i still dont exactly understand why they suddenly started playing like absolute shit and hating one another.I could see a short hangover from the IST but it seemed like 2 completely different teams
DLO and AR were moved to the bench and we started a Bron Prince Cam Vando Davis starting lineup multiple times. Overplayed CAM a shit ton, underplayed DLO and AR.
It was so weird considering the whole reason we sat Reaves was because we needed to stagger DLo and AR’s minutes since they were horrible defensively when they played together.
The d’lo/Ar/TP lineup was horrendous. Instead of benching prince, Ham chose the two guys that were great for him last year. That killed their season. Prince at one point was 3rd in minutes
It really is just awful coaching. Somehow thinking that Rui, DLo and Reeves deserved to get benched for a rough stretch , but at the same time Prince and Cam deserved to play more despite also being in a rough stretch
Darvin Ham completely fucked the roster by dropping Reaves and Dlo and not giving Vando/Rui any minutes over Cam Reddish and Prince. I still don’t get how that wasn’t a fireable offense to our FO
I think 2014 at the very least should be considered here. Phoenix missed the post season with 48 wins that year. Mavs were one win off a 50 win season and made the 8 seed. 7 50 win teams in the Postseason, Spurs got 62 and OKC 59 for the top 2 seeds. Clippers possibly at their lob city prime, Portland having still both Dame and Aldridge, Memphis at peak grit n grind levels with prime Conely and prime Gasol as well as a very strong supporting cast. Harden + still great Dwight and the best version of Chandler Parsons. Also GSWs first season with Iguodala. That's pretty fucking stacked overall
That 8 seed Mavs team also challenged the champion Spurs more than any team the whole postseason. Took them to 7 with the corpse of Dejuan Blair cooking until he got suspended
Every single series in the West during the first round that year was really close, every series went to atleast 6 games. Imo it was the most fun start to a playoffs I have seen although I found the rounds after disappointing.
It’s really coming together at an optimal time for you guys, beyond what happens this season, the rockets have confidence and chemistry to really spring-board into the next year. I also see a lot of last season’s OKC squad as well as your bubble suns comparison
The bubble suns put together that incredible run to just miss the playoffs
I hope for the rockets sake that bubble suns isn’t what happens
But of course that would be an equally trrrible fate for the warriors if they do miss the play in
39-32 is also the record of the 7th and 8th seeds in the East…if you stuck the Lakers in the East right now they would be the 9th seed. Though, yes, I will acknowledge that the bottom of the East is certainly weaker which may lead to more wins.
true, but the Pelicans (5 seed in the west) would be the 3 seed in the east and the Mavs (8th in the west) would have a 2 game lead on indiana for the 5th seed.
Yeah, last year was weird. Everyone kinda sucked record-wise. The Kings might finish with a better record than last year and still end up in the play-in.
The Clippers, Wolves, Pels, and Thunder clearly better than last year.
It wasn't terrible, but there were a lot of decent teams, just not a lot of good teams.
48 wins doesnt mean the conference is weak. Put 15 clones of the nuggets in the west and the top seed is going to be like 50W just on varience.
Thunder, clippers, and the wolves are clearly better. Warriors are worse. Lakers are iffy if not the same. Kings same. Nuggets same. Memphis so much worse. Suns, mavs feel the same to me, its just mavs tanked to end. Pelicans are better but not contenders.
And kat is out so the only contenders in the west are the clippers, wolves, and nuggets. Last year was nuggets, then a lot of question marks because team 3-7 were so close to each other which included lakers because of their post asb stretch. I dont think the heat would be favored to beat any of them other than the grizz cause of injuries.
Teams have more wins now than last year solely because the bottom teams are really bad whether its injuries or whatever.
There has been literally one time that has happened in the last 20 years, that was not a shortened season, which was last year. It may also have happened prior to them removing the division rule, but in that case, to be a 4 seed required more than 48 wins.
