DeMar DeRozan has looked incredible carrying the Spurs this last week. Last night he dominated the fourth quarter and hit a handful of clutch buckets using his trademark array of moves in the lane, befuddling the young Pelicans on the way to 32-points and a nice stat line. Meanwhile, Steph Curry has been carrying the Warriors and putting up ridiculous stats on the way to leading his team to the … tenth seed.
While the pandemic season has been abnormal, some aspects of it are very regular. The Spurs and Warriors do not scare anyone but it is fun to imagine imperfect teams making a splash with a one-note instrument. That is to say, the Spurs will need DeMar and the Warriors will need Steph to do pretty much everything scoring wise at an almost inhuman efficiency level to just compete. The Spurs are just a game or two out of being in the 8th spot and that would give them two chances to win — before facing either the Jazz or the Suns.
We’ve argued in this space previously that the squad is better off competing and learning from said competition than just tanking and hoping for a guy to come save them from the draft. At some point, unless you have a legitimate once-in-a-lifetime player, you got to take some playoff lumps.
The final stretch has news that is normally bad, but is actually good. The squad has only four home games of the final fourteen. Given how terrible the ATT Center has been for this team and how well they’ve played away, it is a good thing.
Every game except for the Kings is one vs a potential playoff team. The Wizards are tenth and are not really a good team but they qualify. The most intriguing are the two games vs the Jazz — destroyed this squad last time — and the two at home vs the Suns — Spurs destroyed them.
Not only will we learn if this team is going to make the show —I mean, every game is crucial for this standings — but we will know what to expect in that first round. If you want an upset possibility, it would probably come against the young Suns, but there are no easy wins in this thing. The Mavericks are +7 in the standings and it is possible that the team goes on an incredible run and takes over the 6th spot and earns a matchup with Kawhi and the Clips.
There ain’t much hope for a Larry O, folks, but there is some hope for little mini-run.