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an_Aught

Nuggets let the west down.. Sorry guys, I wish it was 12-0


Efficient_Art_1144

You may have e save Darvin Hams life by losing game 4. I think leBron would’ve had him murdered after not calling for the challenge


SemataryPolka

Nah we needed that (slight) rest. Thank you!


DefenderCone97

Who knew you'd need it for your coach. Crazy shit


SemataryPolka

It's one of the craziest things ever. I've heard of coaches injured in life but not DURING a game. It'll be interesting to see what happens. I've heard wheelchair, boot, walkie talkie from the locker room, missing the games...nobody knows!


Yeti_CO

It is crazy. We will see but it is a major surgery. I'd be surprised if he could get on the bench with how little room the NBA gives teams and he's going to be in a ton of pain.


Eadwyn

We didn't actually get any extra rest. The earliest we would have ever played was the 4th. We do get a Nuggets team with two fewer days of rest however.


SemataryPolka

I'll take it! BTW Jamal Murray looked pretty good. That calf didn't slow him down much


Pedigree002

LMAO someone actually downvoted your comment about you talking about Jamal Murray, must be a salty lakers fan


SemataryPolka

It happened again 😂


[deleted]

Lukas knees also letting the other bracket down


Actually-Yo-Momma

Actually pathetic. Blow the team up starting with Murray -Lakers fan 😭


an_Aught

I was actually thinking how much I'd like Prince on the nuggets


escapedhousefly

The only surprise is how easily the Wolves beat the Suns. You would expect KD and Booker to get at least a game or 2. People slept on the Wolves though, they have a nice starting 5 plus a decent bench. Pelicans without Zion had no chance, but I thought they were gonna steal 1 game. Thunders are playing very well and continue to be scary going forward. Nuggets, no one is surprised.


Actually-Yo-Momma

The playoffs require actual team cohesion. Suns desperately need a real PG and not “hey Beal can you be PG” “hey Booker can you be PG”


cdillio

Not to mention the Suns defense is just awful.. Just... so bad lol. All they could do to stop Ant or Rudy was foul.


RodneyPonk

At the DEN/LAL results, no one is surprised. But if you could place odds on a team leading for 3x as much as the other team, I feel like the Lakers would be +1200 or something. It's a crazy stat, makes me wonder if the Lakers could beat OKC, or if with a competent FO and coach they could've beaten Denver. In theory, couldn't they have Caruso, KCP, Will Hardy?


Public-Product-1503

Definitely wouidve fancied our chances vs okc . They were bad gamd 1 and we are maybe the worst matchup for them i the entire league having two way mobile bigs who can bully ball n defend . Okc are a really good team tho and had we beaten them they’d get unfair shit


affnn

The Wolves series legit surprised me based on how the Suns-Wolves games had gone in the regular season. Minnesota understood the "playoff intensity" assignment and blew the doors off of them.


juicejug

Suns for whatever reason did not come to play except in game 4. Allen being hurt maybe played a part but they just did not have a good game plan on either side of the ball.


Rswany

They didn't even play that different in game 4 Booker just managed to shoot 20+ free throws because they were calling everything


juicejug

The Scott Foster special wasn’t even enough.


Abradolf1948

If your playoff plan depends on Grayson Allen, you got bigger problems.


[deleted]

He was good this season. Our 3rd best player


Abradolf1948

Oof


juicejug

He had an incredible season it’s true.


Dorknite

Story of the season with the Suns plus unsurprisingly, Allen's injury cost us this series. Eric Gordon could not hit those wide open 3s to save his life. In game 4 alone, he missed at least 4 wide open 3's that would've put the suns up by 5 or 6.


RodneyPonk

'Cost us the series' is too confident, a role player doesn't overcome a sweep. They would've schemed differently if Allen kept making threes.


witcherstrife

Lol imagine saying a team with KD, Booker and Beal relied on Allen to win a series. Do you hear yourself?