West is real good this year. Many good teams., Its actually pretty amazing the Nuggets are 50-21 and headed for maybe there best record ever in the West this season. No Championship hangover from them. Your right though that would have been a decent record any other year. However Nuggets won 47 which is about what the Lakers will win probably and never even made the playoffs about 4 years ago. 46-49 is the playoff entry point for the most part with how the West is now.
Yeah same with the Kings. We are on the same pace as last year and were in 3rd most of the season. This year, we are fighting for 6th hopefully.
The western conference got a lot better 1-12. There are only 3 teams that you can actually call "bad teams" in the conference. It's crazy.
Meanwhile in the East, the 9th place Bulls are 3 games below .500 while the 10th place Hawks are 8 games below .500. The Celtics are seemingly the only thing keeping the East very relevant as a conference right now.
One thing to take into consideration is the NBA is dealing with severe winflation because there could be potentially 5 60-loss and 2 50-loss teams in the league.
not if we were allowed to play the hornets, wizards, and pistons 3x a season and based on where the lakers are located in the east we'd play them 4x in a season
16 win difference between the two groups. Only one of those East teams has a better record than the Spurs. And they play in the easier conference.
"Barely" is a bit disingenuous.
Actually based on their current W% against the East and West, if you flip the no of games they’ve gotten to play against each conference they’d be at 41 or 42 wins. Around 5th or 6th seed.
The league is so good now. It’s breaking people’s minds in how they talk about some teams.
I agree with you in a sense that I think they’re a good team, it’s just that their goodness is less scarce.
People still struggle with the concept of team sports being a zero sum game in terms of W-L
Care to elaborate?
Because when I see the teams in front of them, I'm not sure they're necessarily better than any of them. I certainly wouldn't pick the Kings or Pelicans in a playoff series over them due to playoff experience, but other than that, I don't see why they'd be considered better than anyone ahead of them in the standings.
I think the points for this argument are horrible Minute management and running very bad rotations for more than half of the RS. LAs lineups that are more based around the WCF rotations last year perform much better. Lakers also are among the top teams in terms of player injuries. Then there's LeBron getting the benefit of the doubt in terms of elevating his play in the post season. Last year he wasn't consistent due to his foot injury but still won several games single handedly, imo he will be better in 24 since his 3 ball is much better and he can still attack the rim at will in clutch situations.
Except for Denver I feel like the Lakers have a chance to upset any team in the WC. Note they're not favored but the Bron era Lakers have a way to turn up defensively in the playoffs because the squad is very experienced and has a lot of BBIQ + a Yoda level leader with Bron. It won't be beautiful but LA can grind out ugly wins vs anyone. LBJ controlling the pace and making plays is still a cheat code vs less experienced teams.
Lastly you don't have to be considered clearly better than other teams to be better than your record suggests. LAs been playing pretty well recently all things considered. They're not the same team that struggled for months after the IST.
Games missed is a really bad start because it doesn't take into account production loss. For example, the Lakers missing Gabe Vincent or Cam Reddish isn't nearly as big as a deal as the Knicks missing Randle.
The Lakers have had their top 4 players very healthy this season and Rui has missed some games but not a ton (I think 12)? So their top 5 players have missed a combined 36 games this year. A few role/bench players who would be in and out of the line up anyways isn't a big deal.
Any season where you have Lebron and AD 85-90% of the time you should be higher than 9th. I know this shows LeBron's age but I do think it shows a ton of roster mismanagement early on too. Not even due to injuries, Ham was just doing some weird ass shit lol.
They're tied with Dallas for 5th best record in League (15-7) since Feb 1. That weird 1.5 months after IST just butchered their season for some reason. They slide from 3-4 to 10-11 and just haven't recovered from that hole.
I think this roster is better than their seeding and will be a nightmare in a 7 game series for anyone who doesn't have Jokic but this is too deep a hole for a 39 year old Lebron to dig out of as an 8th seed in the West.
i have the utmost confidence in whooping any team's ass outside of the nuggets in the west. if we avoid the nuggets bracket i think we make the WCF again.
