one can only hope, but i doubt it. i kinda feel like philly has successfully ducked brooklyn in the first round. i don't think brooklyn is that good (see: our season, but slightly better, for similar reasons), but i do think they'd be EXTRA motivated to knock philly out in round 1, and philly knew that. philly/toronto (most likely matchup now) could get interesting, though. a clash of styles and team-building methods (i obviously prefer toronto's). if there's any justice in the world, toronto takes them out.
i think voters have gotten giannis fatigue, tbh. actually a pretty big compliment when people just get tired of your greatness. it is a tough call this year, though. i think embiid is a notch below jokic/giannis, along with luka, who has been a better, more valuable player than booker and tatum. again, he's so good folks are tired of him already. so my tiers are: jokic/giannis embiid/luka tatum/KAT/booker/derozan/durant/morant i'd throw steph in that last group, maybe, too. gs leaned heavily on him early, imo, and he delivered. his later struggles i think are tied to how much work he was doing early.
there should be a book about how anomalous the adelman years were. they had some good fortune and made some good decisions and then the wheels just fell all the way off again. the poor ownership was there the whole time, too, so the success was sort of despite the maloofs. then this crazy-a** ranadive buys them and is somehow worse.
Who’s watching the play-in? Towns is so friggin soft as soon as it’s not the regular season. 0-5 in the first, whining constantly, visibly frustrated by the upped intensity of the defense.
wolves have no experience. clippers roster has a ton. much of it together. they'll beat the wolves and give memphis more trouble than people think for exactly the same reason.
Wolves are looking good though, Edwards and Russ each have 15 at the half. Paul George is his usual playoff self, 2-10, 9 points.
