Looked at tiebreakers for 4-way tie for #5-8. Clips would get #5 (regardless of outcome of Dubs final game with them), Dubs would get #6, Grizz would get #7 (regardless of outcome of their game with Wolves), and Wolves would get #8
OKC isn't historically great unless they get to 70 wins. And so they need to make sure they try realllly reallly hard to beat the Lakers twice and beat Houston as well.
I don't think there has ever been an MVP who was widely considered as lousy as Westbrook, without that MVP getting severely injured, or reaching retirement age. For example, D. Rose was never the same, but that was injury, and late career Nash slowed down and got injured, and wasn't a force but hey we all get old.
Westbrook, on the other hand, was 28 when he won MVP in 2017. In my view then and now, that was a terrible vote as he had inflated stats, did not and does not contribute to winning at all-star levels, is a really really bad shot, a really confused defensive player, and never seems to adapt to team need. Does what he does the same way every time on every team, not what the team needs. His assists come from leveraging his athletic drives to the rim, which in their prime I readily admit were formidable.
But overall, he became a player that by age let's say 31, GMs were not interested in paying much for when he was still very much in his prime. He is getting paid 3 million when LeBron KD and Steph are also ex MVPs who are older and getting paid MVP money.
Last night's closing sequence against Minnesota, WHICH WE NEEDED DENVER TO WIN, grinds my gears so badly and prompts this screed. In the last seconds, Minnesota just blew it passed it to him, colossal mistake by them, down 1. He managed to then blow a wide open uncontested layup, fall out of bounds and argue the no-call for a moment so he wasn't in position as Minnesota came back down, then stood around on defense for a second until he recognized that Minnesota was going to put up a three point shot with time expiring, so he fouled the three point shooter, losing the game. You have to be at a historically low level of BBIQ to blow a layup, not hustle in transition, and then foul a three point shooter.
I hope that the HOF committee will have this tape when they consider his career, because I think it closes the case that he really has been much much worse than his hype. Which isn't personal -- I actually used to love his maniacal drives to the basket and general ferocity. But it comes with so many costs.
I don't think it was such a bad play for Westbrook to take the layup; it was a bad play for him to miss the layup as it really was not contested.
I doubt that he could have dribbled out the clock as he probably would have been fouled, and he's a pretty crappy FT shooter so no guarantees they'd have a three-point lead (as they would have had he made the layup) when Wolves get final possession. It was a simple layup - he just botched it and compounded things by being slow to get back on defense and then making the stupid foul at the end.
The other bad play by the Nuggets was not fouling when they had a foul to give. Braun could have fouled Edwards with around 3 seconds left and Edwards was looking to pass the ball out to NAW. Or they could have fouled earlier in the final possession with Westbrook slow to get back.
I think this is all true, but his motor was elite (which is a skill), and early in his career, his drives were a force of nature. I don't like that he's a HOF player, but he is.
Mostly I hate his OKC teammates for doing things like boxing defenders out on rebounds they could have gotten themselves so that Westbrook could get the rebound and get another triple-double. It was cheap, and he didn't really need the help.
Honestly it's pretty amazing how much Westbrook was able to accomplish (stats wise) off of pure will and determination because he has close to zero winning tendencies and isn't skilled at all lol
Looking forward to watching Lebron when dubs run the play where Steph provides a surprise backscreen for Jimmy, then gets a cross-screen from Draymond (what is it called again?). It worked perfectly last night for a Steph 3. Le-photo-memory-bron will surely have studied the E1P even more closely than I did. I can picture him frantically directing traffic.
It seemed like Podz was able to take advantage of Ja Morant losing concentration on D last night. He tip-toed along the baseline for a layup while Ja was daydreaming, and then flew in for that epic tip-in. Big clutch plays in a playoff-level atmosphere must be great for confidence. Same goes for Moody's late 3. #youngGunsBlooded
Especially after struggling offensively pretty much the entire game. Both stayed ready in a tight, hypertense game and contributed meaningfully down the stretch despite how things had gone up to these moments. Really demonstrates remarkable focus, maturity and character at this early stage of their careers.