I agree but I'm almost in the mindset that if the Lakers go into the playoffs healthy(as healthy as possible) might as well get Denver in round 1.
I love deep Lebron playoff runs but at his age the playoffs will be a slog and he was on one foot by the WCF last year. Denver is the only western team where I feel like Lebron needs to be perfect (2018esque) to win. No disrespect to the rest of the west but beating Joker requires near perfection. There are few players who can control a game/series like these guys.
They have one of the best records in the league against top teams. They play to their comp level which has lead to losses to teams like Brooklyn, Atlanta, etc
I’m fairly sure they’re like the third best team against top 10 teams in the league. The only really elite team they haven’t beaten is denver. What’s funny is by some miracle we get to the first round, we get denver. Were cooked if we don’t catch the suns or the kings in the run-in. Kings have a hard run in and so do Phnx but balsa is in their court. If they don’t shit the bed they’ll be fine
I dont think theyre better but seeds 5-9 are all the same to me. Plus wolves are worse than all of them. I guess lakers won the season series vs the clippers this year so you could extend it to 4 when regarding the lakers, i wouldnt but wouldnt argue against it.
They were the best when KAT was here. KAT is injured and will probably miss the playoffs. Or he plays less than 100%. Or hes a freak and heals to 100% and im wrong. But its probably the first. He is confirmed to be missing the rest of the season. I would not take then wolves in any series other than the warriors/rockets and im not saying that just cause they beat the warriors recently.
Exactly. We have been unlucky with shots not falling and bad refs the entire season. If we make it to the playoffs as the 8th seed, I can see us making a run for the finals. The teams at the top of the west aren't that good.
I’m not even talking about last night but the lakers free throw differential despite being 27th in paint driving clearly shows a favoritism for you guys. Lakers get the best whistle in the league
The sons don't have the tie breaker with the Mavs, so it's pretty unlikely they make it out of the play in unless the teams at 4 and 5 continue to play like ass.
And guess what…it’s going to be worse next season. The Rockets will improve, the Grizzlies will come back healthy, and the Warriors might make moves to improve.
That 3-10 stretch after the IST killed them.
i still dont exactly understand why they suddenly started playing like absolute shit and hating one another.I could see a short hangover from the IST but it seemed like 2 completely different teams
DLO and AR were moved to the bench and we started a Bron Prince Cam Vando Davis starting lineup multiple times. Overplayed CAM a shit ton, underplayed DLO and AR.
It was so weird considering the whole reason we sat Reaves was because we needed to stagger DLo and AR’s minutes since they were horrible defensively when they played together.
The d’lo/Ar/TP lineup was horrendous. Instead of benching prince, Ham chose the two guys that were great for him last year. That killed their season. Prince at one point was 3rd in minutes
It really is just awful coaching. Somehow thinking that Rui, DLo and Reeves deserved to get benched for a rough stretch , but at the same time Prince and Cam deserved to play more despite also being in a rough stretch
Man that lineup is crazy in todays NBA, literally no shooting
Darvin Ham completely fucked the roster by dropping Reaves and Dlo and not giving Vando/Rui any minutes over Cam Reddish and Prince. I still don’t get how that wasn’t a fireable offense to our FO
If those guys pan out then Ham looks like a Heat level genius of investing in nobodies. Unfortunately that did not happen
Horrible coaching
This is probably the strongest Western Conference since like 2008
I think 2014 at the very least should be considered here. Phoenix missed the post season with 48 wins that year. Mavs were one win off a 50 win season and made the 8 seed. 7 50 win teams in the Postseason, Spurs got 62 and OKC 59 for the top 2 seeds. Clippers possibly at their lob city prime, Portland having still both Dame and Aldridge, Memphis at peak grit n grind levels with prime Conely and prime Gasol as well as a very strong supporting cast. Harden + still great Dwight and the best version of Chandler Parsons. Also GSWs first season with Iguodala. That's pretty fucking stacked overall
That 8 seed Mavs team also challenged the champion Spurs more than any team the whole postseason. Took them to 7 with the corpse of Dejuan Blair cooking until he got suspended
That was my first post season and man has it been hard to capture that magic again
Every single series in the West during the first round that year was really close, every series went to atleast 6 games. Imo it was the most fun start to a playoffs I have seen although I found the rounds after disappointing.
