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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

He definitely seemed more under control than Amen (and a LOT better than in previous years). But we've seen better from Amen than he has shown in preseason so hopefully he'll be back on it come the regular season.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

This is the play. Definitely didn't see this level of on-ball nous from Tari in previous seasons. Hoping for more of this!

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Tari Eason has had some nice on ball reps in this first quarter. That PnR with Capela for his first bucket in particular was nice! It would be a big addition to his game if he can make that a regular thing.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I'm referring of course to the fact that there are both NBA and Snooker players called Mark Williams, so you sometimes get feeds including stuff for the wrong sport.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Ding Junhui just showed up on the telecast for #Rockets-#Mavericks! Rare (but not completely unprecedented) Snooker-Basketball crossover!

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

What are you calling Tatum? I don't see him on any of your lists but surely he must be on one of them?

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Sure, I don't think it was freshness across the season, more like freshness within a game. He definitely wore down as games went on and started committing his signature boneheaded turnovers.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Perhaps also High Pressure = Clear Skies, Low Pressure = Cloudy/Rainy.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

There's a good explanation here: weather.metoffice.gov.uk/learn-about/... I would summarise it as High Pressure = less wind, Low Pressure = More wind (but of course it's a bit more nuanced than that :P)

weather.metoffice.gov.uk

High and low pressure

High and low pressure systems cause day-to-day changes in our weather. In this article, we look at how they are defined and how they form.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

To be clear I still think that Udoka is a good coach on the whole. He has been able to mold a bunch of young, flawed players into a team with an identity that wins a lot of games, and that's no small thing. Here's to hoping he can trust his bench a bit more this year!

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

There is a chicken and egg problem here in that BECAUSE they kept giving up leads the #Rockets starters kept having to play to the end instead of getting to sit once things were comfortable. But that still comes back to coaching and giving the team a way to finish games cleanly so it isn't needed.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

The Rockets lost a load of games that they were winning handily because the wheels fell off in crunch time. To my eye some of that was fatigue (don't get me wrong, a lot of it was boneheadedness and lack of a plan). So I think there was room for some minutes shaving here or there to keep KD fresh.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

(Can you trust Ime to moderate his starters minutes in the regular season? Not based on the evidence of last year, when Amen amd KD where #1 and #2 in minutes played and Jabari was #5).

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

It might be premature, but there definitely will be a PT crunch if everyone's healthy. FVV back, Bogi and Smart in, and the only rotation players gone are Okogie and DFS and they were marginal at best. _Someone_ is going to have to play fewer minutes than last year...

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Anyhow, fun way to start the season and hopefully we'll see some more on Sunday from the #Rockets! Glad to be back :)

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

At the start of the 4th we saw Tari isolating a couple of times with some fancy dribbling. I don't think I remember him flashing as sophisticated a handle in previous years. I'm still not sure I want to see him do a lot of dribbling, but it's nice to see some growth!

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Amen had a pretty terrible game and struggled with his ball security. Seemed like it was a bar of soap for him out there at times - hopefully just preseason rust.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Overall it felt like there was more player movement in the offense. They were making a point of doing more cuts across the lane and looking to feed it in there (somewhat overzealously, in fact, hence all the firet half TOs). I'm optimistic that will lead to better results as the season goes on.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

I was impressed with Bogdanovic's passing vision. He was consistently looking to pass a beat earlier than the defense expected and had some lovely dimes. Defense looked reasonable too - I think he's going to be an underrated addition and hopefully greases the wheels of the bench mob a bit.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

OK, not a ton more interesting from the second half really (or maybe my critical eye wasn't quite switched on for it). Overall seemed like a reasonable first outing - definitely stuff to work on but some promising signs and nice to win easily, even if the Mavs were a long way below full strength.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Anyway, that's enough for now - better get back to work! Will be sure to watch the second half later. Isn't it great that the NBA is back? :D (If you can't tell from the length of this thread, I'm excited!)

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I appreciate Jabari Smith Jr's commitment to filling the lanes on the break. A couple of times I noticed him being there to finish, and that's something he's been consistently good at going back to last season. I thought his post-ups looked good too - setting up slightly lower on the block, maybe?

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I do think the combo of FVV and Sheppard seems promising offensively if they can make it work defensively. Fred's capable at sensing when the main action has drawn extra defensive attention and finding shooters (you know, actual intelligent offense!) so will be a luxury for him to have targets!

