 What's the word, y'all? The 2021-2022 NBA season is over, man. We did it. We got to this point. Whether you're rooting for the team that had the best record in the league or you're rooting for the team that had the worst record in the league, there are so many things we could take away from the season and just smile about. I would go out on the limb and say this was definitely a really good season. I enjoyed so many days of it. But the last day of the NBA season is always really, really wild. We have some crazy, crazy performances because majority of the teams already know they're not playing for something or that they already secured their whatever spot in the playoffs or their team that's tanking. So many people set out today. So many people set out today. Let me read you some of my favorite stat lines from the day. O'Shea Berset, 28-8-3, shout out to him. Kevin Love had a 32-10 in two game in less than 15 minutes. Bro put a little over a quarter worth of basketball out there and he had 32-10-2. And then Mamu, you like who? No, Mamu from the Milwaukee Bucks had a 28-13 in four game. Jalen Green into his rookie season on the bank dropping a 41 piece. John Contar put together, yes, Illinois's very own. John Contar put together the last triple double of the regular season. This is crazy. Emmanuel, oh wait. Emmanuel Quickly also got a triple double. But which game ended first? I don't know which game ended first. I think Quickly's game might have ended after John Contar. So John Contar, congratulations on the first career triple double, but you didn't have the last one of the season because I feel like Emmanuel Quickly did it with his 34, 10, and 12. And oh, his teammate, Obie Top, it dropped 40 something. The last day of the season is crazy. Victor Oladipo went all the way back to Indiana days. He dropped 40. I'm not done. Shay Melton had 30. B-Ball Paul had 25. Luca Garza had a 20-10 game. Patrick Williams shot every shot and he had 35. Like it was crazy and Luca hurt himself. I hate to like damper the moon, but Luca got hurt. And if it's anything of anything, what the hell are we doing? I know that the Mavericks had an opportunity to jump up a seed if they won in the Warriors loss. But what the hell are we doing? And I think when he got injured, they were up by a decent amount of points. It's just, ah, Luca, I hope that this is nothing and we can just look past this because it can be an all-time fail from the coaching staff or even having them on the court. Oh, I forgot. I'm sorry, Amir Coffee had 35. And then the guy named Xavier Simpson. I think this is the six-foot guy with the hook shot. He has 17, nine, and seven for OKC. Those are the craziest performances of the day because nobody was really playing. And we did see some shenanigans. Today's video, we're gonna talk about play-in and stuff, but we did see some shenanigans, man. The Bucks, everybody saw what you did. My boy, you were not being slick with this one. The Bucks decided to arrest everybody against the Cavaliers today because they wanted to avoid the play-in teams. And there's probably one that's a little bit heavier than others, right? People are trying to avoid the Brooklyn Nets and the Bucks did that. And I was surprised, man, because last year they did it, right? Two years ago, they went against the Miami Heat in the playoffs. And I'm pretty sure we're talking about the bubble where the Miami Heat went on to the championship game. The Miami Heat made the Bucks look foolish. And I just remember seeing people question Giannis' greatness, oh, can he really do it? He can't get past Miami Heat. And then the next season, the Bucks, going into the last game had an opportunity to completely avoid Miami in the first round. But guess what they did? They played everybody. They was like, you know what? If we gonna go through, or we gonna have to win this conference and win this championship, we gotta beat Miami one way or another. So bring us Miami in the first round and they scraped them boys. So I just thought a coach bud slash Giannis team was not gonna be afraid of nobody. I was wrong. But I don't blame them. I don't blame them. If I was a coach and I was a general manager and I'm thinking about the grander picture of these things, I don't wanna have to face these demons in the first round. And I'm talking about Kady and Carrie Irvin. Number 11 and number 7-11, them boys go great. Would I rather go against those two dudes? Or skidding Chicago Bulls thing? Seems like an easy pick. If I could get rid of one team in four or five and then kinda chill and see the next team in the second round, I would do that 100% of the time too. But I was just surprised that the Bucks did it. That's all. Hey, before we get deep into this, I wanna remind you that we have a newsletter. They enjoy basketball newsletter. Buy NBA fans for NBA fans. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, if you follow the newsletter, you're going to get a write-up of the previous night's games just from some of the best in the world. And we're trying to get to, I think we're trying to get to 25,000 and we're just a little way away. So if you have not subscribed, go ahead, do it and be sure to read those emails because we drop it on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. It's free. Did I mention that? It's free. So do your thing. Anyway, with all that being said, the play-in was set to date. And I'm very interested. We will make an entire video talking about the overall playoffs. That don't start in a listen. This is what I'm gonna say. If you look at the official NBA website, people would be like, Kenny, it's all semantics. I always say the play-in is not the playoffs, right? If you are a play-in team, you didn't make the playoffs until you're top 18. And if you go to the NBA website, it says play-in starts