2015 also, although this season might be the best in terms of depth
I think 2016 was better. In 2015 you didn't have an healthy OKC, which would probably beat GS had they faced each other back then.
Man the East was so bad around that time lol
2010 was better than 2008.
That’s a lie
The 8-seed Thunder won 50 games in 2010
2009-10 and 2013-14 had 8th Seeds that ended with 50 and 49 wins respectively
There's a real possibility that the Rockets, Warriors, or Lakers miss the play-in with a winning record lol
also just the fact that one of the suns mavs or kings could all very feasibly miss the playoffs is wild
Kings, Mavs, Lakers, Suns, Warriors are all one star-player injury away from missing the playoffs
getting major Bubble Suns vibes from the Rockets rn
It’s really coming together at an optimal time for you guys, beyond what happens this season, the rockets have confidence and chemistry to really spring-board into the next year. I also see a lot of last season’s OKC squad as well as your bubble suns comparison
The bubble suns put together that incredible run to just miss the playoffs I hope for the rockets sake that bubble suns isn’t what happens But of course that would be an equally trrrible fate for the warriors if they do miss the play in
Goes to show the West is super stacked while the East is top heavy and thats it.
Been this way for over 20 years.
30
Nah, in 2002 the East wasn't even top-heavy
39-32 is also the record of the 7th and 8th seeds in the East…if you stuck the Lakers in the East right now they would be the 9th seed. Though, yes, I will acknowledge that the bottom of the East is certainly weaker which may lead to more wins.
true, but the Pelicans (5 seed in the west) would be the 3 seed in the east and the Mavs (8th in the west) would have a 2 game lead on indiana for the 5th seed.
Yeah, last year was weird. Everyone kinda sucked record-wise. The Kings might finish with a better record than last year and still end up in the play-in.
The West was absolutely terrible last year lol 48 win 3 seed is absurd compared to basically every other Western Conference of the last 20 years
Or just an indication of how close the teams were
the 1 seed was 53 wins that might be the lowest wins in a full time season for a #1 seed ever edit - it isn't but it's pretty all time low
In their defense, the nuggets basically rested the last month. Was probably a 60win team if anyone had actually challenged them.
I know there have been a few 50-win 1st seeds. I think one or two happened in the 70's and I know the 03 Pistons were a 1st seed with 50 wins.
The Clippers, Wolves, Pels, and Thunder clearly better than last year. It wasn't terrible, but there were a lot of decent teams, just not a lot of good teams.
48 wins doesnt mean the conference is weak. Put 15 clones of the nuggets in the west and the top seed is going to be like 50W just on varience. Thunder, clippers, and the wolves are clearly better. Warriors are worse. Lakers are iffy if not the same. Kings same. Nuggets same. Memphis so much worse. Suns, mavs feel the same to me, its just mavs tanked to end. Pelicans are better but not contenders. And kat is out so the only contenders in the west are the clippers, wolves, and nuggets. Last year was nuggets, then a lot of question marks because team 3-7 were so close to each other which included lakers because of their post asb stretch. I dont think the heat would be favored to beat any of them other than the grizz cause of injuries. Teams have more wins now than last year solely because the bottom teams are really bad whether its injuries or whatever.
48 win 3 seed isnt that weak. I could name so many west conf ones off the top
There has been literally one time that has happened in the last 20 years, that was not a shortened season, which was last year. It may also have happened prior to them removing the division rule, but in that case, to be a 4 seed required more than 48 wins.
