After a big but predictable loss to Houston last game, in which everyone was pretty rancid, we come back tonight to face off against the Atlanta Hawks. Atlanta are currently 26-48, which makes them somehow only 4 games worse than us in the L column despite the fact that they've been actively tanking all year and we were trying hard to make the playoffs until halfway through the season. Incredible.
The Hawks have won 2 straight, and 4 of their last 7, so they're actually playing pretty well right now. The reason is simple: Trae Young is playing his best basketball of the season, and they've locked up a place in the bottom five of the league and therefore can just play fast and loose without having to engineer losses anymore. It would be absolutely spectacular (given the fact that in their final 8 games they play Milwaukee twice, Philadelphia, Spurs, Portland, and Indiana) for them to win more than 3 games for the rest of the year even if they try.
As a result, we can expect them to actually put some effort in tonight. Which is good because for us, that's a fairly safe reason to assume that we're just going to lose. Which is perfect for us: if we can seriously hit rock bottom for the end of the year, Washington beat LA tonight, then there's still a pretty decent chance that we'll end up in the 6th or 7th spot. Suffice it to say that even 7th is leagues better than 9th given the way the lottery odds are allocated in the draft right now.
So let's go into tonight and #DoItBig!