I almost went with “World B. Wrong” but we don’t do nuance here at Razz…
If it couldn’t get any worse for the Mavs, who are still reeling from the catastrophic Luka trade to the immediate catastrophic injury to Anthony Davis and now this, what appears to be a catastrophic injury to Kyrie Irving. Yes, if you were wondering, this deserves three catastrophics (four, now). I mean, it couldn’t get any more worse than this, oh wait, Jaden Hardy went down too in the same game? Well, Hardy is no Irving, but you get the drift, I’m pretty much certain now that the Mavs season is cooked… even if you give the best time table to AD, is there enough time to make moves in the standings out in the West? I don’t think so, but on the fantasy side of things, look to Max Christie, Dinwiddie and Exum to absorb some of those minutes. And are we going to see P.J. Washington handle the ball? Klay? If this were the Celtics or Lakers, definitely get out your popcorn, but you can’t help but feel sorry for the fans… so maybe depression popcorn.
So the Thunder are still rolling, they have now reached 50 wins on the season before any team has reached 40, and of course they have the best point differential in history. I know there’s some aggregated discourse on how good this team actually is and if they are favorites… do we think it’s a disappointment if they don’t make the finals? Yeah, you could say that, but amid the hot takes, I think we can leave some room here and not be surprised if they don’t quite make it. It’s still a very young team, and ultimately time will tell.
SGA, by the way, casually dropped 51 points with 5 rebounds and 7 assists. This is his fourth 50-point game for the season and, ahem, career and he’s averaging 34/5/6 on 65.7% TS the past 35 games. While I’ve stated many times that if Jokic continues to average near a triple-double and keep the Nuggets in the top-3 in standings, I don’t see how he doesn’t get the MVP, but you can’t ignore the media, the storylines, trends and the fact that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is being heralded much more through those channels. I think there are merits to those arguments, but I simply cannot say that 32/5/6 on 52% is better than 29/13/10 on 57%, no matter how many defensive metrics you throw at me.
And not for nothing, in the loss against the Thunder, Ausar Thompson had a great line, going 17/6/5/3/1.
Zaccharie Risacher continues to be a great pick up from the draft and had 104% TS with 4 steals on 27 points. On the flipside, one pick that has not worked out has been Houston’s Reed Sheppard. Being undersized a bit, he was drafted as shooter (I think a good ceiling is maybe Lou Williams?) and has been struggling the entire year, but showed a flash last night going 10-17 from the field, good for 25 points along with 5 assists.
Zach LaVine in his last four games? Pretty good, he’s shooting 63% from the field (41/65) and 67% from three point.
Jay is a longtime Razzball everything who consumes an egregious amount of Makers Mark as a vehicle to gain wisdom and augment his natural glow. Living in the D.C. area, he also likes spending time visiting the local parks and feeding lettuce to any turtles he encounters, including Mitch McConnell.
