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The Peasant Dance; Pieter Bruegel the Elder; 1568

NBA Cup Night VII: All Piston’d Off and Nowhere to Go

It’s the last night of the NBA Cup group stage and hell, I’m finding this edition pretty entertaining, at least in the East where the Atlanta Hawks have already won a group that includes the two best teams in the conference and the Detroit Pistons have a shot to join them. Here are all the games with something at stake, with the game ordered by tip time, all of which are Eastern.

For neutral fans, just know that just about everyone is rooting against the Knicks and Mavericks.

Bucks at Pistons, 7 | The Brandon Jennings Bowl
Winner takes East B and advances to the knockouts. The loser has a shot at the wild card if the game is close (5-6 points) and the Magic beat the Knicks. If the margin is bigger than 5-6 points (Bucks are currently +29, Pistons are +28) and the Magic win, the loser is eliminated and inactive Celtics become the wild card with a +23 margin.

Magic at Knicks, 7:30, TNT | The Evan Fournier Bowl
Winner takes East A and advances to the knockouts. The Magic will win the wild card with a loss of less than 32 points. The Knicks are eliminated with a loss as the Celtics have a better margin. Also, this is just a good game between top East challengers.

Jazz at Thunder, 8
Oklahoma City needs a win to remain alive. A Thunder win paired with a Suns win gives OKC the group. A win plus a Dallas loss would also do the trick, or a win over Utah that is 24 points bigger than Dallas’ margin over Memphis could do it. OKC is eliminated with a win if both the Spurs and Mavericks win their games, provided the Thunder don’t win by 24 points more than Dallas. The Jazz are eliminated so this is not a bowl game by my arbitrary standards.

Grizzlies at Mavericks, 8:30
Mavericks clinch the wild card with a win unless Portland beats the Clippers by more than 50 or the Spurs win and the Thunder beat Utah by at least 24 points more than the Mavericks beat the Grizzlies. The Grizzlies are already eliminated but they were born to try to ruin this for the Mavericks. This is also just a good game from two West challengers.

Spurs at Suns, 9 | The Boris Diaw Bowl
The Spurs win the group with a win. The Suns need a win and either an OKC loss to Utah (to win the group) or a Dallas loss to Memphis (to win the wild card). The margin is only relevant here if it’s a huge blowout or Dallas-Memphis is a huge blowout in the Grizzlies’ favor.

Warriors at Nuggets, 10, TNT
It’s an NBA Cup failure that this game, which is otherwise intriguing, is on national TV instead of Spurs-Suns. Make the call, Adam! Anyway, the Warriors have already won the group. The Nuggets need to beat the hell out of Golden State and see the Thunder lose to the Jazz, the Blazers lose to the Clippers and the Grizzlies absolutely crush the Mavericks to have a shot. Hell, why can’t the NBA call that a Cup parlay and generate some interest around it?

Blazers at Clippers, 10:30
This game only becomes relevant if the Thunder lose to the Jazz and the Mavericks lose to the Grizzlies. In that case, the Blazers (!) can advance with a win over L.A. There’s also a scenario where the Blazers can advance if Dallas loses, Suns-Spurs is a blowout in either direction and Portland wins big. Needless to say, the Blazers making the knockout round would be hilarious. A BLAZERS-PISTONS NBA CUP CHAMPIONSHIP AKA THE SHEED BOWL IS ON THE TABLE.

And here are the NBA Cup games with nothing at stake, featuring some of the saddest teams you’ve ever seen.

Sixers at Hornets, 7
Wizards at Cavaliers, 7
Pacers at Raptors, 7:30
Rockets at Kings, 10

Making the Kings play on their NBA Cup court again is just mean.

Scores

Heat 89, Celtics 108 — Boston is “Jayson Tatum can go 7/21 from the floor and the team still wins by 19 against a play-in level team” good.

Pelicans 112, Hawks 124 — Atlanta is … a functional NBA team again? Four straight wins, sitting at .500. Trae Young with 12 points and 15 assists. The team’s fifth leading scorer in the game. Meanwhile, Dejounte Murray was 2/15 in his return to Atlanta. Fitting, I fear.

Jalen Johnson.

Lakers 80, Timberwolves 109 — Wait, did that disaster against the Kings last week fix the Wolves? Because this is the kind of skin-crawling defense we expect from Minnesota.

LeBron is in perhaps the worst shooting slump of his career. He’s 0/19 from three in the last four games. The Lakers have lost by at least 25 points in three of their last six games.

Nets 102, Bulls 128 — Matas Buzelis sighting!

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Links

The most important piece of the Cavaliers beating the Celtics on Sunday was that it got Cleveland back on top of John Schuhmann’s power rankings! The Rockets are a very worth No. 3 right now, which is a crazy statement if you think back to two years ago.

This Ringer piece on how the website ranked Chick-fil-A waffle fries as the No. 1 fast food item in 2017 might have a narrow audience but as someone who worked for an ambitious sports-n-more website in that era and has strong fast food opinions I am squarely in that audience. Also, Chick-fil-A waffle fries are good!

My man Matt Moore is on Substack now, publishing Hardwood Paroxysm. Few colleagues have ever infuriated me more with their basketball opinions! That’s a compliment, by the way.

Kelly Dwyer on the previous times the West was too deep for its own good.

This isn’t specific to basketball but let me give a big ol’ Hell Yeah to this Rodger Sherman piece on how the powers that be cannot make college football suck.

Some strong takes from The Ringer’s NBA crew. Also on The Ringer, Michael Pina presents his quarter-pole awards.

Josh Gondelman gives Vito the Pug his due. Verde the Welsh Terrier was robbed.

Katie Heindl on Anthony Edwards’ first brush with being the leader of a team.

Tom Haberstroh on the Wolves’ championship goals.

That is Tuesday. See you Wednesday! Be excellent to each other.