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The Official NBA Season Thread: Season Starts Now
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by pmatic,
- Start date
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"Figure it out"
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Mister Meaner
formerly super producer j
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Every nite is important here on out but TONITE again feels like a must win.
Thought they’d need the whole week to get to 5 but all o’sudden this week can help solidify it.
Cavs aren’t that far ahead tho idc if they don’t catch up. The race to the finish line just gets more interesting the closer they get.
Thought they’d need the whole week to get to 5 but all o’sudden this week can help solidify it.
Cavs aren’t that far ahead tho idc if they don’t catch up. The race to the finish line just gets more interesting the closer they get.
Let’s go C’s!
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Are we able to have a little dialogue about Ty Lue? Or is he still one of the best coaches in the league because he won a championship with LeBron?
Got scolded on here for questioning him a couple years back.
Got scolded on here for questioning him a couple years back.
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Brooks sounding exactly like Drake with this his thick Toronto accent.
I always forget this guy is Canadian.
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He tries his best to make people forget, just like drake too.
Outfit terrorist said "s/o uncle shay shay" with his whole (bare) chest tho
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Kawhi and PG aren’t winning you anything anymore. People need to stop blaming the coach and realize both those guys aren’t leading a team to winning anything at this point.
When your main guys are trending towards washed category and aren’t consistent at all, you’ll be mid
Rather start a convo on how Kawhi has the fastest rise to fall of any player in recent memory.
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Kawhi has been awesome these last 2 months since getting healthy.
55/45/92 in January
49/53/92 in February
dacomeup
Supporter
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Yes
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Being awesome for 2-4 months in 2 seasons isnt going to
cut it. The expectations for this team with him and PG are way higher, as they should’ve been
You just can’t rely on them anymore and that’s why their seasons have been super inconsistent and a failure really.
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Clippers got too many guys.
dacomeup
Supporter
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He’s not the same guy as he was in Cleveland. At all. But it’s not ideal not having full buy in from your best guy either.
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It’s barely March. Save this for June if/when they get bounced.
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No. People were calling the Lakers a failure before Thanksgiving this season
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The lakers missed the playoffs last year and are on pace to do so again.
Successful season to me
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So, how many teams would you say are real, true, honest-to-goodness contenders right now?
I’m not talking about the “if everything goes exactly just right,” so-you’re-saying-there’s-a-chance contenders, of which there are a profusion this season — a related story to the lack of true contenders that we’ll delve into further in a minute.
I’m talking about teams with legitimate championship-contender resumes, ones that can withstand the absence of a key player or two and still compete, the ones with bodies of work that history tells us yields some realistic chance of holding up Larry O this June.
Using that as the bar, I have … three?
In a year where so many teams pushed their chips in with future draft picks and crazy expensive rosters (nine teams in the tax!), that feels like news.
For most of the league’s bluebloods, in fact, it’s become an increasingly desperate time, one that could have major implications once the season ends. That feeling was underscored here in Philly over the weekend, where the Sixers came in with their lineup fully loaded and … lost twice at home to conference rivals, first to the team that won the conference last season (Boston), and then to the team that knocked them out of the playoffs in the second round (Miami).
Sure, both games went down to the wire, but the Sixers — like several other teams we’ll discuss — weren’t built for moral victories. Their time is now — if they’re going to have a “time” at all.
The losses dropped Philadelphia to 39-21 on the season, leaving it in third place in the East and on pace for a win total in the 50-52 range given the rough schedule ahead. (The Sixers only have seven home games left, and just three contests remain against the league’s six bottom feeders. But they do get to play at Milwaukee twice, at Phoenix, at Denver, at Golden State, at Miami and at Dallas … Have fun guys!)
Amazingly, even a win total in the 50 range might still be the fourth-best record in the entire league when all is said and done. That speaks to the more general whiff of desperation around some huge-spending teams, both in terms of money and assets, a scent that can be detected well beyond the banks of the Delaware.
Before we trudge forward any further, however, let’s look backward for a second. A brief examination at history gives you an idea why several alleged contenders should be feeling quite uneasy right now.
