 What's the word, y'all? The NBA playoffs have become extremely unpredictable and I'm here for it. Because let's be real, the first round of the NBA playoffs historically is pretty mid, like, you know, you might get a series here and that are really cool. Maybe you get a three-six matchup that's fine, or four-five matchups are typically good. Nah, this year, like, every series except for the one that's already ended has given us something. We got two teams that fought that way through the play-in to have a three-one lead on one of the top teams in their conference. The Miami Heat just got a historic performance and then the Lakers won a game against the Grizzlies and, like, LeBron, listen, for the entirety of the fourth quarter. I mean, the guys, well, we lost a whole game in Discord, but we saw LeBron be so passive, passionate to reheat you more, passionate to also reason this and this, and we just screamed, LeBron, take a shot! And then he made the biggest shot of the game and then in overtime made another one of the biggest shots in the game. So shout out to LeBron. It felt like he was coaching a lot of this game and he still ended up with 20-20 and a win. But there's been a high level of unpredictability which is dope. I mean, a lot of people picked the Lakers to beat the Memphis Grizzlies. I guess that wouldn't be necessarily unpredictable, but the one that has been extremely unpredictable is seeing the Miami Heat take a three-one lead against the Milwaukee Bucks. I cannot talk about these without addressing the elephant in the room and that, of course, has to do with injuries. In both of these series where you see the play-in, the lower seed go in and take a three-one lead, we've seen significant injuries across star players. Yannis was dealing with a booty thing, a back thing, whatever you want to call it, and he missed a few games. One of those games they dominated. Another one of those games they didn't. And this just showcases how small the margin of error you can really get in the NBA or I guess sports in general. Because now you're down to one, right? Yannis gets injured in game one early in this one. They do not adjust. They lose home court advantage. And then in game two, they come in and put the smack down on the Miami Heat. They prepared to play without Yannis. But in game three, the Miami Heat fall back and now you got Yannis in this awkward position that even if he's not 80%, 70%, he has to play because going down three-one is almost, I say almost a death sentence. I think it's been 13 times in NBA history where we've seen some people come back three-one. A lot of those times feel like they're more recently. Like seeing the Denver Nuggets do it twice in 2020 or seeing the Cavs do it of course in the NBA Finals or seeing the Warriors do it the series before the NBA Finals. And then in 2015 he started to use the rocket. So like a lot of these feels like they just happened in the last, man, 2015 is almost a decade ago. That's crazy. So that's why I say almost because a lot of things can happen to change the series. But now Yannis has to play in this one. He had a good game, but the margin of error was so small that a historic performance like this puts you in a hole and now you have no room for error. You lose a game, you are out. This is a team that a lot of people, me included, picked to win the NBA Finals. And they're one game away from being eliminated in the first round. Again, if we flip it over to the Western Conference I can't say this was extremely unpredictable because a lot of people picked the Lakers to win this series. Especially when you consider that Stephen Adams was down with an injury and he's not gonna come back. And Brandon Clark is down with an injury. He's not gonna come back. Those are two players you want in the hypothetical series against Anthony Davis and they're gone. And now we add the wrinkle of John Morant not being able to use his right hand as effectively as he wants. It makes sense that the Lakers are up here. Again, even before all of that, even before we knew who the Lakers is gonna go against, a lot of people believed that the Lakers had done the things at the deadline to make themselves a championship contender. I think post-trade deadline, they were tied, I think with the Mifers Grizzlies for the best record in the Western Conference. So again, they were trending upward. We made a video on this channel talking about how I did believe that this team could make a run. And here they are one game away from securing at least the first round and they gonna go against the Sacramento Kings or the Warriors in the next one. A lot of this, I can't say all of it because who knows I'm not gonna live in a world of hypotheticals. A lot of this has to do with the injuries around ball right now. I thought that the Clippers in the Sun series was gearing up to be a really, really good one, especially after game one with Kawhi Linda was back in Robocop mode. And then now he's out, missed the last couple and he's guaranteed out for the next game as well. Jorlin Bied got injured head to miss a game, but luckily his team rallied and swept the Brooklyn Nets without him. And as far as I know, as far as I remember, they said, actually, why can't I'm just, I'm at a computer. Let me just Google Jorlin Bied, probably 50% to start the next series, which is not ideal because the next series is gonna be significantly harder than the one that they just got done with. So we got Yannis missing time, we got Embiid missing time, we got Jama Rant missing time, we got Kawhi Linda missing time. Paul George, I'm gonna include because him and Kawhi together is like this tandem but he ain't get injured in the playoffs. These are players that got injured in the playoffs and that's not even counting like Tyler Hero who's out with a hand injury or Victor Ladipo who's out for like a year, man. I feel so bad for Victor Oledipo. I'm watching late in this game when it happened. And traditionally, if somebody's gonna have an injury like this, you know, they're on the ground, they're screaming, their history action was of someone that's been there before and that makes me sad. And now we gotta wait an entire season to see if he can come back and he was already struggling to come back from the last one. So Vio, get well soon, man. And now we found out today that Deiren Fox is gonna be trying, he might try to play with the broken index finger. So a lot of the variants that we're seeing in the playoffs right now is because of the injuries that are being suffered. The one thing that's