ITS THE OFFS BABY THE 2023 NBA PLAYOFFS

this seems not great

Related: The combined .590 regular-season winning percentage of the eight teams in the conference semifinals is the lowest since the playoffs expanded to 16 teams in 1984. The previous low was .617 in 2007.

— Kevin Pelton (@kpelton) April 30, 2023

or maybe it is great

wilbon and sas talking like theyre introducing some huge new idea that steph is one of the greatest who ever did it lol everyone knows that

think its fine to happen once in a while. if stars are missing enough of the regular season that a bunch of teams are underseeded though then thats bad for various reasons

I've watched dame having great games for his entire career, but steph is just pure distilled magic.

if Steph makes another title run where he puts up backbreaking 40+ point performances every series where do you rank him all time? like 3?

ya maybe doubt its gonna happen dubs seemed very much in on fumes mode all year and this series but he might deserve to be there anyway

also weird stuff like having a team that blew it up at the trade deadline due to bad vibes rather than bad record. its the causes of weird seeding that are bad for the league, not the effects

i'd say steph's the best 'pure' guard ever. jordan was more of a guard/small forward combo. harder to compare goats across positions.

who knows I mean a lot of great regular season teams have been eliminated already, seems like a year where some team who wasn't given a chance rises from the grave

either the Warriors or the Lakers will be in the WCF

lakers got better at the deadline too

could be true

I think the obvious truth here is that LeBron and Steph Curry have been playing against each other through many lifetimes and are destined to meet over and over until the end of time

— Zito (@_Zeets) April 30, 2023

james and steph will tend to cancel one another out, so the series will be decided by players down the rosters. imo that should favor the dubs, if wiggins and klay can deliver good games. poole's been unreliable af.

Steph told them to “Light the Beam” 😳🔥 pic.twitter.com/DgZBtcliDF

— NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) April 30, 2023

im sorry thats rude

hadn't really put this together but after dumping russ and pat bev, the lakers are actually a young-ish team? lebron is the only player on the entire roster in his 30s!

yeah but ad is spiritually 45

lol true

bucks
celtics
sixers
knicks

nuggets
lakers
kings
suns

bucks
sixers

kings
suns

― symsymsym, Saturday, April 15, 2023 10:34 AM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

6 of 8, plz pay no attention to any picks after the first round

impossible to know what will happen that far in the future anyway

Ok but for real… Looney in this series was something else.

nba big men often bloom late. looney's arrived as a role player holla fame guy.

hollinger on parity

You want evidence of competitive balance? Well, we didn’t have a 60-win team this year for the second time in three years (pro-rating for shortened seasons) … something that only happened one time in the previous 40. It was “1 vs. 8,” yes, but only 14 wins separated Milwaukee from Miami, and just eight kept the Lakers from Memphis.

Even winning 55 games is an increasingly rare feat: Only two teams did it each of the last two years, and just three made it in 2018-19. In 2012-13 and 2014-2015, we had six.

How about this: only six teams this season had a point differential of greater than plus-3.0 per game, itself a pretty modest sign of dominance and/or legitimate contender status. Already three of them have been eliminated from the playoffs. If you’re looking for that indicator to hold, Denver, Philadelphia and Boston are your only teams left of the eight that made the conference semis.

not moving like someone whos going to play basketball today

Joel Embiid did some light shooting before this morning’s shootaround. pic.twitter.com/5x365f948m

— Keith Pompey (@PompeyOnSixers) May 1, 2023

Isn’t that just his normal movement

shooting before shootaround

pre-boarding

i guess you never say never but it’s been a week of them being pretty open about him not playing tonight

honestly wonder if they look better in this match up w/o him out there……

I think Maxey is a huge factor. If they get the Maxey of the first round, Sixers have a shot. If they get the Maxey who has underperformed against the Celtics in the past, it might be a quick series (especially if Embiid misses a couple games).

on his pod w/russillo simmons was saying he's heard no embiid for the first two games

honestly wonder if they look better in this match up w/o him out there……

― J0rdan S., Monday, May 1, 2023 11:42 AM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol cmon

reading some series previews and everyone is talking about the end of season game where embiid scored 52 without mentioning that it wasnt serious playoff seeding was pretty much already set celtics just letting grant guard him one on one and so forth, guess it makes the story a lil more exciting but really all the games were close even if the celtics did win the three where they were actually trying

hey, embiid putting up big numbers while his rivals coasted is going to get him an MVP. let’s not muddy the narrative

lol the votes are already in it doesnt matter now

that game vs the celtics was wild. celtics clearly not trying to give anything away. im sure theyll just stick grant and blake on him again and see how it goes.

been reading/listening to a lot over the last 48 hours about how the suns are in trouble in this series, which echoes what we all posted after that game, but my alarm bells are officially going off now that everyone is saying the same thing about this series after only a game. this is smelling like a fairly dominant suns win tonight that produces an equal amount of articles/podcast episodes about how we have a series now & what the suns did to turn it around in game 2…

xp generally over the last x number of year the celtics have been happy to defend embiid mostly straight up with some hedging make him think a lil about where hes going then in the second half mix in more double teams, he has great numbers against them but the celtics have the wins def a let him get his strategy which is doable cause they have horf who at least makes him work

will be interesting to see what adjustments the suns have for game two its tough cause they have so few games with kd theyre adjusting from what, getting him some catch and shoot threes would be smart imo

im a suns skeptic tho so theyre gonna have to prove me wrong show me the money and so forth

been reading/listening to a lot over the last 48 hours about how the suns are in trouble in this series, which echoes what we all posted after that game, but my alarm bells are officially going off now that everyone is saying the same thing about this series after only a game. this is smelling like a fairly dominant suns win tonight that produces an equal amount of articles/podcast episodes about how we have a series now & what the suns did to turn it around in game 2…

― J0rdan S., Monday, May 1, 2023 1:11 PM (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think all the reasons to be concerned are correct, but I just doubt this is going to be a short series and you might be right. the nuggets are a team that are not known for showing up with full intensity on a game to game basis — when they were up 2-0 in the last series, it was the first time in the jokic era they had led 2-0 in any series. just the way it is

I haven’t read or listened to much of anything since game 1 but given their lack of depth on the bench, I imagine the suns adjustments are going to be something like hammering the pick and roll on offense and increasing their 3 point rate. they’re probably fucked in terms of stopping the nuggets offense but if they can limit turnovers and try to close the 3 point gap they have the talent to win, assuming their players can hold up playing 42+ minutes for 4+ more games

you just have to deal with Joker and Murray, they are who they are, but the times in the Wolves series when Porter Jr. started going off as well.... that's rough

suns shot 50% in the first game would be good to get more threes def but its not really who they are theyre gonna have to find a way to play some defense

joker coasted his way to a cool 24-19-5

slowing the game down in order to conserve energy would be good for them too

he missed a bunch of layups/putbacks too didnt have his best game

yeah his touch has been way off the last couple of games at least, I do wonder whether he's still nursing that calf injury

as a resident kd liker i am not super invested in proving the suns are bad actually but i wouldnt bet on them to win any of the denver games