First, I noted this before, but just to repeat myself: The past 26 champions, and 45 of the 46 in the post-merger era, had a top-three record in their conference. We can extend that even more definitely by carving out a “Golden State exception” – every single champion in NBA history was either a top-three seed or a defending champion. The closest thing to an exception, the 2010 Celtics who were one good quarter away from winning the title as a No. 4 seed, were two years removed from winning it all.
That part of the equation doesn’t do much to reduce the field, however — no matter what, it gives you six teams every year. (Or a seventh if the defending champ craters in the following regular season, like Golden State this year).
However, there is another piece to this. All those champions also won a bunch of games. With so much of the league crowded around .500, it’s not clear how that’s gonna work this time.
Of the last 43 champions, 42 won at least 52 games (prorated to an 82-game season) in their title season. At first blush, it may seem the strength of that rule is weakening; last year’s Warriors won just 53, and the Bucks only won a pro-rated 53 the year before that. However, those were the lowest totals by a champion since Miami’s 52-win team in 2006; every one of the 14 teams in between won at least 57 games.
And if that’s the bar for a real contender, it’s getting a little thin on the ground. By my count we have three teams with regular-season resumes that pass history’s test for a potential champion:
Even the relatively low bar of reaching 52 wins seems like a difficult hill to climb for anyone else. The Sixers, Cavs and Grizzlies are the only three realistic pursuers; ESPN’s BPI has Cleveland and Philly finishing with 51 wins and no other team clearing 49, while Fivethirtyeight adds Memphis at 51 wins but again, has only three teams clearing 52 and only six topping 49.
It’s possible we will end up with just three teams with 52 or more wins …. which would be the lowest total since 1978-79 had but two. (We had five last season, plus three others who won 51; 2002-03 also had just three.)
So what’s happened to all the other teams who thought they’d be in this discussion at the start of the year? Well, that’s where we get to the panic and desperation part. Nineteen teams have already lost at least 30 times, basically eliminating the possibility of reaching 52 wins, and that list includes “win now” teams such as the Clippers, Warriors, Mavs, Wolves, Hawks and Lakers. Phoenix, the presumed next man up on most contender lists because of its recent acquisition of Kevin Durant, is at 29 losses. So is Miami.
Flipping this on its head, who besides the three contenders noted above actually feels good about its season right now? I can come up with three, the three clubs on pace to approach 50 wins despite missing the playoffs last season: Cleveland, New York and Sacramento(!!!). Memphis, en route to another second-place finish in the West, probably feels OK too. Not great, but OK.
Otherwise? You could feel the panic in the air during the trade deadline and, especially, the buyout market. Three alleged contenders took players waived by their rivals and immediately inserted them as starters into their own lineups. Nothing says “everything is going to plan here” quite like trying to beat your competitors with their leftovers.
Just look at all the teams that went all-in … and now realize they’re trying to hit on an inside straight and still need two cards. In the West, especially, virtually every night on the schedule feels like a desperation face-off.
To wit:
Can Phoenix win enough to get into the top three, which history says is an important hurdle for contender legitimacy? That should be the goal from here, and it seems attainable. The Suns have to make up four games in the loss column on Sacramento, but still play the Kings twice and would own the tiebreaker even with a split. Like a lot of teams on this list, they’ve just completely lost their margin of error because of a combination of injuries and inconsistency. Even with Durant, blasting their way out of a lower playoff seed will be a slog at best.
And if they can’t? What does the future look like here with no draft picks, no cap flexibility and a depleted stock of young players? The Suns’ future seemed incredibly bright when they made the 2021 Finals and it may still be in a couple of months, but it’s getting late early here.
Even that latter mark, however, isn’t what the Clippers were expecting when they paired those two. The evidence is getting pretty overwhelming that they just aren’t good enough; they at least took Denver to overtime on Sunday, but ended up losing by double figures for the fourth time this season. One of those games was at home, with Leonard playing, while Nuggets’ star Nikola Jokić sat out. Yikes.
Suffice to say the Clippers didn’t spend this much money to be the No. 6 seed; this could be an interesting summer in L.A. All that makes the scent of panic exuded by the Westbrook move more understandable. It’s unlikely to make it smell better, though.
