 There are only three real contenders. At least that's a statement that I read a couple days ago and it's just been about my existence so I think it's time for us to make a video. So it comes from John Hollinger at The Athletic and he opens up the article saying, so how many teams would you say are real, true, honest to goodness contenders right now? And before we dive more into this article, I think it's important for us to define what a contender really is. Of course, I'd be having these conversations with the homies all the time since we have an NBA podcast and it seems like my definition of a true contender is different than consensus. In my eyes, a true contender is a team that can go into any series no matter the circumstances and win. It's pretty simple, but it's a little bit different because there are some teams out there that I think could win a championship but there's a lot of exterior factors like injury luck, like breaking right in the bracket so we go against this team and not that team. And for me, a true contender, they don't care about that. They shouldn't care about that because we believe no matter who we go against we are the better team, whether they're healthy or whether we are the higher seed or whatever. Again, that's just my definition. You might disagree and that's completely okay. But how can we say right now that there's only three teams? Three teams that fit the criteria of a contender? I mean, we got teams making big time trades. We got teams going on a bio market and picking up extra bodies. We have so many teams that believe that they have a chance this year. I mean, a perfect example of this is just looking at the Western Conference. A lot of these teams believe that they have a chance. You can argue that out of the 10 teams right now in the Western Conference, eight of them believe that they have a chance to win a championship. And the two I'm discounting are the Minnesota Timberwolves and the New Orleans Pelicans considering we don't know what's going on with Zion and we ain't got no updates on Carthony Towns. But every single other one of these teams either made trades or did something to make them believe that we have a chance. The Kings are just really, really good. I mean, how can they not believe that they have a chance if they've been dominating teams across the league this season? I know a lot of things are going on in Memphis. But Jamarra said a couple of months ago he's good out West. The Suns just traded for Kevin Durant. The Clippers have Paul George and Kawhi Leonard and they became buyers this deadline. The Warriors are the defending champions. The Mavericks were just in the conference finals and made a trade to add Cary Irvin. And then the Lakers are the Lakers and they believe that if we can get in there and bronze coming back in 80s playing great we can beat any team. But then we go back to our original statement. There's only three real contenders. So a lot of people are about to be really upset if that's true. But what is the rationalization behind this? Let's go back into the article. The past 26 champions and 45 out of 46. Think about that. 45 out of 46 champions post the merging error at a top three record in their conference. That is a ridiculous stat. 26 straight years of this being the case of being a top three team in their conference. 45 out of 46. So do we believe that this year is different than the last 26? Do we think that this is gonna be the second year in the last 47 that this recipe doesn't happen? Of the last 43 champions, 42 have won at least 52 games. But he does let you know that like last year the Warriors won exactly 53 which is one more than the criteria. And then the Bucks won 53 if you change it because of the loss of games. So just one game above the 52 but still some pretty staggering numbers. And the only teams that fit this criteria right now are the Milwaukee Bucks, the Boston Celtics and the Denver Nuggets. And we wanna go super crazy into the numbers. There's only two teams in the last 21 seasons that won a championship without being top 10 in offense and top 10 in defense. First team was the Detroit Pistons from the past. We all know they were crazy defensive team but the offense wasn't quite there. It went like it was trash but it won top 10. Any other team that didn't fit the criteria of top 10 offense, top 10 defense the year they won a championship is last year Golden State Warriors. They were 70 to no offense by the end of the season and second on defense. But even they both in those seasons the Detroit Pistons and the Golden State Warriors fit into John Holgerstein. They've topped three in their conference and both teams won over 52 games. So if we use my recipe as top 10 offense, top 10 defense and also use the recipe that John Holger's talking about what team is the NBA champion right now? The only team that fits the criteria exactly is the Boston Celtics. To break it to you ladies and gentlemen, this might be our eventual NBA champions. Obviously the reason we watch the sport is because it's not that simple. It's not just numbers and stuff like that. But it is pretty damn in the sea that all of these are going that way. But if you look at top 10 offense, top 10 defense the Philadelphia 76ers are fifth in offense and ninth in defense. The Cleveland Cavaliers are ninth on offense and third on defense. And the Memphis Grizzlies are tenth on offense and second on defense. Those are all the teams that fit the top 10, top 10 criteria but some of them won't hit the 50 plus games thing. This is why I disagree with what John Holger is saying in this article. Because as of right now, the Philadelphia 76ers are projected to win 51 games. That's just one off of the Holger method. They're already top 10 in offense and top 10 in defense. So you're trying to tell me the difference between them being a contender and not a contender is one brand of regularity is a game that they lost. It might have been one to Joel and B set out. It might have been one that somebody was injured. It can't just be formula this and formula that. Then the biggest elephant in the room is Kevin Arendt. I'm unfortunate that he got injured. Just so many freak accidents after freak accidents. Herding yourself in