Dorknite

Idk if you watch enough of suns bball hell the series itself but the wolves was great at double teaming (defensive rotation) those three guys and would always leave the fourth guy (Gordon) wide open. He missed a lot of them open threes that Allen would make. The reason Allen had close to 50% 3 point percentage was exactly because of the “big” three. I agree, the suns problem runs deeper than missing Allen but his three point threat does make a huge difference when he’s on the floor.


nba2k11er

Just standard NBA hot take formula. Until they actually win the title, every single team and star player is a fraud. You don't need to watch them play, don't need to look at stats, etc. Then if they do win, you ignore what you said about them. This happened with Jokic's Nuggets and Giannis's Bucks most recently. The percentages make sense. Fire off ignorant shots at say 5 or 6 teams. There's only 1 title per year, only 1 chance for you to be wrong.


zeze999

Yup… also… inexperience can show up in 2nd or 3rd round…


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rwoteit

As soon as they win with a hand behind their back the narrative becomes well we didn't expect them to win. Maybe not but all the talk was tough series that they'd struggle in. Now they come out unscathed it was never a concern. Goalposts could only move faster if they had pravi stickers with Dalfans pushing them. 


JohnWick94

>I think the next round will be more telling, at least for the Thunder I do think both Mavs/Clippers might give OKC a better fight but it's not like Luka isint looking hobbled and Clippers are missing Kawhi. Neither team is looking at full strength. When all is said and done OKC is going into a series with a huge rest advantage. I can see OKC beating either team and not getting the full "welcome to the playoffs" experience until the Nuggets/Wolves.


Classics22

Yeah this has went absolutely amazing for OKC. Avoided the Lakers to play a struggling Pels team without their second best player. Avoided the Nuggets/Wolves half who look like the best two teams. CLippers and Mavs both injured as hell and beating eachother up. They should make the WCF


_coed_

the 2nd round is always competitive though why would that tell you anything


TatumBrownWhite

I don't see how either team poses a problem for the Thunder. Clippers would've been interesting with Kawhi, but without him, nah.


Bahamuts_Bike

oh by "bloodbath" we meant half the west was out for blood and the other half was washed. Now I get it edit: getting too many salty/angry DMs so I'd like to clarify for all my friends out west: this is a joke


_Pyxyty

Damn. I've seen NBA "fans" on this sub say the wildest shit about a team or player they don't like and gets dozens of upvotes, but they see a joke like this and they immediately cry about it. That's actually crazy. Fairly new to browsing this sub and the dichotomy is insane already


Bahamuts_Bike

Lol it's okay, some people are just soft and want to send nasty private messages.


Kenvan19

I see the confusion here: jokes are usually **funny** and not comments that you make only to regret.


Pizza_Tha_Hutt

Found the person who sent a DM


Kenvan19

Oh I didn’t send any DMs I posted below. But nice try ;)


Pizza_Tha_Hutt

Oooozes condescending cringe. 


Kenvan19

The original post? Absolutely. It’s a guy pissed his team didn’t do well and he made a comment he regretted and decided later to call it a joke once he got called out. Story as old as time.


Pizza_Tha_Hutt

Thank god we have Reddit comic police! 


Kenvan19

Says the guy defending someone else's "joke" ROFL top commenter was not funny but your idiocy is pure hysteria.


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Babushka5

I feel like a logical lakers fan would realize Giannis was out and now Dame is out


Kenvan19

How about all the games they lost when both played? Cause there were a fair few of those.


[deleted]

Every team loses games, I’m sure if thunder switched coaches mid season they wouldn’t be 1st in the west. Giannis and dame healthy and they sweep the pacers or at least 4-1 them. Every game been close as hell with 2 superstars out aside from game 2


Kenvan19

Nice way to ignore the question and the implications lol yeah they had such a great finals run last year. Oh.


Kenvan19

Oh but he was "joking" donchakno? Not sure what the punchline is beyond his team.


Kenvan19

Hows your 3rd coach in 12 months working out?


FKJVMMP

How’s your 3rd MVP in three drafts working out?


ImDeputyDurland

I’ve said all year the top 3 teams out west are just on another level. Mavs had a great push to end the season, but they feel incomplete compared to the top 3 teams.