On the other hand, Hield, Post, Podz, and Green combined to go 6-27 (22%) on mostly wide open threes. To me, this and Morant hitting 5-8 is what kept Memphis in the game.
In the Butler era, Dubs have won a lot of games while shooting poorly from three. If they can improve on that (and there's plenty of room for improvement), they can be a formidable playoff foe.
The next three games will say how shitty it is to have to finish a long road trip and then immediately play a back-to-back against a really good team at home. I would LOVE 1-1 but 0-2 is a distinct possibility. I have more hope for the third game at home against Houston.
Let's not talk about our absolutely woeful record at LA or against Denver anywhere over the last 2-3 years.
I know what you mean, and I agree the next few games will be telling. But also, isn’t it consistently surprising how sui generis each individual basketball game is? Like, you could have said something very similar after Game 4 of the ’22 Finals: Steph played the game of his life and we barely held on to win… Then in Game 5, he doesn’t hit a single three, and somehow we win that one by an identical margin, without ever trailing in the 4th quarter. It’s hard to explain sometimes...
I have to remind people (nobody seems to remember) these were his other stats:
- 16 points on 7-13 shooting from two, 2-3 from the line, four rebounds, eight assists, two steals, ONE turnover, +15 (one behind GP2 for game high).
Yes, the missed threes were ghastly (although slightly inflated by him gunning to preserve the games in a row in the playoffs with at least one three streak) but the rest of his game was actually quite good and a big part of the Warriors winning the game.
Anyway, to your actual point; yes, games can be close all the time and in memory we gloss over all of the myriad details that got the Warriors the win instead of the loss. The fact remains, the team did enough to win when Memphis was playing REALLY well, probably close to if not the best game they could possibly play.
But also: the warriors didn’t look gassed at the end, they looked energized. Steph seemed ready to hit another dozen threes if it had gone into overtime.
And the team awaits the return of two key rotational players from injury
Dubs have a lot of confidence in their closing lineup with Steph, Dray, and JB. Kerr's rotations ensure that they'll all be on the floor for the final four minutes. It could be a mirage, but Dubs have been winning nearly all of the clutch games when Steph, JB, and Dray are available.
"Henley also allegedly helped NBA players by getting back some money they lost in a rigged dice game that a professional boxer the complaint identifies as “A.B.” organized."
Haven't seen video of the initial gesture by Buddy, but when he responded to Ja he appeared to be doing the 'ice-in-his-veins' or maybe a combo of that with the Schroeder badge gesture, not a finger gun. The back of his hand is parallel to ground, not perpendicular.
That would be crazy harsh considering he was just reacting to ja. It's just not something I would hold against him since most people would do the same without thinking
#7 or better seed seems reasonably secure IMO. In the remaining games, we will have to have 3 more losses than the loser of TWolves-Grizz April 11th game to drop to #8 seed. Seems unlikely if we stay healthy.
We need to get to where we can avoid Denver. 3 seed would be ideal but not even sure that’s realistic since it involves us beating Denver and LA back to back and winning out. Not sure we can muster that
#7 would suck, tho. I'm not even sure it's any better than #8, as the team seems to get a little extra oomph from playing in a hostile arena.
They both have the core problem of being a random ending / crappy three point variance game away from elimination or (best case) a first-round meeting with OKC.
I think they can win Suns, Spurs and Blazers games w/o going into to fully engaged fury mode.
If they can muster fully engaged fury mode in 2 of other four games (Lakers, Nuggets, Rockets and Clippers), we should be able to hold on to #7 or better. Grizz and Wolves are not going to win all of the rest of their games (even putting aside April 11th one).
Lost in last night’s drama, the Bucks last night shot the highest FG% in a game this century, shooting 68.9%, with former Warrior Ryan Rollins shooting 8-of-10 overall and 5-of-7 from 3-point range while scoring 23 points.
Also: "FG%" doesn't mean that much these days. Based on their fairly modest total scoring output, I'd guess it was pretty far off the highest TS% ever. Still a pretty impressive feat, tho...
