🎰🏆🃏 My 2024-25 NBA Cup picks
The toughest groups? The softest? Which injuries loom large?
The NBA’s In-Season Tournament starts on Tuesday night. I’ll be on the Blazers broadcast as they kick things off with the Minnesota Timberwolves at 10 pm ET. Tune in!!!!
As part of the research for the show, I wanted to see where the Blazers’ Group A stacks up with the rest of the groups and how the injuries are shaping the field. So I’ll share that info here.
As a reminder, the NBA creates groups by conference first and then a random drawing within buckets assigned by last season’s record so that the team strength is evenly distributed. But when last season’s good teams become bad (MIL and PHI) or bad teams become good (MEM), there’s going to be some imbalance. Not much you can do about that.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think the Lakers repeat. And considering how the post-Vegas season went, maybe they don’t want to? Isn’t it funny how two of the four teams that went to Vegas last season ended up firing their coach? Lakers (Ham) and Bucks (Ham). OK, maybe not funny for those guys. Kudos to Rick Carlisle for surviving and thriving all the way to the East Finals.
Anyway, here are the Groups’ collective W-L Pct, Simple Rating System (SRS) (courtesy of Basketball-Reference) and my picks for each Group and overall winner …
