Only two of them chose the most dominant team of last two years, Thunder, TWO.

Must be a weird pundit thing where picking the 1 seed is too boring but picking a non-champion is too wild. 

That’s why they loved the Nuggets and the Celtics. 

The Ringers hard-on for Jokic knows no bounds

People were super high on the cam johnson addition. It was good to get off MPJ’s contract but MPJ did a lot more than cam when he was in Denver.

Hardaway was actually a good pickup.

Jonas and Bruce Brown were thought to be great depth pieces that addressed their biggest issues but they both ended up pretty bad

The Ringer exists to slurp Jokic. That Pina guy said Jokic should have won the MVP the last 5 years.

The only thing surprising is that they didn’t pick the Nuggets in 3.

It’s the best Nuggets roster and Murray was better and rolling into the playoffs

Let’s call a spade a spade. The Ringer employs mostly white guys from Boston. These “analysts” are biased towards the Celtics (Boston) or white guys (Jokic, Luka).

The level of groupthink is pretty amazing.

The picks themselves are all defensible on the surface but when you look at them together it is totally insane.

Everyone other than Zach trying to agree with the boss!

the lack of thunder picks is also astonishing. how are they still underrated?

It’s almost as if the The Ringer guys have been known Jokic glazers forever

The great white nerd hope burns bright

They were hot at the end of the season and sports “analysis” has almost completely devolved into “what have you done for me lately” nowadays

The Ringer really isn’t beating the heavy Jokic bias allegations

Jokic dickriding out of control

Mind blowing even.

But The Ringer is Jokic homer central. No other media company circlejirks about him as much as they do.

He changed his idea, he gave an explanation on why he changed his idea and why he chose Cs over Knicks. So that really does not matter. I still wanted to include the initial prediction though.

Were people that high on the Spurs coming into the season? I feel like a lot of people had them in the play in range, maybe 5-6 seed

I think they picked them because they wanted to pick a team other than the Thunder, but didn’t wanna pick an inexperienced team.

They won 68 games and a championship last season, as the 2nd youngest team since 1977. 64 this season despite all the injuries, B2B MVP for their best player, only top seed to sweep the first round.

I don’t think they’re some unbeatable juggernaut, I really thought my nuggets had a shot (why did we win that fucking game against you, christ), but people talk like they’re the fake-ass Pistons and there are still debates about who the best GUARD in the league is, as if he hasn’t been neck-and-neck with Joker at any point these last few seasons for BITW.

At a certain point it progresses from disrespect to outright delusion, I don’t understand how anybody can be that blinded by homerism

Inside the NBA guys were split on whether Denver or San Antonio go to the Finals. Not a single one predicted OKC to make it out of the West. It’s fine.

While I believe lot of Thunder fans let the talk get to them too much, what you said is extremely validating for a lot of us lol

And not a single fucking Spurs pick like wtf

Same I didn’t expect this post to make me feel for okc lol

seriously, anyone not picking OKC out of the west (I’d argue the next season, or two, as well but that’s getting ahead of things) is just crazy

Wish someone had Nuggets vs Hornets as a “sneaky” pick there to fully capture their love affairs

Actually remarkable how much influence these morons have over NBA awards too. They got Marcus Smart a DPOY, (likely) Jaylen Brown a 1st team. Ridiculous

There is a lot of schadenfreude in this thread about the Ringer, but this sub had loads of folks downplaying OKC and hyping Luka and Jokic over Shai all season.

This would be my bet right now

Zach has a lot of wins this season:

1. He correctly assumed that Wolves are a danger and total different beast in the post-season compared to regular season.
2. He stood by the Knicks even when they were getting trounced by the media during their slump after ASB.
3. He toned down expectations on the Hornets, telling people fun to watch does not necessarily mean world-beater.
4. He correctly said Portland would get out of the play-ins.
5. He stood by OKC while everyone was calling for “this season might be different”.
6. Rightly pointed out that since January Denver have been atrocious defensively and did not fall for any of the individual performances Jokic had towards the end of the season.

I feel the need to point this out because he’s been on podcasts where people routinely went against these takes while he choose to be consistent the whole way through.

The media outlet known for being Celtics fans glaze a white European player ²⁴⁄₇, surprising, aint it?

Ringer PR for the Nuggets is on another level and this is coming from a live and die Jokic AND Ringer truther. I thought the Nuggets were one of the three teams that could come out of the West, and even I thought The Ringer’s insistence on them was far overblown this year. Also, hate to be the one, but it’s impossible to ignore the obvious factor that the face of the company (Bill Simmons) is one of Jokic’s greatest warriors haha.

And yet after the loss they will still find a way to keep him on top 

And post loss Bill followed it up on the pod by saying “was Aaron Gordon the biggest injury of the series?” as if Anthony Edwards didn’t get hurt lol

Correct

The Ringer had a season long betting series for the NFL. 10 people in teams of 2 all finished under .500. They had to edit out their record for their weekly 5 best bets column because it was like 30%

Reminder: Bill Simmons didn’t get rich betting on sports. He got rich talking about betting on sports. There is a big difference…

I think they absolutely do and I’m kind of dreading it.

Their center isn’t white which is an important ringer metric 😆

Young team in the playoffs with a new head coach, you have to believe that somebody is going to “solve” them. And, hey, maybe someone will! The Wolves played us well during the regular season, as had the Nuggets if they had won that series. And, of course, the Thunder are shockingly talented; we might have beaten the tar outta them this year so far, but that doesn’t mean they lack the tools to potentially beat us.

Or, maybe Mitch is the real deal and Wemby is unsolvable. We’ll see soon.

and if it’s not OKC, then why not Spurs? At least they owned us 4-1 in the regular season. To not have even one person picking Spurs is very questionable.

i didnt know he changed it. all season when he talked about the knicks he kept saying “im not changing my pick” despite the knicks ups and downs

Or certain effects of biases.