Yep, the Suns, so an asterisk, still impressive though.
They shot 58.6% from three and 93.3% from the line, so I'd have to assume the TS% was pretty up there too. The modest scoring output was because they only took 74 shots.
I popped into the Lakers subreddit to see an outsiders perspective and most of them are saying that the Warriors are frauds who haven’t faced a healthy good team.
Welp, I’m excited. I really hope Kuminga returns, he’d thrive against a team like the Lakers without really rim protection.
I think the Lakers are one of Kuminga's worst matchups honestly. They are one of the teams that doesn't even pretend to guard him at the 3 point line (and will likely do the same with Butler). Then they have length to bother him in Vando and DFS. And finally they have LeBron who will clean up some of the backcuts to the rim the JK really thrives on. They no longer have AD who made all the other problems worse, but it's still not ideal.
I was in a Celtics forum this morning and the general consensus there was that the Ws are "solidly" the #4 team in the league, after OKC/BOS/CLE. They seemed wicked excited about a potential Ws-Lakers first round matchup (and I think would root for the Ws pretty much to a man).
Fuck Lakers subreddit, of course. May have to pay them a visit after we stomp them. :-)
I paused the recording of this game about halfway through the 4th quarter, and while I was away from it I learned the outcome 😒. Maybe for the best, though, because I was already bricking it. I am not in playoff conditioning yet. What a game, and what an awesome performance by Jimmy and Steph.
One of my favorite things about the long run of excellence by the W’s is the growing list of heated rivalries they’ve outlived. Memphis will be heard from again, of course, but with Brooks and Jenkins gone the whole vibe is different. It gives me great pleasure to think back on how meteoric they seemed in ’22, and how we (along, less pleasingly, with LA in ’23) made sure they couldn’t break through.
Just watched the ending of the Min-Den game. Man did the refs insert themselves into that one. There were calls made that were...'odd'. The foul called against Denver on the attempted three with time expiring sure looked like a no-call would have been the right call. And not checking a few seconds earlier to get an out-of-bounds call right was costly to Denver as well. Were the refs fatigued or something?
Looked at tiebreakers for 4-way tie for #5-8. Clips would get #5 (regardless of outcome of Dubs final game with them), Dubs would get #6, Grizz would get #7 (regardless of outcome of their game with Wolves), and Wolves would get #8
Not the worst outcome for the Dubs if it plays out like that
OKC isn't historically great unless they get to 70 wins. And so they need to make sure they try realllly reallly hard to beat the Lakers twice and beat Houston as well.
With the Clippers SUPER soft remaining schedule how many games can the Warriors afford to lose?
Approximately zero
If Dubs beat the Clips on the final day, then they'd need to win 5 of their other 6 games if Clips won the rest of theirs.
Ew.
I don't think there has ever been an MVP who was widely considered as lousy as Westbrook, without that MVP getting severely injured, or reaching retirement age. For example, D. Rose was never the same, but that was injury, and late career Nash slowed down and got injured, and wasn't a force but hey we all get old.
Westbrook, on the other hand, was 28 when he won MVP in 2017. In my view then and now, that was a terrible vote as he had inflated stats, did not and does not contribute to winning at all-star levels, is a really really bad shot, a really confused defensive player, and never seems to adapt to team need. Does what he does the same way every time on every team, not what the team needs. His assists come from leveraging his athletic drives to the rim, which in their prime I readily admit were formidable.
But overall, he became a player that by age let's say 31, GMs were not interested in paying much for when he was still very much in his prime. He is getting paid 3 million when LeBron KD and Steph are also ex MVPs who are older and getting paid MVP money.
Last night's closing sequence against Minnesota, WHICH WE NEEDED DENVER TO WIN, grinds my gears so badly and prompts this screed. In the last seconds, Minnesota just blew it passed it to him, colossal mistake by them, down 1. He managed to then blow a wide open uncontested layup, fall out of bounds and argue the no-call for a moment so he wasn't in position as Minnesota came back down, then stood around on defense for a second until he recognized that Minnesota was going to put up a three point shot with time expiring, so he fouled the three point shooter, losing the game. You have to be at a historically low level of BBIQ to blow a layup, not hustle in transition, and then foul a three point shooter.
