Paulo Alves

Because regardless of exactly what seed the Rockets are, regardless of what record they have over the final eight games, I don't think it's going to dramatically change how we feel about this season.

The only way that can dramatically change how we feel about what we've seen this year is if they go on a run in the playoffs, as we've talked about for a lot of this episode.

So I want to look ahead to that series that's starting in mid-April.

Obviously, we'll talk much more about it when we know who the opponent is, and we're still a couple of weeks away from that.

But at this early stage, Paolo, who do you think is the most favorable draw between the

the Nuggets, the Timberwolves, and the Lakers.

Because as mentioned earlier, I think mathematically you can't... None of these teams can catch the Spurs, who are pretty entrenched as a top-two seed, and I don't think it's realistic for any of them to fall to the play-in range and be caught by Phoenix.

So I think it's pretty clear that either in the 3-6 or the 4-5, we'll see what seed, we'll see if the Rockets have home-court advantage, but...

It's going to be one of those three opponents in all likelihood who you draw in the first round.

And I think I'm leaning Lakers.

Jaden McDaniels has some knee soreness that depending on what happens there, you could tilt me in the direction of Minnesota.

But the reason I would prefer the Lakers over Minnesota, I did not like what we saw from KD against Jaden McDaniels last week.

I think the Rockets need KD to be able to tap into the all-star, all-NBA version of himself to have a chance.

And I think Jaden might be the most difficult one-on-one matchup for him among all of those three teams.

And what I keep going back to with the Lakers...

even with everything going wrong for the Rockets and not having Shingun one of those games at all, both of those losses to the Lakers in Houston were still there for the taking, entering the final three or four minutes, and it took Luka going absolutely crazy for the Lakers to scrape by.

So even with the Rockets doing so many things wrong, not having Shingun one game, Tari being broken,

it was still right there for the taking.

You could sort of argue the same with Minnesota, although the Timberwolves didn't have Anthony Edwards for this game, so I would caution reading too much into that.

And then earlier in March, Denver was the game.