Betrayer

In just 24 minutes.

To be fair, nobody was expecting them to lose to Washington or Golden State without Curry. Same with Milwaukee and Indy. Those are in fact lottery teams. It's the games against LA, ATL, MIN x2, OKC, TOR, ORL, and CHA that will be a struggle. The majority of their remaining games are against playoff teams.

That's rough. This was one of the 5 games they had a good chance to win.

The worst part about the 65 game rule is that due to disqualifications Jalen Duren could very well make an All-NBA team. Get ready for that contract to put a chokehold on this franchise.

I'd be very happy with the Pistons going 7-7 in this stretch, but I'm not super confident about that without their MVP level player. On the other hand, Boston not only has their MVP level player who got them to the #2 seed, but they've just added another MVP level player. Two very different situations and I think this has the potential to come down to the wire.

I don't know. There's 14 games left and if you look a bit deeper into how these teams have been playing more recently, I feel like it's actually a tough schedule. Washington, Golden State, Philly, Milwaukee, and Indy - All bad. There we agree. That's 5 probable wins, but the other 9 games... LA is 9-1 in their last 10 and they're on a tear. ATL has won 10 in a row and is the hottest team in the NBA. NO is 6-4, playing much better with no pick to tank for. MIN is a handful and we play them twice. OKC - just call this an automatic loss. TOR just beat us when we actually had Cade. ORL has found their groove and are 7-3 recently. CHA is playing well and are also 7-3 recently. That's a tough road without Cade and with BOS breathing down our necks.

Collapsed season. This was seriously painful news to hear this morning. If he's back for Round 1 you can probably expect him to be on a minutes restriction and have some conditioning issues. Only possible good thing I can imagine coming out of this is we slip to 2nd place, manage to get through Round 1 while Cade is working himself back into shape, and get to face the Knicks in Round 2 with a healthy Cade (and Stew) for our revenge. That's the best "Glass Half Full" I can come up with. As for the rest of the season, I'm guessing JB starts Jenkins in Cade's place. I'd actually consider just letting Ausar initiate the offense. We've seen him be the lead initiator before when Cade was out and it worked decently well. Ausar guards the other teams PG every night anyway, so less cross matching is needed. You can put another spacer in there to help spread the court for Ausar + Duren pick and rolls. I'd slide Green into the starting lineup at the SF. Javonte is our only legitimate 3-and-D player, shooting 37% from beyond the arc this year and whopping 50% from the corners.

Gotta admire his commitment to defense though.

If you're proposing moving one of the bad teams (like SAC) to these new cities, I'm cool with that idea. Just not 2 more teams to water down the league even more.

I'm sure it'll all go through, because there's money involved, but I truly hope it does not. The last thing this league needs is more bad teams.

Toronto beat us at our own game. Crushed on the offensive glass and beaten on points off turnovers. JD struggled to control the defensive boards and help at the same time and nobody else was strong enough to keep Poeltl off the glass on the rotation. Ausar looked a step slow coming back from injury and was on a minutes restriction. Seems like it would've been a great game to go bigger and have Reed share some minutes with Duren to control the glass. But no, why not run with a bunch of guards instead and hope to suddenly become the type of team that shoots their way back into games? Right, JB? Right?!

In case you were wondering if they're in tank mode or not, you have your answer.

Good to see them stomping the teams they should stomp again. Please save some of this hot shooting for the games we really need it in. Huerter with another solid game. He's no world beater, but I'd rather see him play than Lavert.

A lot of garbage basketball in there, but hey, if it pushes Kobe further down in the record books I'm ok with it.

But what about CLE catching NYK? If we stay at #1 then I need the Knicks at #4. Give me that sweet, sweet revenge.