5 Big stories from le NBA season and Playoff predictions.

Not particularly dissuaded from half-baked preseason nonsense preds (aka the Pelicans and Suns being contenders), we’re back unabated with a vengeance. What should the most memorable stories of ’24/25′ relative to the playoffs approaching be (beyond the Luka trade that people still won’t shut the hell up about)? Who are our playoff darlings and who the overrated schmucks?

1. The abomination also known as the Phoenix Suns were the worst NBA disappointment of the 21st century

When you think of underachieving healthy teams whose potential people grossly overestimated, the 2013 Lakers come to mind quite saliently. Yet this team a) included a 49 year old Steve Nash, b) had a washed up Dwight Howard that somehow made 3rd team all NBA, and c) for fuck’s sake, they made the playoffs. Maybe the Bubble or Lob Era Clippers? They choked in the Conference Semis multiple times, meaning…..they consistently made the playoffs.

If not for that narcissistic brainfart of a GM being paid millions to make decisions for the Mavericks, the Suns’ woeful display would have been the story of the season by a mile. People still trying to convince themselves that Durant was an All-NBA guy is a joke. His legacy wasn’t tainted enough after getting swept by Edwards while his sole reaction was smiling about getting his ass whooped, but managing 36 wins while playing alongside one of the ostensible next faces of the league should bring the disgrace up a notch. Your guess on why the media is so lenient with him is as good as mine. I mean I know it’s because he accepts their podcast and interview invitations but anyway. He’s 37? So is Steph and Bron. Booker transforming from a future MVP to a dude you wonder if he can make another All-Star team before he retires just puts an extra cherry on the expired cake.

Simply unfathomable that this group was so uninspired; whether you accidentally wasted your European Sunday night tuning in to watch one of their early games, or were lucky enough to never watch a minute of this absolute catastrophe, let us all take a break from talking about Nico Harrison to properly appreciate the absurdity of what unfolded in the desert.

2. The Knicks might be…alright?

On the other side of the tracks, we had a popular talking point which probably deserved much less spotlight. Sure, the Knicks did not look good, but anybody who expected this collection of players to play the beautiful off-ball version of the sport….didn’t realize who these players were. One shouldn’t anticipate such a newly formed team to gel as fast, and getting 50 comfortable wins as well as somehow managing to reach the playoffs fully healthy despite their maniac coach playing the starting five 42 minutes a game should render them dangerous as hell. Towns balled out. Anunoby balled out. Bridges had a couple of games shooting 17/19 from the floor. Brunson is clutch player of the year. Hart is messing around and getting triple doubles. It’s the first year of this squad’s rendition. Can we calm down with calling them a bust and labelling the Bridges trade an irreversible disaster? Teams playing uglier basketball have won chips after all. That looming Celtics- Knicks series could be a damn classic.

3. The Cavs should prove they are not the 2015 Atlanta Hawks before they continue to complain about being labeled as a 2015 Hawks cautionary tale

People seem to be taking an unnecessary amount of offense when the Cavs are brought up in the ‘cool story bro regular season darling that will choke’ conversation. Then someone will come in yelling: ‘The Hawks didn’t have Evan Mobley”. How sure are we that the Mobley-Allen duo is superior to the Millsap-Horford one back then? Garland’s awful stats from last season’s playoff run could just be a case of a young guy requiring the reps, but they could also be another case of the Kyle Lowry playoff syndrome.

Sure, the Hawks didn’t have Donnie Mitchell or anybody remotely as competent on the front of past playoff heroics. But before people keep crying about how their 7/1 odds to lift the trophy are nuts and lacking in appreciation for Kenny Atkinson’s juggernaut, you’d rather wait and see it to believe it.

On another note, every second analyst said they’d be favorites against the Celtics….up until they went on a 4 game losing streak. One damn losing streak near the end of the season. Everything they saw for 60 games dissolved before their eyes. How recency bias affects all these ‘professionals’ will never cease to surprise.

4. The hypocricy of hating the 48-34 Grizz & 49-33 Wolves, while loving the 50-32 Clippers and Lakers.

Look, I got nothing against this incredible shocker of a Clippers season, as will become obvious from the predictions below. It’s only a little bit contrived how everyone’s pouring praise on the aforementioned geriatric Hollywood teams, whilst pouring buckets of shite on the young pups. I get it, teams with young All-Stars are supposed to take the league by storm and drop 55 win regular seasons. The Grizzlies defense is trash, and they do give a sense of an underachieving sleeping giant. The Wolves vibes and offensive sets equally so. There is however a generous sack of hypocricy in only judging teams based on an expectation formed by recent past’s relative success. Ascension is not linear or uniform. Harden remembering how to play quality basketball and Kawhi coming back from the dead shall be commended as much as Van Gundy’s genius role on that bench.

