2021 Toilet Bowl: Squirtle Power

SQSQ began the season with legitimate championship hopes as they ended the aborted 2020 season as the best team in the league. After two straight playoff appearances and two years of twelve-plus wins, there was no way Squirtle could back step right? GM Brian was so confident in their ring chances that they traded for the ultimate win-now move, sending out Bam Adebayo for LeBron James.

Instead, the Giannis Antetokounmpo and James combination came out of the gates with three straight losses and despite a mid-season winning streak, SQSQ would finish 7-9, leaving them outside the playoffs as the sixth-worst team in the league. In the Toilet Bowl, SQSQ found its stride though, taking care of ABCX in round one, winning the dad-son matchup against KSTK in round two, and then winning the whole thing against SCRM. That’s great right?

Well, the bad news is that while SQSQ gets the Toilet Bowl title as a feather in their cap, they don’t actually get to draft a top player in 2022. (This is SQSQ's second Toilet Bowl finals appearance, the last one was in 2017.) Back in February, Mason Plumlee was brought in via trade in exchange for Gary Trent Jr. and SQSQ 2022 RD1 -- Plumlee was traded to KSKT by SQSQ back in December -- which ended up being the number one overall pick. So essentially, SQSQ was playing for KSKT’s number one overall selection.

Dad Brian took home the win and now son Matt will reap the rewards. If that’s not sacrificing for family, we don’t know what is! For next season, Giannis and LeBron are still a solid duo, but perhaps some tinkering will have to be done to get SQSQ back on the road to contention.

In their opening season for Slam, SCRM finished outside the playoffs at 7-8-1, but that had to be considered a win after taking over for a Hilt franchise that put up six and four wins in recent years. With Anthony Davis dinged up most of the season, SCRM still managed to pull it together and get two Toilet Bowl wins, earning themselves the 2022 RD1.3 pick — due to the rule not allowing #9/10 seeds to win the top two picks. Adding another top talent to this core should make SCRM’s second season in Slam even more successful!