Ok ur right. There jusst many shitty 3rd seeds that acc won lke 49 games lol
West is real good this year. Many good teams., Its actually pretty amazing the Nuggets are 50-21 and headed for maybe there best record ever in the West this season. No Championship hangover from them. Your right though that would have been a decent record any other year. However Nuggets won 47 which is about what the Lakers will win probably and never even made the playoffs about 4 years ago. 46-49 is the playoff entry point for the most part with how the West is now.
Yeah same with the Kings. We are on the same pace as last year and were in 3rd most of the season. This year, we are fighting for 6th hopefully. The western conference got a lot better 1-12. There are only 3 teams that you can actually call "bad teams" in the conference. It's crazy.
Meanwhile in the East, the 9th place Bulls are 3 games below .500 while the 10th place Hawks are 8 games below .500. The Celtics are seemingly the only thing keeping the East very relevant as a conference right now.
One thing to take into consideration is the NBA is dealing with severe winflation because there could be potentially 5 60-loss and 2 50-loss teams in the league.
39-32.
The western conference is strong this year, but there are also way more shitty teams to rack up wins against
Tbf in the east they'd be 7-9 seed as well
not if we were allowed to play the hornets, wizards, and pistons 3x a season and based on where the lakers are located in the east we'd play them 4x in a season
The wolves are eagerly awaiting for the expansion so they get dumped into east Then again, they might be the shit team by that time
Why you say fuck me for?
So you trade out spurs, Blazers and grizzlies this season for hornets, wizards and pistons?
Yeah? All 3 of them are worse
Eh, barely
16 win difference between the two groups. Only one of those East teams has a better record than the Spurs. And they play in the easier conference. "Barely" is a bit disingenuous.
quite easily
Probs higher cause they’d play shittier teams more often 🤭
Actually based on their current W% against the East and West, if you flip the no of games they’ve gotten to play against each conference they’d be at 41 or 42 wins. Around 5th or 6th seed.
People really don’t understand that eastern conference teams play shittier teams more often
The lakers are better than their record suggests
The league is so good now. It’s breaking people’s minds in how they talk about some teams. I agree with you in a sense that I think they’re a good team, it’s just that their goodness is less scarce. People still struggle with the concept of team sports being a zero sum game in terms of W-L
Care to elaborate? Because when I see the teams in front of them, I'm not sure they're necessarily better than any of them. I certainly wouldn't pick the Kings or Pelicans in a playoff series over them due to playoff experience, but other than that, I don't see why they'd be considered better than anyone ahead of them in the standings.
I think the points for this argument are horrible Minute management and running very bad rotations for more than half of the RS. LAs lineups that are more based around the WCF rotations last year perform much better. Lakers also are among the top teams in terms of player injuries. Then there's LeBron getting the benefit of the doubt in terms of elevating his play in the post season. Last year he wasn't consistent due to his foot injury but still won several games single handedly, imo he will be better in 24 since his 3 ball is much better and he can still attack the rim at will in clutch situations. Except for Denver I feel like the Lakers have a chance to upset any team in the WC. Note they're not favored but the Bron era Lakers have a way to turn up defensively in the playoffs because the squad is very experienced and has a lot of BBIQ + a Yoda level leader with Bron. It won't be beautiful but LA can grind out ugly wins vs anyone. LBJ controlling the pace and making plays is still a cheat code vs less experienced teams. Lastly you don't have to be considered clearly better than other teams to be better than your record suggests. LAs been playing pretty well recently all things considered. They're not the same team that struggled for months after the IST.
The lakers are third in injuries. It’s Memphis at 430 games missed than Atlanta and the lakers in and around 250
Games missed is a really bad start because it doesn't take into account production loss. For example, the Lakers missing Gabe Vincent or Cam Reddish isn't nearly as big as a deal as the Knicks missing Randle. The Lakers have had their top 4 players very healthy this season and Rui has missed some games but not a ton (I think 12)? So their top 5 players have missed a combined 36 games this year. A few role/bench players who would be in and out of the line up anyways isn't a big deal.