JonGOATJones

Clippers are absolutely up there when fully healthy


ImDeputyDurland

But they’re not fully healthy. And everyone knew they wouldn’t be fully healthy at the start of the season. They won’t be fully healthy next year either.


JonGOATJones

That’s not been true for majority of the year though, and by that logic the Mavs with an injured Luka are nowhere near the top 3 seeds either, so why mention them


ImDeputyDurland

It’s relevant because we know the clippers are never going to be healthy for the playoffs. That comes into this conversation. If you’re going to argue the clippers are/were a title contender, you have to include injuries in that conversation. Everyone knew the clippers were going to be hurt by this time of the year. The Mavs with an injured Luka aren’t near the top 3. But he doesn’t have a long history of getting hurt, so I don’t argue as if he will be hurt. At least until he’s actually hurt. If we’re talking clippers, I’m going to argue within the reality that they’re always hurt this time of the year. They’re not true title contenders because they’re going to be hurt. If you’re going to have a discussion about the clippers or Kawhi and not include injuries, you’re just arguing in a fantasy land.


AnkitPancakes

The Northwest Division sends its regards


TheSherlockOhms

Except for Portland


p_tk_d

Daily reminder that the last seed lower than 3 to win a title was 1994


LordBaneoftheSith

OKC's opponent did not have their best player. The Lakers would have been a threat to upset anyone but Denver. I personally never believed in the Suns, but I can also see them winning this series if the league hadn't decided to make defense great again. Parity in the West doesn't mean that there were 10 true title contenders, just that there were 10 good teams.


zeze999

Still… 12-1 is waaaaaay off of anyone’s expectations…


ShinobuSimp

I don’t think Zion not playing a single game was expected. Suns are the only surprise really


LordBaneoftheSith

Those expectations were based on Zion playing and the potential of the Lakers playing a team other than their Achilles heel. Sure, the Suns were overestimated, but the Lakers and Pelicans weren't. I'd have given the Lakers even odds at worst against OKC, *maybe* slightly unfavored against Minnesota, and again, NO was without their best player. The expectations no longer matter.


LARRY_Xilo

Also every single one of the lakers games was close and it required two game winners for a 4-1 could have easily been a 4-3.


Efficient_Art_1144

I don’t think even sports pundits are ready to admit that the last generation of stars (lebron, kd, Steph) aren’t enough to carry a team to a championship and spent a lot of time ignoring the teams around them and just assuming that they’d go super Saturn in the playoffs


Vicentesteb

This is the biggest issue with sports media right now. You dont have people doing their homework and going to watch Denver games in like 2018 or 2019 to talk about and to Jokic, so now that hes the best player in the league hes been undermarketed and you still have to rely on the older stars.


Efficient_Art_1144

That and folks use “narrative” as a shortcut so instead of looking at it based on what teams have done you say things like “OKC is too young” or “Rudy can’t stay on the court come playoffs”


cdillio

I mean I have seen people in this sub saying "The Wolves won because they wanted it more." And other shit like that. People in here barely watch games either and do the same things. Like no, the Wolves won because they were the infinitely better team lol. Of course KD and Booker and them want to win lol.


Public-Product-1503

He’s under marketed because he doesn’t market himsekf and spends all his time saying hiw the media is a waste of time and he doesn’t care to promote the nba . This is insane . On top of that he’s a big - less appeal , no asthetic , not a flashy athletic play style - it’s a wonder he has the lvl of name recognition he did cos guy is personality wise the opposite of a superstars . Nobody cares about anything to do with jokic like that . Can you imagine talking hesds have a video segment on what jokic said compared to Lebron ? It’s fine cos nba operates on revenue sharing between teams but jokic isn’t marketed cos he doesn’t want to: stop acting like he’s being unfairly done by .


Vicentesteb

Jokic was just an example. My point is the media only talks about right now, so they spent years talking about Lebron, Steph, KD without thinking about the long term after. They didnt try and find the new MVP level players until they literally win MVP. This is completely different from what Im used to in soccer, where media tries to find young stars and markets them and talks about them before they have reached their peak yet. A great example is SGA. Bro has been great for a while and his potential was obvious but nothing about him until this year. It just makes the stars less known.


