Worst gift in the pile: 2023 NBA Play-Ins

you gotta root for any team that starts two guys with the same name who also look the same

love the "zion williamson out for 46th game" infographic

i'm just happy he's supporting his team from the bench which is the most useful thing he could be doing rn

if he were playing hed be all thinking about stuff

https://stathead.com/basketball/pcm_finder.cgi?request=1&sum=0&player_id1=gilgesh01&p1yrfrom=2023&player_id2=wadedw01&p2yrfrom=2006

feel like wade is my favorite SGA comp, a wade updated for the hoisting era

wade was definitely one of the coolest players ever we need more wades out there

relentless driving is def one of the best ways to play

Diar DeRozan deserved her own highlight reel tonight 🔥 pic.twitter.com/nUMNKrGtVQ

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) April 13, 2023

28 in the second half. he’s had a really nice season actually

smh

However, DeRozan says she is NOT going to Miami on Friday

"She got to go back to school"

— Jamal Collier (@JamalCollier) April 13, 2023

dort doing things

someone needs to check under dort’s jersey to make sure there’s not a jimmy butler jersey underneath

it's really inspiring how Diar didn't give up when the Bulls were 20 down, she just kept screaming

first half was the dort-murphy battle we were all expecting

young wade was several levels above SGA athletically but i could see it in terms of SGA’s finishing creativity in the paint

good game, good game. sga is ridiculous

oh man that sucks for jones

nice win for okc shai go ahead shot was so good

so are we back on team david griffin might stink at his job or what

i mean ingram missed half the season, zion 2/3 of the season and doesnt want to play and nance/alvarado were hurt for the play in. I think herb and murphy are good and still growing.

i'm just happy he's supporting his team from the bench which is the most useful thing he could be doing rn

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, April 12, 2023 7:02 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i lol'd

nice win for okc shai go ahead shot was so good

― lag∞n, Wednesday, April 12, 2023 9:24 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

the dexterity

how pic.twitter.com/0fRlqMLBTR

— Steve Jones Jr. (@stevejones20) April 13, 2023

the thunder doing this well while starting two rookies and a 2nd year guy plus a bunch of 2nd/3rd year guys in the rotation is insane. they only played one vet last night saric for 11 minutes.

yeah theyve got a ton of talent, and draft picks, future is bright

jaylin 8-8-8 game and the sweetest hook ive seen in years

Jaylin Williams with a BEAUTIFUL hook shot 🔥pic.twitter.com/ET2It4eeVo

— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPointsApp) April 13, 2023

and thats not even the good jalen

right. i like this guy tho seems like the dude thats willing to do all the dirty work. really interested to see how chet integrates into all this.

if chets not a total injury causality they could be real good in not that long

it is really something how well they play together. they got a good coach over there.

yeah players seem happy too even through a big tank

just seems like a good org presti obvs has the touch and daigneault is homegrown, big flaw is that theyre a small market team unwilling to pay the tax or at least that was the case last time around

i mean ingram missed half the season, zion 2/3 of the season and doesnt want to play and nance/alvarado were hurt for the play in. I think herb and murphy are good and still growing.

― Spottie, Thursday, April 13, 2023 3:02 AM (nine hours ago)

paying $101 million next year for three guys who are never on the floor at the same time. throw in another $10m for larry nance who also never plays. i guess you can say there is upside there based on the first few weeks of this season... but it's looking pretty bad!

xp yeah usually i'm skeptical of org quality but it seems real in okc, the vets who pass through always rave about how they're treated and how everything is set up which in turn prob gets a lot of goodwill with agents. it's a decent shield against tanking affecting morale.

i'm stealing this stat from one of the podcasts but the pelicans have had 4 years of ingram & zion together and their finishes in the west are 13, 11, 8, and 10th. i guess you can say they're moving up lol?

i'm astounded that ppl in the national media continue to advance the narrative that the pelicans pushed the suns to the brink in the first round last year, and thus are a latent "contender" or whatever. it's so bogus

just seems like a good org presti obvs has the touch and daigneault is homegrown, big flaw is that theyre a small market team unwilling to pay the tax or at least that was the case last time around

― lag∞n, Thursday, April 13, 2023 1:46 PM (twenty-one minutes ago)

big flaw is that they had kevin durant russell westbrook james harden & serge ibaka on their team and made the NBA finals one time cuz sam presti put a roster from the stone age around them. but maybe his ability to identify & develop role players has changed...

does anyone remember that 39 year old derek fisher averaged 26 mpg for OKC in the 12-13 finals

xxp i was thinking about your "is david griffin bad again?" post and idk, they have unquestionably collected a lot of talent but so much of it is in the form of one-way players....they need to turn it into a real team. and right now they have no idea if that real team can include zion or not.

and then averaged 16 mpg in the playoffs the next year while shooting 31/29 shooting splits xp to myself

i'm kinda trolling but i actually do think presti should have to answer to the hague about what happened between the years of 2010 and 2018 in okc

xxp i was thinking about your "is david griffin bad again?" post and idk, they have unquestionably collected a lot of talent but so much of it is in the form of one-way players....they need to turn it into a real team. and right now they have no idea if that real team can include zion or not.

― call all destroyer, Thursday, April 13, 2023 2:14 PM (three minutes ago)

i was kinda genuinely asking bcuz there was this huge whiplash in the national media NBA punditry world about how griffin was maybe gonna lose his job, but then they were the breakout stars of the playoffs & had built a contender, and now they got bounced out of the playoffs by a tanking team. so i'm curious like... what the temperature is gonna be on this one. keeping in mind of course that griffin appears to be one of, if not the, most popular/connected GM w/in the media, who all call him "griff"

yeah i get it, i think it's an interesting question and not one with a clear answer. i never considered them a contender myself but in theory they have a path to get there

i think he'll be shielded by the teams injuries yet again. but yeah 4 years of those guys and nothing to show for it is not good. i guess give it one more shot idk

i mean they kinda have no choice

well, ingram still prob has real trade value. but feel like they won't be doing that

lakers pick swap really didn't end up working out for them either

would any one of us have NOT drafted Zion with the first overall pick? obv the pels get a free pass on making that pick. what's hard to say how much better a different team would have managed his injury issues since then. a lot of rehab outcomes are down to how the player handles them.

yeah he was the only pick to make given the upside but some of the bigger concerns about him have come to fruition. the underrated one is how long it seems to take him to recover and ramp up, that's not going to get better.

big flaw is that they had kevin durant russell westbrook james harden & serge ibaka on their team and made the NBA finals one time cuz sam presti put a roster from the stone age around them. but maybe his ability to identify & develop role players has changed...

― J0rdan S., Thursday, April 13, 2023 2:11 PM (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

tbf they made the finals as a very young team had injuries then lost a squeaker to the warriors and that was it, if you wanted to take issue with prestis roster construction choosing russ over harden was his biggest offense, still quite obviously an absolute master of the craft tho

"Went 18/36, it had to have an affect."

Scottie Barnes heard DeMar's daughter yelling pic.twitter.com/wQ2lRT8Z9B

— Yahoo Sports Canada (@YahooCASports) April 13, 2023

amazing lol

would any one of us have NOT drafted Zion with the first overall pick?

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Friday, 14 April 2023

i was a pretty big zion skeptic at the time but it wasnt a view that was widely shared.

you don't want to understate how hard it is to build a contender as a small market team, and when it starts with the klutch mafia conspiring to steal your best player well it is going to be an uphill battle