Chapter 755: The Playoffs Are in Sight
After the game was played in March, April came, and since the beginning of the month, the Warriors have ended with a wave of five consecutive wins, so that the season is almost over, and the playoffs are played on April 17, West Coast time, and the Warriors have played 80 games, leaving only two games left.
So far, the general trend of the league is basically certain, of course, this is only a basic certainty, the final standings are not yet certain, especially in the West, the competition for the last two places is so fierce that so far, ten teams are likely to enter the playoffs.
Currently, the ninth place in the West is the Grizzlies, which are a magical team, and they made the Lakers the year before last and kept saying that they wanted to rebuild around Gay, and then decisively selected Mayo in the draft; When Mayo and Guy quarreled over the top, the prodigal son turned back and the Fat Man quietly became the second All-Star in Grizzlies history......
But the Grizzlies have been a successful season, with nearly twice as many wins by the end of the season as they did last season, and they have a bunch of youngsters on the roster who are contenders for a playoff ticket in the coming seasons......
But that's all, because the competition in the West is too perverted, the Grizzlies' best result is also to make the playoffs, and it would be a dream to go further.
The team that is now ranked eighth is a team that no one expected at the beginning of the season, the former king of the Southwest, the Spurs!
It turns out that when a car's engine ages, even if you replace it with a brand new clutch, it won't help.
The Spurs' problem is just time, Duncan and Manu's aging is force majeure: before 08, the Spurs only needed to find a mess of broken copper and iron to modify it casually to dominate the playoffs, and this year they seriously found Jefferson and McDice but nine times out of ten they will accompany the prince to study, and this season's GDP health is still a problem, and this is the biggest problem for the Spurs so far.
The Thunder began to rise this season, although they did not play well in the first half of the All-Star schedule, but in the second half of the season, they played championship-level games, and in February and March, they continued to stage eight consecutive wins and nine consecutive wins.
In fact, from the day Kevin Durant entered the NBA, fans knew that this was a name that would become great sooner or later, and he would score like a melon and chop vegetables in the regular season and bring that devastated team back to the top of glory......
This is only his third season, he has brought the team to the playoffs, and he has done better than LeBron in this regard, and the little emperor only brought the team to the playoffs in his third season, and Durant's Western competition is completely different from the East at that time.
However, considering Durant's current average of 30+ points per game, this qiē is also a natural fit.
Besides, for Durant, he feels that this day came too late, they have Chamberlain's dead pervert at that level, and he brought the team to the Western Conference Finals in the first season, if it weren't for the rookie Chamberlain's impact was too fierce and exhausted his body in advance, then it is not impossible for the rookie to lead the team to win the championship in the season.
Although the Thunder are temporarily in seventh place, this position is not stable, because the Spurs are only half a win behind them, and the Thunder's last two games are the Magic and the Suns, which are two strong teams, and they are expected to enter the playoffs with two consecutive losses.
The Jazz are currently in sixth place, and the Jazz have been able to play this position this season thanks to the veteran coach Sloan.
Although the Zen master in Los Angeles has the number of rings that Sloan can't catch up with in his life, Sloan has a unique persistence in the NBA world, and for 20 years, Sloan has never left the snow of Utah.
In the past 20 years, his two proudest disciples have retired one after another, his wife who was close to him has died, and his boss, who trusted him, can now only chat with him in a wheelchair...... But this old bone still stands on the iceberg of Utah!
His temper is still hot, and every team that visits him has to shed a layer of skin even if they win, and this decades-long dedication to a team is comparable to only the dead ghost bishop in Boston, except that the cardinal has nine rings around him, and Sloan can't get even a trophy for the best coach.
However, Sloan is now the most respected head coach in the NBA by players and fans, including Chamberlain, who has been battling with the Jazz for the first two seasons.
The fifth place in the West is the Trail Blazers, Roy used his level of second quarterback in the West to drag this team into the ranks of the giants, look at what kind of goods their teams are, soft big forward Aldridge, what else? There are no good candidates anymore.
There was originally a super center who could be proud of the league, but the Trail Blazers couldn't wait, so they sent Oden to Phoenix for almost the price of a cabbage, and then achieved Nash's sunset red. If the Trail Blazers are a little lucky, then the combination of Oden + Roy will make Chamberlain fearful.
It seems to be retribution, and the fourth is the Suns, that is, the hapless Trail Blazers, who are expected to meet Oden in the first round of the playoffs.
Although Auden has always appeared in the public eye with a low-key and humble image, but every year, this kind of revenge against his old club is the most tempting, it is said that the betting company has opened, betting on the first round of the playoffs The best center, Chamberlain and Auden, everyone is optimistic about Auden playing the Trail Blazers.
In the twilight of his career, Nash still led the Suns to play a magnificent bombardment, and at the beginning of the season, he was shocked by the cold sweat of all the princes in the West, Oden is playing so well, and he has to thank Nash, if it weren't for the top point guard to guide him all the way, he would never have adapted to the NBA game so quickly after recovering from his recovery.
The third in the West is the aggrieved Mavericks, who had the best chance to win the championship in 06, but the opposite Flash opened the game plug-in, and the Mavericks had nowhere to shout injustice and finally made a bad move; 07 They are in the best condition, but the seemingly generous old Nelson is actually extremely small-minded, and he deliberately created a team that completely restrained the Mavericks and Dirk, and insidiously assassinated the former disciples in the first round, fulfilling the odd-numbered myth of the Spurs in vain......