The Wolves are allowed to get experimental too and sacrifice some wins. Edwards basically shot 40% from three while taking 10 a game. Why not see the glass half-full with some young teams for a change? Wouldn’t you rather people give Durant 1500 tweets to reply to a day than hate on a couple of ascending teams, which, despite playing badly, still nearly got hella close to 50 wins?

5. The West playoffs couldn’t have been set up better if rigged.

The Rockets hit the one opponent that they might actually have a chance against, while the lower-seeded Warriors once again caught the young upstart, promising us a replay of the awfully entertaining Kings Dubs series a few years back. Nuggets-Clippers saga continues. I’m bored to list all the ways in which these two teams are intertwined since the bubble, but do feel free to google up. Edwards simultaneously gets the pleasure of going up against another elderly senior superstar with whom he’ll hopefully trash talk to death, whilst Doncic gets to humiliate Rudy and aforementioned Ant, all in the span of one series. If Lebron ends up getting his butt kicked like KD, I can only hope that he reacts a little differently than seeming super stoked and excited about it. The Thunder will likely destroy the Grizz (hopefully the latter won’t choke and force us to watch Spencer Dinwiddie in a first round melee), although Morant and co. will get their chance to avenge the team that utterly and completely usurped them in the young championship contender juggernaut conversation.

It’s not a stretch to say nobody hates the Thunder more than the Grizz. It’s safe to say noone is a more intriguing player to hound around Steph while blocking away Butler’s drives in the same possession than Amen. It’s a tiny stretch but not crazy to say that Jokic and Kawhi are currently the two most unstoppable forces in ball. It’s silly to assume Ant ain’t dreaming about how to get back at and properly piss off Luka. This sure was a super lame season in many ways, but this first round should more than make up for lost time.

Playoff Predictions

Anyone who ever read my columns knows how I de facto hate favourites. Nonetheless, this time around I cannot ignore how we finally get the chance to see an inevitably competitive and intriguing finals since Lebron brought one to Akron. Barring injuries, noone from the East could really compete with OKC except the Greens. Barring injuries, noone from the West could really compete with the Celts except the Thunder. So here is to a year where we root for the two favourites for the sake of all of us come June. Without further ado:

West First Round: Thunder-Grizz 4-1, Rockets-Warriors 2-4, Nuggets-Clippers 2-4, Lakers-Wolves 3-4

We got 3 of the best 4 teams on one side of the bracket, meaning a potentially undeserving group will come out of the easier side while a currently anticipated Finals Contender won’t even make it out of the 1st round. This is excellent news for both Curry and Bron, and slightly annoying news for the Thunder who will catch their toughest test in the 2nd round.

-The Grizz decide to play defense for Game 3 in Memphis and win big, inspiring them to talk massive trash which in turn inspires Shai to drop 55 on them in Game 4.

-The Rockets win big in Game 1 or 2 where Curry shoots an abysmal 2/23 and people wonder if his knee is bum along with his thumb. Houston’s abominable crunch time offense gets saved once again by another Amen Thompson floater. In the end, having two offensive maestros vs. Sengun trying to go beyond his skillset to keep Houston afloat proves to be an unsustainable recipe for success. If the refs are needed to ensure one last Curry vs. Lebron dance in the 2nd round, they deliver.

-Kawhi miraculously stays healthy for the entirety of the series, proving that his 36 minute nights lately were legit. The Nuggets’ continuing tendency to play bored ball for three quarters, then try to salvage everything in the 4th proves untenable versus Jimmy H’s and Kawhi’s clutch gene. A double OT Game 4 victory for the Clippers goes down the history books. Jokic’s loss in the 1st round paired with Shai winning MVP gets surprisingly little shock value mention, justifiably so since Jokic ends the series averaging 34-14-12.

-Wolves are just too big for the Lakers. Despite Reaves making up for Lebron’s underwhelming and injury ravaged series, a couple of 25 offensive rebound games thanks to Rudy, Naz and Randle give the pups the edge. Notwithstanding the refs doing all they can to deliver us Bron vs. Curry, Doncic still manages to gather 5 techs in 6 games, prompting Nico Harrison apologists to get their bullshit victory lap a few years before Luka gets his first chip in Purple and Gold.