I hope that the HOF committee will have this tape when they consider his career, because I think it closes the case that he really has been much much worse than his hype. Which isn't personal -- I actually used to love his maniacal drives to the basket and general ferocity. But it comes with so many costs.
He didn’t even need to make the layup. He could have just dribbled the ball and run out the clock. What a boneheaded play
I don't think it was such a bad play for Westbrook to take the layup; it was a bad play for him to miss the layup as it really was not contested.
I doubt that he could have dribbled out the clock as he probably would have been fouled, and he's a pretty crappy FT shooter so no guarantees they'd have a three-point lead (as they would have had he made the layup) when Wolves get final possession. It was a simple layup - he just botched it and compounded things by being slow to get back on defense and then making the stupid foul at the end.
The other bad play by the Nuggets was not fouling when they had a foul to give. Braun could have fouled Edwards with around 3 seconds left and Edwards was looking to pass the ball out to NAW. Or they could have fouled earlier in the final possession with Westbrook slow to get back.
Westbrook can languish with Shaq, Chuck, Kobe, Rose in the one time MVP corner. Hehe.
And Iverson, who is another player I consider not that impressive considering he got an MVP
I think this is all true, but his motor was elite (which is a skill), and early in his career, his drives were a force of nature. I don't like that he's a HOF player, but he is.
Mostly I hate his OKC teammates for doing things like boxing defenders out on rebounds they could have gotten themselves so that Westbrook could get the rebound and get another triple-double. It was cheap, and he didn't really need the help.
I think we are on the same page. No question it was an all time motor. It just headed the vehicle in the wrong direction too often.
Honestly it's pretty amazing how much Westbrook was able to accomplish (stats wise) off of pure will and determination because he has close to zero winning tendencies and isn't skilled at all lol
Counterpoint: triple doubles
/thread
Any player who gets more than one triple double is automatically admitted to the Hall of Fame. I think we can agree that's only fair.
Angel Reese you are a HOF'er!
Looking forward to watching Lebron when dubs run the play where Steph provides a surprise backscreen for Jimmy, then gets a cross-screen from Draymond (what is it called again?). It worked perfectly last night for a Steph 3. Le-photo-memory-bron will surely have studied the E1P even more closely than I did. I can picture him frantically directing traffic.
It seemed like Podz was able to take advantage of Ja Morant losing concentration on D last night. He tip-toed along the baseline for a layup while Ja was daydreaming, and then flew in for that epic tip-in. Big clutch plays in a playoff-level atmosphere must be great for confidence. Same goes for Moody's late 3. #youngGunsBlooded
Especially after struggling offensively pretty much the entire game. Both stayed ready in a tight, hypertense game and contributed meaningfully down the stretch despite how things had gone up to these moments. Really demonstrates remarkable focus, maturity and character at this early stage of their careers.
Btw, diaper Steph strikes again. Seriously, how many of those 10 three-pointer performances have come with, vs. without, the butt pad?
He's a Diaper Dandy, Baybeeeeee!!!
That was definitely just sitting there for someone...
JK will presumably be sporting a butt pad when he returns too. I have high expectations.
Here is the negative about last nights awesome win.
Curry went for 52. Butler had a great game. DG had a great game outside of his 3’s. 28-28?
They were still behind with about 4 minutes to go and Memphis played the night before vs Boston and hasn’t beat a good team in months.
I know Memphis is very good when they get it together which they did last night.
My question is how often can we expect the old trio to play that well ?
Do they have to play at that level to beat the good teams?
I guess the next 3 games will say something.
On the other hand, Hield, Post, Podz, and Green combined to go 6-27 (22%) on mostly wide open threes. To me, this and Morant hitting 5-8 is what kept Memphis in the game.
