NBA Playoff hot take rankings: No, you’re irrevocably flawed

Is it possible to discuss basketball without everything revolving around the concept of hot takes? Yeah, maybe, but that’s not what this is about. This is the opposite.

An article about basketball isn’t really about basketball unless someone spends their time trying to out-opinion the opinions of other opinion-havers. Fandom is only true if you’re defending it poorly in public at any possible moment. Did someone say your favorite MVP candidate is worse than another? Attack them. Attack them on a personal level, if at all possible. This is where hot takes live.

What if someone is audacious enough to claim that that X perception held by group Y is mistaken by Z amount? You have my permission to pass out from anger while trying to fit your rage into 140 characters while attaching an image that hopefully drives your point in like a wooden stake into the heart of some idiot basketball vampire.

Read More: The NBA Playoffs are totally bromantic

This is the best time of year to showcase how much you think your thoughts are the best. Let’s explore some of the best examples of this.

Hot Take No. 1: These playoffs are boring

Games in the second round have been decided by an average of 17.78947368 points. Only two games in the second round have been decided by single-digits. The Spurs just happened to win a Game 6 on the road by 39 points. There is no competition. Everything is balls.

This is kind of low on the hot takes list. It only really appears for semantic reasons. There’s a significant difference between the following sentences.

• The playoffs are boring.
• I’ve been bored by these playoffs.

The first one is telling people how to think about or enjoy a thing. The second one is a personal statement. I’m not particularly interested in telling people how to have fun, so if you’re saying you haven’t found the playoffs enjoyable due to the blowouts and pain, then that’s cool. I might disagree because I still find myself locked in pretty much every game until it’s not a game any more, but that’s no concern of yours.

So the playoffs may have bored some people. That does not make them objectively boring. I’ve had fun. So there.

Hotacity: 3 hots out of 10

Hot Take No. 2: The MVP discussion is still worth having

Russell can’t be MVP because he lost to Harden. Harden can’t be MVP because he lost to Kawhi. Kawhi can’t be MVP because he didn’t play in the Spurs best performance of the year. LeBron can’t be MVP because I’m Skip Bayless and my opinion apparently matters to people other than myself for some reason. Go Cowboys. My cowboys.

I’ll try to find a novel way to construct the counter-thought.

Firstly, it’s not like he’s going to Bay More. Secondly, when there are deadlines, we can only make decisions based on the information available when the deadline hits. The deadline for the MVP vote happened before the playoffs. The things that happen in the playoffs happen in the playoffs. They don’t count. I’m big into visual aids these last couple of days, so here’s something to look at.

It’s fair to argue the abstruse definition of “Most Valuable.” That debate really never stops, and it’s kind of fun hearing how different people evaluate it. It’s not fair to use these playoffs as a determiner for who should win this year’s MVP. The playoffs have no bearing. They’re not part of this discussion. That discussion is already over. It’s done now. Cousins already won, we just don’t know it yet.

Hotacity: 5 hots out of 10 annoyings, shut up

Hot Take No. 3: Mike D’Antoni’s system can’t succeed in the playoffs

Jump shooting teams will never win a championship. 3s? More like “bees” in that one scene where Nic Cage get’s his face all stung up. That’s what jump shooting is like in the playoff. It’s a screaming Nic Cage in a basket dying because of bees. Bees.

The jumpshooting argument is only still raging in circles akin to the circles of hell. Ignore it. There’s a pretty large middle ground between oversimplifying and overcomplicating, and “jump shooting is bad” somehow misses. It takes something like talent to be that far off.

There’s probably some truth to other parts of this argument, though. D’Antoni has a short rotation. Isaiah Thomas short. That served them well in the regular season. It served Harden’s MVP quest as well. All those minutes add up.

Game 6 against the Spurs was time collecting on debt. Harden had nothing left on his bump card. The Rockets were spent. There was no energy. No fight. There was just a clock ticking down from 48 minutes to a merciful death.

Could that be the result of D’Antoni’s reliance on a short list of players? Yeah maybe. It’s possible. It’s possibly probable. There’s just enough there to make the take baked.

Ovens are hot, you see. I’m not talking about drugs. I’ll leave that for national television voices.

Hotacity: 5 hots out of 10 kinda fairs

Hot Take No. 4: There’s no point to anything if the outcome is predetermined

We all know who is going to be in the Finals. Furthermore, we all know who is going to win the Finals.

No we don’t. I’ve already covered this for The Rotation. Read that if you want. I recommend having some pie on hand.

But no. We don’t know. There is no predetermination. There are just outcomes on a range of least likely to most likely. Maybe the probabilities are pushing closer to infinity than ever before, but that doesn’t make anything definite. It makes the unlikely that much more magical. This is the cool thing about sports. We don’t know.

I understand pessimism and the convenient barrier it offers between you and reality. The presumed bad outcome happens, you were right. If you were wrong, a good thing happens. Either way, it’s a positive result. Win-win.

Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of presuming the worst. It fixates your worldview around results rather than the steps needed to get there. You miss a lot. You miss things that are good while waiting for the bad.

You miss a Manu throwback to his last throwback. You miss Jonathan Simmons being LeBron. You miss LeBron being LeBron. These moments are a sacrifice. The preceding events have to be meaningless for the ultimate result to have as much meaning as you need.

Next: The 20 different emotions of Gregg Popovich

Again, I don’t want to tell you how to have fun. If this is fun for you, then fun away. I just think it’s a bit warm in here.

Hotacity: 9 hots out of 10 it can be betters