DAY 1 RECAP: Trust The Process

Hi everyone! While I was considering writing my first Bold Predictions column of this year's playoffs, I've decided instead to recap today's games & touch on preparation for tomorrow since we have several new "pick one" format players & visitors of this blog. That said, I'll write-up my first Bold Predictions tomorrow night as it pertains to Monday's games so be on the lookout.

Needless to say, today's games went as expected as far as easy wins for the teams widely known to be heavily favored & close games for the two series that could go either way. So Trust The Process and pick your Nets (Bridges/Dinwiddie) & Hawks (Young/Murray) early as those teams are surely going to be eliminated. And stay far away from the Cavs/Knicks & Warriors/Kings series for a good while, because anything could happen with those; in fact both the teams I give the slight edge to just lost Game 1 so...

NOW ON TO DAY TWO:

The Process remains fairly simply. Avoid the Lakers/Grizzlies matchup as that should be the most competitive series of all the ones featured tomorrow. Some might also say Suns/Clippers will be competitive, but I'll get to that in the next paragraph. The series that makes the absolute most sense to pick from is Wolves / Nuggets as the Wolves will most definitely lose, so Edwards, Towns & to a lesser extent, Gobert, make sense to target immediately.

That said, if you participate in the Google Drive league as I do, the picking started during the Play-In & I already chose both Edwards & Towns so I'm going with Kawhi Leonard there tomorrow. Yep, you heard me, not only am I confident the Suns will win that series, I actually believe they can sweep the Paul George-less Clippers in this first round. You gotta remember, Kevin Durant has lost how many games while playing in a Suns uniform? Oh wait, ZERO. There's simply no way he's all the sudden losing 4 out of 7. In fact, I don't think it happens all playoffs, which is why I have the Suns BEATING the Celtics in the NBA Finals in 6 games. That's right, I've done my NBA playoff brackets & if you haven't yet, I highly recommend getting yours in as you can win ONE MILLION DOLLARS... if you're a psychic and/or the luckiest predictive mind on the planet. 

Fill it out here before it closes: NBA Playoff Bracket Challenge

But I digress... an argument can be made that aside from the Wolves players, picking Heat players would be the next best move with Jimmy Butler likely your first guy off the board. The Heat will almost certainly lose to the Bucks & while I believe they will, I actually think they have a decent shot to win more games than the Clippers will against the Suns. Yes, you can tell I'm a huge Suns fan (I'm from Phoenix) & a big believer in them for these playoffs.

So to sum it up, your first picks should be Edwards/Towns for tomorrow. But if you'd like to go against the grain for whatever reason, Jimmy Butler, Kawhi Leonard or even the third Wolf & resident cheap shot artist, Rudy Gobert, could be an option. And one last thing, remember to not get caught up in criticizing yourself for picking players in the "wrong order" as none of us ever get that perfect where we have each guy on their best stat nights; it's more important to make sure NOT to pick players on teams that will be advancing as the larger your available player pool in future rounds, the bigger advantage you'll have against the competition as the playoffs advance further & the field thins out.

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And if anyone's curious, below is my bracket!