NBA 2018-2019 Season

The Game Room
161

They have a fairly brutal schedule down the stretch. Though beating Indiana and Boston helped. Last I checked a few games ago, it was something like 11 games left against winning teams, while the Rockets only had something like 6 against the same. The Nuggets still have as difficult games: @Indy, Detroit, @Houston, @OKC (all in a row), then @GS, San Antonio, home and home with Portland, @Utah. Not the easiest road home.

GS has: Indy, Detroit, Denver, and the Clippers. Plus a lot of cupcakes.

The Nuggets have played great this year though, and they certainly have a shot at the top seed.

162

Wow, Nuggets got their doors blown off in Indiana last night. It was the 3rd road game in 4 days, so not too concerned. Only a half game behind GSW and a mildly comfortable 3 games up on Houston for the 2 seed.

The playoff teams are basically set for the West. Just need to determine seeding. The East, on the other hand, has a couple teams knocking on the door and any one of Miami, Detroit or Brooklyn could fall out if they slump.

163

The Blazers are pretty solidly in 4th, if they don’t screw the pooch in these last few games. After knocking off Detroit, they host Brooklyn tonight, which should be an easy win, but they’ve been known to choke against bad teams in the past. They may not catch Houston, but who knows.

164

More bad news for the Blazers. Jusuf Nurkic suffered a compound fracture to his left leg during the 2OT game with Brooklyn, and is out for the season. If Portland had any chance at advancing past the first round, this may have killed it. The guy is a monster in the middle and none of the other big men can do what he does.

165

Pacers are on national TV again tomorrow night, facing Paul George and the Thunder on ESPN. Our previous game against them, on the 14th, saw us come back from down 19 to defeat the Thunder for the first time since PG-13 was traded there before last season.

166

They caught Houston. No thanks to the Rockets role players stinking up the gym from outside. Not sure whether the Blazers can hang on, though I think the Rockets may give them some more help with another loss to Denver tomorrow if the Rockets don’t pull their heads from their butts.

Really sucks about Nurkic. Despite how bad the injury looked, the word is that he can make a full recovery, which is fantastic.

167

Tough schedule lately for the Pacers. Every time I turn on ESPN, it seems like they’re playing one or another of the Western Conference’s best: OKC, Denver, Golden State, Portland, the Clippers. Then you’ve got two more with Detroit and two more with Boston. Not easy.

168

Four games out of first spot with only seven games remaining, it doesn’t look like the Raptors will catch the Bucks, despite the former’s walk in the park remaining match-ups against the Knicks, Bulls, Magic, Nets, Hornets, Heat, and Timberwolves.

Home court advantage would have been nice. Some have argued, well, Milwaukee lost in TO, while TO lost in Milwaukee, thereby tossing home court advantage out the window, but, nah, shit’s different in the play-offs: home court, throughout the entire play-offs, would’ve been absolutely key.

Crossing fingers, for the Raptors’ sake, the Pistons don’t make the play-offs, who are currently in a crazy mad dash to make the play-offs with Miami, Brooklyn, Orlando and Charlotte - all of them within 2.5 games of each other.

Some have complained about all the load management Kawhi’s been getting all season, but when you factor his playing only nine games last season, along with their 14-5 record without him on the roster, I have not the slightest problem with his LM. To have Kawhi as rested as possible going into the play-offs is completely in the Raps’ interests.

I’d be surprised if they lost to either Boston or Philly in the play-offs (despite both their obviously talented rosters), but have doubts TO would get past Detroit or Milwaukee.

169

What’s with this trend of home teams wearing dark colors? Thought they traditionally wear white.

170

LeBron is done for the season before April even starts…that’s not going to help against those who said going West would not serve him well.

171

A really horrible game between the Blazers and the Pistons the other night. Combined score for both teams in the 1st quarter was 25 points. :rolleyes: Neither team ever really got rolling, and the Pistons won a game that they should not have been close in. They redeemed themselves against Chicago, anyway. Kantor is really stepping up in the middle, and the rest of the team is also working hard to take up the slack of missing CJ McCollum and Nurc. Evan Turner had a triple-double last night, which was completely out of character for him.

172

The Wizards finally fired their useless shit-for-brains GM Ernie Grunfeld, at least a decade too late. Unfortunately his legacy of clueless idiocy is going to fuck the team for probably another decade.

173

As a fan of the Rockets, and therefore no stranger to albatross contracts, the John Wall extension is breathtaking for how astonishingly bad it is. 4 more years, at near 170 million dollars total cost. It was bad before his Achilles injury and is now probably the worst contract in the NBA.

OTOH, the Wizards still have Beal, and most of their hideous contracts besides Mahinmi’s come off the books at the end of this year. Jabari Parker might not be completely terrible, and if he is, it expires next year anyway. They managed to get rid of Porter’s silly contract. But yeah, Grunfeld is one of the worst GM’s I’ve seen in near any professional sport.

174

Bummer for the Nuggets last night with their loss to the Warriors, though not totally unexpected. Rockets are only a game and a half back, and hopefully the Blazers and Nuggets can beat on each other for a bit. 2 seed isn’t a complete pipe dream for the Rockets, which would have been complete crazy talk back in October. Weird season.

175

Washington is a really snakebitten franchise. Haven’t had 50 regular season wins or an advancement beyond the second round of the playoffs since 1979.

176

Portland and Denver play back-to-back games over the next few days. Gonna be a tough go for both of them.

177

It certainly will be. OTOH, at least both are pretty much assured of first round home court advantage, even if there’s jostling to avoid having to face the Warriors in the 2nd round. Denver -6.5, per ESPN.

I didn’t realize that Portland still won 11 of their last 13 since Nurkic went down. Pretty resilient, especially since McCollum’s been out for a lot of those games too, including tonight’s.

I just hope the Rockets don’t play down to their opponents again, and play tonight’s Knicks game in a manner that allows some rest for their elderly players. They can’t rest Paul, Tucker, or Nene, not with the 2 seed conceivably available, but they ‘should’ be able to beat the Knicks without needing 25+ minutes from any of them.

Hurry up playoffs, already.

In other news, it wasn’t the best night to be a Philly fan. Not only did Milwaukee beat them on their home court, but there was a nice 26-18 foul discrepancy, and a hilarious 43-18 free throw difference. I guess the league has picked their next star.

178

It was a tough game, with Denver containing Lillard and holding him to 14 points. Kantor had another great game, despite being mugged by Jokic, and Turner lit it up for a third game in a row. Unfortunately Seth Curry was out, or they might have pulled it off. Denver was just too strong at the end. We’ll see what happens on Sunday at home.

179

Magic Johnson just stepped down. Seriously, like 10 minutes ago.

“So Magic Johnson just called an impromptu press conference after Luke Walton got done and he announced he’s stepping down as president. Whoa.”

He said he loved Jeanie Buss like a sister. He didn’t mention that he just fucked her like a bitch.

Eta: Lol, just hearing that he didn’t tell Jeanie before telling the press: “I just couldn’t do it.”

What a disaster!

180

Clown shoes. Wonder why he bailed out so abruptly? It’s usually legal trouble or other shenanigans when we see this kind of turnover in other arenas, though at least Magic spared us the, “I just want to spend more time with my family,” schtick.

In other news, the Rockets couldn’t stand prosperity, and choked away an, at times, 15 point lead to lose by a point to the Thunder. Right after the Nuggets master plan collapsed with their losing to the Jazz. 2 seed right for the taking, and now, with the Blazers getting a buzzer beater to come from behind to beat the Lakers, it’s entirely possible the Rockets can fall to the 4th seed in the West.

Got only themselves to blame.