April 12th. Playoffs start April 16th. So, you know, we're talking about the play-in. We will make a video talking about the entirety of the playoffs once we know who the four teams are gonna fill the seven-eight spot for show-for-show. And I know some of y'all are looking for those other videos. Quick housekeeping, just really, really quick. I was trying to do a Ward week last year, but some of y'all know that I'm expecting my kid any day now. And if you have a kid, you know that they give you a day, but it's literally like hour-to-hour, day-to-day. So, some things came up and we will talk about my MVP. We will talk about my sixth man of the year and most improved player eventually. But out of the playoffs here, I would much rather focus on that. But be looking out for those videos too. There's a seven-eight matchup of Brooklyn versus Cleveland. The nine-ten is Atlanta versus Charlotte. Then out west, it's Minnesota versus Clippers in the seven-eight. And then the nine-ten, it is the Pelicans versus the Spurs. And I will honestly say I've been a huge fan of the play-in since it was incorporated. But I do think there's one major flaw in it. And I think a lot of people have pointed this out. There needs to be a games back threshold. For example, if we're looking at the Western Conference standings, the Minnesota Timbers ended this year with a four-game difference between them and the 8C. And shout out to the Clippers for, oh my God, I did not realize that Clippers finished that strong on a five-game streak. Last time I checked, this was not four games. I think it was five games or six games. But it felt like for a lot of it that the Minnesota Timbers, they feel like a guaranteed playoff team. And I don't know if they should be fighting for that spot because they have been significantly better than the field. Now, your argument against that Kenny, they just got to win one of two games and they'll be straight as high. But I wanna remind you of the Warriors team. Was that last year where 7-8 matchup is Lakers versus Warriors? It ended up being an amazing game. Lakers versus Warriors, LeBron James concussed, I guess. Said, I saw three rims out there. I threw it at the middle one. And then the Warriors lose. They're like, oh, no big deal. They just gotta win one game against the Memphis Grizzlies. And they lost. They lost. I mean, I guess I'm not too mad about that. But I just feel like there has to be some type of games back threshold. Basically what they did in the bubble, it made so much sense in the bubble. I don't know why they wouldn't continue it. And of course it's for special circumstances because in the Eastern Conference, everything is so jumbled. We talking about one game difference between the seven and the 10. So in that case, there is no games back then. All 40s, people are competing for those last two spots. But in the other case, Minnesota secures number seven. And then the last routine is 5-8. How the hell do you do that? I think that the nine and 10 play and then the winner of nine and 10 goes against eight. And then that's how you figure it out. Either way, I'm so excited. I love one game eliminations. That's one reason I'm a huge fan of March Madness. And this is our mini version of March Madness. And I saw somebody on Twitter talking about it, how many young players we will be seeing and like the future of the NBA is going to be on display. And some of it is the future and the now. Like Darius Gargan is the future, but he was just an all-star. Or Trey Young is the future, but he's already a two-time all-star. Melloball already an all-star. If you take a look out west, it's like aunt. It's cat. It's D'Angelo Russell. Paul George is old, but like it's Brandon Ingram. It's the John Tay Murray. Just a lot of our up-and-coming star players in the league are getting to be on national TV, one game elimination. I'm sure we're gonna get some good performances. I will say that this has always been something for the two years. There's been a thing. I've been wrong a lot about my predictions, low key. Because it's a one game elimination. You can talk all you want about matchups and boom, boom, boom, anything can happen in one singular game, right? So I'm looking at the first matchup being the seventh seed in the eighth seed, Brooklyn Nets versus Cleveland Cavaliers. If you look at the regular season, the Brooklyn Nets beat them three out of four times. But there was that fourth time where the Cavs won. But I don't want to bury the lead. The one time that the Cavs won, Kevin Arrant didn't play. And I'm going to assume that Kevin Arrant will play this one. But one thing that is a huge if for me and that obviously dramatically changes the opinions or the thoughts about it is whether or not Jared Allen will be ready to play. I think JB Biggerstaff was asked about it today or yesterday. And he said, we're not completely sure. We're trying to figure things out. I'm paraphrasing, but he says something similar to that. And of course, him being on there would dramatically increase their chances. But I don't think that the Bucks were trying to avoid Cleveland, Atlanta, or Charlotte. I think that's the one team up top, the Brooklyn Nets. And if I'm trying to pick, I'm going to pick between our seven eight matchup. My prediction is going to be a Brooklyn Nets win. Which is unfortunate, man, because majority of the season, Cavaliers have been a team that was top six until we got to like the last two weeks. And they just been dealing with, if we're talking about any team of this year who had the worst injury luck, it is 1,000% the Cavaliers. It's not even, to me, you can't even make an argument for anybody else. You can't make an argument for anybody else. They missed Jared Allen for like two months. Darius Garland missed a couple of weeks with some back stuff. Kyle