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Today is the birthday of two-time ABA All-Star and one-time All-ABA selection Cincinnatus Powell. Cincy died in January 2023. The Baton Rouge native would have been 84 years old today. He was a star for the Dallas Chaparrals, averaging 19.3 points and 9.0 rebounds in three years with them. Go ahead and say the name “Cincinnatus Powell” out loud like you’re a Louisiana attorney wearing suspenders, no jacket and constantly wiping the sweat from your brow with a handkerchief. Do that the rest of the day, and you’ll have a great time.
Can they do it?
Spurs are ahead schedule
The San Antonio Spurs are the talk of the NBA. Well, outside of tanking, the Spurs are the talk of the NBA. They head into Toronto tonight looking for their first 10-game winning streak since January 2016, when they won 13 in a row.
San Antonio is second in the Western Conference and just 2.5 games behind the Oklahoma City Thunder. They shut down the East-leading Pistons on Monday. You can’t help but start wondering if this team can contend for the title just one season after missing the Play-In Tournament by five games. Of course, Victor Wembanyama not playing the final 30 games affected the finish last season. This current Spurs team didn’t come out of nowhere, but it’s certainly ahead of schedule.
Back in late December, the Spurs pulled off three wins in 12 days over the Thunder. I compared the similarities between this Spurs team and the 2023-24 Thunder squad that took the leap from non-playoff squad to No. 1 seed in the West. With those three wins, San Antonio seemingly burst the invincible bubble that the Thunder constructed with their 24-1 start. For the Spurs, it’s been a season of proving they’re already with the elite.
This recent ascension has people wondering if San Antonio can grab its sixth championship this season. San Antonio is 10-3 against the Pistons, Celtics, Knicks, Thunder, Nuggets and Rockets combined. (Although one of those losses was the NBA Cup final, which only counts in the bank accounts of the Knicks.)
The Spurs have roughly the same average age as last year’s championship Thunder squad. But they don’t have that one playoff run of experience to learn from. Not yet, at least. So what would be the equalizer to jump them into contention status? Wemby is that equalizer. He’s the reason everybody is wondering if this is possible, because he bends the realm of basketball as we’ve known it.
Wemby is so good and seems to get better with every stretch of games. And while he doesn’t have playoff experience, maybe he can channel the do-or-die pressure he faced in the Olympics. Regardless, we’re seeing him change basketball right before our eyes. It won’t be long before he’s competing for titles. Whether that’s starting next year or now. The Spurs are more than just Wemby, but he’s the main reason people want to believe now.
The last 24
🚫 No tanks. How can the NBA end tanking? Here are some bold ideas from The Athletic’s experts, including abolishing the lottery.
🍙 Ice cold. As part of our continuing hip-hop and basketball series, Ice Cube tells Jason Jones all about his famous “triple-double” lyric from “It Was a Good Day.”
🥇 Another one. Kevin Durant has four Olympic gold medals. He wants No. 5 in 2028, when he’d be nearly 40 years olf.
🏀 Still dunking. The 70-year old Marques Johnson should be in the Hall of Fame. The legend dunks every year for his birthday.
👋 He’s back! Dejounte Murray tore his Achilles last year and made his comeback last night. Don’t miss this Mirin Fader profile on him.
🦖 Great pick. It’s not often a second-round pick becomes a leader for a good team. Jamal Shead is exactly that in Toronto.
Stream the NBA on Fubo (try it for free!) and catch out-of-market games on League Pass.
Audit time
Are any teams benefiting from inflation?
Once or twice a season, The Bounce likes to do a little audit of team records to see which ones are competing the best against good and bad opponents. Since it’s just you and me talking here, the real reason for the audit is to look for fraudulence in a team record. Who is just beating up on the losing teams in the NBA and struggling against the non-losing ones? Can a team with an inflated record get it together for the postseason and become a problem?
We’ve also checked recent NBA conference finalists to see if this is a big deal, but I wanted to go further back over the last 20 years. How often do we see teams with losing records against non-losing opponents (.500 or better) make the conference finals? How often do these teams reach the NBA Finals or win it all? What does that mean for the current contenders this season? Let’s audit!
