Playoffs 2019

A look at our eight playoff teams in Power Ranking order. Note the first and second half ODE splits!

#1 Swamp Dragons (15-3-2)
First half (WK1-10): 3/3/11 ODE, 3rd
Second half (WK11-20): 1/2/13 ODE, 5th
Two Toilet Bowl wins and four out-of-playoff seasons later, Swamp Dragons are fully revived and ready to resume their world beating ways. Swamp picked up a Russell Conference title this year and also earned the best regular season record in the league. Eddie’s team is the clear favorite heading into the title chase and they’ll be playing for a much bigger prize this year than next season’s top overall pick. After a semi-disastrous LeBron James trade four years ago, Swamp is back!

For the season, Swamp had the third best combined ODE over the first half but then dipped a bit to fifth overall as their efficiency slipped and other teams passed them by. However, their offensive and defensive ratings nudged up to first and second respectively, so that seems like an upgrade overall. They are top-two in every category save FG%, BLK, and TO, which gives them some slight holes but that’s just mere details when they dominate in the other six categories.

The returning core of MVP candidate Paul George, Nikola Jokic, and Jusuf Nurkic have all been as great as advertised while trades for Khris Middleton and D’Angelo Russell worked out handsomely. Add in the addition of the most offensively efficient rookie ever in Deandre Ayton and this team went from merely deep to overpowering. (The less we mention Markelle Fultz the better.) And we don’t want to overlook second round pick Jeremy Lamb’s role in all this, as Lamb has been quietly spectacular all year.

After starting off 4-3, Swamp hasn’t lost a game since WK7 and are 11-0-2 since, including wins against all the top contenders — including two versus their biggest competition, Sour Snails.

#2 Sour Snails (14-5-1)
2/1/3 ODE, 1st
2/3/4 ODE, 1st
Our inaugural Chamberlain Conference champions is a familiar name aren't they? Once a lowly 5-4, Trieu’s team righted the ship and has gone 9-1-1 over the back half of the season. Sour Snails led SlamNation in combined ODE rating end-to-end, with outstanding efficiency and a top-two offense. Their defense was the best in the league through our first ten weeks but “only” third for the second half. For individual rankings, the Snails were top three in PTS, REB, 3PT, BLK and both percentages for most of the season, and have only a poor turnover rate and league average AST and STL as “weaknesses.”

GM Trieu has also had consistently high Games Played, made a huge number of roster moves, and participated in four trades — highlighted by the pre-draft shipping off of Damian Lillard, a mid-season acquisition of Zach LaVine, and then a late season dump off of excess talent. Through it all, they’ve drafted future stars, unearthed waiver gems, and made possibly only one misstep: letting keeper Brook Lopez go early in the season. After a 10-11 dip last year -- that still led to a Finals showing -- Snails now enters the 2019 playoffs positioned to add a fifth title to their ring collection. Update: A late breaking fifth trade of Kemba Walker for Demarcus Cousins changes everything! Or does it?

#3 Chunky Monkeys (14-5-1)
1/4/14 ODE, 4th
4/6/12 ODE, 6th
The defending champs face an uphill battle for a repeat as they’ll have to go through their cousin Eddie as well as longtime foe Sour Snails to capture a back-to-back title. Despite a top record, Monkeys swooned mid-season and had a winless month WK7-10. But all seems right again as they are 4-1-1 heading into the playoffs. Of course Monkeys feasted on five non-playoff teams during that time so we’re still not sure how good they are overall, notwithstanding their confidence boosting win in WK20 versus Squirtle Snails.

During their ten game win streak to start the season, Monkeys were the fourth-best team by combined ODE and had the best offense in the league, along with a top tier defense. Over the second half of the season though, while their efficiency rating has increased a smudge, their offensive and defensive numbers have dropped to fourth and sixth respectively. That all has resulted in a drop to sixth overall in combined ODE. Category wise, a powerful PTS, FG%, STL combo still fuels them, while AST and 3PT are almost elite. However this team can’t shoot free throws, is not great on the boards, and is middling in BLK.