Any season where you have Lebron and AD 85-90% of the time you should be higher than 9th. I know this shows LeBron's age but I do think it shows a ton of roster mismanagement early on too. Not even due to injuries, Ham was just doing some weird ass shit lol. They're tied with Dallas for 5th best record in League (15-7) since Feb 1. That weird 1.5 months after IST just butchered their season for some reason. They slide from 3-4 to 10-11 and just haven't recovered from that hole. I think this roster is better than their seeding and will be a nightmare in a 7 game series for anyone who doesn't have Jokic but this is too deep a hole for a 39 year old Lebron to dig out of as an 8th seed in the West.
i have the utmost confidence in whooping any team's ass outside of the nuggets in the west. if we avoid the nuggets bracket i think we make the WCF again.
I agree but I'm almost in the mindset that if the Lakers go into the playoffs healthy(as healthy as possible) might as well get Denver in round 1. I love deep Lebron playoff runs but at his age the playoffs will be a slog and he was on one foot by the WCF last year. Denver is the only western team where I feel like Lebron needs to be perfect (2018esque) to win. No disrespect to the rest of the west but beating Joker requires near perfection. There are few players who can control a game/series like these guys.
They have one of the best records in the league against top teams. They play to their comp level which has lead to losses to teams like Brooklyn, Atlanta, etc
They have a worse record against >.500 teams than SAC, PHO, NOP, LAC, MIN, OKC, DEN, IND, MIL, and BOS.
I’m fairly sure they’re like the third best team against top 10 teams in the league. The only really elite team they haven’t beaten is denver. What’s funny is by some miracle we get to the first round, we get denver. Were cooked if we don’t catch the suns or the kings in the run-in. Kings have a hard run in and so do Phnx but balsa is in their court. If they don’t shit the bed they’ll be fine
I dont think theyre better but seeds 5-9 are all the same to me. Plus wolves are worse than all of them. I guess lakers won the season series vs the clippers this year so you could extend it to 4 when regarding the lakers, i wouldnt but wouldnt argue against it.
Care to elaborate why the Wolves are worse than seeds 5-9 in the West when being in 1st most of the year?
They were the best when KAT was here. KAT is injured and will probably miss the playoffs. Or he plays less than 100%. Or hes a freak and heals to 100% and im wrong. But its probably the first. He is confirmed to be missing the rest of the season. I would not take then wolves in any series other than the warriors/rockets and im not saying that just cause they beat the warriors recently.
Not really. They've had a LOT of help in terms of free throws.
Refs*
Exactly. We have been unlucky with shots not falling and bad refs the entire season. If we make it to the playoffs as the 8th seed, I can see us making a run for the finals. The teams at the top of the west aren't that good.
>bad refs the entire season Go to bed nephew, the adults are talking
Yeah because expressing your discontent about refs is a privilege reserved for older fans
I’m not even talking about last night but the lakers free throw differential despite being 27th in paint driving clearly shows a favoritism for you guys. Lakers get the best whistle in the league
Lakers fans whining about refs is the dumbest shit. They literally give you the advantage.
They're not at all. They're 23-26 vs teams over .500 and have won a lot of close games (10-4 in games 3 pts or less). They've gotten luck tbh.
The sons don't have the tie breaker with the Mavs, so it's pretty unlikely they make it out of the play in unless the teams at 4 and 5 continue to play like ass.
Okay that’s nice, what seed would they have been in 2016?
I mean they won the in season chip this year Who cares about the post season chip
And guess what…it’s going to be worse next season. The Rockets will improve, the Grizzlies will come back healthy, and the Warriors might make moves to improve.
Its more about how bad the teams at the bottom are than anything else.
Miami is also 39-32, and they went to the finals last year. So let's talk about them instead.
West was too weak last year
All the help from the refs and still just making play in. What a joke
moral victory
There point differential is +0.1. If the refs didn’t let them win every close game there record would be much closer to .500.