Rick Pitino (yeah, I know) doesn't get anywhere enough credit for getting the 88-89 Knicks to 52 wins with Ewing, Mark Jackson, Charles Oakley, inconsistent rookie Rod Strickland, some slightly-better- than-JAGGy-types (Trent Tucker, Johnny Newman, and Gerald Wilkins,) and some corpses (Sidney Green, Kenny "Hey! Isn't the sky up?" Walker, and Kiki "I used to be great but my Dad played for the Knicks in the 1st NBA season" Vandeweghe).
ATL was in the play-in last year with 36 wins; CHI with 39.
40 games to get into the play-in, sure, but the post was about avoiding the play-in. Philly won 47 games last year and still couldn't avoid the play-in. I don't think there's any way Philly gets the 6 seed with 40 wins this year, and the 6 seed is the goal for a lot of these teams (both to get the guaranteed playoff spot and to avoid Boston in R1).
The suspension is primarily about losing 3 games of pay. It’s the vehicle required to be able to fine him.
Yeah it's starting to feel like if they don't play at a 60 win pace when embiid/george/maxey are all healthy, they won't even make the play in.
You may see a 29-win team in the EC play-in if the deck falls right. This could actually be quite comical with 4-5 teams fighting for the final spot with 50+ losses.
Wouldn't be a huge shock, but just for [brief] historical context, the average 10 seed has won 40 games (if we apply the 2021 winning percentages to a full 82 game season). Just once has a team won fewer than 35 games (the 2022 Spurs won 34 games). If a team actually gets into the play-in with < 30 wins and it doesn't spur a change to the current playoff format, I don't think anything will.
W/L records this time of year can be misleading with strength of schedules weighed so differently without a larger sample. I’d argue that the Clippers have been the most impressive team as far as overperforming to this point at 4-4 with a brutal schedule while teams like Cleveland, Golden State, and even Boston have had cakewalks.
think of it this way. If Caleb hadn’t gone ballastic, POBOBS might not have gotten KP. Caleb ended up doing us a favor - and maybe was the peak of this iteration of MIA.
Exactly, and I think it really is true in Boston's case. More of that coming this season too....
In fairness, the 2022 Bucks and Heat probably feel the same way about getting the brunt of the 6 months that TimeLord was playing at a DPOY level, his never-come-again good ol' days.
That was TL at his peak for sure, but he was a beast that whole season. 2nd team all-defense and got some DPOY votes, anyone who knows anything knows that that season (and those series when he wasn't even 100%) wasn't a fluke, injuries have just robbed him of the career he should be having. He also played just a combined 206 minutes against both Milwaukee and Miami - Martin played 249 in the 2023 ECF. Martin's incredible series against Boston came out of nowhere, looking nothing like he did for that entire season before and after the Boston series, and looking nothing like the rest of his career.
Have to give credit to Miami for recognizing they got all the juice from Martin (and Strus) and let some other schmuck sign them.
One of the biggest guys in the league, flops like this should be embarrassing. Fuck this guy.
he could accept the switch & post a guy a foot shorter than him (then flop for 2 FTs
)
Too early to say really on McCain. Cam Thomas to me is a losing player--a guy who can score inefficiently and doesn't do anything else and also needs the ball a lot to be effective. If he eventually gets on a good team he could be a Jamal Crawford/Lou Williams type, but I just don't think his style or his attitude are conducive to winning. Crawford and Williams had a professionalism and comfortability coming off the bench as scorers for very good teams, something that it underrated and why a lot of talented-but-flawed scorers never materialize into having the kinds of careers Crawford and Williams had.
Heat Culture doesn't travel.
I have some good news involving James Harden's career.
I’m impressed that McCain got up 17 shots last night playing with Embiid and George. It will be interesting to see how he does with Maxey back.
It’s about time Silver implements a minimum age requirement. You cannot go on skirting labor laws like this forever.
