Around the League: Week 14 3/22-3/28

[Split T]

Love chose this...he could have got out of Cleveland but he took the money.

[Flagrant Fowl]

Exactly. He's the asshole here.

[pickle]

Fully agreed. And if he's not in the proper mental state, maybe just don't suit up, but don't make a spectacle, embarrass yourself, and make a mockery of the fans who pay money to come watch the game...

[Mori Chu]

JAZZ LOSE!

[Superbone]

Kevin Love gets a lot of benefit of the doubt for several reasons, but that stunt should get him fined by the Cavs.

Was it intentional? Looked like he was frustrated and batted the inbounds pass back in but it was sloppy and wide right but his teammate didn’t go after it.

It's not the mistake that would bother me, it's the complete lack of effort to correct it.

Good point.

[Flagrant Fowl]

Looks like he was upset with the official, but I didn't see a foul.

[Superbone]

Looks like he was upset with the official, but I didn't see a foul.

Yeah, it was a flop if nothing else.

[BKinSJC]

This thread seems like as good a place to put this as any, and you can jump the next few paragraphs if you're in a hurry. TL;DR - the San Antonio Spurs, surprisingly, are the only team left in the NBA that still has a chance to get at least one win against every other NBA team this season.

Longer version: with Utah's loss to Minnesota tonight, and the T-Wolves sweeping the season series from the Jazz, I started to think about how hard it is for a team to defeat every other team in the league at least once in a given year. I'm not sure how often it's happened; probably very seldom. I was tracking the Suns chances as well, and they didn't lose the opportunity to do so until the loss at Brooklyn on Sunday, which put them at 0-2 and with no chance to beat the Nets this year; other than that, they've now beaten everyone else (including the Knicks win today) except the Clippers (still one game remaining) and the Spurs (still two games left).

Anyways, the Jazz and the Suns are out, but I wondered if anybody else this year still has a chance to beat every other team. So I started through the game results, starting from the best teams in the league, seeing how many other teams they'd swept the season series from. As soon as I found that a team had been swept, they were off the list of possibilities. This went pretty quickly - the Jazz, for instance, knocked out nine Eastern teams and one Western team all by themselves; the Suns added three more Eastern teams and a couple of Western teams, the Nets had swept the season series from another six unique teams that weren't already eliminated, and so forth. As it got down to just a few teams left, I started just looking at those teams' losses and trying to quickly determine if they had already been swept in the season series by any other team. This got rid of a few final hangers-around, until there was just one team left.

San Antonio. Amazingly, the 31-29 Spurs have not yet been swept by any other team in the NBA. There are five teams that they haven't beaten yet, but they still have at least one game remaining against all of those teams.

Here's a list of the teams, including the first one I came across that they have no chance to defeat this year:

Code: Select all

Team			Cannot Defeat:
----			--------------
Utah Jazz		Minnesota
Phoenix Suns		Brooklyn
LA Clippers		Brooklyn
Brooklyn Nets		Memphis
Philadelphia 76ers	Phoenix
Denver Nuggets		Sacramento
Milwaukee Bucks		Utah
Los Angeles Lakers	Philadelphia
Dallas Mavericks	Phoenix
New York Knicks		Brooklyn
Atlanta Hawks		Utah
Portland Trail Blazers	Clippers
Boston Celtics		Utah
Memphis Grizzlies	Utah
San Antonio Spurs	??????
Miami Heat		Phoenix
Golden State Warriors	Brooklyn
Charlotte Hornets	Utah
Indiana Pacers		Utah
Washington Wizards	Philadelphia
New Orleans Pelicans	Brooklyn
Chicago Bulls		Utah
Toronto Raptors		Phoenix
Sacramento Kings	Brooklyn
Cleveland Cavaliers	Utah
OKC Thunder		Philadelphia
Detroit Pistons		Utah
Orlando Magic		Utah
Minnesota T-Wolves	Clippers
Houston Rockets		Phoenix

In order to maintain this, the Spurs would have to do all of the following: win at Miami, at home vs. Philadelphia, either of two home games vs. Utah, at home vs. Milwaukee and at Brooklyn.

[ShelC]

Poku could be a problem in the near future. They've been running more offense thru him and his numbers in March and April are pretty solid at 11-6-3, tho his shooting numbers are still pretty bad.

[Split T]

Bill Simmons just picked his All-NBA team

1st
G - Curry and Doncic
F - Giannis and Randle
C - Jokic

2nd
G - Dame and CP3
F - Kawhi and PG13
C - Embiid

3rd
G - Mitchell and Booker
F - LeBron and Zion
C - Rudy

Thoughts?


Randle is a shock...but when you consider all the games missed by players, it’s hard to argue. No Nets players seems wrong, but who would you pick as they all missed a ton of time.

[LazarusLong]

Kawhi is a great talent, but he's sorta mailed it in at times this year.
I might switch him with Zion ...

Have no problem with Randle, who's having a career year.

[Mori Chu]

This thread seems like as good a place to put this as any, and you can jump the next few paragraphs if you're in a hurry. TL;DR - the San Antonio Spurs, surprisingly, are the only team left in the NBA that still has a chance to get at least one win against every other NBA team this season.

Super interesting. That feels right, as the Spurs are boring but consistently give good effort, so it.makes sense to me that they'd have at least some success against almost every other team in the league.

More concerning to me is that our Suns can't seem to beat the LA Clippers this year, and we seem likely to meet them in the 2nd round in the 2-3 matchup. I wish we were in a different part of the bracket from them. I wasn't scared of them before, but now I'm not so sure.

[Flagrant Fowl]

No way in hell the Spurs win all those games, especially now that Derrick White is out.

I was really impressed with how well he and Murray defended Paul and Booker. They'll be really scary if they ever find some offensive consistency.

[Superbone]

Yep, they may be last team standing but no way they complete it.

[Mori Chu]

Warriors getting absolutely walloped by the Mavs on TNT right now.

[Split T]

Celtics stopped the Thunder’s 14 game losing streak

[Mori Chu]

Warriors getting absolutely walloped by the Mavs on TNT right now.

62-29 Mavs at the half. Ouch.

[Superbone]

Warriors getting absolutely walloped by the Mavs on TNT right now.

62-29 Mavs at the half. Ouch.

Good bye Betting Game. What happened to Steph’s hot streak?

[Superbone]

Celtics stopped the Thunder’s 14 game losing streak

And the Thunder had 27 turnovers! Has Brad Stevens lost the Celtics?

[Split T]

Jazz beat the Kings by 49...so if we win Friday, we move into 1st. Jazz will almost definitely be without Mitchell and maybe without Conley.