The Mavs have a familiar litany of issues for a team on this list. They’re already in next year’s tax, out of future draft picks and trying to hit on a quasi-reckless gamble (Kyrie Irving) after painting themselves into a corner with bad contracts and the needless own goal of Jalen Brunson’s departure. The Mavs also got bonus desperation points for starting a buyout guy (Justin Holiday, who couldn’t get minutes in Atlanta even as the Hawks were desperate for reliable wing play).
Keep an eye on this situation. Between Irving’s wandering eye for L.A. this summer, the potential of Luka Dončić’s frustration boiling over and Kidd’s history of things ending badly when they end, this could get a lot worse before it gets better.
Ironically, the historically myopic Lakers might have been the most farsighted team at the deadline and buyout time, focusing almost entirely on moves that maximize their roster and flexibility next season. They probably won’t make the playoffs now that James is looking at an extended absence, and have a decent chance of falling out of the Play-In. (Congrats, Pelicans fans.) But .. how is this the one team that isn’t panicking?
All of which takes us back to the Sixers. On paper, this has been the obvious “fourth contender” since the first day of the season. They have an MVP-candidate center in his prime, having one of his healthiest seasons. They have an All-Star caliber pick-and-roll operator on the perimeter in James Harden. They have multiple secondary options who can score (Tobias Harris, Tyrese Maxey), role-playing defenders (P.J. Tucker, De’Anthony Melton), and enough shooting to rank fourth in 3-point percentage. Some fool even picked them to win the title before the season started.
And yet … they looked out of their league in the opener against Boston, and 58 games later on Sunday couldn’t hang on to a double-digit lead against them even as Jayson Tatum labored through one of his worst games of the season.
Even if you distill the Sixers’ season down to the Harden-Embiid results, it looks better, but not overwhelmingly so. Philly is 25-13 when the two play, with a +9.8 per-1oo possessions margin. That’s impressive, but a lot of elite combos rack up double-digit margins. Also, both those figures will likely take a dent as the Sixers hit the toughest stretch of their schedule to close the season.
Probe just a little, meanwhile, and the soft underbelly gives way. Philly walks the ball up the court and lazes into sets unless Maxey is running a fast break by himself; check out the last two plays of the Miami game, for instance. The Sixers have no reliable third scorer in the half court, unless you count “Tobias Harris every third night” as a separate player. They’ve invested heavily in a theoretical stretch 4 who takes two shots a game (okay, 2.9, but still), and are somehow a bad rebounding team despite starting a behemoth center.
They have some good shooters but no shooters, guys who inspire fear in defenses just by wandering toward the 3-point line. (Ironically, they had one in Isaiah Joe and waived him, allowing their sunk cost in 2021 first-rounder Jaden Springer to crowd Joe off the roster.) The non-Embiid minutes are still bad, and unlike some other stars those minutes will still be significant in a playoff series; Embiid fatigues easily and usually stays around 38 minutes even in playoff games.
So why are we still talking about these guys? Because stars win series, and Harden-Embiid is a pairing that should hang with anyone. Despite the back-to-back home losses, Philly is 27-9 since its muddling 12-12 start.
So are the Sixers our non-Phoenix answer to the question of whom might join our three true contenders in the inner circle? Or are they just another flawed, desperate team in a league chock full of them?
That might be the league’s most interesting question over these last 20 games. And as with several of the other increasingly panicked teams I highlighted above, the answer could have huge implications for this summer.
I’m not talking about the “if everything goes exactly just right,” so-you’re-saying-there’s-a-chance contenders, of which there are a profusion this season — a related story to the lack of true contenders that we’ll delve into further in a minute.
I’m talking about teams with legitimate championship-contender resumes, ones that can withstand the absence of a key player or two and still compete, the ones with bodies of work that history tells us yields some realistic chance of holding up Larry O this June.
Using that as the bar, I have … three?
In a year where so many teams pushed their chips in with future draft picks and crazy expensive rosters (nine teams in the tax!), that feels like news.