East First Round: Cavs-Heat 4-1/Cavs Hawks 4-0, Celtics-Magic 4-1, Knicks-Pistons 4-1, Pacers-Bucks 4-3

– The Zombie Heat grab an out-of-nowhere Game 2 win prompting people to start the aforementioned ‘Cavs might choke’ conversations. They convincingly take over the rest of the series. /The Zombie Hawks get their bum delivered to them losing the 4 games by a combined 100pts.

– Joe Mazzulla shows his players footage from Soviet Union’s World War II saga. He says yeah, they may have won and helped save humanity in the end, but it’s also kind of a shame that Stalin trusted Adolf and let him first take out a bunch of millions of his men. “We don’t need to keep allowing teams to cause casualties on us, we should be sweeping everyone out the floor”. The Celts still proceed to lose Game 2 in typical Boston fashion, but also do wake up in time to avoid a Game 3 collapse and going down 2-1 to Paolo Banchero’s heatcheck of a series. They slowly and unconvincingly clean things up and prep for the Knickerbockers.

-One part of me is certain the Pistons will put up a fight against an uninspiring and pressure-heavy Knicks sporting a choky first round, while another sees them getting swept by a Bockers team striving to prove everyone they remain the contender we thought them to be. In the end reason and logic prevail, leading to a wholly predictable 4-1. Cade’s introduction to superstardom is simultaneously achieved, as he finishes the series averaging 32-8-9.

-Pacers 4-3 might seem like the least likely scenario, because the longer this series goes, the better the chances of Lillard suiting up, and consequently the better the chances of Giannis’ and Dame’s experience getting the best of Indy. This is possibly the one series where any outcome shouldn’t come as a surprise, from Giannis dominating with 40ppg and taking the Bucks to 4-2 glory singledhandedly, all the way to the Pacers gentlemanly sweeping a tired and injury depleted Bucks team. In the end we’ll pick Pacers only to piss off Giannis as well as jinx the Pacers.

West 2nd Round: Thunder-Clippers 4-2, Wolves-Warriors 4-3

-The Clippers get their chance of a lifetime to prove Shai they’re not that bummed out they traded him along with a bunch of other stuff for Podcast P. Shai gets his chance to show he’s not only the best scorer in basketball, but also a petty revenge maniac with a Balmer chip on his shoulder. The Clippers start out the series playing as the surprisingly superior and more experienced team, only for Kawhi’s availability to be put in question again. The last three games are OKC cakewalks, prompting us to forget the Clippers would have a chance even if Leonard was at 100%.

-Still can’t quite believe I’m picking the Wolves to make the Conference Finals again. Sure, it’s a convenient path to get there, and sure, they could also be wiped off the court by the Lakers and render this entire thing stupid. But the Warriors are old, man. The chances of them getting out of the Houston bloudhounds unscathed, and the duo of Butler and Curry staying healthy seem rather miniscule. In the end, it’s a battle of attrition and Donte Divicenzo’s revenge series gives the Wolves the edge in one of the least memorable 7-game series we have seen.

East 2nd Round: Cavs-Pacers 4-1, Celtics-Knicks 4-3

-Although they seemed to be the Cavslayers during the regular season, the Pacers are the exact type of team that Cleveland can’t quite lose to. The Cavs’ bigs are too much to handle, while Donnie averages 36. Most games are high octane and competitive, but the result feels predetermined much like last season’s Celts/Pacers series.

-The Knicks take humongous offense in everyone picking the Celtics to dismantle them in 5 games, regurgitating how bad a matchup this is for them. Tatum and Brown struggle vs. the Knicks wings for a change. Half the games are Celtic blowouts, the other half are semi-lucky clutch Knicks wins where Brunson catches fire and justifies his Clutch Player of the Year award. In the end we get a classic Game 7, where Bill Simmons shits his pants for the first 38 minutes, only for Tatum and White to take over in the 4th.

West Finals: Thunder-Wolves 4-1; East Finals: Cavaliers-Celtics 2-4

-The Wolves have no chance in this matchup. An Edwards masterpiece gives them one game and another Divincenzo classic almost helps them walk out of Chesapeake with a break in Game 1, but in the end OKC is too deep and too formidable.

-After the Celtics disappoint with a long series against the Knicks, half the NBA analysts pick the home-court advantaged Cavs to pull one on the defending champs. Despite some Mitchell heroics, this matchup once and for all proves that for Cleveland to reach their inexorable potential, Jarrett Allen ought to be traded for a reliable wing. The Cavs spend most of their summer trying to convince Lebron to come back to Ohio for one last dream run.

