Apr 14th, 2023

Team of the 2020s — Zion(?) — #SoupGate

April 14, 2023

Fri, April 14th, 2023

  The Opening Tip

  • New NBA kid has gone viral 

  • This Zion situation seems not good

  • J.R. Smith has set the record straight on #SoupGate

 1. The OKC Thunder will soon be our overlords   

The Oklahoma City Thunder play the Timberwolves tonight for a spot as the 8-seed in the West. Whether they win or not is not all that important in the long run, because: They will soon be our overlords.One of the best-run teams in one of the least desirable markets has …

  • An MVP-type player in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who you should truly make an effort to watch if you haven’t yet

  • This past year’s No. 2 pick on ice in Chet Holmgren 

  • An incredible cast of good young role players: Josh Giddey, Lu Dort, Jalen Williams, Jaylin Williams, etc. 

And, like, every fucking draft pick. They can’t use every one of their 15 first-rounders in the next five years on actual players, but they can package a comically large amount of them for an unhappy (Luka) superstar (Luka) with (Luka) a (Luka) few (Luka) years (Luka) left (Luka) on (Luka) their (Luka) deal (Luka).The Thunder went 40-42 this year. Their record’s gunna start with a five for the rest of the 2020s.

 2. Daily GIF: Diar DeRozan = MVP    

Best part of the play-in games so far: Diar DeRozan, DeMar’s daughter, going viral for screaming every time a Raptor player was about to take a free-throw.Also, it clearly worked: 

  • Toronto shot 18-of-36 from the free-throw line, their most missed FTs since 1997

 3. Trivia time  

LeBron has played the most playoff games in NBA history. Who’s second?Answer at the bottom.

4. Lord, these Zion quotes  

Zion Williamson, who’s played 29 of a possible 164 games in the last two years, spoke to the media on Tuesday and said a few kinda wild things.A breakdown: 

“Physically I'm fine.”

Good start.

“Now it's just a matter of when I feel like Zion."

Hm. Expand?

"I don't feel like there are any specific benchmarks for being Zion."

Good news for Zion:

The Pelicans lost their play-in game on Wednesday, so he doesn’t have to feel like Zion again until, at the earliest, October 2023.

If you’re a Pelicans fan --

-- this has to be pretty infuriating, especially since he was

right before Wednesday’s L.

If you’re a subscriber of

, you have to respect this no-work, all-guaranteed-money king.

5. We finally have #SoupGate answers 

That final LeBron-Cleveland season gave us many iconic moments. The funniest was probably J.R. Smith’s locker room run-in with assistant coach Damon Jones, which ended with Smith throwing what we now can identify as a tomato-based chicken tortilla soup at Jones.The entire situation has mostly lived in online NBA lore until yesterday, when Smith opened up about it on JJ Redick’s podcast.From J.R.’s mouth: 

“I'm in the lunch room getting my soup, (Jones) comes in. He's trying to make me spill it. I'm not gonna lie, it took me a second. I actually thought about it. It wasn't a rageful throw. It was like, OK you're playing with me, I know you're playing with me, I'm gonna show you.I literally thought about it, and I threw it on him. He's over there screaming because the shit is hot. I'm like, 'See, you're gonna stop playing now with me now, right?'"

It wasn’t a rageful throw. The shit is hot. J.R Smith is iconic.

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 6.  Quick Hits 

 7.  Reads & Pods