Of course, a lot of that can be attributed to the injuries to Clint Capela and LeBron James, and to be honest, Chunky Monkeys are looking healthy at just the right time. James Harden and Kyle Lowry are a perfectly paired backcourt and Evan suddenly have a plethora of useful wings in Otto Porter Jr, Kelly Oubre (drafted in the sixth round, cut, and then back again), and Joe Harris. There isn’t a lot of high level depth here and Kris Dunn is a total wildcard and could be supplanted by rookie Collin Sexton easily. With LeBron James engaged and in playoff mode, Monkeys should have a shot at another title, even if the days of them dominating the regular season ended this year. Oh wait, LBJ is on a minutes restriction and not playing back-to-backs?! Do we smell a possible first round upset brewing?!

#4 Funk Coalition (13-7)
12/6/2 ODE, 5th
8/1/7 ODE, 4th
Despite a series of awful trades and re-upping on their most happy-to-trade title, Funk Coalition find themselves just on the edge of contention as they walked through a soft end-of-season schedule and climbed up the power rankings, just as predicted. After a shaky 2-5 start, Funk buckled down and went 11-2, with their only two losses coming against Sour Snails and Spade. Of course, they’ve also only picked up three of those thirteen wins versus playoff opponents so it’s an open question how good this coalition really is.

With a dramatic reimagining of their roster, Funk's season long ODE has been all over the place. A theme emerges though as they’ve maintained a strong defense — currently the league’s best defensive rating — and suffered from a weak offense plus some recent turnover issues. REB/STL/BLK are very strong across the board and there are even good percentages here, although Funk is middling for PTS and 3PT. But ending the season as the fourth best combined ODE team isn’t bad and could give them a puncher’s chance at an upset.

With Karl-Anthony Towns freed from his earlier season shackles, and Ben Simmons turnt up for his playoff mode, this team of all wings plus KAT/Simmons is basically a mix-and-match crew that should roll out a competitive first round.

For the record, this year’s outgoing versus incoming trade players.

• Outgoing: Khris Middleton, D’Angelo Russell, Andrew Wiggins, Rudy Gay, Lou Williams, Trevor Ariza, Jerami Grant, Evan Fournier, Kent Bazemore
• Incoming: Gordon Hayward, Wiggins, Taurean Prince, Nicolas Batum, Zach Collins, Jonathan Isaac, Evan Fournier, Nemanja Bjelica, Marcus Smart, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Kent Bazemore, Dwayne Wade

#5 Squirtle Squad (12-6-2)
5/12/11 ODE, 10th
3/6/5 ODE, 2nd
After three long years in playoff exile, Squirtle has a fully formed Giannis Antetokounmpo ready to play world stomper and lead this team deep into the playoffs. Or at least get a playoff win? Squirtle hasn’t been out of the first round since 2012 but they're going to get a shot at a minor upset in the first round this year. Squirtles sat atop Chamberlain Conference as recently as a month ago but now find themselves relegated to the bottom half of the playoff bracket despite a 4-1-1 record down the stretch.

For the first half of the season, Squirtles was all offense as they poured on the scoring. However, their efficiency was suspect and their defense even more so. Thus, the turnaround to a top defensive and efficiency rating has been quite the surprise, evening out a team that used to be all-offense. That balance gave Squirtles the second-best combined ODE over the last ten weeks of the season. The biggest leap was in TOs, which went from 15th in the league to 8th, which may coincide with the mid-season trade off of Zach LaVine for ultra-efficient Tobias Harris — who has been just as good as a Clipper or a 76er.

Giannis has a perfect front court sidekick in Nikola Vucevic and now this crew of all shooters is perfectly aligned to take down a bigger fish. We’d love it if Squirtles got a shot at Spade in the second round, as there was some real slander thrown their way by Randall in our podcast. What do you have to say about that Squirtles!?

#6 Team Spade (12-7-1)
6/9/1 ODE, 2nd
2/3/4 ODE, 3rd
As discussed in our recent podcast episode, Randall had a terrible last season but we sort of knew that his team was always one of the best around. After a league worst two wins last season, Spade returned with a vengeance this year and ascended to second place in their new Chamberlain Conference digs. Throwing shots at all the contenders, Spade has a decent at a long awaited title as they are very balanced and enter the playoffs on a 6-2 tear, with one loss coming versus Swamp Dragons in WK17 and then a surprising WK20 loss to Fob Stars that tumbled them from the fourth seed to sixth.