What Needs to Happen for each of the above failing teams to reach the Finals

Let us fabricate some suspense before our inevitable Finals prediction, by giving plausible scenarios under which each other team could shock the world and go all the way in the playoffs:

-Cleveland Cavaliers: A combination of at least three of the following five needs to be valid–>i) Jaylen Brown’s knee is as bum as the coaching staff worries, ii) K-Porzi gets injured again and tries to stay healthy for Eurobasket, iii) Celtics choke bad a la 2022 Finals, iv)Mobley hits 3 triples a game in the conference finals forcing the Celts to play big, iv) Mitchell scores two buzzer beating shots throughout the series.

-New York Knicks: In all honesty don’t find this unlikely at all. If more than one of the Celtics top 6 are out or relatively banged, I would in fact pick them to take that Semi down. The Cavs would salivate at the possibility, but at full health the Knicks have the size, wing superiority and five-on-five edge to make such a potential series 50-50 at worst.

-Los Angeles Clippers: Kawhi staying healthy. Kawhi’s knees not acting up. Kawhi not deciding that a phantom pain in his knee might imply his old age won’t be as fun unless he takes a seat at the most inopportune time for Steve Ballmer. Kawhi being the bigger man and playing through pain.

-Los Angeles Lakers: I mean, Lebron’s last dance? Doncic’s revenge? And on top of all that a Lakers-Celtics finals being the wet dream of every millionaire NBA-involved officer makes for a hell of a narrative. It would take a little help from the ref friends, Austin Reaves averaging 25 throughout the playoffs, and perhaps OKC being thrown out by the Clippers. But none of that is impossible.

-Denver Nuggets: Not gonna build a convincing argument against the best player in the world, but man if they somehow make it will Mike Malone never find a job again. The only inconceivable part remains how they score consistently against the Thunder in the 2nd round, but last year’s Mavs paved the way of how a Balkan genius can make this juggernaut look vulnerable as hell. The only thing that’s for sure is MPJ needs to keep shooting way more threes.

-Minnesota Timberwolves: Ant’s swag multiplying before our eyes. I could honestly see OKC beating them even if both Chet and J-Dub were banged up for a few games. But if Hartenstein’s playoff injury woes continue and leave the young pups without an inside force to fight with the Minny dinosaurs, this year’s more seasoned wolves could have a puncher’s chance.

-Warriors: Staying miraculously healthy throughout the run, and either catching a non-OKC team in the Conference Finals, or OKC missing one of J-Dub or Shai for more than 5 games in that series. We’ve seen more surprising outcomes and would certainly not rule out that possibility. The further Steph goes, the better off we all are. Damn eye candy that guy is.

-Milwaukee Bucks: Hurts a Greek to say it, but slaying the Cavs and Celtics in consecutive series while your only reliable second banana is recovering from thrombosis and can’t guard an ice cream would probably imply a Giannis performance that instantly lifts him on the top 10 in the all time Pantheon.

-Indiana Pacers: The chance of an incredibly lucky team getting insanely luckier for a second year in a row is non-zero as the Cavs draft luck the previous decade proved, but I’d gladly get a testicle tattoo if they somehow do.

-Houston Rockets: All of the below occur in succession–> Steph gets injured in the 1st round, Lebron/Ant gets injured in the 2nd, Clippers get through a choking OKC, only to lose Leonard in the process. Then they almost beat the Rockets without Leonard but then Harden also goes down in Game 5.

-Grizzlies: Right now this team can’t guard a piece of salami, so let’s first see them stop a single off-ball screen before we talk about contention.

-Detroit Pistons: Zero chance they reach the finals. Their second best scorer is…Malik Beasley.

– Orlando Magic: Zero chance they reach the finals. Their offense is garbage.

-Miami Heat/Atlanta Hawks: It’s more likely that Netanyahu decides to commit suicide and fuck off from the planet.

Finals: Oklahoma City-Boston 4-3

I’ve spent the past two seasons appreciating, yet doubting the Thunder. People exaggerating their ‘depth’, refs allowing them to play fierce D without calling fouls, you call it. Never budged from the belief that the Celtics would repeat, almost comfortably so. At any rate, the ultimate hope was to finally see a real Finals after a series of disappointments the past few years.

They do say you never really appreciate your thoughts and feelings until you put them down into words. It is through this extended moment of contemplation that the matchups become more salient in your head, and you furthermore get to visualize the small market, well-run team finally getting to drink from the chalice.

Wishful thinking thus dictates that we get one of the best Finals transhistorically, and that the small market David hands one to the elite market Goliath. The fact that this David is the odds-on favourite can be ignored for the purposes of narrative. So contrary to all instincts and belief, the best team in the league throughout the past two seasons pulls through and Oklahoma City at last receives the parade senseless Harden trades and devastating Westbrook injuries deprived them of.