This Week's Show
The Geeks talk the NBA playoffs. The Warriors are really good. The Spurs might be fading. The East is boring as heck. Tune in!
Hosts
- Andres Alvarez(@nerdnumbers)
- Patrick Minton(@nbageek)
- Produced by Brian Foster(@boxscorebrian)
Sources
Please subscribe to Channel NerdNumbers on YouTube and like us on iTunes!
Video Show
This Week's Poll
Show Notes
Your Hosts
I call Patrick "Tim Duncanesque" in his intro. He's also an auto-click on the explicit label for the podcast. I beat him to the punch on cursing this week though.
Brian got some fan love from last week's comments. As mentioned, Brian is often busy producing the show, which makes it harder to talk as well. But we agree, he's fantastic on the show.
I did a podcast this week with the world's biggest Spurs' fan E.J. Fischer. He's also a fantastic author and had a ton to talk about regarding his novella "The New Mother."
Preseason Bets
Patrick doubles down on his over bet for the Timberwolves. He also asserts that Flip Saunders wanted to lose. Flip denies it, but hey, the Wolves did finish with the league's worst record.
I despise the draft lottery. A fun case in point, the day before the playoffs, the NBA had a scenario where two teams both had an active reason to want to lose, in a game they were playing against each other!
We compare Andrew Wiggins' highlight reel games -- which shouldn't include threes, we guess? -- to the Attitude Era and Hot-Shotting in wrestling. I'm proud of that!
The Golden State Warriors
The Warriors are the best regular season team in the modern era. It's not even close.
We give Klay credit for his improvement. We even say that we don't think the Love trade would have helped this team. In particular, Green's flexibility at the four helps the Warriors a ton.
Charles Barkley says jump shooting teams can't win titles. The Warriors shoot threes though and still attack the rim. Look forward to a piece from Patrick on this later in the week.
Tune in to hear Patrick breakdown his thoughts on the Warriors' offense.
Stephen Curry cracked the top twenty-five seasons of all-time. On a per-minute basis, he played better than all but one of Michael Jordan's seasons!
Horace Grant was arguably the Bulls' MVP in 1991-1992. Not that Michael Jordan wasn't great too, but I feel Grant is often underrated.
Patrick has the Warriors to win round one in four games.
The Playoffs
In 2006, the Central Division sent all five of its teams. And in 2011 the Southwest Division had five teams with winning records. This is the first season the NBA has had a division send all five teams with winning records to the playoffs. Of course, two teams with losing records made it in from the East. We had a few ideas how to improve that on the show.
I'm not excited about the Eastern Conference playoffs. I had a fun analogy for the Raptors.
DareDevil started strong, then coasted, then kinda ended meh. Basically it's the Toronto Raptors this year.
— Andrés Alvarez (@NerdNumbers) April 15, 2015
We talk the disappointing end to the Spurs season. Patrick points out it's not shocking the Clippers are good. In fact, he thinks they're the favorite and has the Clippers to win in six games.
Patrick has a theory on age and rest in the playoffs. Tune in to hear it!
Many teams play a shortened rotation in the playoffs. This helps the Clippers a great deal as they arguably have the best tandem in the NBA.
I admit I'm alright with Chris Paul getting by the Spurs.
I love Mark Cuban as a heel and a talker in the NBA. I don't always agree with what he says, but I'd prefer him keep talking to many other owners. That said, I found his "the Rockets are a bad team." rant a bit amusing.
Mark Cuban said the Rockets aren't a good team. By the transitive property, that means the Mavs are....
— Andrés Alvarez (@NerdNumbers) April 19, 2015
What is up with Rondo? We just don't get it.
Patrick thinks the Rockets will win against the Mavericks in five.
Losing Wesley Matthews hurt the Blazers. Patrick thinks the Grizzlies take the series in five.
I love autoplay on NBA.com! In response to a fantastic ad from a hardware store, I recommend Lowes and Menards!
Patrick says the Hawks beat the Nets in five.
Patrick thinks the Bulls take the Bucks in six. That said if the Bulls keep playing Derrick Rose it's going to hurt them. Of course, they don't stand a shot against the Cavs or Hawks.
Name an NBA star player that managed to come even close to their previous performance after several major injuries in consecutive seasons. Grant Hill doesn't count. I can maybe give you Bill Walton.
The Raptors vs. the Wizards is a battle of terrible coaching. We're so sorry Eastern Conference fans.
I'm not saying Randy Wittman doesn't know what he's doing, but this doesn't do him any favors. https://t.co/4pFvFrWa06
— Steve McPherson (@steventurous) April 18, 2015
Patrick says the Wizards take the series in six.
Patrick says the Cavs win in five.
Shout Outs
Patrick shouts out CJ Fogler (@cjzero), who has fantastic NBA related gifs and videos.
Patrick shouts out Steve McPherson ( @steventurous), a fantastic Wolves fan who had both some great work on Andrew Wiggins this week and shared the great Whitman gif above.
Brian shouts out Shawn Kemp, who hosted the pettiest of parties.
Brian shouts out Monty Williams, for being the crotchety old man of the playoffs.
I shout out Howard Shaw Warshaw, the creator of the E.T. game for Atari. Not only was he a seminal designer, I feel he was unfairly hit with a false narrative. This is something we see a lot in sports. Atari: Game Over is a fantastic documentary on Netflix worth checking out on the subject.
I shout out the great comments from papucar, johnfloyd6675, and benjibopper for the great comments about Brian on last week's show.