Lisex got injured very early in the season. Ricky Rubio was having a resurgence of his career and he got a season into injury. Carissa Virg got traded to the team and then a week later, he got injured. Laurie Markner got injured for two weeks at a time. Like they have had so many injuries. And if there's any silver lining Cavs fans, if you lose this game, you still got one more to make it work. But even if you lose that, when you know the next year, you're going to have the throw and DG team back together for an entire season. They hope that that year is healthy. You're going to have Laurie Markner back. You're going to have Evan Mobley back. And your two of Evan Mobley might be dangerous. You feel me? And I didn't even mention that. We missed some crucial time in the last couple of weeks of the season. So I'm not rooting for anybody, obviously. But you know what? I would say majority of the fans are probably rooting for the Cavs because I know that there are teams out there afraid of the Brooklyn Knights and they would rather have somebody else deal with the dirty work instead of going against that team in a seven game series. But again, anything can happen in a seven. I've seen games this year where KD dropped 50 and they lost. You know what I'm saying? I've seen that this year. So anything is possible. But if I had to make a prediction, I'm going Brooklyn Knights. Oh, a game just wrapped up. Clay Thompson had 40. So there's Clay looking good as ever. Give Clay any shot he wants and he can drop a 40 piece. All right, let's keep it in the Eastern Conference talking about this 9-10. I am going to go out on let me say, it's like, if you want to, actually, maybe I don't want to, if you want to get a casual fan into the game of basketball, let them watch Atlanta versus Charlotte because we're talking 160 to 163. Like that's the type of game we about to see, bro. These seeds do not defend very well, but we got some very, very high powered offenses. I do want to give a lot of love to Trey Young and the Atlanta Hawks, though, because where they're doing similar things than last year, but it just, it took them a lot later to do it. But in the last month or so, the Atlanta Hawks have been really, really good. I'm trying to look at it right now. They've had, oh, Kenny, see, this is why you got to look at the last two weeks. I'm gonna clean in the glass and it said over the last two weeks, the Atlanta Hawks are six and two and they are third in offense and 11 in defense. That defense is a lot better than I expected it to be. Charlotte, on the other hand, are seven in offense and 18th in defense. I've talked about this before, but somebody did a research that said that the way you end your regular season is not indicative of how you play in the playoffs and stuff, but this is not the playoffs. It's just one game. And if you approach it at one game, maybe this stuff does matter. I don't know. If I were to make a prediction, though, on this, I think I'm going with Atlanta. I think I'm going with Atlanta. Both of the teams ended exactly the same, exactly same record. I'm gonna go with Atlanta just because Trey Young is amazing. And I've seen him in big pressure situations and I've seen him perform to the highest value or the highest degree. And the Charlotte Hornets were playing team last year and they let the Indiana Pacers, I'm not mistaken, drop like 150 points on them. Like, I know I was exaggerating when I said, oh, it's gonna be 160 to 163. No, if I remember correctly, the Pacers put up like 145 points last year in the playing game. And they were like, it was one game elimination and Charlotte gave up 145 points. You know what I'm saying? Some teams are able to snap on the defense to Charlotte Hornets haven't necessarily been that team. And I think that Atlanta could be that team just because I've seen them in those playoff series snap on the defense. So I guess I'm going to Atlanta. Let me go look at the regular season series. Was that gonna change my opinion? In the regular season, it was a two, two split. Oh, snap. Two, two split. And only one of these games was even close. All of them were like blowouts for whoever won the game. Interesting. Okay. All right, but which one was the newest one, the most recent one? The most recent one was a Charlotte win. A 10 point win for Charlotte where basically everybody was healthy for Atlanta and Charlotte had their entire lineup too. Post trade that line. Montrez-Harris here. He had a 20 piece. Oh, I don't know if that changes things. Hey, listen, I'm not a prediction guy. I make predictions for the sake of the video, but listen, I don't stand on my predictions. I'm not rooting for anybody. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I just want to go basketball or fun basketball because this might not be, this is going to be not great basketball but fun basketball. Does that make sense? Cause I think the best version of basketball and when it is a little bit gritty and this don't feel very gritty to me. All right, let's go over to the Western Conference. Like I said, Minnesota versus the Clippers. And even though I say, like I said, the Minnesota Timbers feels like a team that should be solidified in the playoffs. The Clippers, bro. I have learned my lesson when writing these boys off. The Minnesota Timbers have had the best offense as far as total points scored this entire season. I saw that graphic today during the Bulls game where Minnesota has scored the most total points amongst any team. And I guess that don't really mean anything. I guess it don't mean anything in a grand scheme with things, but it's just a cool stat. But in the last two weeks, they've had the worst spread differential in the entire league. They have had the 16th best offense and the 28th best defense, which is not very normal for them