For most of the league’s bluebloods, in fact, it’s become an increasingly desperate time, one that could have major implications once the season ends. That feeling was underscored here in Philly over the weekend, where the Sixers came in with their lineup fully loaded and … lost twice at home to conference rivals, first to the team that won the conference last season (Boston), and then to the team that knocked them out of the playoffs in the second round (Miami).
Sure, both games went down to the wire, but the Sixers — like several other teams we’ll discuss — weren’t built for moral victories. Their time is now — if they’re going to have a “time” at all.
The losses dropped Philadelphia to 39-21 on the season, leaving it in third place in the East and on pace for a win total in the 50-52 range given the rough schedule ahead. (The Sixers only have seven home games left, and just three contests remain against the league’s six bottom feeders. But they do get to play at Milwaukee twice, at Phoenix, at Denver, at Golden State, at Miami and at Dallas … Have fun guys!)
Amazingly, even a win total in the 50 range might still be the fourth-best record in the entire league when all is said and done. That speaks to the more general whiff of desperation around some huge-spending teams, both in terms of money and assets, a scent that can be detected well beyond the banks of the Delaware.
Before we trudge forward any further, however, let’s look backward for a second. A brief examination at history gives you an idea why several alleged contenders should be feeling quite uneasy right now.
First, I noted this before, but just to repeat myself: The past 26 champions, and 45 of the 46 in the post-merger era, had a top-three record in their conference. We can extend that even more definitely by carving out a “Golden State exception” – every single champion in NBA history was either a top-three seed or a defending champion. The closest thing to an exception, the 2010 Celtics who were one good quarter away from winning the title as a No. 4 seed, were two years removed from winning it all.
That part of the equation doesn’t do much to reduce the field, however — no matter what, it gives you six teams every year. (Or a seventh if the defending champ craters in the following regular season, like Golden State this year).
However, there is another piece to this. All those champions also won a bunch of games. With so much of the league crowded around .500, it’s not clear how that’s gonna work this time.
Of the last 43 champions, 42 won at least 52 games (prorated to an 82-game season) in their title season. At first blush, it may seem the strength of that rule is weakening; last year’s Warriors won just 53, and the Bucks only won a pro-rated 53 the year before that. However, those were the lowest totals by a champion since Miami’s 52-win team in 2006; every one of the 14 teams in between won at least 57 games.
And if that’s the bar for a real contender, it’s getting a little thin on the ground. By my count we have three teams with regular-season resumes that pass history’s test for a potential champion:
- Milwaukee, the 2021 champ, is projected to land at 57 wins this year and a top-2 seed in the East.
- Boston, the 2022 finalists, is projected to land at 57 wins this year and a top-2 seed.
- And Denver, which has never been to a Finals but is running away with the West, also is projected to land at 57 wins.
Even the relatively low bar of reaching 52 wins seems like a difficult hill to climb for anyone else. The Sixers, Cavs and Grizzlies are the only three realistic pursuers; ESPN’s BPI has Cleveland and Philly finishing with 51 wins and no other team clearing 49, while Fivethirtyeight adds Memphis at 51 wins but again, has only three teams clearing 52 and only six topping 49.
It’s possible we will end up with just three teams with 52 or more wins …. which would be the lowest total since 1978-79 had but two. (We had five last season, plus three others who won 51; 2002-03 also had just three.)
So what’s happened to all the other teams who thought they’d be in this discussion at the start of the year? Well, that’s where we get to the panic and desperation part. Nineteen teams have already lost at least 30 times, basically eliminating the possibility of reaching 52 wins, and that list includes “win now” teams such as the Clippers, Warriors, Mavs, Wolves, Hawks and Lakers. Phoenix, the presumed next man up on most contender lists because of its recent acquisition of Kevin Durant, is at 29 losses. So is Miami.
Flipping this on its head, who besides the three contenders noted above actually feels good about its season right now? I can come up with three, the three clubs on pace to approach 50 wins despite missing the playoffs last season: Cleveland, New York and Sacramento(!!!). Memphis, en route to another second-place finish in the West, probably feels OK too. Not great, but OK.
Otherwise? You could feel the panic in the air during the trade deadline and, especially, the buyout market. Three alleged contenders took players waived by their rivals and immediately inserted them as starters into their own lineups. Nothing says “everything is going to plan here” quite like trying to beat your competitors with their leftovers.
