If the NBA Playoffs started today, the play-in round would feature Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, and LeBron James. No question a number of experts forecast choppy seas for at least two of those teams but the play-in round for all three? With a little over a quarter of the season remaining, there certainly is time for any or all of the Warriors, Suns, and Lakers to climb in the standings, it appears unlikely. Steph and his mates are aging quickly. The Big Three in Phoenix are rarely all healthy, and LeBron seems more interested in teasing fans about his next stop as well as publicizing his potential lack of interest in publicizing his retirement. **Spoiler alert: No shot he retires without a Farewell Tour. Zero.**
With the changing of the guard out West underway, the boys of Bet the EDGE broke down the Futures Market on today’s episode.
Drew Dinsick (@whale_capper) began the conversation with a macro-level look at playoff pricing out West.
“The top four teams are so closely clustered, that it makes pricing the Futures Market a little more speculative and I personally think pricing those series is going to depend on specifically the health and home court which right now we just have to kind of guess at. The market is telling you that there’s a huge disparity in terms of likelihood of winning the West between the more experienced teams in the Nuggets and the Clippers relative to the teams that are likely going to have the one and two seeds with the Timberwolves and the Thunder. So it’s kind of funny upside-down where you could have some funky series prices with the road team opening up meaningful favorites.”
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You can crunch numbers, but it ultimately comes down to whether or not you believe in the ability of the Timberwolves and the Thunder to get it done in the playoffs.
Jay Croucher (@croucherJD) thinks the market is not respecting the top seeds at the moment…especially the Thunder.
“If you just look at what the Thunder have done so far this season, they’ve been the second-best team in the NBA to date by net rating. They have the guy who should be the MVP favorite in SGA. I think Gordon Hayward is really going to help them because the one thing that you would be worried about with the Thunder is their kind of Jarrett Allen / Tony Allen type of thing that gets exploited in the playoffs is Josh Giddey just not being guarded. Gordon Hayward kind of gives them insurance against that.”
Croucher’s belief in the Thunder is as much about the mispriced market as much as it is about the Thunder themselves.
“It’s a peculiar market at the moment. I am not necessarily saying its wrong but where you’ve got the one and the two seeds right now are your fourth and fifth favorites in the conference. That doesn’t happen particularly often and that’s buying into the idea that the Nuggets and the Clippers are just markedly better than both of those top two teams. I think they are better but at current prices are they three times better than these teams relative to their chances at winning the conference? I think that’s a little bit rich. The Thunder are the team in the West who is most interesting to me because they have legitimate upside.”
Neither Croucher nor Dinsick like Minnesota’s chances of winning the West, but they know the playoffs are about matchups and they do give the Timberwolves a shot if they meet up with the defending champs.
Croucher explained why he does not like the Timberwolves to win the West, but possibly to cause trouble for the Nuggets.
“It’s not very scientific but it’s just gnawing at me having watched the Timberwolves the past two years and all the dumb things that Anthony Edwards and Karl Anthony Townes do at the end of games. We’ve talked about the previous iterations of the Celtics not being particularly cerebral on offense, but the Celtics look like Mensa students compared to what the Wolves do down the stretch in games…I think Minnesota actually, I think they are probably the match up the Nuggets least want to see because of how Gobert has given Jokic trouble. I think he’s probably the one guy in the league best equipped to deal with Jokic…Gobert is the one guy who seems to give him strife.”
Does the old guard have enough left in the tank to make a run in the second season or is there a new sheriff in town? It is time for all suitors – young, old, and somewhere in the middle - to get serious as we head into the final quarter of the NBA’s regular season.
Enjoy the full episode of Bet the EDGE and please like and subscribe to the pod.
