Goeiedag, enchantée and welcome to this week's episode of Eight 2 Four presents: All-NBA Team of the Week. The regular competition is finished, the Play-In games have been played. It is time for the Playoffs. Over the next two months we will see wonderful basketball and you can put money on it that we’ll see some surprises. We’ll see history being written, right in front of our eyes. Over the next 8 weeks, we’ll discuss some of the most impressive performances we’ve seen during the week. But before we get ahead of ourselves, for this week’s episode we have picked 5 players that were incredibly important for their teams in the Play-In games.
PICK #1
Our first pick of the week is LeBron James of the LA Lakers. His game winner against the Golden State Warriors has yet again ignited the GOAT-debate. After being poked in the eye, he shot the game-winning 3 over Curry. He said right after the game that he couldn’t really see properly, saw 3 rims and just aimed for the middle one. The people in the LeBron camp are using this as an example why he is the GOAT but the anti-LeBron people claim that he keeps claiming to perform when hurt or tired or injured. Either way, LeBron is the best player of the last 20 years, this includes Wizards-MJ.
The Lakers weren’t planning on dropping all the way to 7th at the start of the season. Yes, I’m sure they were not going to chase the Jazz to be the number 1 seed by the end of the season, but dropping all the way to the Play-In game? No, the Lakers wanted to play it a bit more safe than that. But then both AD and LeBron got injured and, as much as they tried, the rest of the roster just wasn’t strong enough to hold off the other teams in the West. LeBron was even forced to return earlier than planned to make sure they didn’t drop any further than 7th.
Once it was clear that they had to play the Warriors in the Play-In game, LeBron did what he has done so many times in the past. Game 7 mentality and perform when it counts the most. It was never in doubt that they would win that game, even when they were down double digits. A healthy LeBron is a force to be reckoned with and will go a long way in these Playoffs, being the 7th seed does not matter. The first round against Phoenix will tell us a lot about how his ankle will hold up. If it does, I think the Suns don’t stand a chance. They’ll win 2 games at most. And in the next round await a banged-up Denver or tired Portland, the road the Western Conference Final is wide open.
PICK #2
Our second pick of the week is Ja Morant of the Memphis Grizzlies. At the start of this month, Morant made a bold claim that he’s a top 5 point guard in the league. He received a lot of criticism for making this quote, especially because he struggled a bit to back it up on the court this season. But if there’s one thing that Morant can do, it is to deliver. In the Play-In games against the Spurs and the Warriors he took the team on his back and willed them to the Playoffs.
Against the Spurs, Memphis started really strong and absolutely smashed them in the first quarter. That was enough to walk away with the victory because the rest of the game was the Spurs slowly chipping away at the Grizzlies’ lead. But Ja and his guys held on. In the next game, against the Warriors, there was a similar scenario where the Grizzlies blew the Warriors away in the second quarter but this time, they let Curry come back into the game. Once the game hit overtime, nobody would have given the Grizz a chance but they pulled through anyway, with Morant putting them up by 5 with 2 powerful drives with only 5 seconds left to play.
In the first round of the Playoffs wait the Jazz and, unfortunately, they are just too strong for the Grizzlies. This season, the Jazz won all their games against the Grizzlies and in all of those games they were missing at least one of their star players. But for Morant, triple J and the rest of the team, just making it is a win in itself. Everything else is cream and, hopefully, a learning curve. And, if they push hard enough, they can find themselves walking away with at least one win.
PICK #3
Our third pick of the week is Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics. Despite the whole organisation being ok with missing this year’s Playoffs, Tatum wasn’t. And he dropped 50 on the Wizards to prove it. The win secured Boston a spot in the Playoffs but having to fight it out in a series against the Nets and their Big 3.5. Considering that the Celtics will be missing Jaylen Brown for the whole series and whatever comes next, it will be an incredibly difficult task for the Bean Boys.