Just look at all the teams that went all-in … and now realize they’re trying to hit on an inside straight and still need two cards. In the West, especially, virtually every night on the schedule feels like a desperation face-off.
To wit:
- Miami won Monday’s game in Philly, but I mean … yikes? The Heat plucked Kevin Love off the buyout market and immediately inserted him into the team’s open sore at power forward. He responded with a zero-point debut as a full-strength Heat team was run off the floor by mighty Milwaukee.
- Defending champion Golden State at least has those two words “defending champion” in its corner; history says we should respect that part of the resume. The rest of it? Not so much. Golden State is 31-30, ranks 20th in defense, and it’s not clear they can count on Steph Curry’s return to magically cure everything; they’re only 20-18 when he plays. The pathway to the contender credibility that would come with a top-three seed becomes narrower with each defeat. In fact, avoiding the Play-In is probably a more pressing immediate task.
- Phoenix has not yet begun to fight, so to speak, with Durant scheduled to make his debut on Wednesday. Yet the Suns’ willingness to overpay Brooklyn for him, despite the leverage of being Durant’s only target destination, speaks to the creeping desperation there, too.
Can Phoenix win enough to get into the top three, which history says is an important hurdle for contender legitimacy? That should be the goal from here, and it seems attainable. The Suns have to make up four games in the loss column on Sacramento, but still play the Kings twice and would own the tiebreaker even with a split. Like a lot of teams on this list, they’ve just completely lost their margin of error because of a combination of injuries and inconsistency. Even with Durant, blasting their way out of a lower playoff seed will be a slog at best.
And if they can’t? What does the future look like here with no draft picks, no cap flexibility and a depleted stock of young players? The Suns’ future seemed incredibly bright when they made the 2021 Finals and it may still be in a couple of months, but it’s getting late early here.
- The Clippers? Everything is under control here, now that they signed the player their in-town rivals couldn’t wait to be rid of and promoted him to the starting lineup. Russell Westbrook’s high-usage, low-efficiency, non-floor-spacing style seems almost perfectly suited to minimize Kawhi Leonard’s and Paul George’s effectiveness. “Actually, I fear them much less now,” said one exec, who was granted anonymity so that he could speak freely. (Also, um … didn’t they already try this two years ago with Rajon Rondo? How’d that work out?)
Even that latter mark, however, isn’t what the Clippers were expecting when they paired those two. The evidence is getting pretty overwhelming that they just aren’t good enough; they at least took Denver to overtime on Sunday, but ended up losing by double figures for the fourth time this season. One of those games was at home, with Leonard playing, while Nuggets’ star Nikola Jokić sat out. Yikes.
Suffice to say the Clippers didn’t spend this much money to be the No. 6 seed; this could be an interesting summer in L.A. All that makes the scent of panic exuded by the Westbrook move more understandable. It’s unlikely to make it smell better, though.
- Dallas made the conference finals last year, has a 24-year-old superstar, and yet … looks just as desperate as everyone else, especially in the wake of Sunday’s collapse against the Lakers and Jason Kidd’s weird press conference afterward.
The Mavs have a familiar litany of issues for a team on this list. They’re already in next year’s tax, out of future draft picks and trying to hit on a quasi-reckless gamble (Kyrie Irving) after painting themselves into a corner with bad contracts and the needless own goal of Jalen Brunson’s departure. The Mavs also got bonus desperation points for starting a buyout guy (Justin Holiday, who couldn’t get minutes in Atlanta even as the Hawks were desperate for reliable wing play).
Keep an eye on this situation. Between Irving’s wandering eye for L.A. this summer, the potential of Luka Dončić’s frustration boiling over and Kidd’s history of things ending badly when they end, this could get a lot worse before it gets better.
- Minnesota hasn’t had Karl-Anthony Towns for most of the year, but even when he was playing the T’wolves never looked particularly cohesive or troubling. The reality is that Minnesota fans’ biggest fear has come to pass: That the Wolves took a massive, reckless risk by wildly overpaying for Rudy Gobert, only to discover he’s not quite the player he was three years ago and doesn’t fit their existing talent all that well.
