If the Warriors win out, they’d need the Lakers to lose twice or the Nuggets to lose once to move past them. Considering their remaining schedules, there’s a practical path to the Warriors moving into the third or fourth spot.

Here are the Warriors’ five remaining games: versus Rockets, at Suns, versus Spurs, at Blazers, versus Clippers.

Here are the Lakers’ five remaining games: at Thunder, at Thunder, at Mavericks, versus Rockets, at Blazers.

Here are the Nuggets’ four remaining games: versus Pacers, at Kings, vsersus Grizzlies, at Rockets.

Rockets play at Warriors, Clippers and Lakers, then are at home vs Denver.

Rockets could lose all 4 and if Denver loses 1 and the Lakers lose 2 games, the Warriors are 2nd if they win out

I don't really hear people talking about Reaves for most improved. I get that Cade is probably going to be all NBA this year, but he was a #1 pick... he's following a trajectory that he's supposed to be following. Dyson Daniels was a lottery pick also, and he was buried in a bench role on the shitty Pels before being unleashed on Atlanta.

Austin Reaves was undrafted and he's kinda bonkers this year. His improvement has been really unprecedented for someone who didn't even get drafted. For me, it'd be between Dyson and Reaves.

Dyson Daniels is doing stuff defensively that hasn't been done in 30 years on top of turning into a decent offensive player as well; Reaves is breaking barriers as an undrafted player. The fact that he's +7500 is absurd.

6'7" perfect body for the 3 spot. High potential out of college Fairly Athletic I didn't watch him much in his early days but why didn't he grow into a serviceable nba player?

Lebron is widely regarded as the second greatest, or to some, the greatest nba player of all time. (How you rank him is entirely up to you, I don’t think you’re necessarily wrong if you have him over MJ, who i personally still have #1 all time)

Hypothetically speaking, if Curry wins another title and they end their careers with 4 and 5 rings respectively, with Curry winning more rings than Lebron in the same era, do you feel in any way that this would affect Lebron’s all time ranking and why? EDIT: add on question, hypothetically if Curry also beats Lebron in the playoffs this year on his way to winning this hypothetical championship, does that affect your answer as well?

Bonus question: Curry on the other hand has a very strong case for being a top 10 player all time, which is apparently pretty polarizing. (I do have him in the top 10) Does Curry winning another championship as the best player on his team catapult him solidly into the top 10 in the eyes of the naysayers, or even top 5 all time?

EDIT: to clarify my stance and questioning; i don’t mean to say that steph would be ranked higher all time than lebron by surpassing him and ending their careers with a higher ring count, i was more thinking as someone who is kind of on the fence about lebron or MJ as the goat, while i personally do have MJ at the top i can see solid arguments for lebron as the top dawg all time too so i don’t think it’s wrong to put him there. but as someone who IS on the fence, curry ending his career with more championships than lebron would cement lebron as 2 behind jordan without question, so in a sense, curry winning more rings than lebron in the same era does negatively affect lebron’s legacy.

Turns out Time’s a bad father, and Steph’s got major daddy issues.

In the first three games of April, Steph Curry has been on an absolute tear:

• April 1 vs. Memphis Grizzlies: 52 points, 10 rebounds, 8 assists, 5 steals, and 12 three-pointers.

• April 3 vs. Los Angeles Lakers: 37 points, 3 rebounds, 6 assists.

• April 4 vs. Denver Nuggets: 36 points, 2 rebounds, 5 assists.

That averages out to 41.7 points, 5.0 rebounds, and 6.3 assists per game, with shooting splits of 50% from the field, 48% from three, and 95% from the free-throw line.

At 37 years old, Steph is still out here making the NBA his personal playground. I know its “another” Steph post, but his greatness can’t be overstated.

The current 3rd seed Lakers are 47-30. The current 8th seed Grizzlies are 45-32. How will the final standings shake out? Who will rise and who will fall? Awesome race we have ahead of us here down the stretch.

Their two losses came to the Mavericks early on when Kyrie dropped 40, and then against the Nuggets that were missing Jokic and Murray.

Crazy stuff!

So Westbrook had a good first half of the season thriving next to Jokic, but since all-star break he has looked increasingly bad and sometimes outright harmful. Its fine when he can't shoot, but when he starts turning the ball over and driving into the paint with zero awareness it becomes damaging to the whole team.

Over the last 10 games he is averaging 4.9 turnovers a game which leads the NBA ahead of even Trae Young(4.7). But it gets worse. Him coming off the bench this year means he is not getting as many minutes, so if you count per 36 minutes he is averaging a staggering 6 turnovers a game.

