Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Basketball Association

NBA All-star game replacements

I don't understand why Jaylen Brown has not been listed as injured for the 2023 NBA All-Star Game. On Feb 8, he was injured and expected to miss multiple weeks per CBS Sports. Surely Trae Young, Zach LaVine or Jalen Brunson could be convinced to make an appearance in his place.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 07:05, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

• I forgot the All-star game is not a contact sport.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:41, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Linking G League seasons in career histories

I'm seeing quite a number of G League players' infoboxes having the years/seasons of their careers in the G League linked, which isn't the case way back as far as I can remember. I know that that is the practice for NBA players, but I'm not aware of any consensus of this practice for G League players. Is this fine or could we make a case of WP:OVERLINK from this?

On another note, there seems to be no explicit mention in the style advice page of linking NBA season articles in infoboxes. Can this be added? ^{Engr. Smitty Werben} 23:16, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

I noticed that too. My thought is, since individual season articles exist for all G League seasons, and since it's affiliated with the NBA, I'm okay with the G League infobox season links. SportsGuy789 (talk) 15:50, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

The NBA links are probably also MOS:OVERLINK, but does anyone want to bother to clean it up at this point?—Bagumba (talk) 18:04, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

I'd be willing to (slowly) clean those up if the consensus is to do so. *shrug* I'm curious though: has that always been the case from the very start, or some random editor just started linking the seasons in a player's article which eventually became the norm in all NBA players? ^{Engr. Smitty Werben} 23:03, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

There was a discussion from 2011 at Template talk:Infobox basketball biography/Archive 2 § The years should be linked to the season articles 2 —Bagumba (talk) 01:14, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Length of history sections

I've just been looking at the history sections of some NBA teams. These sections are getting insanely long, even in articles where there is a separate article for team history. It seems like people want to add every minute detail to these sections. Next up, we'll see breaking news about a nobody athlete signed to the team the night before under a three day contract who managed to tie his shoelaces while sitting the bench their entire first game with the franchise. It's getting ridiculous.

Example; the franchise history section on the LA Lakers page is over 11,000 words long. That's more than 30 printed pages! The article should summarize, not write a book about the franchise's history.

Please, please, rein this in. Please! --Hammersoft (talk) 19:19, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

I mean.... easier said than done, right? It would be a full-time job to rewrite all those history sections and then push back against the inevitable accumulation of cruft. And to be fair, this stuff likely isn't being added by members of this project, but by IP editors or editors who don't really interact with the greater Wikipedia community.

I share your concern. It's silly for the main Chicago Bulls article to have a full paragraph about the Patrick Beverley signing. It's too early to say if Patrick Beverley will have any long-term significance to the Bulls. But realistically, there aren't enough active project members to maintain every article to an ideal standard. Just telling the project to "rein this in" isn't going to accomplish much. Without a sudden influx of new, talented editors, there's a point where we have to settle for "good enough". Zagalejo (talk) 17:21, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

It gets reined in if anyone cares to take it to WP:GA (or perhaps WP:GAR in the Lakers case). Otherwise, I think many editors are not aware of the concept of WP:SUMMARYSTYLE and that there are more suitable lower-level articles for most content. There's also WP:NOTDIARY.—Bagumba (talk) 17:59, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Better communicating uncertainty in unconfirmed sports transactions

I've started a discussion that could use this project's input at the idea lab village pump. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 23:47, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Linking in lead of BLPs

Is this necessary? I have reverted the editor more than once, but this linking (not to mention a redirect) has been restored. The editor is citing either WP:OVERLINK or MOS:MORELINKWORDS as its reasons. – sbaio 14:04, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

To me this is a pretty nitpicky thing to get worked up about, but the link for both is "basketball." So making the link "basketball player" is silly because it is just forcing a redirect to the main article "basketball." Rikster2 (talk) 14:11, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

That is what I initially indicated to the editor, but the aforementioned policies were mentioned with the addition of "a script", which removes the links. I pointed to FA-class and GA-class BLPs, which simply link to "basketball", but that was also ignored. – sbaio 14:24, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

First off, there was an earlier edit, which used a script, to change the link to "professional basketball". I had complained before at User_talk:Ohconfucius/script#Professional_sports_links, but it seems nothing changed. Perhaps comment there if you want to see that changed. Still, editors are responsible for the scripts they use, not solely the script writer. As for linking "basketball player", that was this edit, not a script. The edit summary claimed MOS:MORELINKWORDS, but I don't see it. A link to "basketball" went to "basketball"; no extra words were need to convey plain "basketball".—Bagumba (talk) 19:24, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I think the logic is that "basketball" is so common a word it does not need to be linked. Having had discussions with editors from many parts of the world where basketball is not a popular sport, I think I disagree that a link to the sport is not useful. This is not like linking a country or something like that in my opinion. Rikster2 (talk) 19:37, 28 March 2023 (UTC)