I like consolidating the conversation for now, given the size of the community and volume of posts a separate game and post-game thread would create. I think it makes sense to have a single game thread that is used for both intra and post game discussion. The bot can update the post body to reflect the final box score once the game is over (assuming that is possible) or leave the box score in a reply to the original post.

The college football group has been doing one game thread, for watching and post game discussion. Especially in the regular season, I think this is the right call. Monday night games that aren't on national TV are going to get low to no engagement anyway. Splitting that discussion up to 2 threads will fracture the small discussion.

For the playoffs, I could see us wanting to split it up to game and post-game threads.

I would say I don't like the idea of doing game threads as chat only on other services. I want more in-depth discussion, and making us go to a real time chat system will make any real effort drowned out by the low quality chats of "Wow" or "That's Traveling."

What about one game day thread with post-game box score comments from a bot? That could be kind of similar to the /r/NBA next day threads.

I think I agree with your thoughts here.

Also ... Anybody know where this Lemmy NBA discord is?