The NBA’s Preseason is finally over. Naturally, then, it’s time to rank some teams.
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Tag: Toronto Raptors
Atlantic Division Preview: Last Year’s – and Potentially This Year’s – NBA Champs
Welcome to the sixth of the Corner Three 2019-2020 NBA division-by-division season previews. In each of these previews, we use RJ Garcia’s player-by-player ratings (based on on/off metrics and career trajectory) and per-game minutes projections (taking into account potential minutes lost to injury) to project overall team quality for the upcoming season. RJ and Derek Reifer also provide their own analyses and commentary to provide any context and additional insights.
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Who, Why, and In How Long: Round 2 of the NBA Playoffs (East)
The first round hasn’t been made best-of-5 yet, so it played pretty much according to script. In the East, that is. The Warriors have dilly-dallied, and the Nuggets have had trouble closing out the Spurs.
With some help from my co-host RJ Garcia, we already broke down round 1. Now, things get a lot more interesting. The big 4 in the East finally clash, after months of well-deserved anticipation. How do we see things shaking out?
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Who, Why, and In How Long: Round 1 of the NBA Playoffs
After a long wait, it’s finally here, and we had to do a quick breakdown of each of the 1st round matchups. Arya vs. Daenerys could be a doozy, and Bran vs. Jaime has all kinds of history…
Oh yeah, the NBA Playoffs are here too. I guess I’ll break those down too, with some help from my co-host RJ Garcia.
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How is Indiana Keeping Pace in the East?
On January 23rd, Victor Oladipo suffered a ruptured quad tendon in his right knee.
The 2017-18 Most Improved Player was the star of the team, giving them life on both ends of the court. Without another clear star on the roster, or multiple players the casual fan has even heard of, Indiana was surely in for a rough go of it – especially with other East contenders, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Toronto, loading up with talent at the trade deadline.
The Process Is Over
During Sam Hinkie’s introductory press conference as President of Basketball Operations for the Sixers in 2013, owner Josh Harris said that the previous regime had made decisions without “good process. They weren’t good decisions.” Now, in 2019, the two leadership teams’ processes since Hinkie departed, led by Brian Colangelo and Elton Brand, have culminated in today, where the Sixers are stuck with decisions that – weren’t good.
#NBATwitter: A Study
Twitter is the lifeblood of the NBA.
As described by the Washington Post, it’s “a sports bar that doesn’t close, where the stars pull up a seat next to you”. According to Twitter itself, the NBA was the most tweeted-about sports league in 2018, and it’s no surprise, as the online home of the players houses more organic drama than any episode of The Bachelor. From burner accounts of superstars and GMs, to asking for trades and reacting to them, to basketball players doing what they do best – shooting their shot, fans of the NBA know there’s no way to track their favorite league quite like Twitter.
One Buck – What’s Up With Milwaukee?
Giannis Antetokounmpo might be the best player in basketball.
Of course, he also might not be, but the fact that he might be tells you enough about his talent. The 23-year-old, 6’11” tall, 7′ wingspan, every-position nightmare from Athens has more than earned his nickname “The Greek Freak”. However, the name originates more through a combination of his raw physical measurables and his hard-to-pronounce surname than his actual skill, which has grown at an incredible rate. Just the 15th pick in the 2013 draft, Giannis has panned out to an extent perhaps unimagined by even the Bucks, and more quickly than the rest of the league would wish. Giannis ranks 3rd overall in CornerThree WARÂ and 2nd in RPM WARÂ across the entire NBA, and has an extremely versatile skillset that allows him to play all 5 positions on both offense and defense. Despite this, the Bucks sit just half a game above the 8th seed in the Eastern Conference, sport a -0.3 average point differential per game, and rank 19th out of 30 in TSP, which expects them to perform at a level under that of a 38 win team in the postseason. FiveThirtyEight ranks them as the 2nd-worst team in the postseason.
How?
We The North: Will This Year be Different for the Raptors?
The Toronto Raptors have won at least 48 games in each of the past four seasons, and barring catastrophe, this will be their fifth. They currently hold the top spot in the Eastern Conference, sitting 2 games above the second-place Celtics and a whopping 9 games above the third-place Cavaliers. They’re 9-1 in their past 10 games. Despite all of these easy to access, and perhaps even well-known, facts, they are not taken seriously. Why?
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Magic? The Wizards Without John Wall
John Wall was the 1st overall pick in the 2010 NBA Draft. Now, he’s 27, and in what should be the center of his basketball prime. He’s already a 5-time All-Star and is coming off his first career All-NBA selection. Going into the 2017-2018 season, he was seventh in Vegas’ MVP odds. However, this season, by many measures, he has struggled.
Corner Three 