In the Butler era, Dubs have won a lot of games while shooting poorly from three. If they can improve on that (and there's plenty of room for improvement), they can be a formidable playoff foe.
> I guess the next 3 games will say something.
The next three games will say how shitty it is to have to finish a long road trip and then immediately play a back-to-back against a really good team at home. I would LOVE 1-1 but 0-2 is a distinct possibility. I have more hope for the third game at home against Houston.
Let's not talk about our absolutely woeful record at LA or against Denver anywhere over the last 2-3 years.
That woeful record is actually what gives me hope that the Dubs take one of the b2b games. There's additional motivation there.
I know what you mean, and I agree the next few games will be telling. But also, isn’t it consistently surprising how sui generis each individual basketball game is? Like, you could have said something very similar after Game 4 of the ’22 Finals: Steph played the game of his life and we barely held on to win… Then in Game 5, he doesn’t hit a single three, and somehow we win that one by an identical margin, without ever trailing in the 4th quarter. It’s hard to explain sometimes...
> Then in Game 5, he doesn’t hit a single three,
I have to remind people (nobody seems to remember) these were his other stats:
- 16 points on 7-13 shooting from two, 2-3 from the line, four rebounds, eight assists, two steals, ONE turnover, +15 (one behind GP2 for game high).
Yes, the missed threes were ghastly (although slightly inflated by him gunning to preserve the games in a row in the playoffs with at least one three streak) but the rest of his game was actually quite good and a big part of the Warriors winning the game.
Anyway, to your actual point; yes, games can be close all the time and in memory we gloss over all of the myriad details that got the Warriors the win instead of the loss. The fact remains, the team did enough to win when Memphis was playing REALLY well, probably close to if not the best game they could possibly play.
But also: the warriors didn’t look gassed at the end, they looked energized. Steph seemed ready to hit another dozen threes if it had gone into overtime.
And the team awaits the return of two key rotational players from injury
Dubs have a lot of confidence in their closing lineup with Steph, Dray, and JB. Kerr's rotations ensure that they'll all be on the floor for the final four minutes. It could be a mirage, but Dubs have been winning nearly all of the clutch games when Steph, JB, and Dray are available.
https://www.sfgate.com/warriors/article/warriors-draymond-green-allegedly-defrauded-20232794.php
That's concerning. Why does Draymond have anything to do with these people? Dude, you're a family man...
"Henley also allegedly helped NBA players by getting back some money they lost in a rigged dice game that a professional boxer the complaint identifies as “A.B.” organized."
Lollll way to go, Adrien Broner
Is Hield going to be suspended?
If they suspend Hield for that after giving the Wolves and Pistons such light suspensions for an actual fracas that extended into the crowd........
Well, it's Adam Silver's NBA, so I guess I wouldn't be that surprised.
This crazy take from the idiots at sfgate attempts to portray Buddy as the instigator:
https://www.sfgate.com/warriors/article/warriors-reserve-grizzlies-ja-morant-gun-gestures-20254610.php
This is Buddy… he’s almost certainly showing some respect to Ja for his great shot…
Well do we actually know who instigated? This is a Morant 3 point celebration, so how do we know Hield wasn't doing it first to mock him?
Haven't seen video of the initial gesture by Buddy, but when he responded to Ja he appeared to be doing the 'ice-in-his-veins' or maybe a combo of that with the Schroeder badge gesture, not a finger gun. The back of his hand is parallel to ground, not perpendicular.
I'd be willing to bet that Morant did it first, given the history of Morant with this issue and knowing who Buddy is.
That would be crazy harsh considering he was just reacting to ja. It's just not something I would hold against him since most people would do the same without thinking
#7 or better seed seems reasonably secure IMO. In the remaining games, we will have to have 3 more losses than the loser of TWolves-Grizz April 11th game to drop to #8 seed. Seems unlikely if we stay healthy.
We need to get to where we can avoid Denver. 3 seed would be ideal but not even sure that’s realistic since it involves us beating Denver and LA back to back and winning out. Not sure we can muster that
We're not in a position to choose our playoff opponent - best just to avoid the play-in and see how things fall from there.
