LeBron James

What about you?

This is a four-siren team for me, and maybe like you two, I'm stuck in a moment and I can't get out of it.

I would have them behind the Spurs right now.

The Nuggets have not looked impressive to me at all since Nikola Jokic came back.

Now I go back to the 23 title team.

They went 9-10 combined in the months of March and April.

They had an absolute swoon going into the playoffs, and then everything clicked perfectly for them.

They got the best basketball of Bruce Brown's career.

Christian Brown ascended...

in the playoffs and Aaron Gordon was awesome I think they can probably win without contributions from Peyton Watson but they absolutely cannot win if Aaron Gordon isn't at his peak and that's what has me a little bit worried for this team hasn't played since January 23rd he's only played 10 games since November like it's not just this stretch for Aaron Gordon he was banged up yeah

at the start of the season as well.

He was banged up during the playoffs last year.

It's turning into a recurring theme with him.

So they're going to probably hold him out as long as they feel comfortable during the regular season, but that's like a push-pull as well because they need to be the third seed.

Every team needs to be the third seed so you don't run into thunder in the second round.

So there's definitely a catch-22 there of how...

how much are we pushing during the regular season versus how much do we want to preserve for the playoffs?

They've tended to err on the side of preserving for the playoffs, but Adelman was talking recently about like, yeah, we actually are looking at the standings right now and times are getting tough in the Western conference and seating is going to be super, super important.

So maybe prisoner of the moment, but I'm, I think Spurs ahead of nuggets right now, personally.

Yeah, look, I think everybody agrees it's going to be Thunder Spurs 1-2 in whatever order you want to put them.