Blazers now 1 game clear of the 3rd. Have they played there way into being a dark horse coming out of the west?
No. They’re not getting past one or both of HOU and GSW. But they’re in the next group of teams.
The simulations show them with 3% chance of winning the conference, 1% to win championship, up from 0 a couple weeks ago. What’s making them play so much better is the return of good defense.
I owe them an apology. I wrote the most heavy-handed piece I’ve written about them last year when they washed out of the playoffs. I called them NBA Jam (with CJ and Dame as the only offense). They had the lowest post-season assist rate of a backcourt in modern NBA history. But now the defense is better.
Dame goes on ridiculous stretches. We don’t talk about it much, b/c Curry’s in a league of his own when he gets hot, but Dame’s the most fun player in the league when he gets hot. We have this preconceived notion of how flawed they are from a cap standpoint, and they’re not built in an ideal way, and similar to TOR and how we’ve talked about them so long, but we need to give them credit for holding there.
Yeah, not
totally ideal to be paying Evan Turner 17M for the next 2+ years.
Defense they were top 3-4 in the beginning of the year, then got worse and bottomed out in JAN. But how did they do that?
In QSQ Quantified Shot Quality (2nd spectrum shot quality, basically what we’d expect eFG% based on how/where the shots are taken, not who shot it or opposing D), they are 1st in the league, even in their “bad” months of JAN. Because of the style they play, even when the defense is not getting good results, like in JAN, they’re still keeping with the principles that make them among the best in the league…
They drop Nurkic... Drop the bigs into the lane on the P&R, and ask the guards to fight over the screen and challenge from behind. Now the plan is “we don’t expect the backcourt to keep guys in front, you just have to hustle and get back in the play when you can.” They’re daring other teams to take suboptimal shots. They’re not getting turnovers, they’re not getting blocks, just having teams take shots from difficult situations.
Only 20th time since the merger that a team has gone from Bottom 10 in Def Eff. to Top 5 next season.
We thought we knew the book on these guys, bad D and Dame and CJ on O, and it's hard to take them seriously because we see that they take
hard shots. It’s hard to count on those hard shots day in and day out. It’s a gamble, welcoming risk that good teams don’t do.
Who do we see with a potential for upset and why in the West playoffs (aside from GSW and HOU)?
MIN and Spurs slipping, but everyone else is playing well.
UTH was 10th in the west, went 15-2, and are still in 10th.
LAL, if in the East, would be solidly in the playoff race. But they’re not close.
NOP and UTH have been incredible, but it may not matter as they play a murderous schedule the next couple of weeks.
I think MIN will, b/c they did enough before Butler got hurt, but look at SAS. They have the hardest schedule remaining…average team has a 58% win % (which would be the 4 seed of the playoffs)
It’s just a rough time right now if you have a tough schedule, if you have hurt players…it’s really fun to watch. If you know which teams are going to be in the finals, at least there’s something compelling right now.
MIN: Butler injury
NOP: Boogie injury
POR: Dame missed a bit
Spurs w/o Kawhi and others
Jazz Gobert
Thunder Roberson
Boring answer, but Thunder and Spurs (which entails Kawhi coming back in a big way). Thunder are 2-1 against W’s and got a proof of concept. Just like last year when the Spurs did well in the reg season and carried it over until kawhi got hurt in the playoffs.
One of the reasons there’s such a logjam is that everyone has their flaws.
Chances to win it all: Rockets 43%, Warriors 24%, TOR 18%=