#7 would suck, tho. I'm not even sure it's any better than #8, as the team seems to get a little extra oomph from playing in a hostile arena.
They both have the core problem of being a random ending / crappy three point variance game away from elimination or (best case) a first-round meeting with OKC.
I agree with you if the Warriors are able to keep playing with the fully engaged fury that they played with last night.
I think they can win Suns, Spurs and Blazers games w/o going into to fully engaged fury mode.
If they can muster fully engaged fury mode in 2 of other four games (Lakers, Nuggets, Rockets and Clippers), we should be able to hold on to #7 or better. Grizz and Wolves are not going to win all of the rest of their games (even putting aside April 11th one).
They need to hold off both the Grizz and Wolves though. Assuming the Clippers beat their easy schedule and move up since they have the tiebreaker.
Lost in last night’s drama, the Bucks last night shot the highest FG% in a game this century, shooting 68.9%, with former Warrior Ryan Rollins shooting 8-of-10 overall and 5-of-7 from 3-point range while scoring 23 points.
Link: https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/44499696/bucks-shoot-highest-single-game-field-goal-percentage-1998
Against the Suns tho, lol
Also: "FG%" doesn't mean that much these days. Based on their fairly modest total scoring output, I'd guess it was pretty far off the highest TS% ever. Still a pretty impressive feat, tho...
Hey Klay's 37 point quarter came against the Kings, but it still counts.
Yep, the Suns, so an asterisk, still impressive though.
They shot 58.6% from three and 93.3% from the line, so I'd have to assume the TS% was pretty up there too. The modest scoring output was because they only took 74 shots.
I popped into the Lakers subreddit to see an outsiders perspective and most of them are saying that the Warriors are frauds who haven’t faced a healthy good team.
Welp, I’m excited. I really hope Kuminga returns, he’d thrive against a team like the Lakers without really rim protection.
"Jaxson Hayes" is their savior in the paint
“I popped into the Lakers subreddit”
There’s your first mistake 😜
I think the Lakers are one of Kuminga's worst matchups honestly. They are one of the teams that doesn't even pretend to guard him at the 3 point line (and will likely do the same with Butler). Then they have length to bother him in Vando and DFS. And finally they have LeBron who will clean up some of the backcuts to the rim the JK really thrives on. They no longer have AD who made all the other problems worse, but it's still not ideal.
I really hope the guys blow that out of the water in the next game.
Hopefully Steph exorcises his Staples Center lighting demons.
I was in a Celtics forum this morning and the general consensus there was that the Ws are "solidly" the #4 team in the league, after OKC/BOS/CLE. They seemed wicked excited about a potential Ws-Lakers first round matchup (and I think would root for the Ws pretty much to a man).
Fuck Lakers subreddit, of course. May have to pay them a visit after we stomp them. :-)
I paused the recording of this game about halfway through the 4th quarter, and while I was away from it I learned the outcome 😒. Maybe for the best, though, because I was already bricking it. I am not in playoff conditioning yet. What a game, and what an awesome performance by Jimmy and Steph.
One of my favorite things about the long run of excellence by the W’s is the growing list of heated rivalries they’ve outlived. Memphis will be heard from again, of course, but with Brooks and Jenkins gone the whole vibe is different. It gives me great pleasure to think back on how meteoric they seemed in ’22, and how we (along, less pleasingly, with LA in ’23) made sure they couldn’t break through.
So long as Steph and Dray continue to fend off mortality, we good.
:) I couldn't handle the tension and went downstairs at about the 5 minute mark and washed the dishes.
These big games are closer to excruciating than fun for me these days. But, I do like the wins.
Jokic has three 50+ points games in his career...all losses.
Just watched the ending of the Min-Den game. Man did the refs insert themselves into that one. There were calls made that were...'odd'. The foul called against Denver on the attempted three with time expiring sure looked like a no-call would have been the right call. And not checking a few seconds earlier to get an out-of-bounds call right was costly to Denver as well. Were the refs fatigued or something?