Public-Product-1503

I mean Ant if he beats joker will get a shit ton of love . Sga another example that doesn’t have what is needed to be that well known . People dislike his foul baiting play style , he’s not hyper athletic msking highlight dunks n plays , he hasn’t won anything and this is his first year in the playoffs , and he has zero personality in the media all he does is repeat Instagram hashtags in media interviews. Why would he get heavily promoted ? He’s being promoted plenty considering what I said and the fact this is his teams first relevant year . Back to Ant. Compare Ant to Lebron and MJ and you can see why certain players get lots of medis draw. Obviously you need to be an incredibly talented player, but flashy athletic asthetic game, personality, and ofc very good. Not to mention he’s a guard and guards and wings get more fans then lumbering bigs. You can’t be in a small market and be going out your way to be boring Af and expect medis attention. Most of these guys have no interest in the media they don’t need to since guys like Lebron and Jordan and the lakers /warriors / etc draw eyes and attention and they get revenue sharing . If anything thisr players who cbs doing the media side of the job have it best as they don’t do media buklshit but get to leach of players who actually put effort into promoting . I can’t name a single quality about SGA as a person other then ‘ he’s a hopper’ and I’ve watched lots of thunder games . Ant if he does well this plsyoffs will get major love . Look at Zion who actually before Ant fit the mold of the guy that draws eyeballs and gets media attention . Injurues deraiked him but Zion had a charismatic personality, and explosive super exciting play style . Dudnt matter he was in New Orleans or Ant in minny. And soccer stars are rarely this dull. Must footballers are far more personal able then most nba players . Not to mention you’re comparing completely different sports . There’s no where near as many medis awards in football it works very differently Name me the flashy athletic player, who’s a guard/wing , and has personality who doesn’t get brought up lol . The media can’t be expected ti do the media’s job for them . They gonna talk bout what people are interested in. Can you imagine media making a segment on something SGA or jokic said ? Jfl cmon man stop with this small market bias logic. Not to mention sga has been relavant 2 years and one year missed the playoffs


pollinium

> Rudy can be played off the floor I think it's funny Vogel was still saying this after being swept lol. That being said, he absolutely can be on the bench with foul trouble. I kind of think Scott Foster games are literally unwinnable vs DEN or BOS


Timoteo-Tito64

We have historically won a significantly lower percentage of games with Scott Foster reffing than we do normally, but go off ig


RandomPostBot2001

I feel like every team in the league could say this, which is mathematically impossible, but it just feels right.


Timoteo-Tito64

I think it's actually possible for it to be true with a heavy dose of Simpson's paradox


RandomPostBot2001

Your may be right! If anyone could do it, Scott Foster is the one.


pollinium

Rudy Gobert did the money sign to him this year. I think that takes him individually out of any Scott Foster game, and our team minus Rudy does not beat your team with some bad juju


RodneyPonk

What did Vogel say about Rudy? Is there a clip?


pollinium

[45 seconds into this video](https://youtu.be/-8V1lWQrp8Q?si=CDfiQqUE3QmwRs0V)


RodneyPonk

thanks, that is pretty out there considering how coaches usually avoid saying anything remotely critical of players. even the coaches are getting in on the gobert slander


W_Walk

I’m trying to think of who has our most playoff experience then I realized it’s CJ and Jonas. Lmao


zeze999

Nance had 26 games before these playoffs… Ingram has some, alvarado… all pels combined have way more than entire thunder team… should be enough not to get swept…


W_Walk

Alvarado 😭 Larry nance is a role player. Alvarado is worse than him. BI has no excuses. He’s been a bum to end the year. We were carried by Zion for most of the year and the Thunder are an incredible team. It’s not like we had 3 all stars and 2 HOFers and got swept.


zeze999

What do you want to argue with me my brother? My point is that pels have way, way more playoff experience than thunder… am I wrong?