covering all that up is the fact that these games have been damn good whether it's, you know, a star player's playing or not. We're getting banger after banger after banger. And again, this is the first round of the playoffs, y'all. We definitely don't get this to the second round of the conference finals, even the finals, but we're getting it right here right now. Bro, the Bucks are just one game away from getting eliminated. That is so wild to wrap my head around, man. And the way Jimmy Butler has been playing recently, you tell me he get three shots to win one game? Again, I don't wanna count anything out. We just went through the stats. There are teams that have done it very, very recently, but like three chances to win one game is a ton, especially now that they're, oh no, they get one, they get one home game. They get one more home game. So it's just the same. The performance that Jimmy Butler just put on was one of the greatest playoff performances of all time. And anytime we have a moment like this, always try to come up to this channel and try to put in a perspective at how great a performance it was. Like when Dom's Mitchell dropped to 71 or when Damian Little dropped to 71 or when Jordan Levy dropped his 56, 10, 7, 8, whatever it was game. Like in the moment you recognize that, oh my God, this is a crazy, crazy performance. We're having so much fun, but you don't really internalize how ridiculous of a performance this was. If you look at the all-time points in a single playoff game, we got Michael Jordan who at 63. We have Elgin Valu at 61 back in the 1962 season. Then we got Dom's Mitchell in the bubble and then there's Jimmy Butler tying with a bunch of different people including Charles Barkley, Michael Jordan again and Will Chamberlain. Like we just experienced this game right there. And when you think about the stakes of them now taking the 3-1 lead against a number one seed, it makes it even crazier. Because Jordan 63 came in a loss. I don't know if y'all remember that shout out to the GOAT but it came in a loss. It was young Jordan against Larry Burden, so it makes sense. Dom's Mitchell won came in a loss because if you remember it was him and Jamal Murray going head-to-head. So Jimmy's on top of the win kind of, kind of maybe more impressive. I can't say, I can't say it again. I wasn't there in real time in 1986 to say that. But again, when you consider the stakes of them being the eight seed going to get to one seed and the fact that they want to give this up a 3-1 lead, you just look at the counterstats, you say it's incredible and you add the stakes on top of it. It's like, man, this performance was ridiculous. And it was a regulation while Jordan's was in a double overtime game and then Dom's Mitchell was in a single overtime game. Whatever, whatever, whatever. I'm just trying to put in perspective how ridiculous this performance was where the man was on fire. Simple as that. He was on fire. He was taking the shots they needed because he wasn't getting a lot of help from his number two. And traditionally the offensive side his number two was going to be Tyler Harrow. But again, I mentioned Tyler Harrow has a broken hand. He will not be coming back. So his number two is now BAM out of bio. And there are so many moments in this game. Like I am a self-proclaimed BAM believer and I have been. You can check the archives for forever. So this is rookie season practically. This series so far is really making me mad as a BAM believer. That's the name of the fan club. BAM believers, I'm upset BAM because Jimmy's out there giving his all, dropping 56 and BAM ain't had a game just yet. Is it gonna happen? I do not know. I genuinely do not know. I would usually say, of course it's gonna happen eventually. I can't say, yeah, I can't say for sure. But they got three chance to win one game and then I don't know what happens after that. Again, I'm not trying to project or anything because anything can happen in the NBA. But the way the Knicks have been taking care of the Cavaliers now we got Knicks versus Heat again. I don't know why I said it again. I don't think they've played against each other a couple of years ago. So we got Knicks versus Heat and I'm not gonna say who I would pick to win that series because I'm not living in the world of hypotheticals. I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna say who I would pick. We gonna have to see it happen in real life before I start making predictions. Well, it would look like that second half of the bracket between the Cavs, I'm sorry, between the Celtics and the 76ers might determine the team that's gonna win the East. I don't wanna count anybody else because again, it has been extremely unpredictable but with the Bucks being out, I mean, Godly, I don't know what to say. Cause if it felt like you didn't want to be the 4C going into the playoffs and now with all of these things coming alive, now being the 4C between the 5C don't seem that bad. Cause Jimmy just gave us a historical performance and he's been great. But I still can't look at that team and say, ah, they're back to the real life championship contender. You know what I'm saying? That first was like, oh, if we the 4C or the 5C we first gotta beat up on the other team and that team is good. And then we gotta go against the Bucks and then we gotta go against the winner of the Celtics and the 76ers. That ain't something we wanna do. So let's fight to get two or three and we'll fight each other two or three in the second round and then whatever. I just hate the injuries at the end of the day. I just hate the injuries because obviously a lot of things are different. If the injuries don't exist, maybe the product is slightly better. But again, the product ain't been bad. I don't know, I'm rambling at this point. I missed a bunch of time in between the last upload. Now I've been going through burnout stuff, but if you needed some coverage about the NBA, you should have just clicked the link in my description so you can subscribe to the Enjoy Basketball newsletter. Absolutely. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you get an up-to-date on all things basketball. So if you're missing some series or you're wanting those story lads, you wanna see viral tweets that maybe you missed out on, then Enjoy Basketball newsletter is the way to do that. So hit that link in the description. I'm gonna try my hardest to do these every single day because there's a lot of series that we didn't even get to talk about and I wanna talk about them but I wanna do it the right way.