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Good morning! We’re officially in the postseason. And while we’re extremely excited to ride through the NBA playoffs with you all, we must discuss one of the strangest NBA weekends we’ve ever witnessed in our lives. Can someone please tell us what was in the Gatorade coolers this weekend?

Imagine being a fan of a normal sports league. The NBA could never. Let’s break it all down. This is how we felt all weekend:

Today’s Lineup

Strange Times In The NBA: What on Earth did we watch this weekend? 🤨 

Play-In Preview: This year’s tournament features some fascinating matchups 🧐

EB x Katie Heindl: Get to know the author of BASKETBALL FEELINGS 💬

Jarritos

Say hello to our good friends at Jarritos! ICYMI, Jarritos makes the best-tasting sodas you can find! Jarritos’ all-natural fruit flavors are made with real cane sugar (no high fructose corn syrup here), so you can enjoy the refreshing taste of soda without any artificial sweeteners.

Their classic glass bottles keep your drink COLDER than Jalen Brunson in the fourth 🥶 

Try the lineup of flavors including Fruit Punch, Mandarin, and Lime! Enjoy sodas the way they were meant to be experienced and pick up Jarritos’ Fiesta Pack at Walmart today! Your taste buds will thank you for it.

The Twilight Zone Of NBA Basketball

The final weekend of the NBA season is consistently one of the most surreal stretches in all of sports—some teams are playing for their lives, and others are playing guys you’ve never heard of. This year was no exception. Except now, some teams fight each other on the bench. Yes, more than one.

Friday night was…definitely a night of basketball, we can tell you that much. Jalen McDaniels, Torrey Craig, Lindell Wigginton, and Svi Mykhailiuk all led their teams in scoring. Good for them.

Saturday was quiet, which allowed us to get ready for what Sunday had in store…you ready? Ok.

Let’s start with something light: Golden State scored 55 points in the first quarter, and Mikal Bridges played four seconds to keep his games-played streak alive. Has Bridges missed a game in his five-year career?

Now let’s ramp up the craziness a bit.

A broken speaker delayed the Clippers/Suns game, then LAC started collapsing, so Mason Plumlee and Bones Hyland got into it on the bench (NOTE: that is probably the strangest sentence ever written in an Enjoy Basketball newsletter.) Los Angeles was narrowly able to avoid disaster as they ended up winning 119-114 and clinching the West’s five-seed.

It doesn’t get less bizarre from here, we’ll tell you that much.

Rudy Gobert punched teammate Kyle Anderson during a timeout, resulting in Gobert being sent home in the middle of an extremely important game against New Orleans (teammates fighting was the theme of the day, apparently.) Then, in the same game, Jaden McDaniels punched a wall in the team tunnel and ended up breaking his hand, an absolutely brutal blow to Minnesota’s hopes of a playoff run.

The wildest part? Minnesota won! In the actual basketball portion of that game, Brandon Ingram was on a mission, scoring 42. But the undermanned Wolves got 30 points from Karl-Anthony Towns and some chaotic magic from Anthony Edwards late.

The Play-In Teams Are Nothing To Play With

What can you expect from this year’s play-in tournament? Well, for starters, the East slate looks like a Playboi Carti album…these teams’ logos have a Whole Lotta Red in them…anyone?

Okay, whatever. Here's a few things—outside of the star players— to watch for when the play-in tips off tomorrow.

Bulls vs. Raptors: Do you like three-point shooting? Then ⚠️ STAY AWAY ⚠️ from this game, as both teams rank near the bottom of the league in 3PA and 3PM. Do you like low-turnover games between good two-point shooting teams? Then you’re going to have a great time here. This game will be won within the arc—a rarity in today’s NBA.

Heat vs. Hawks: Over the past two years, these squads have each made their own ECF run—so you can assume neither of them are thrilled to be in the play-in game. But they are! We’ll see a very classic trope in this one; can a good offense (Atlanta is top-10 in ORTG) beat a good defense? (Miami is still a top-10 defensive team, even if they’ve dropped a bit post-ASB.)

Thunder vs. Pelicans: Be prepared for a lot of bodies on the floor. New Orleans and OKC are both top-10 teams when it comes to deflections and charges drawn. Guys like Trey Murphy and Herb Jones spearhead that for New Orleans, and Jaylin Williams (the NBA’s top charge-taker) will put his body on the line with no second thoughts.

Lakers vs. Timberwolves: Revenge game…loading? D’Angelo Russell will face off against his former squad with the season on the line. The X-Factor in this game? It might be Taurean Prince, who will likely be filling Jaden Mcdaniels' minutes. On Sunday, he was a perfect fill-in, scoring 18 points. If he can replicate that performance, maybe Minnesota can mitigate the harm of missing one of their best young players.

Frozen Moments

• Ja Morant is just freestyling at this point… 🌪️

• Jalen Green broke, like, seven laws of physics on this play 🤯

• Udonis Haslem dunk. RT for 10 years of good luck.

Interview With Katie Heindl

NOTE: This is a shortened version of our interview with Katie. Click here for the full conversation.

Better than anyone else, Katie Heindl can articulate every single specific feeling that basketball causes us to experience. Go read her phenomenal newsletter BASKETBALL FEELINGS, and also find her work in Dime, Gaming Society, and recently, The New York Times Magazine. Enjoy Basketball recently caught up with Heindl via email to talk about...everything, basically.

EB: Is there a specific player, team, or moment that made you fall in love with basketball?

KH: Growing up in Toronto, I was a kid when the Raptors' NBA expansion was announced…my parents got my older brother and I tickets to some of the first games, when the team was still playing at SkyDome where the Blue Jays play…Shoppers Drug Mart sold the tickets for $7. Pretty soon after, my dad put up a hoop on the garage, I got a Raptors Starter jacket, and the deal was sealed.

EB: What’s the most memorable NBA moment you’ve seen live?

KH: I was at the November 2014 game when Vince Carter finally stopped getting booed in Toronto. Game ops started playing his tribute in a timeout, and Toronto fans—always primed because they’d been booing this man for exactly a decade by then—started to go, but then it was like some collective acceptance took hold. Within seconds the jeers turned over, everyone was cheering and crying, Carter was crying, of course I was crying. I’ve got to talk to him about what a hard-earned acquiesce that was since then, but I got chills.

EB: Can you give us a bold prediction for the rest of the NBA season?

KH: Cavs-Kings Finals! Not only could they light the beam, but Jarrett Allen, electronics genius, could probably build Cleveland their own rival beam.

What We’re Enjoying

The Beths: New Zealand-based indie rock band The Beths are having a moment. Their NPR Tiny Desk concert was one of the best in recent memory, and they just put out a fantastic single called “Watching The Credits.” A great “cruising with the windows down” song if you ask us. Check it out.

Signing Off

Goodbye for now, friends. Try to stretch before bed a few times this week! You’ll sleep so much better. Let’s have a great week. Talk soon.

-Quinn Everts

Trivia Answer: The current leader in play-in points? Ja Morant. He has played in three of them already, so this statistic is bound to change a few times going forward.

Before you go…

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