warm-ups is ridiculous. But he will be back come playoff time before playoff time. And Kevin Arendt is not a normal human being. Every single time this man, Kevin has gone through an injury whether it be a two week injury, a year long injury, a six month injury. He always comes back and just look who. You know how we be thinking about all the jail and period slash the re getting, getting acclimated to basketball. Kevin Arendt will do that. His first game back with the saws. He looked like the Kevin Arendt that he had been the entire season. So there's so many different factors where I have to ultimately disagree that there are only three real contenders. They might be the three favorites. But there are some other teams out there that I think for sure could go into any playoff series and win regardless of the circumstance. And like, do we give the Warriors the benefit of the doubt? Oh, this must have happened today. The Pistons, the Rockets and the Spurs have it. They're done. They're out. I don't remember seeing that like yesterday. But the thing with the Warriors, obviously, is this. They were tied for the third worst road team in all of basketball. Tied with the three teams. I'm sorry, one game away from being tied with the teams that aren't in the running for the playoffs anymore with 17 games left. But the one thing is, during the Steph Curry, Clay Thompson era, they've always won at least one road game in the playoffs. That's a stat in like every series. But this year it's just bad. Even if you look at yesterday against the Memphis Grizzlies, all the animosity between Draymond Green and Dylan Brooks who've taken shots at each other, whether it be in interviews or podcasting, they got destroyed. Steph Curry, Clay Thompson, Draymond Green, they relatively healthy without wigs. Going to get to see Mrs. Stephen Adams for pretty much the rest of the regular season. Brandon Clark is out for the season and plus some get well soon. And then Jaws dealing with what he dealing with. Y'all lost on the road again. They just can't win a road game. So you want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but like how when they're one of the best teams at home, but they can't put together a road win to save their life. I wonder how many of the years that we're talking about have had this level of parity. How many years of the 40, whatever we're talking about, have had this level of parity? Like it has to happen. Again, it's a big sample size. It's 40 plus years of basketball. But how many years have had the parity enough with the difference between being the five seed and being on the outside? We're not even just talking about, the playing is something that is new. But like completely on the outside looking in, the 11 seed, the difference between that is two games. Again, it's had to have happened because it's a big sample size, but I wonder how rare this actually is. Like are we living in the anomaly season? I really do hope so. Not saying that I don't want to see the Bucks Celtics or Denver Nuggets win a championship because again, my team ain't competing. So I don't care who actually win, but I think it's just better for any sport where the winner of the championship is up in the air more than ever. Because in my lifetime as an NBA fan, I mean, we went through this period of an eight year, nine year period, where we knew exactly what was gonna happen out East. And then once we got to the finals, we had a good idea of who was gonna win and who wasn't. Cause I think there are a lot of teams that can make a conference finals run. But how many of those teams are I think can win that conference finals and then win the finals against the opposing conference? Like we see teams come out of nowhere. I'm just gonna put that in rotation marks like the Dallas Mavericks did last season or the Trail Blazers did a few years ago or the Denver Nuggets did a few years ago. I can't, again, out of nowhere is in quotation marks cause those are good basketball teams. But like a lot of the times we see that surprise team get to the conference finals and then they go against the team that a lot of people believe is the favorite and the favorite ends up winning and then boom, it's over and they go to the finals. Cause I remember just a week ago on ESPN, the panel of NBA experts were asked if the Lakers were the 8C and they're going against the Denver Nuggets in the seven game series, who you got? And out of the four people on that panel, they all said the Lakers. Are they right or are they wrong? I don't know, time will tell, I guess. It's a possibility that that might happen. And they were asked the exact same thing about the Memphis Grizzles and the Lakers and they all picked the Lakers. Is that Laker bias? Is that Braun bias? Is whatever. I don't know, but this could be a year. At least we hope to be a year where parity is at an all time high that a team that we see as a regular season juggernaut could get eliminated earlier on than normal. I mean, last year was that, right? Last year was that. Juggernaut in the regular season was the Phoenix Sons. And they got laughed at off their own court in the second round of the playoffs. So hopefully what happened last year with the Warriors not being top 10 in this and that could carry over and continue this streak of parity. At least that's all we can ask for as NBA fans. And if you ask me right now, March 9th, Kenny, who do you think is gonna win a championship? I'm gonna tell you the Milwaukee Bucks. I picked them in the pre-season and I've been riding with them because they look like the most complete team even though they do not fit the top 10 and top 10 criteria. So based on my own little methodology, we're going against his, because offensively they are not good. They are not good. I'm sorry, they are not great. Let's put it that way, great. They're a league average. They're a league average offense according to the numbers. But I still believe come play off time, you have the best player in the world and a soon to be healthy, complete team. It's gonna be hard to beat that team to seven. Anyway, I don't even know if I said anything in this video. You let me know what you think about there being three real contenders. Is it facts to you or not?