Who is ready for the MVP race between Julian Strawther and Jared McCain to be settled tongiht?

Tanking has gotten ridiculous.

Knowing us we will play down to the competition and have to come back from 15 in the third to get overtime.

Lol typical weak sauce from SGA

Clearly trying to dodge KJ Simpson

Brooks Barnhizer would never

48 minutes of Topic Basketball

Fascinating how “the fans paid money to see the stars play basketball” no longer matters.

it will still some how be 92-92 going into the fourth

If the Nuggets win they likely end up as the 3 seed, ensuring the Thunder play the Lakers/Rockets winner in the second round. If the Nuggets lose then they could jostle to a position to play the Thunder in the second round. The Thunder do not want to win.

Hmm better fine the Jazz for this

They’ve locked up the #1 seed and they’re deciding to give pretty much the entire rotation a weeks rest before the playoffs start

It’s debatable whether or not that’s the right thing to do but I doubt they’re playing 5D chess to manipulate the standings

Payton Sandfort legacy game

Where’s the NBA to voice outrage at this instead of an injured team dealing with a back to back?

Must not want the Nuggets to fall to the 4th seed.

Who tf is Payton Sandfort

/s

They should be stripped of all their first round picks for that

Every team in the history of the NBA has rested key players the last few games of the season if their playoff seeding was locked up. OKC did the same thing the last three games last year. All of the sudden it’s a huge problem this year because we are playing the nuggets whose seed isn’t locked up.

SGA & his crew just want to be home to watch the debuting Royce Keys on Smackdown tonight..

& to see what massive surprise Pat McAfee has going into WrestleMania..

Completely ethical..

Carlson going to get 30 blocks tonight /s

It’s not a nationally televised game so there should be no fines for either team resting starters. Thunder/Suns is also not nationally televised but Nuggets/Spurs is.

We have problems if players can’t be out for rest but instead it needs to be listed as “left great toe soreness” to avoid fines.

If they are going to be out anyways, who honestly gives a fuck if it’s listed as rest? Oh no, the optics!

Jokic, Murray & Gordon are all questionable

This is when you supposed to rest your players. I remember back in the days when teams only rested their guys at the end of the season usually

half of these aren’t real names.

When does the tanking investigation take place?

denver winning by 40 in front of the home crowd can add some spice to this rivalry.

Fine them.

Why isn’t Adam silver doing something about this?

I think they do this purposely to minimize any game planning the nuggets could do for a potential playoff series. You dont want Denver “figuring” anything out against OKC or getting any more ammo for the scouting report.

I may end up being more invested in SA-DEN in the 2nd round than whoever OKC plays lol. That’ll be a 7 game blood bath.

Punish OKC by forcing them to give up Hartenstein.

bought a ticket for this game a week ago and thought it was pretty cheap for the matchup. I refuse to even glance at ticket prices after this news.

still looking forward to the Aaron Wiggins show though

I gotta say, lineups with a Dort/Barnhizer pairing have some pretty high pure chaos potential. I don’t know that I’d want to be one of the eight other players on the court with that duo. Or one of the refs. Or sitting courtside.

Genius strategy and rest for the best. Easy sweep for the 1st and 2nd round for OKC

Comrade Silver the revisionist scum Presti is clearly tanking for picks you need to revoke all their picks and force them to trade SGA it’s the only reasonable response

I fully understand why they’re doing this and it’s (prolly) objectively the right thing, but this is just lame as hell. I wanna see Jokic and Shai go band for band again not unironic Brooks Barnhizer minutes.

so fucking lame man

McCain ball coming

Dort would never miss an opportunity to injure Jokic

Payton “Pryce’s Brother” Sandfort

Watch Adelman still not play DaRon

Basketball is so wack sometimes

The dream team

I just saw this on ESPN and am surprised the NBA doesn’t have rules against stuff like this. Fans pay tickets to see the best players then they just sit them to rest. I’m also not sure where their G-league team is located, but that seems like a lot of players to call up.

I can’t remember what sport/league does it, but they require teams to have to play a certain amount of your “starters” (barring injuries) each night. NBA should implement that as well.

Do you think the thunder just go to each player and ask “which injury would you like listed tonight?” Or just make them up randomly?

It’s Fantastic!

Dort erasure

You know Ryan Smith is calling the league office about this

Thunder really ducking that Denver smoke in 2nd round lmao

We took care of our business. Everyone else should be worried about theirs

Lu Dort is playing. Probably so he can try to injure one of our starters

They’ll play Dort a bit to see if he can injure a Denver starter or two before the playoffs.

Should be fined

Hurts the brand when you have two elite teams with star players not in the game . Limit thier minutes if you are trying to manage the load

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Ducking Denver both during regular season and in the playoffs

I wish people didnt go to the game. Only way nba does something about it

Dodging the Nuggets is weak as fuck. Doesn’t SGA want to battle for MVP?

but why do people complain about the nba?

durrrrrrrrrrr

 Lu Dort apparently will be out there.

Knowing how Lu operates, I’d make sure Jokic, Jamal & Aaron are ruled out. Keeping them out of the playoffs is what he’s paid for and will prob do 

Wasn’t OKC lobbying for punishing Utah for tanking?

So a massive fine incoming for the Thunder or all this “penalties for load management” stuff is just to punish the other teams?