The Opening Tip

• Steph Curry and the Warriors are experiencing life in the NBA’s lower middle-class. 
• The small markets have been broken by the NBA’s buyout market. 
• Carmelo Anthony is still providing laughs in year 18. 

The weekend's best matchups

1. Fuggit, James Harden is MVP

Point: Conventional wisdom says purposely gaining weight and going to a strip club during a pandemic to tank your trade value and force your way out of Houston should disqualify you from winning the MVP.

Counterpoint: Conventional wisdom doesn’t play 38.3 minutes per night on the best team in the Eastern Conference with 26.1 PPG, 8.9 RPG and 11.2 APG averages.

James Harden came to the Nets in mid January, when their record was 7-6. Since, he’s played 33 of a possible 36 games (Brooklyn is 26-7 in those 33 games), all while Kevin Durant hasn’t played since Feb. 13 and Kyrie Irving has gone and returned from two spiritual enterprises.

Brooklyn has a rookie coach, one star whose interest in basketball changes depending on the moon, another who is busy getting in vulgar social media fights (that’s a real link), and another, Harden, who shows up and wins games.

The Nets are the story of this season, and that wouldn’t be true if they never traded for Harden.

Nikola Jokic, who is having a great season as well, is currently a -130 favorite to win the MVP award on a 30-18 Denver team. Harden, the catalyst for the 34-15 Nets, is second at a distant +500. Either Harden ends up winning it, or we arrive at a Lakers-Nets Finals in June wondering why eight lousy games in Houston disqualified the East’s best player from consideration for MVP.

2. Daily GIF: Bam locks down Steph Curry

Last night during Miami’s 116-109 win over the Warriors, Bam Adebayo did his best Kevin Love impression, forcing the last minute air ball that clinched the win.

Golden State is now 23-25 and losers of five of its last six. If the playoffs started today, the Warriors would be the No. 10 seed in the play-in tournament, one game ahead of the Kings. They could really use noted Red Sox fan Klay Thompson right now.

3. Trivia time

LeBron James owns the record for most playoff games played, at 260. Who is second on the list?

Hint: Five titles, no All-Stars.

Answer at the bottom.

4. The lil’ ol’ small markets are pissed about the NBA’s buyout market

LaMarcus Aldridge made his Brooklyn debut last night, playing 30 minutes in an easy win over the Hornets. He finished with 11 points, nine rebounds and six assists.

That’s pretty good production from Brooklyn’s point of view, especially since it came with the price of a prorated minimum contract. Aldridge, along with Blake Griffin, joined the Nets though a “buyout,” in which a previous team pays said player a lump sum to simply go away. Once that transaction is complete, the player is free to sign wherever he is wanted.

It’s how those two ended up in Brooklyn, and how the Lakers acquired Andre Drummond without giving anything up.

It’s an old thing, but definitely not a fair thing, and the latest round of former stars gallivanting to contending big-city teams has the little guy particularly angry at the system.

From ESPN’s Adrian Wojnorowski’s reporting:
 

5. Carmelo Anthony: Not into the whole fog machine thing

Carmelo Anthony, owner of one of the most expressive faces in all of sports, posted these two works of art to his Twitter account yesterday with the caption, “You guys love that fog machine huh? @DetroitPistons”

(Melo has had a grudge against the Pistons since the night of the 2003 NBA Draft, when Detroit took Darko Miličić over him with the second pick.)

He responded to the influx of fog by dropping 16 points off the bench in an easy win for Portland.

6.  Quick hits

• The Pelicans just signed Isaiah Thomas to a 10-day contract. ❤️
• Joel Embiid is set to return from his bone bruise injury on Saturday against the Timberwolves. 
• Bill Russell, greatest living human, has announced his return to the NBA. 
• Check out this missed layup by Paul George.
• From Reddit: If Nikola Jokic does win MVP, he would be the highest picked player (second round, 41st overall) by a mile to win it.
• Here are some Aaron Gordon-Nuggets highlights from their win over the Clippers last night.

7.  Reads and podcast pick

• Celebrating Passover with Amar’e Stoudemire [GQ]
• The Celtics are a below-average and apathetic team. No one can explain why [The Boston Globe]
• The Blazers believe their best defense is more offense [The Ringer]
• Zach Lowe’s 10 likes and dislikes [ESPN]
• ABA stories with Dr. J and Terry Pluto [Ryen Russillo Podcast]

Trivia answer: Derek Fisher