B-Ball Freak wrote:I'm not gonna lie, I'm not looking forward to face the Celtics or Heat in the play in. If they do make it, I don't see them making any noise against the Nets or the Bucks, although they beat em twice this season, Philly is bad matchup with Embiid too...in other words, for me I'd rather miss the play-ins and take a pick thats in the 6-10 range.
On the other hand, Miami and Boston have both been playing better as of late and have a bit of an easier remaining schedule than Atlanta while Charlotte continues to fall further back without Ball+Hayward and may end up dropping as far as 9th. Assuming we keep winning and the Bulls keep losing, it will be a tight finish with us and the Wizards for 10th. If we make it though, the most likely scenario is IND/CHA at 8th/9th then ATL/BOS/MIA at 7th. I'd put my money on us beating IND/CHA then the loser of the 7/8 game as long as it's not BOS/MIA.
It will be a pretty telling sign that we're gunning for the play-in games if most of our top 5 are playing again on Saturday against the Knicks. NYK has won 8 straight and it would be easy to have multiple players sidelined with minor injuries/rest on the front side of a 3 games in 4 days stretch considering Lowry has missed 10 of our last 12 games, FVV missed 8 and Siakam+OG missed two straight games against Orlando and OKC last week plus each missed a game against CLE/NYK just days before.
At this point, since getting Birch and Gillespie, we look like a good team again. If healthy, we should be able to win more games than lose in our next 12. That might put us in a rather unique scenario where we need to beat the Pacers in back-to-back games (final season game and 9/10 play-in game) though.
Sent from my Pixel 4 using
RealGM mobile app