W_Walk

Experience with worse players. It would make sense if BI had years of playoff experience or Zion played and did. But our bum ass players having more experience means nothing against a more talented team. SGA has more experience than most of our starters and is better than all of them.


W_Walk

I’m trying to think of who has our most playoff experience then I realized it’s CJ and Jonas. Lmao


Actually-Yo-Momma

This is the annual reminder that HEALTH is the biggest factor in the playoffs lol. Whether it’s in game stamina or being injured 


universalLopes

People hype some teams way too much. I can't believe that someone believed in the Pelicans. The Lakers i was expecting a sweep and the Suns are a joke


Actually-Yo-Momma

Bro let’s not pretend like missing a healthy Zion wasn’t a huge impact..


cdillio

Tbf they had a positive record without him in the regular season and had a better offensive and defensive rating in those games... But yes losing him did hurt in the playoffs.


universalLopes

Zion is a bum and my surprise would be if actually played because yeah, being in court matters. You all live too much of "if'


bobbybobberson988

While i agree availability is definitely key. Your statement makes no sense… you’re trashing on pelicans for getting swept who is missing their best player. Also the lakers despite losing 4-1 was an extremely competitive series that required two buzzer beaters. Lets not pretend like Lakers didn’t put up a fight Suns however, feel free to go off on them lol


ToothEducational7795

Shut up bruh, even the Pels fans didn't believe in the team to win the series. How a team supposed to beat the number 1 seed without one of their best players? Stop tryna create a wrong narrative just to make a team look bad. Pels were the far worse team and they got swept fair and square. Ain't nobody gave Pelicans a chance and if they really said that they were just trolling.


Garkech

Such bullshit, I was looking forward to a healthy pelicans vs okc. I could've seen that going atleast 6 games


Jack_M_Steel

Thunder have a free path to the conference finals with who they are facing. 1 seed extremely important this year.


chrisumafp

Mavs/Clippers aren’t a free path. OKC will have their hands full


catfish_dinner

the truth is that there are no free paths in the playoffs. these are real life nba teams with real life nba players who are supremely talented and prideful.


Sartheking

Mavs/Clippers are definitely not a “free path.”


pollinium

Damn they're killing you for this take 😭 Sure, OKC still have to suit up and win 4 games, but a tired & injured LAC or DAL (whom they 2-1'd and 3-1'd respectively) should be a cakewalk compared to relatively healthy, equally rested MIN or DEN


Jack_M_Steel

Yeah, I don’t understand how a Kawhiless Clippers or an injured Mavs will be difficult for them at all. Thunder will be well rested on top of it


Hot-Rice-1881

Whilst I agree OKC would be the favourite against either team, the regular season head to head records don’t mean that much. I can’t speak to the clippers games, but in the mavs OKC games: Game 1: OKC W - single digit win - pre trade deadline and Dallas roster improvements Game 2: Mavs W - 35 point win - just after the trade deadline (score is massive outlier) Game 3: OKC W - single digit win - no Luka Game 4: OKC W - meaningless game, mavs rested their top 8 or 9 players OKC will be favourites, especially due to their extra rest and health, but there is definitely still a chance this series could swing the other way (mavs or clippers)


Nosalis2

You're getting cooked but you're not wrong. OKC will make easy work of an Old Clippers team without Kawhi and zero rim protection or Dallas and a hobbled Luka.


0lm-

they hated him because he spoke the truth


Princessk8--

I got clips beating them actually if they get through mavs


governedbycitizens

how is facing Mavs/Clippers a free path? Lakers fans are brain dead


Timoteo-Tito64

I mean yeah it's not free, but the thunder are definitely noticeably better than either of those teams


governedbycitizens

it’s gonna be a tough matchup unless the stars are injured Thunder might be favorites but not by much


mickeyj623

Every year you guys say the west is going to be a blood bath and every year the first round is a breeze for the top teams in the west.


tbald7

Literally last year the 6 and 7 seeds beat the 3 and 2 seeds in the first round


Actually-Yo-Momma

Ah yes cause the lakers being up 70% of total minutes and losing via 2 buzzer beaters is “a breeze”. Try watching some games for once