 What's the word y'all? Let's be real y'all, the play in race is kind of depressing. And I'm not saying it's not fun, cause if you ask me would I rather have the play in or not, I'm taking play in 100% of the time. Because again, as an extra element, a lot of our teams are still trying to compete because they know that there's 15 spots. And 10 of those spots have a chance to make the playoffs. We gonna keep it going into the very last day of the season. And it's got us caring about random games in March. Today and tomorrow, I'm almost a Die Hard Pistons fan. Pistons versus Pacers. Well, I need the Pistons to win because my team is competing with the Pacers for a play in spot. Pistons versus Wizards tomorrow. I mean, I'm rooting for the Pistons. Even though they're the underdog in both games, they're not very good. James Wiseman has been looking solid at least. Let's say I ain't been a guy that's been rooting against other teams before. I'm actively doing that right now. And it's against the brand. It's not normally what we do right here. But my team is one of those teams competing for a play in spot. So I need those other teams to lose because I don't trust my organization. Or like the other day, I found myself watching back-to-back games of Wizards versus Hawks screaming, Go Tray Young. You know what I'm saying? That's the effect that the play in has had. And it's an important one. But when I'm talking about it being depressing, I'm talking about the teams that's competing. Because I bet if you ask every single one of those teams, is your season going the way you wanted it to? They're gonna say, No, absolutely not. We thought we was gonna be way better than this. And here we are clawing to just have a chance to go against a one or two seed. And depending on what conference you win, you basically are fighting for a chance to lose in five. Let's be real. If you out East, you're fighting for a chance to lose in five. Now West is a little bit different. You know what I'm saying? Some people might pick some upsets. But for the Easter Conference race, it's like, Hey, it could be cool to get one, two playoff games in, add an extra revenue stream. Let's talk about the Easter Conference. The teams that are in the play-in hunt starting off with the Miami Heat. You know, I've been talking about this kind of a lot recently and I mentioned in our podcast the other day that the Miami Heat might have the worst 4 through 12, 4 through 15 of any team in the NBA right now. Not just any playoff team, but almost any team in the NBA, y'all. Of course, we still love Jimmy Butler. He's trying, man. He's trying. He just got fined or got it technical for walking off the court after he gave them blood, sweat, and tears and a potential game tie and shot to go to overtime and they still lost to the Orlando Magic. He just, he literally just walked off the court. No daps. No BNF on my teammates. I'm out because I can't stand this. Still trust BAM on a bio. I still trust Tyler Hero to an extent. But after that, it's like, boy, legit they have, if not the worst, one of the worst 3 through or 4 through whatever in all of basketball. And this is a team that was a top seed last season and was one shot away. We're going to keep saying that one shot away from being in the finals and they're in the playing right now with little to no hope of making any noise. Then we got the Atlanta Hawks who sit at a small foul hunting. They blow so many leads. I can't even keep track of it and they traded three first round picks to get this parent of the Jean-Té Muriel training on together and they look terrible, but they're a fireball team. And that's way worse than they thought they were going to be with adding a guy like the Jean-Té Muriel to that team. Last season they were four games over. Yikes. Again, there's 15-ish games left so they might still end up four games over, but let's say they end up five games over. You added a Jean-Té Muriel and you only got one extra game of win. Now I know that they've had a ton of injuries and their actual start of five hasn't played a ton of time together, but still they had the firecoats coinciders in now. Like this has been a disappointing season for what they tried to do this offseason. It's a runner-up, it's a four games under after being one of the top seas. They were not even in a play-in last year. They had a set-and-stone playoff series last year and a lot of things have fallen through for them. The Bulls, wait, where do we start? Where do we start? They're literally, quite literally, the worst clutch team in basketball. Not the worst clutch team of the teams here before playing spot, but in all of basketball, worse than the 15 and 53 Detroit Pistons, they are the worst clutch team in ball. And I mentioned this on our podcast today. If the Bulls were half as good in the fourth quarter as they were last season, we're the 4-5 seed right now. Last year we were the best fourth quarter clutch team in basketball. This year we are the little worst. It makes no sense. It makes no sense. They traded away an extra pick that's going to go to Orlando this year. And here we are competing for a play-in spot and we're on a two-game streak, which is cool. We got the Kings coming up. You know what I'm saying? We're in the 10th seed right now because this win just kind of fell off. The Pacers are the exception. If you look at the history of the play-in, it's only been two years, like, forgetting about the bubble. It's only been two years of the play-in. And every single year there's been a team that's in the play-in that you're like, here they come. Here go them boys. This team is about to be nice in the future. The first year it was Jean-Marin and the Memphis Grizzlies who ended up in the play-in and ended up knocking out the Warriors. Yeah, they knocked out the Warriors. And then last year, it was the Minnesota 10 Bulls. Now, of course, they traded half the pieces of the roster to get in and really go bare. But that was a team like, oh, yeah, Anthony Edwards, he's coming to himself car to the town to get into the play-off series. Like, you know what I'm saying? It had some teams that were relatively young and experienced and then those are like the boys we pay attention to and the play-in. The only team out east to have some of that is the Indiana Pacers. And they've been here. You know what I'm saying? It's the Pacers. They've always been a team that's been competent enough to be in the play-in race or be in the play-off team. But they are a relatively young team-ish. I mean, I guess Miles Turner is still relatively young in NBA years, which is crazy to even think about. But that's the one team that, oh, they got a bright future where every single other one of these teams can beat a forward spot as kind of a no-man's leg. And the Washington Wizards are no exception too. I said earlier, they might be the best of the bad teams. And since then, they ain't won a game. The kidney curse is back, baby. So that's the Eastern Conference teams. And again, there's only one exception, but everybody else is looking at themselves like, man, we are super underperforming. Out West, I mean, this is changing almost on the daily. The Warriors won against the Bucs the other day after