The battle of the bastards
The NBA is coming back and we’re probably going to see an eighth-seed play-in tournament in the Western Conference, but who will make the cut?
By now, we’ve all heard about the NBA’s ‘bubble’ plan that invites 22 teams to Disney World’s Wide World of Sports to play eight more regular season games before the playoffs.
The teams that are invited into the bubble are the 16 playoffs teams plus New Orleans, San Antonio, Sacramento, Portland, Phoenix and Washington. If any of those teams are within four games of their respective eighth seed after eight games, there will be a play-in to determine which team gets into the playoffs.
It’ll have the two teams play a maximum of two games with the current eighth seed needing to win one game and the ninth seed needing to win both games.
The winner of each play-in will receive a one-way ticket to meet either the Los Angeles Lakers or Milwaukee Bucks in a blood bath… congratulations.
Thus I have aptly named it The Battle of the Bastards!
I’m going to focus on the Western Conference because quite frankly, if I told you I was going to break down the intricacies of Orlando versus Washington I doubt you’d have clicked on this article in the first place.
The Knights of the Vale
Time has passed and injuries have healed. Some of these teams battling out for a lesser playoff spot are getting some much-needed help.
When Jon Snow was in a bit of a pickle at the Battle of the Bastards and all seemed lost, the Knights of the Vale came rushing in to save him from a near-inevitable defeat.
The Portland Trail Blazers had a horrible start to the season injury-wise. After trading for Hassan Whiteside with the knowledge that starting centre Jusef Nurkic would be out until after the All-Star Break, they could at least take solace in the fact that it’d open up minutes for their young big; Zach Collins.
Well after 86 minutes of that, the NBA gods said “no, that’s enough of that,” and Collins left a game against the Mavericks with a dislocated shoulder.
To add insult to injury, Rodney Hood played a mere 21 games at the small forward position before suffering a season-ending Achilles injury.
While Hood isn’t coming back for the bubble, Collins and Nurkic returning at full health will make their starting lineup beefier, and their bench is still extremely capable with Carmelo Anthony likely backing up Collins and Trevor Ariza and Whiteside taking a secondary role.
At the trade deadline, the Memphis Grizzlies traded away Jae Crowder, Solomon Hill and the zero-games-played Andre Igoudala for Justise Winslow, Gorgui Dieng and Dion Waiters, although the latter was quickly waived.
With Justise seemingly out for the season, it looked like an investment in the future and that the team didn’t care too much for the playoffs this season.
Crowder was playing real minutes for this team and minutes on the wing can be hard to come by, just ask the Chicago Bulls (lol).
Luckily for Memphis, the COVID-19 pandemic shortened the season and instead of playing out the season without Jae and unsure of when Justise will join his teammates in a baby blue uniform, he’ll likely join them for the eight-game playoff defence stretch and play-in games.
One of the more realistic scenarios of a play-in is the Grizz facing the New Orleans Pelicans and when going against Most Improved Player candidate in Brandon Ingram, so it definitely won’t hurt having a strong defender going at him on that end.
Rickon Stark
At the start of the Battle of the Bastards, Ramsay Bolton let the youngest Stark brother run for his life, crossing the battlefield and to the safety of his older half-brother, Jon Snow.
This obviously didn’t work out well for the poor little plot fodder as Ramsay was shooting arrows at him as he ran. Ramsay is an experienced archer and we had seen throughout the Game of Thrones series that he rarely missed so seeing the first few arrows miss the fleeing Rickon was more a case of the evil Ramsay toying with his prey, as opposed to actually missing.
Enter, the Phoenix Suns.
When the plans for the NBA to resume were released, the first thing people said was something along the lines of: “why are the Suns here?”
Phoenix is currently the 13th seed in the West and is six games behind Memphis right now. If they win all eight of their games, there’s a chance they still miss the playoffs. They’re also missing out on a few free wins against the lesser teams of the league since they’re all eliminated.
With the news that LaMarcus Aldridge is missing the entirety of the Orlando bubble, the Rickon mantra might even be applied to the Spurs now who are looking dangerously thin on the superstar front.
I will caution that last take because as I’ve said on the pod: you don’t want to count out Gregg Popovich until we know for sure the San Antonio playoff streak is over.
Jon versus Ramsay
On a recent episode of The Deep Two NBA Podcast, Dante and I said that a play-in is most likely between Memphis and New Orleans or Portland (sizzling hot takes, I know). Let’s set the table for those matchups:
I would sell my kidney to see Ja Morant and the Grizz play Zion Williamson and the Pelicans. Ja will most likely win the Rookie of the Year award barring something incredible from Zion like averaging a 40–30 for eight games, but what if he loses in a play-in?
What if he’s just accepted the award and had his little victory speech before Zion walks right through NBA Jonas Valančiūnas and Jaren Jackson Jr?
Or, better than that: what if Ja wins the award then takes it to another level in the playoff and we go into the 2020–21 season wondering if Zion’s as good as we were hoping and if we should’ve been more hyped for Ja?
Outside of those two guys, we’ve got two of the best young teams in the league going up against one another which is something we don’t usually get in a playoff-style matchup. Young teams are usually one of the bottom playoff seeds and are just fodder for the first seed in each conference, think about it.
Brandon Ingram has had a breakout season but does it translate to the playoffs or was LeBron right to send him packing for a superstar today?
JJJ was one of the sweetest shooting big men in the league but when the going gets tough, the tough get going and will he be slowed down?
Then there’s Portland, a team who should be a playoff lock if not for the injuries. Will they prove that experience and veteran leadership is better than these upstart teams?
There are a lot of questions, we’re only going to see the answers to a fraction of them and I can’t wait.