In reality, Tatum will have to be unstoppable on both ends of the floor for at least 4 games to stand even a small chance to beat the Nets in a best-of-7 series. Kemba is too unreliable, Marcus Smart is even worse on the offensive end and Evan Fournier is good but no number 2 on a winning Playoff team. As soon as the front office decided to schedule Brown’s surgery now instead of after the Playoffs, we all knew that was them flying the white flag.
But Tatum is not one to give up easily. The 23-year old has been playing at the highest level since he was drafted in 2017. In those 3 years he made the Eastern Conference Finals twice and the semi-finals once. And in all 3 of those seasons he was one of the main guys, sharing the spotlight with Kyrie in the first 2 seasons. If they don’t get past the first round this season, I can imagine that Jayson will be genuinely disappointed. But most winning teams build their wins on big losses, so you can bet on it that Boston will be stronger again next season.
PICK #4
Our fourth pick of the week is Bradley Beal of the Washington Wizards. Russell Westbrook has probably been the most important player on the Wizards the last few weeks but Beal is the absolute star of the team. The Wizards wouldn’t be in the Playoffs without Beal. He just missed out on the scoring title, only scoring .7 points per game less than Steph Curry, and battling him on an injured hamstring until the last game of the regular season.
That injured hamstring played an important part for the Wizards in the Play-In games, keeping Beal to a 22 points against Boston. Westbrook had a bad game as well, quite typical for Westbrook to play bad when it matters, and the Wizards lost the first game against a red-hot Jayson Tatum. The second game, against the Pacers, was much better. The game was over by the third quarter, allowing Beal to rest up a bit before the start of the Playoffs.
That game was played on Thursday, the Wizards start their Playoffs on Sunday, against Philly. That’s the longest break Beal has had in a while, carrying the whole franchise on his back for years now. Against Philly, Beal will need the support of his teammates to be able to cause an upset but, I believe that the Wizards don’t have enough quality or depth on the roster to even steal a single game. Point in case, in January, Beal had a career-high of 60 points against Philly and the Wizards still lost. If Beal doesn’t get the support from his teammates, the Wizards will have to go home early again.
PICK #5
Our fifth pick of the week is Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors. The scoring champion of the regular season did not make it to the Playoffs but I want to take this opportunity to applaud Steph for an incredible season. He has done the impossible with this team, bringing them to the verge of the Playoffs and only tripping right at the very end, pushing the Grizzlies to overtime. It has been a difficult season for Curry, who was ready to compete at the highest level at the start of it. He lost his buddy Klay Thompson with a season-ending injury before they had even played a game and their inexperienced roster struggled to gel into a winning team. Without Curry, the Warriors weren’t winning anything this season.
The absolute low point for the Warriors was a loss in April in Toronto. The Warriors played without Curry and Draymond and lost by 53 points. That’s the third biggest loss in franchise history and the Warriors were quite famous for being bad. Looking at this makes Curry’s incredible season extraordinary. Curry was on record-breaking course this season. He overtook Wilt Chamberlain as the highest scoring Warrior in franchise history. He passed Reggie Miller on 3s made all-time. He scored more than 200 threes in a season, for the 8th season in row. He scored 96 3s in one month, an NBA-record. And he won the scoring title scoring more 3s than 2s.
Hopefully the Warriors front office can make the roster more competitive next season because a Curry playing at this kind of level needs to be able to play for the title each season. This is the second season that the Warriors are missing out on due to injury, hopefully next year they’ll have a bit more luck. I believe that they have some difficult decisions to make and have to move on from Wiggins, Oubre and maybe even Wiseman unless they can fit him in during the off-season. If they luck out in the lottery, they’ll have the Wolves draft pick to use in a trade as well. A lot of work to be done, but they have plenty of time to prepare.
This is our All-NBA team of the Week. Please share our podcast and give us 5 stars. If you have any questions, you can contact the show on eight2fouroffice@gmail.com. Thank you for listening, ballers out!
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