Steph Curry did some crazy stuff. And now they're outside of the play-in. They're the sixth seed, but like the Minnesota Timbers gave up five first-round picks and a lot of real rotational players in order to get Rudy Gauberian. And here they are in the play-in. Now, of course, Continent Talent doesn't play since the end of November. And we still don't know what that's about. But again, if you look at what they did this off-season and their own expectations and everything, this is a disappointing year. The Dallas Mavericks traded for an all-star, all-star caliber player, all-star starter caliber player. And they have been significantly worse since the trade. They're 3-7 in the last 10 and they can't put together wins. And now, Lucodontas is out for at least a week. And they're a play-in team right now. Utah Jazz is one of the exceptions out West. You know what I'm saying? They traded away. Donov Mitchell, Rudy Gauberian, they're still in the hunt. Every single time they feel like they're about to fall out of it, they go on a two- to three-game win streak. Taylor Horton Tucker had almost had a 30-point trip with Double D the other night. Like, they continuously find out ways to stop the bleeding and stay in this race. And then the OKC Thunder might be that team for me that mimics the Memphis Grizzlies or the Pelicans from the last couple years. Like, this is the youngest team, literally the youngest team in basketball and they're missing Chad Holger. And here they are. Here they are in the play-in right now. Like, this might be the team that we look at and if they make it, if they make it and be like, oh, yeah, okay. So this is the recipe for the last couple years. But you also got the Lakers in the hunt. They lost their last game after playing really good basketball without LeBron James. And they were just in the ninth seed like two days ago and here they are as the 11th seed. But again, if you ask the Lakers, how's the season going? They're going to say it's been an underwhelming season. I mean, since the trade-out line, they've been great. I mean, the defense is the best in basketball. But like, and as collectively of the season, it hasn't been what you wanted. You don't want to have Bron and AD and have to claw your way to get in the play-in. They're not even there. Like, some teams are there and you feel kind of comfortable with them at least being there. You can't say that about the Lakers right now because they lose one game, two games in a row. Boom, they back to the 11th seed. Then the Pelicans, boy, the Pals, man. What the heck? They had a couple of days this season where they were the one seed. They were the one seed. And here they are all the way down in 12th, man. I, it's so unfortunate. Zion and Brandon Ingram have played like 200 minutes together all season long. And it's not very fun, man. Even though this team is a fun team when they're healthy, lately it's a really, really hard watch right now. And they have some players that I really enjoy. Herb Jones and Brandon Ingram, two of my favorite players to watch. But collectively as a team, they have been a hard watch since Zion's went down. And that's why they're the 12th seed right now. I guess the Blazers are technically still in the hunt, only being two games behind. But the way they've been playing recently as well is hard to say that it's actually, they're actually in the hunt hunt. They do have Damian Lillard who can win you three games in a row and then you're back in the play-in. But I don't know, man. So I just listed off like eight different teams, six teams out West. And maybe there's two that they look in like, okay, if we make it, the Thunder say this was a successful season. The Jazz will say this was a successful season. But the rest of them, they make the play-in and lose or they miss it completely. They like, bro, this season sucked. There's so many teams that are up in the air where like, depending on the way this season goes, I can see quite a handful of these teams looking themselves in the mirror and say, okay, we built this team to do this. Let's kind of rethink some things. This off season could be kind of cool. And that's saying something because the frequency class is not very good. You know what I'm saying? You got a couple names with that with James Harden, Cary Irvin and stuff like that. But for the most part, it's not going to be a year where we're like, oh my God, superstar combo player went to the Warriors again. Because you remember Boogie did that and then Katie did that. We're not having one of those years but we could see a year like, oh snap. They traded him away. Man, I did not see that comment when you think about it. Oh, they built this team to be a play, to be more than a play-in team. We were playing team. We got to reshuffle this deck a little bit. Hey, even though the bull season has been depressing, we're right there and we might get the Bucks in the first round. And last year, we took a game. Wow, we did take a game away from the Bucks, didn't we? Huh, I'll take that. No, I'm joking. That would be another unsuccessful season. Another one, one of those. So when I say the play-in race is depressing, I don't mean that like the games aren't fun or that I want to get rid of the play-in, but like the teams that are involved and they have to really take a look in the mirror and say, okay, what do we do next? But that last week of the season is just going to be an extended playoffs. You can argue right now is an extended playoffs because these games don't matter more than anything. But like that last week and a half, two weeks, oh man, we might see some coaches go out there and run a seven-man rotation for this game in the end of March. You know what I'm saying? Because they need that win so very much. And those type of implications are the reason why I love the play-in. And those type of implications I'm going to mention it again. One of the reasons why I like the idea of change in the league is for us testing out different ways to make the games more valuable in the middle and the beginning of the season. Whether it be an end-season tournament who everybody I talk to hate except for me or whatever it might be, I love the idea of somehow getting the games in November to feel like the games are feeling right now or to feel like the games are going to feel in the beginning of February. Real thing is how do we convince the players and the coaches to care about some random trophy, some cup trophy that we get in November? I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. But I would be so ready to pull up to a win-or-go-home game in the random part of November to get some random trophy that nobody cares about. I would care. Because the Bulls win that, I would get a six-time NBA championship one time. I don't even know who they would name the cup after. Cup Blake Winner. I'm wearing that shirt. You know what I'm saying? If you're a fan of one of these teams that's competing for a play-in spot, let me know how you feel as a fan. Because I would argue that majority of us are like, dang, I got to watch my team play again. Man, I hate knowing that right now. That's how I be feeling sometimes with the Bulls. Let me know. Leave a like, subscribe, whatever.