We’ve hit the unofficial half way mark of the NBA Season, otherwise known as All Star Weekend! This season sees the weekend being taken to New Orleans. Fair to say some players will be enjoying the sites of the city, or the crazy street known as Bourbon Street!
Some predictions were made at the start of the season by yours truly.
Houston would miss the playoffs. That isn’t happening. Harden has his team flying and they look set for a top 4 finish in the conference.
Minnesota would make the playoffs. Also not happening. The young core really haven’t played as well as we thought under Coach Thibs, and losing LaVine certainly hasn’t helped. Until next year Minnesota, this team has the talent to do great things, it just may take longer than we first expected.
Indiana would contend as one of the top teams in the East. Still capable of happening. They started extremely slow and have since got their groove back. In saying that, they’ve been really disappointing and will need a massive second half of the season to really to inflict any kind of damage in the playoffs.
The All Star game itself will have many storylines.
Will Russell Westbrook play alongside all 4 Warriors at one time? As fans of the game, we would all love to see it. The Durant Westbrook feud really boiled over last week in OKC. For someone who has watched these two grow over the years, it was really hard to watch. To be best of mates to worst of enemies in the space of half a season, it plays with the old heart strings. OKC fans were quick to jump all over Durant in his return to OKC and he was happy to play the villain. Time will tell if the 2 hug it out come All Star Weekend.
Carmelo Anthony was brought in as an injury replacement for Kevin Love in the East squad. You’ve got to hand it to Melo, who has honestly had to deal with a circus in New York this season. His play has been great under the circumstances, and he’s doing what he does best; play basketball and not let the mess that’s surrounding the Knicks bother him. This Knicks team can make a run at the playoffs if they keep Melo. The bottom 2 seeds in the East are up for grabs, and there’s nights where this team actually looks the goods. Whether they’re good enough to make a run is left to be seen.
In other formats of the weekend, it’s hard to go past Klay Thompson in the 3 point shootout. He started the season fairly slow, with trade rumours floating about. Klay has since found his range, and if he keeps that up this weekend say good night!
In the dunk contest, the biggest unknown in the field (Derrick Jones Jr) is a dunking machine! Some of the highlights that have been doing the rounds of Derrick have hoops fans drooling with his potential match up with Aaron Gordon. With no disrespect to DeAndre Jordan and Glenn Robinson III, they’ll have to do something special to knock off one of those two guys before the finals.
As always you can get your All Star jerseys here at the Throwback Store!
Would love to know everyone’s thoughts on the upcoming All Star weekend. Should the game mean more than just a pickup game? Baseball (who has since brushed this) had the winning conference have home field advantage for the World Series. That made the game mean so much more the players. Whether we’d like to see that for the NBA and potentially have players get hurt…the NBA would never allow it.
Look forward to hearing from everyone! We’ve had a great first half of the season with the Warriors and the Cavs leading the way, but will the little warrior in Boston have something to say about that come playoff time?
Dave Bauk