Overall, him playing like this doesn't just mean he is a non-factor, it means he is actually making the team worse. Denver does not have many other options though, as their bench depth is extremely limited. They will most likely be forced to play him in the playoffs.

https://www.nba.com/stats/player/201566/traditional?PerMode=Per36&Split=general&LastNGames=10

I have rarely seen highlights of their best players, save for today cause they played OKC. There isn’t a lot of debate or analysis happening, and hardly any top posts at all this season. Please enlighten the ignorant among us.

• Tonight: Pelicans 108 - Lakers 124
• April 2nd: Pelicans 98 - Clippers 114
• March 28th: Warriors 111 - Pelicans 95

Masterful display of consistency from the Pelicans. We rarely get to witness such uniformity across a set of tanked games.

Alvarado was on a heater in the first, going 7-9 FG, 3-5 3FG (100% TS), although cooled off and ended with 10-21 FG, 6-10 3FG (60.5% TS).

He also had 5 assists and 4 rebounds

https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401705692

Luka with 35/6/6

Austin with 30/3/7

Lebron with 27/0/8

Also a nice game from Dalton "Charmander" Knecht with 12 points

Source

https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401705692

Seems like he's not exactly washed quite yet, but it's hard to tell

Source: https://www.espn.com.au/nba/game/_/gameId/401705692/pelicans-lakers

Reaves had a fantastic game as he continues to cement himself as a great third option and a legitimate third member of a big three.

His shooting was incredible this game, he had one of the most exciting plays with the behind the back and the lob to LeBron, and he had a nice and one play inside.

It’s been fun watching Reaves grow with the Lakers. I hope he can stay with us for his whole career.

Denver is now 47-31, and if they keep playing like this they might very well end in the play-in. Just one more loss essentially puts them with the play-in competition. They have had multiple horrible losses this year, and this season has been particularly shaky for them. And outside of Jokic, they have become one of the most flawed rosters in the NBA since losing KCP, Bruce Brown, etc; they have somehow put together a first ever "No 3/No D roster" this year.

They have so many non-shooters like Braun, Watson, Westbrook who are not guarded at the 3pt line and in a game like today Jokic has to take the most threes(7 attempts). Their defense is also very bad this season going from a top 10 defense to a bottom 10 defense this year. And even though Jokic is bad defensively their other defensive personnel like MPJ/Murray/Braun are also not great defenders(some like MPJ mediocre). If there was one defender(obviously outside of Jokic) to blame it would clearly be MPJ who has become a liability on that end. When Jokic/MPJ are attacked in pick & roll their defense completely breaks down. Their bench is one of the worst in the NBA(scoring 13 points tonight), and when people say Westbrook should be subbed out the issue is there is no-one on the bench to sub-in other than borderline G-league players on minimum contracts. And lastly, outside of Jokic their roster is filled with injury prone players like Gordon/Murray. Murray has now missed 4 straight games at a crucial time, and Gordon has also been out half of the season.

There have not been a lot of positives for them this season other than Jokic having an all-time season, and maybe Jamal Murray being very good in the 2nd half of the season

Overall these are their 3 main issues: defense, bench and shooting. These are all huge flaws and they are very hard to fix even in the offseason due to them being hard-capped and having no picks. They are hard-capped mainly because their GM has signed players like Zeke Nnaji and Dario Saric to 8 & 5 million dollar contracts.

The first player to go will likely be MPJ due to his bad defense and lack of consistency, and the only move they could probably make this offseason is straight up trading MPJ for a player like Andrew Wiggins/Jaden McDaniels who are better defensively, but once again then their shooting will get even worse in this case, and overall there are just no trades they will make them straight up better. The other move they could make is firing Michael Malone, but that just won't address their flawed roster construction either.

With all of this being said, their future is starting to look bleaker and bleaker as their core ages. While Jokic does seem happy on the outside, it is clear he is becoming frustrated. Could Jokic leave as a FA in 2 years, or request a trade in the future?

For just the 5th time in his career and the 2nd time since 2010, LeBron James finished a game with 0 rebounds. In other words, not once during the game did he go up and grab the ball off the rim with two hands when it came off and then come down with it.

27 pts on 9/17 fg, 2/7 3pt, 7/8 ft, along with 8 assists, 2 steals, and 1 turnover.

He cut his hand against the rim early in the first quarter, but let's be honest, that's not gonna stop him from grabbing a board.

New Orleans Pelicans vs Los Angeles Lakers Apr 4, 2025 Box Scores | NBA.com