Since then, the Mavericks have been lukewarm in the Western Conference quarterfinals, and although Dirk has honed his jump shot and rim offense to perfection, the "Soft Egg Leader" label has been chasing him like a nightmare, and Cuban now looks more like a jumping clown......
Even if you get good hands like Kidd and Butler and Marion, what's the use? The current boss of the West will definitely not be their turn, and the Lakers and Warriors are the real contenders.
The Lakers, who are ranked second in the West, have been very bad recently, Kobe's finger injury has spread like a flu to the whole team, and not long ago the Zen master was even more alarmist: There are three or four main fingers in the team that have problems, and some of them must have guò surgery to fully recover.
Of course, given the essence of KFC's consistent X, it cannot be ruled out that this is a smoke bomb he put off, but this still makes countless Komi feel worried, and recalling the scene where Kobe Bryant cut 40+ in a row in the low post at the beginning of the season really has the illusion of being in a different world.
What hurts Comi's the most is that there is a mountain in the West that the Lakers can't climb, the Warriors!
With 58 wins and 22 losses in 80 games, although the Warriors still have many problems this season and have lost a lot of indifferent games, their strength is still undoubted, because the Warriors have never lost a key battle!
This is what makes the Lakers feel depressed, and what is even more depressing is that the two teams have played each other four times this season, and the Warriors have won three times and only lost once!
Compared to the bayonet West, the East team is much less competitive, with the Spurs, who are eighth in the West, currently have 50 wins, while the Bulls, who are eighth in the East, have only 40 wins.
This is not simply ten fewer wins, but also means that the Bulls have ten more defeats than the Spurs, and the absolute strength gap between the two sides comes out.
The Bulls are also quite magical, they played a high-flying game at the beginning of the season, and the sophomore Rose simply became a killer, they once hit the first place in the East, and the result is just the opposite of another new army, the Thunder, they were super fierce in the first half of the season, and withered in the second half.
Especially since mid-March, the Bulls have suffered a difficult 10-game losing streak, which means that they were actually in third place in the East, but for 10 games, they have slipped down the rankings until they have slipped to eighth in the East.
Speaking of which, this is indeed very strange.
But this can't be blamed on the Bulls, on the one hand, because they have suffered difficult away games in a row, and then when they return to the home court, they meet the league's first brother Cavaliers; On the other hand, their core boss Rose is injured, and the Bulls without Rose are worse than the Bulls without Jordan.
At seventh place is the Heat, a team that can be in this position because of one name: Dwyane Wade.
Take a look at the game between the Heat and the Cavaliers, Lakers, Magic, and Warriors, Wade is not inferior in the individual duel with any superstar, but in the Cavaliers, James has O'Neal and Xiao Mo, Lakers Kobe has Gasol and Odom, not to mention Magic Howard, Carter is more like the core than him, in the Warriors, Chamberlain is surrounded by the left green dragon and the right white tiger There is an old cow in the waist, and the Heat lost to Wade without help.
The Flash is still fast, but this is the second consecutive season that the Heat has almost overdrawn Wade, so much so that the Flash, who is bent on serving his country, has refused the invitation of the American Basketball Association and cannot participate in the World Championships.
Even fans understand Wade for this, when Coach K invited the Flash, fans everywhere were calling for the Flash to take a good rest in the summer.
Sixth is the Bobcats, who are infinitely close to making the first playoff in franchise history, thanks to Larry Brown. No matter how many problems this stubborn old man has with his personality, he didn't say anything about his ability, and he was stunned to build the new army of Bobcats into an iron army with team combat and tenacious defense.
The fifth is the Bucks, many fans mention this team, and their memories only stay on "Reed's cancer" and "Jennings is no longer magical after 55 points". But this team, how to put it, is weird, the weirdest team in the league.
Reed, the team's core and boss at the start of the season, ruptured his ligament and missed the entire season, and as a result, the Bucks suddenly rose to prominence.
The Bucks, who no longer have a single big star, have everyone a chance, and no one on the team has scored more than 17 points, compared to six players who are averaging double-doubles per game.
Fourth in the East is the Hawks, and when it comes to the Eastern Conference championship this season, people are always used to mentioning the top three in the East, but only the top three.
But the Eagles already have the capital to redraw the eastern discourse. The youngsters are getting better, with 80 percent of the league helpless against the Hawks' three 206, athletic forwards, and Crawford on the bench jumping out of the bench to solve the problem when the front court can't solve the problem.
The top three in the East are not to be expected, with the Celtics, Magic and Cavaliers.
The Celtics lack nothing but health, after all, they are the oldest team in the league, and the average age of the starting five is over 32.
Injuries are the team's worst enemy, and as the season progresses, the form and fitness of the veterans are increasingly tormenting the nerves of head coach Doc Rivers. Rashid is still unbridled on the outside, Perkins is always open on the offensive end, and Garnett's points per game average is dropping to a career-low low......
No one is still naïve enough to think that this Celtic team can still win the championship.
Now the focus of the East is between the Magic and the Cavaliers, and the team that can enter the Finals must be one of the two, and now it is up to the old and the new to face each other.
The Magic is the new center + old guard, and the Cavaliers are the new guard + old center, just see who is more resilient, who is more fierce and ferocious on both sides, and then who is the champion of the East.