Winning Time is Cancelled
After a quick snooze to allow the NCAA to take everyone’s attention during March Madness, the NBA is back to its dramatic best this week. I don’t follow college basketball enough that I care about a particular team in the Tournament, but I’ll always watch a few games to check out some of the prospects for the next draft and this next upcoming draft is absolutely stacked. Paolo Banchero, Chet Holmgren, Jalen Smith and Jaden Ivey all look like number 1 picks. There’s plenty of time to talk about these guys before the 2022 NBA draft and I don’t know who I would call the definitive number 1 pick.
We’re now tantalising close to the NBA Playoffs, the escalation point that turns into 3 months of the highest quality basketball. Phoenix are far-and-away the favourites this season, there’s no other valid opinion based on what we’ve seen this year, but they still need to get through theWest and into the Finals. I’ve still got hopes that my Warriors will make some noise in the playoffs, but the list of issues which needs fixing is getting longer every game they drop.
Over in the East, the battle for the top seeds remains as tight as it’s been the past few months, Kyrie is able to play home games again and the Nets look absolutely terrifying behind an invigorated, aggressive Durant. So there’s no better place to start this week than the Eastern Conference.
The Celtics need more Time (Lord)
What a rollercoaster week for the Celtics, which took another sharp twist yesterday. After being placed as low as 11th in the Eastern Conference as recently as 7 January 2022, the Celtics made their way to the top of the East beating the Timberwolves to claim the 1 seed, a title the Celtics held onto for a total of one day.
The positivity emanating from Boston the last few months is palpable, Tatum looks like the MVP-caliber player he’s supposed to be, Al Jefferson has been completely reincarnated after a few years moonlighting as a human statue and Marcus Smart deserves to go to jail for injuring Steph Curry – sorry. Everything was looking up for Boston, fans going so far as getting 2022 championship tattoos. It should go without saying, but getting the early championship tattoo is the easiest way to curse your team to failure.
Tragedy quickly followed success for the Celtics when Robert Williams, the defensive backbone of the team, tore his meniscus against the Timberwolves, adding himself to a long line of Boston playoff injuries. Since Williams went down, the Celtics have lost to the Raptors and Heat, and it began to look like their dream of contending this season was over.
Without overstating it, Robert Williams is the most important part of Boston’s defense and without him they can’t compete with the top of the East. Meniscus tears are weird injuries which you can treat in two ways: repair or remove. If it’s removed, it’s a month or so turnaround. If it’s repaired, it’s a year or more. Chris Paul has been playing without a meniscus in his right knee for a decade now; meanwhile, James Wiseman is still recovering from having his meniscus repaired last April.
I don’t know a whole lot about the human body, but I’m of the opinion that, apart from the appendix, the contents of your body are pretty important and should stay where they are. Apparently, Boston and Williams have a different view, and decided to remove Williams’ meniscus in a move that could see him back on the court for the second round of the playoffs.
Boston’s defense will still be good while they wait for Williams, but they won’t be holding teams to an average of 99 points for a while yet. They’ll be good enough to make it through the first round, but when they run into Embiid, or Giannis, or Durant, or Kyrie, or even Bam, who killed Boston in the bubble playoffs, they’ll need Williams to stop those guys from scoring 35 a game.
Even if this move might reduce the length of Williams career – Dwayne Wade removed his meniscus when he was in college and went on to regret it – at least Boston are going for it this season. In the last 4 postseasons, the Celtics have made the Conference Finals twice, and every off-season they’re the Next Big Team, only to fail the next year. Last year was a failure, losing in the first round, will the pattern repeat itself?
Same old Philly, Same old Harden
I feel like I’ve watched this team play a million games already. They look practically indistinguishable from the 14 different versions of the 76ers that have been put together since they started making the playoffs again in 2018, it’s the same old plodding offense where everyone clears out when Embiid has the ball and he either makes a play or gets fouled. Embiid has the second highest scoring average this season, because everyone else on the team spends the shot clock watching him.
Is James Harden even on this team? In his first two games as a Sixer, Harden where was moving off-ball and running out on the break, but now he’s back to his same old trick of standing 5 feet above the 3 point line whenever he doesn’t have the ball.
Yeah sure Tyrese Maxey is in the middle of a breakout season and has become a reliable playmaker and third scoring option but fuck it, I’m acting out and turning heel on the Sixers. What’s Tobias Harris doing on this team to deserve his $36 million this year? Nothing. But don’t worry Sixers fans, maybe Georges Niang will hit one corner 3 in the last 2 minutes.
What’s going to happen when we watch another playoff series where Embiid scores 40 points in 3 quarters, then misses 14 shots in the fourth quarter on his way to 42 points in a 6 point loss?
It’s not like the Sixers are going to change anything, they’re coached by Doc Rivers, the worst good coach in the league. Doc’s coaching strategy is not made for change – the Sixers are paddling directly towards the waterfall without life jackets with the hope that all those rocks at the bottom are soft, despite all the evidence that they’re not.
