona fide phenomenon. Joel Embiid is single-handedly making the Philadelphia 76ers fun. Anywhere from two to all of these players’ teams will be in the postseason, but none of them can expect to challenge for a title. Are you really not going to watch them jockey for seeding because of it?

Last season’s Western Conference finals between the Warriors and Thunder should be enough evidence that the inevitable can come to feel like anything but. (Even more so for the last three games of the Finals.) At the same time, though, the difference between expectations and reality can be irrelevant to whatever’s exciting. Teams and players are often interesting irrespective of their place in the standings. The game, and the artistry within it, is reason enough to pay attention. — Eric Freeman

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Fantastic beasts and the only word we use to describe them

Hey, did you hear? Kristaps Porzingis is a unicorn. So is Joel Embiid. Karl-Anthony Towns, too.

Giannis Antetokounmpo, Anthony Davis and Ben Simmons? Unicorns! Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook? Draymond Green and Marc Gasol? Al Horford, DeMarcus Cousins, Myles Turner and Nikola Jokic? A VERITABLE ORGY OF UNICORNS, the likes of which you could previously only find at Arizona State!

And if you’re fretting over the possibility that this recent influx of rare-skilled talents into the NBA has drained the pool of single-horned fly-horses, I turn to a fantastical creature of yesteryear — Artie, the Strongest Man in the World — to assuage your concerns:

There are still yet-to-pop pros like Dragan Bender and Thon Maker. And 2017 draft prospects like Lonzo Ball, and Miles Bridges, and Chris Boucher, and OG Anunoby, and Tyler Lydon. And …

Look, I’m not trying to be history’s most incorrigible grump. I love cool players with weird skill-sets who can do tons of different, seemingly incongruous things all at once! I just wish we didn’t have to call them all the same thing, and do so 11,000 times a day every day, especially considering the deep, rich vein of mythical creatures we could be mining here.

If Porzingis is a unicorn, why can’t Embiid be a chimera? Or Giannis a griffin? Or KAT a manticore, KD a kelpie, and AD one of the Hecatoncheires? There are centuries of legends, just teeming with wondrous beings of great and menacing power, many of which are nearly as fun to say and spell as Antetokounmpo. Why limit ourselves?

I fear the answer is laziness, and that’s no answer at all. If these transcendent talents with which we’ve been blessed should teach us anything, it’s that the game of basketball continues to evolve and push its participants into new and remarkable places; so, too, should our pursuit of the appropriate language with which to describe it, and them.

I eagerly await the arrival of our next apparently impossible player. I resolve to meet him with a cup of coffee in one hand, a copy of Edith Hamilton’s “Mythology” in the other, and an open mind. — Dan Devine

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