As you can see in the graphic, only the Nuggets (13-13 vs. non-losing | 23-9 vs. losing teams), Knicks (17-16 | 20-6), Rockets (15-10 | 20-11), Celtics (18-12 | 20-7), Spurs (20-11 | 21-5), Thunder (19-10 | 26-4) and Pistons (18-7 | 24-7) pass the audit at this point in the season. And Denver is teetering there. Other hopeful contenders like the Wolves (12-14 | 24-9), Cavs (15-16 | 22-6), Lakers (11-15 | 23-8), Raptors (11-17 | 23-7) and Sixers (13-17 | 19-9) are on the edge of getting into that positive/positive quadrant on the graphic.
What does this mean historically? Can teams like Minnesota, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Toronto and Philadelphia still find their way into a deep playoff run by getting to the conference finals or greater? Let’s look at the conference finalists over the last 20 years.
- Conference finalists: Only 10 of the last 80 conference finalists had a losing record against .500-or-better teams during the regular season. The 2021 Hawks (15-21), 2023 Lakers (21-27) and 2025 Knicks (15-23) had the worst records of those 10 teams. Everybody else was within three games of having a .500 record in those matchups.
- NBA finalists: Only four teams have made the finals with those regular-season results. Two of those teams featured prime LeBron James with the 2017 Cavs (22-25) and 2018 Cavs (22-23). It’s possible they knew the best player in the league would get it together. We also had the 2024 Mavericks (25-27) make it, but they had major changes at the trade deadline.
- NBA champs: One team ended up winning the title in the last 20 years with a losing record against .500-or-better teams. That was the 2006 Heat, who were 19-21 in those regular-season games.
That means 12.5 percent of conference finalists have losing records against non-losing teams in the regular season. Ten percent of NBA finalists have those losing records. And 5 percent of NBA champs in the last 20 years didn’t bring it in the regular season against the good teams.
For the .500 Nuggets this season, six other teams were .500 against non-losing teams and made the conference finals. The 2007 Cavs (19-19), 2010 Celtics (22-22) and 2023 Heat (24-24) all made the NBA Finals, but none of those teams won it all. Denver should probably win more games against the good teams, just to not test history.
They said what?!
Carlisle pushes back on Pacers’ tanking fine
On Feb. 12, the NBA fined the Indiana Pacers $100,000 as part of a tanking crackdown. The reason? The league said an investigation concluded that Pascal Siakam and two other Pacers could have played in a game against the Jazz but were ruled out for injuries. Aaron Nesmith was apparently one of those players, and yesterday Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said on local radio that he thought the decision was “ridiculous.”
Carlisle questioned the whole process. He claimed that Nesmith couldn’t hold a ball because of the injury, that the league investigator didn’t talk to Indiana team doctors and didn’t want to talk to Nesmith himself. However, it was one final comment Carlisle said in his radio rant that caught everybody’s attention.
“They talked to their doctors, who did not examine Aaron Nesmith. And we asked them if they wanted to talk to the kid (Nesmith), and they said, no, they didn’t need to. This was shocking to me, and during the interview, they also asked if we considered medicating him to play in a game when we were 30 games under .500.”
Wait, what? Asked if the Pacers considered medicating Nesmith so he could play in the game? What in the Bud Kilmer is going on?
A lot of teams are going to battle the league’s decisions — both ones already made and to be made — to punish them as tankers. It’s not surprising that Carlisle chose to speak out against it. The league issued a statement disagreeing with some of what Carlisle alleged.
“Coach Carlisle’s description of the process that went into the decision to fine the Indiana Pacers is inaccurate. An independent physician led the medical review. In addition, the Pacers’ General Manager and the team’s Senior Vice President, Sports Medicine and Performance were interviewed as part of the process. The Pacers confirmed that it had provided all of the information requested by the league, and the team reported that an interview with Coach Carlisle or a team physician wasn’t necessary.”
This still doesn’t address the medicating allegation, which I’m sure the players’ union will be upset about! The rest of the season will get uglier before the league implements whatever changes it can to curb the tanking. Teams are going to openly fight punishments, like we saw with Utah owner Ryan Smith criticizing the punishment of his team.