The healthy return of Kawhi Leonard gave this team back the superstar it needed and now Kevin Love, Will Barton, and Devin Booker are all healthy. We already gave this keeper core high marks but all the vets are ready to play and heck, Danilo Gallinari hasn’t even suffered an injury all season. If ever there was a year for Spade to pull it together and upset their way to a ring, this could be their healthiest shot yet.

On the season, Spade has been ranked second and third for combined ODE, just behind the best in the league. They started off with the sixth and ninth offensive and defensive splits and have only gotten better over the second half of the season, ascending to second and third respectively. While Spade hasn’t been overwhelming in any category save 3PT and FT%, they are pretty good across the board save REB and some AST, but rebounds could be quickly rectified depending on Love’s playoff minutes. Is Spade good enough to be taken seriously as a dark horse contender? Definitely. Can they win the title this year? We’ll see!

#7 Fat Jubas (12-8)
8/2/13 ODE, 8th
9/3/10 ODE, 7th
There was a time when Fat Jubas was 8-2 and one of the contenders emerging out of the Russell Conference. But a so-so midseason swoon and then three straight losses to Squirtle, Sour Snails, and Spade took them out of home court advantage and even with two recent wins, it’ll be an uphill battle for this early season juggernaut.

Another mostly defense, some offense team like Funk Coalition, Fat Jubas has been ranked number one in BLK all season long and are mostly elite in STL — although that has fallen off post-Robert Covington. What is weird about this team is how they pair all that defense with an outrageous AST ranking, second overall for the season, and then supplement it by being terrible at FT% and pretty bad at 3PT to boot. So we have a brilliant BLK team that has lowish TOs, fantastic AST, but yet can’t shoot free throws or threes that well. Just who is on this roster?!

All those assists come courtesy of Chris Paul, Jrue Holiday, Jeff Teague, Joe Ingles, and Tomas Satoransky. All the blocks come from Myles Turner, Serge Ibaka, and now Jerami Grant in place of the still injured Covington. The culprit for the FT% tank is um, Willie Cauley-Stein? There should be plenty of deep range shooters on this team but most of the frontline save Grant doesn’t put up threes and with Jrue Holiday out for a crucial first round matchup, things look dire for Jubas. The recent elevation of post-trade Jonas Valanciunas could help a bit but depending on who Jubas faces off against in the playoffs, it could be a quick first round exit for Eric this year despite another successful regular season. Rob Cov, Jubas needs you back!

#8 Fob Stars (10-9-1)
13/16/5 ODE, 13th
11/15/5 ODE, 10th
Sometimes you don’t need to be the best team to be one of the winning-er teams. Fob Stars started off the season coming off the arguably terrible Damian Lillard for Kemba Walker and Tobias Harris trade, plus the non-emergence of Jamal Murray and the injury start of John Collins. A 1-6 record made it seem like Fob was headed straight for the Toilet Bowl.

Oh but look what happened since! After that initial seven weeks, Fob ripped off six wins and a tie versus Sour Snails, and went head to head against some of our strongest contenders and emerged victorious. A crushing schedule near the end of the season sent them back toward 0.500 but it’s been an outstanding season from owner Jimmy as he’s dragged his team back into the playoffs for a fourth straight season. Last year Fob Stars pulled off an upset against a higher seed, can they do it again?

It’s safe to say that Fob Stars haven’t been overly impressive in offensive or defensive rating all year, but they are a solid fifth in efficiency overall and throw down league average PTS and 3PT without turning the ball over much. Their real strength is in FG% and TO but really the engine this year has been GM Jimmy’s under-the-radar free agent pickups. Thaddeus Young, Jordan Clarkson, and Terrence Ross aren’t sexy but they’ve been tremendous in STL and 3PT, respectively. A turn toward even more offense could be interesting -- this team is just about last in STL and BLK.

Damian Lillard and John Collins are a nice one-two punch and while we’re still waiting on Jamal Murray, the recent emergence of Point Justise has been a boon to the lineup. It’ll be a tough act for Lillard to drag this team to a second round appearance but Fob Stars have already exceeded expectations this season and are well positioned to improve even more next year. Great job Jimmy!