because for a good portion of the season, they were a top 10 defense, but as we completed 82 games in, they ended up with the 13th best defense, which is still a lot better than I think a lot of people expected it. But with the players they have on their team, they feel like a team that definitely could lock in on defense when they need to. The one thing I see with this team, and I've seen in the lies, like, you know, they'll go up on the little run going into the first half and then you put a little bit of pressure on them and then they don't know how to react. They go droughts without scoring the ball. And I feel like this Clippers team is a team that is good on putting that pressure. This Clippers team would be down by 16 and be like, we good, we still in this, you know? So those two, there was like the opposing things. And if I had to take a guess on who I think is going to win this game, I'm going with many. I think I'm going with many Minnesota on this one. I think I'm going with Minnesota. I do believe the Clippers are probably going to still stay the eighth seed, you know, winning game number two, whatever that is, but I do believe that Minnesota can pull out this one. But I would not be surprised that Clippers just clamped up and won this one, especially with Paul George being back in him when he has played, he's looked pretty good. And currently they're on the five game streak. Does that mean something? Does it mean nothing? I don't really know. And then the nine, 10 matchup, we have the Pelicans who are, you know, 36 and 45. But I do want to say this in defense of the Pelicans, they started off the season like three and 16 or something. But since then they've been like an average basketball team. You know, I know there are 10 games below 500, but they've been like an average basketball team. If you get rid of the three and 16 or whatever, it was something wired like that. So the fact that they turn their season around to even be in this place is crazy. And I heard, it might have been on the Zach Lowe's podcast, he was talking about the Lakers. This is supposed to be, I was talking about the Lakers, but it was just basically saying that the Lakers are crazy for even allowing this to happen. For the Pelicans to be in so much of a hold, as big of a hold as you can be in and crawl out of it. And of course, being under 500 still making a plan is kind of crazy, but the Lakers let them do it. But they won today. Shout out to Malik Monk with a little 30 piece. The Pelicans are a really good team, but so are the Spurs. Both teams are good coach. One of them is a great coach. Willie Green is a really good coach too. I've seen throughout the season. If I weren't going to guess though, the John Tay Murray has been out for a couple of games now because he got really sick, I guess, non-COVID related, but he got really sick, I guess. He was tweeting about things, but I'm guessing that he's gonna be available to play in this play-in because they're going to need him, even though they can play okay without him. Obviously he's their all star. He's their everything basically. But in this series, hmm, on this game, this is how crazy it can be. It's just like I'm taking, flip the coin. Where's the coin? I'm flipping a virtual coin, like no joke. I'm going to say the Pelicans are heads and the Spurs are tails. We're going to flip. And it's telling me to go with the Spurs. So Spurs Nation, you have my pick for this seven or this nine, 10 matchup. Only thing I hope for is that every single one of these games is a good one. Last year, we had a few stinkers. Of course we had a couple of good ones and the good ones definitely make you forget about the stinkers but there were some stinkers in that, you know what I'm saying? And I think that the teams that we do have matchup well enough where we should hopefully have four really solid games, you know, four really solid games. That's all we can really hope for, man. In the comment section, let me know what you think. Who is your winners of the play-in tournament? And then I cannot wait to talk about these matchups, bro, because Philly versus Toronto, I am trying to rack my brain around this series. It was already hard enough. And now with this Matisse Stiball stuff coming out, if you don't know Matisse Stiball won't be able to play at least in the first two games in Toronto because he didn't get his second shot and it's mandatory for you to get your shots in order to enter Canada. Matisse not being there is a huge, huge miss and a huge, huge, you know what I'm saying? Something that they desperately need. I don't know who I'm picking in the series just yet but it will be a series, you know? I know that Philly has Joelle who might be MVP and they have James who's been the top 15, 20 player this season but not having Matisse and some of the track record on some of the Philly teams once playoff time come around. It can't, hey, I'm just saying I ain't made my decisions just yet, it's up in the air at the moment. I still got to think about it a little bit more but eventually we will. So like I said, for the playoffs and my goal is to drop these videos daily or near daily talking about the things that I saw just overall giving recaps and stuff. But again, my daughter could be here any day between now and the next 10 days. So if she does come, then expect me not to upload for those days because I will be at a hospital in the delivery room and then when I come home probably gonna be a dad at least a little bit before I get back to recorded videos but I'll be watching the games for show for show. So we might have one big ass recap where I talk about seven games that I miss. Regardless, I appreciate you watching. Thank you so much for the support. Hit that link in the description. Follow the newsletter and I see you all tomorrow. I'm out.