- Atlanta already fired its coach and traded all of the second-round picks in humanity to come up with a real stretch-4 option. As I described Tuesday, the Hawks are at least still young, but they are out multiple future firsts and already over next year’s tax line. (While you’re here, may I interest you in John Collins? I can give you great terms on financing.) They didn’t do all that just to return to the Play-In tournament, but that’s where they’re headed; like many of the other teams here, the Hawks unwittingly went all-in on average.
- We talked ourselves into the idea of Laker exceptionalism, that LeBron James and Anthony Davis could magically stay healthy for a 20-game block of schedule and drag a revamped Laker roster back to the play-in, or further. For one weekend, at least, that vision looked possible in glorious wins over the Warriors and Mavs.
Ironically, the historically myopic Lakers might have been the most farsighted team at the deadline and buyout time, focusing almost entirely on moves that maximize their roster and flexibility next season. They probably won’t make the playoffs now that James is looking at an extended absence, and have a decent chance of falling out of the Play-In. (Congrats, Pelicans fans.) But .. how is this the one team that isn’t panicking?
All of which takes us back to the Sixers. On paper, this has been the obvious “fourth contender” since the first day of the season. They have an MVP-candidate center in his prime, having one of his healthiest seasons. They have an All-Star caliber pick-and-roll operator on the perimeter in James Harden. They have multiple secondary options who can score (Tobias Harris, Tyrese Maxey), role-playing defenders (P.J. Tucker, De’Anthony Melton), and enough shooting to rank fourth in 3-point percentage. Some fool even picked them to win the title before the season started.
And yet … they looked out of their league in the opener against Boston, and 58 games later on Sunday couldn’t hang on to a double-digit lead against them even as Jayson Tatum labored through one of his worst games of the season.
Even if you distill the Sixers’ season down to the Harden-Embiid results, it looks better, but not overwhelmingly so. Philly is 25-13 when the two play, with a +9.8 per-1oo possessions margin. That’s impressive, but a lot of elite combos rack up double-digit margins. Also, both those figures will likely take a dent as the Sixers hit the toughest stretch of their schedule to close the season.
Probe just a little, meanwhile, and the soft underbelly gives way. Philly walks the ball up the court and lazes into sets unless Maxey is running a fast break by himself; check out the last two plays of the Miami game, for instance. The Sixers have no reliable third scorer in the half court, unless you count “Tobias Harris every third night” as a separate player. They’ve invested heavily in a theoretical stretch 4 who takes two shots a game (okay, 2.9, but still), and are somehow a bad rebounding team despite starting a behemoth center.
They have some good shooters but no shooters, guys who inspire fear in defenses just by wandering toward the 3-point line. (Ironically, they had one in Isaiah Joe and waived him, allowing their sunk cost in 2021 first-rounder Jaden Springer to crowd Joe off the roster.) The non-Embiid minutes are still bad, and unlike some other stars those minutes will still be significant in a playoff series; Embiid fatigues easily and usually stays around 38 minutes even in playoff games.
So why are we still talking about these guys? Because stars win series, and Harden-Embiid is a pairing that should hang with anyone. Despite the back-to-back home losses, Philly is 27-9 since its muddling 12-12 start.
So are the Sixers our non-Phoenix answer to the question of whom might join our three true contenders in the inner circle? Or are they just another flawed, desperate team in a league chock full of them?
That might be the league’s most interesting question over these last 20 games. And as with several of the other increasingly panicked teams I highlighted above, the answer could have huge implications for this summer.
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No one saw this coming
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Top lock, full denial of PG and Kawhi, suckering Brick to attack >>>
Not every team has Ant and McDaniels on the wings defending though.
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Looked like Kawhi conceded the brick
Edit: hell yeah he conceded. There was 14 seconds on the clock. Clippers dumber than the lakers
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Why are you even putting The Vampire on the court with Kawhi and BPG? Doesn’t make any sense.
Kawhi/BPG/Mann/Powell + whatever big makes sense matchup wise seems like a complete no brainer.
Kawhi/BPG/Mann/Powell + whatever big makes sense matchup wise seems like a complete no brainer.
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