It all happened again against the Bucks this week, when Giannis reminded everyone he’s the real king of the East after rejecting Embiid’s attempted game-tying layup with seconds left in the game. The reason Embiid even had the ball was because Harden bricked a 3 so badly that it clanged off the backboard at a weird enough angle that Embiid could grab it first, before Giannis appeared from the other side of the rim to send it away. The minutes before that shot, Harden was playing hot potato with the ball, content to sling it away so that he couldn’t obviously choke again. There’s a reason that defenses allow Georges Niang open 3’s, and Harden was willing to give up about 4 shots he could have taken himself for Georges to brick instead.
How come the Bulls Can’t Beat Anyone Good?
I’ve already paid my penance to Bulls fans for being what some would call unnecessarily harsh early in the season, but I’ve given them, and particularly DeMar DeRozan, their flowers as they’ve emerged from a mire of disappointment to put together a genuinely good basketball season.
But, in a completely objective way, I’m just going to point out that the Bulls are 0-3 against the Heat, Bucks and Sixers, 1-1 against the Celtics and 2-1 against the Nets. Again, being completely objective, those are the teams that the Bulls will need to beat in the playoffs. Now, say that they manage to do that, it doesn’t get much easier out West, where the Bulls have failed to win a game against any of the Suns, Grizzlies or Warriors.
You can take whatever you like from the Bulls’ record against good teams, but if you were to draw conclusions from those facts, you could suggest that the Bulls are maybe, just a bit, a paper tiger. You could be forgiven for thinking the inevitable sadness that Bulls fans have come to expect has been delayed and worsened by having their hopes built up all year by a team gutter-stomping bad teams in the regular season.
Of course, those would be your own thoughts, I’m just raising those facts for you to consider and draw your own conclusion. I myself won’t be outright slandering the Bulls again, because this is a pretty slander-heavy article already. Speaking of slander, it’s time to go back to old faithful – “fuck the Lakers”!
Winning Time is Cancelled
If you’re not like me and you don’t walk past about 40 posters for the show on your way to the train, ‘Winning Time‘ is a HBO drama series about the 80’s Showtime Lakers. Directed by Adam McKay and starring the underrated GOAT actor John C Reilly as Jerry Buss and Adrien Brody as Pat Riley … I haven’t watched an episode yet. Call me a dumb entitled millenial but I don’t want to wait for a show week for week, I’m happy to wait a whole season then watch it in 3 days.
There’s 10 episodes of Winning Time lined up for this first season, which is due to finish on the 8th of May, coinciding with the end of the second round of the playoffs, if not the Western conference Finals. The Lakers advertising machine would have been dreaming of cross-promoting the finale of the series with a deep playoff run, cutting together footage of Magic and LeBron, Frank Vogel and Pat Riley, AD and Kareem. There’s a delicious taste of schadenfreude wafting through the air as it becomes almost certain that the TV series will outlast this Lakers series.
The Lakers are currently sitting 10th in the Western conference and will have to fight with the Spurs and Pelicans, a team they just gave up a 23 point lead against, to make the play-in game. Allegedly, AD will be back to help with that push, but it’s hard to put much expectation on Davis’ contribution until he can play more than 20 minutes. This was supposed to be a finals contender and now they’re fighting to make in the play-in.
The Lakers have 7 games left to claw their way into the play-in tournament, with games against the Jazz, Pelicans, two against the Nuggets, Suns, Warriors and Thunder. At this stage in the season, only OKC and the Suns don’t care if they win or lose those games, there’s playoff standing available for all the rest of them, and the Suns might drop 50 points in a quarter again just for the fun of it.
If the Lakers manage to win 3 or so of those games they will find themselves in a 9-10 play-in game against the Pelicans or the Spurs: two young energetic teams who will be super motivated to make it into the playoffs and will be even more motivated to beat their idol in LeBron. That’s not to mention that serial bad-decision maker Russell Westbrook is still a member of this team, and will have no hesitation trying to win the game with a dunk that he slams directly into the rim.
I’m not willing to say the Lakers won’t make it, the Spurs and Pelicans could fall apart pretty quickly and find themselves on holiday before they know it. There’s a reason that both of those teams are in the play-in game themselves. Add to that the typical NBA conspiracy which suggests we’ll probably see a few games decided by questionable calls in the Lakers favour so the NBA doesn’t miss out on the sweet TV ratings that come from a high-pressure Lakers game.
The Looming Clippers
This is coming from a place of fear, but I don’t like that there’s even a 1% chance Kawhi Leonard comes back in these playoffs. Paul George has already been back one game, inspiring a 25 point comeback behind his 34 points in 30 minutes and making an already over-performing team even better.
Ty Lue could coach a pair of sunglasses to win an NBA game, and there’s a possibility he could make a run at the title with his two best players coming back full of rest. I don’t like it. The talk around Kawhi’s return is very uncertain, but the man is so influential that he could flip any series. I’m going off nothing but gut feeling and fear here, and I am afraid. I write this as a note which hopefully never comes true.