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Reed Sheppard looks to have bulked up a bit in the off-season. I noticed him able to box out bigger players in a way that he perhaps might not have been able to in previous seasons. Hopefully that bodes well for his defense, since that's what he's going to need to be able to stay on the floor.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Later on it was a bit of a worse outcome - KD sagged off his man a bit thinking about helping, and Flagg was able to kick it one pass away for an open 3. KD has had a few defensive breakdowns in the first half, hopefully he irons them out as the preseason continues.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

That may mean that teams look to post them up a bit this year - we saw Flagg try that a few times in the first half. How the #Rockets handle it is going to be something to watch. I liked what I saw first up - Amen aggressively double teamed and then scram switched FVV out of the matchup.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Something to bear in mind as we go into this season is that in a league where teams are getting taller on average each year, the #Rockets have bucked the trend and feature a backcourt with a lot of 6'3" and smaller players: FVV, Sheppard and Smart are all a bit undersized.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

It's worth keeping an eye on what the bench offense looks like. If it's struggling once the season starts Udoka may want to look at mixing in some FVV/KD/Sengun time with the second unit.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The #Rockets looked a bit flat in the first quarter when Sengun checked out for Adams. I thought the lineup they had out there (Amen-Tari-Reed-Bogdan-Adams) seemed good on paper (chaos + shooting and movement), but somehow wasn't generating much good offense. Maybe just a bit sloppy?

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I was on the lookout for possessions where he pounded the air out of the ball like he used to, but they were mercifully absent. I'm hopeful that with more ball handlers on the team he'll be able to mix in some off-ball reps - his strength as a shooter should open things up for Amen and Reed.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Awesome to see Fred VanVleet back on the court! His shooting stroke was certainly there early, which is great to see. But the thing I really appreciated in the first half was his entry passing. #Rockets were looking to post up Jabari and Sengun, and he took his time and found them in their spots.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Watched through the first half of #Rockets-#Mavericks on my lunch break! Great to be back watching after a summer away :). And hey, the team looks pretty good at first glance! A few thoughts in a thread: 🧵 #NBASky

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

And joy of joys, it's basketball I can watch during my regular awake hours! What a pleasant surprise! I think I might take a long late lunchbreak to watch it.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

If that claim at the bottom about sums of reciprocals being less than 1 (or more properly 2 if you include the 1/1 term) is indeed correct then this is actually quite beautiful to me (even if the counterexample fraction is obscene).

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

How do you classify AD? If he meets the criteria I'd have him up there somewhere still.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Similarly when I read the book I Am Legend the overwhelming emotion for me was one of claustrophobia as the protagonist has to bar his doors every night, whereas the film was more about the loneliness of the last man on earth. Both interesting to explore, but very different tonally.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

For me the book evokes a sense of impending doom - somehow Area X feels close and cloying, and its crreping corruption is fascinating. The film still tells an interesting story on some levels IMO, but its weirdness has more of a spacious quality to it that gives it a very different feel.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

(But also I agree that the book is miles better in both cases).

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I regard the film Annihilation in much the same way as the film I Am Legend. Comparing either to the source material is weird because they went in such different tonal directions. If you treat them as independent from their source the hold up better.

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Reposted by Rob Dover

Sara Montour Lewis @saramontourlewis.com · 16/09/2026

The world is a dumpster fire, let's talk ball. One of my fave things about NBA Threads V1 was that the community spanned across so many teams* and that made the whole season way more fun. If you're a hoops fan and a good human that does more than shit posting throw an intro below so we can follow!

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Hey! My name's Rob, I'm a Rockets fan based in the UK. Timezones make it hard for me to watch many games live (when I was younger I used to stay up but I jave learned the error of my ways), but I do my best to catch up after the fact. Thanks for doing this prompt - seems like a good idea!

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Feels great to be able to watch NBA basketball again! Even if it's preseason. Even if it's Hornets vs Nets. Even if Charlotte are missing three starters.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Do you see a viable path for Tari to improve this season, and fi so what does that look like? I feel like last year was something of a lost year for him - he didn't seem to have the same impact defensively and after a hot start the shooting regressed badly.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I don't hold any truck with anthropomorphising AI models. But if you treat them as an augmenting tool rather than engaging with the personhood arguments, then I think I'd prefer them to be able to call out to deterministic programs where necessary to give me better results, right?

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Is it important to know when an answer is returned via LLM inference vs calling out to a deterministic tool? Sometimes, yes. But provided you can verify its output the issue is mitigated quite a bit.

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

All that may be true, but that doesn't mean it's not possible to get useful stuff out of one. I avoid using it in my personal life, but as a software engineer I have used it to solve problems in minutes that used to take me days. The combination of LLM agents calling out to tools is powerful!

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I'm surprised that there isn't a legal requirement for a TV sold in the UK to include the core terrestrial channels on it as standard. Seems like a big misstep from Ofcom (or maybe I just bought an illegal TV?)

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

An underrated part of GB News' success is the rise of Smart TVs. It used to be that freeview boxes would always default to BBC, ITV, C4 etc. But Smart TVs have no such default - when I turned mine on GB News was on the list of channels it played by default and the BBC was not!

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Rob Dover @boredtrevor.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I've started seeing this escape the confines of social media (which I can ignore by not being on IG/TikTok) and it bothers me a lot. Recently there were screens at the train station with a video of someone explaining there was a delay, instead of just...displaying a sign saying there was a delay.

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