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It’s been a tough season for the NBA. Despite some genuinely exciting moments — Bam Adebayo’s stunning 83-point game, last weekend’s marvelous Nikola Jokic vs. Victor Wembanyama overtime duel, and the seemingly endless stream of cartoonishly brilliant Wemby highlights, to name a few — the action on the court has largely been swallowed up by the tiresome tanking discourse.
In case you’ve ignored this issue (smart!), here’s the problem in a nutshell: with an unusually deep pool of top prospects coming out of college this year, a large number of the NBA’s worst teams have grown increasingly shameless about losing as many games as they can in order to boost their odds in the draft lottery. Though unsavoury, tanking is generally a smart strategy for the teams themselves because the quickest path back to contention is to draft a superstar. But the impact on the league as a whole has been brutal as more and more games turn into unwatchable blowouts. As of yesterday, according to an ESPN story on the tanking problem, the average margin of victory this season had reached an all-time-high 13.1 points, with a record 89 games decided by 30 or more.
With fans and pundits fed up with being served so many stinkers, everyone seems to have developed their own pet solution to the tanking epidemic. NBA commissioner Adam Silver even vowed to “fix” it this summer by changing the draft process. However, most of the ideas being batted around on podcasts and other forums amount to half measures as few are willing to deploy the nuclear option of simply doing away with weighted lottery odds. Heck, if tanking is really an existential threat, why not go all the way and give every team, up to and including the champions, the same chance of getting the No. 1 pick? Or even abolish the draft altogether? That would end tanking with the stroke of a pen.
See? I just pulled myself into a tanking discussion right after saying how tiresome I find the whole debate. It’s a black hole!
Still, for those who prefer to just (imagine this) watch actual basketball, there’s some interesting stuff going on as we approach the end of the regular season on Sunday and the start of the playoffs next week. Here are some Canadian-inflected angles to follow:
The Raptors’ playoff push
Canada’s only NBA team hasn’t reached the post-season since 2023, when it finished ninth in the Eastern Conference and lost a play-in game against 10th-place Chicago. And Toronto hasn’t made the playoffs proper since 2022, when it lost in the first round to Philadelphia.
But, after finishing 30-52 last season, the Raptors shot out of the gates with a 14-5 start and have gone a .500 since then to amass a solid 44-35 record and guarantee themselves a play-in berth at minimum. They currently hold the sixth and final direct playoff spot in the Eastern Conference and could end up as high as fifth as they trail Atlanta by just half a game.
But, with three games left, the Raps remain in a dogfight to stay out of the play-in tournament for the seventh- through 10th-place teams. No. 7 Orlando is only a half game behind Toronto, while Philly (1 game) and Charlotte (1½) are in hot pursuit too.
The Raptors scored a big win on Tuesday over 10th-place Miami, knocking the Heat out of contention for the top six. Those teams play each other again tonight in Toronto before the Raptors close out the regular season with a trip to New York City to face the third-place Knicks (a potential first-round opponent) and the eliminated Brooklyn Nets.
Toronto’s leading scorer this season is slender wing Brandon Ingram, averaging 21.3 points per game after being acquired in a February 2025 trade with New Orleans. The injury-prone 28-year-old did not suit up for the Raptors last season because of an ankle injury he suffered a couple months before the deal. But he’s been remarkably healthy this season, playing 74 of the team’s 79 games so far after averaging 55 in his first nine NBA seasons.
Canadian RJ Barrett ranks second on the team with 19.1 points per game, while versatile fifth-year forward Scottie Barnes is averaging 18.2 points and leads the club in rebounds, steals and blocks.
SGA for MVP, again
Last year, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander became the first Canadian to win the NBA’s Most Valuable Player award since Steve Nash in 2005 and ’06. He also topped the league in scoring with 32.7 points per game, led Oklahoma City to an NBA-best 68-14 regular-season record and was named MVP of the Finals after powering the Thunder’s seven-game victory over Indiana. With that, Gilgeous-Alexander joined basketball legends Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O’Neal and Michael Jordan as the only players ever to win the scoring title, the regular-season MVP, the Finals MVP and a championship in the same season.
Now, SGA is poised to join Nash in the back-to-back MVP club. Though his 31.1 points per game trail Lakers gunner Luka Doncic’s 33.5, Gilgeous-Alexander has achieved his in a more efficient manner for a much better team. Last night, Oklahoma City (64-16) clinched the overall No. 1 seed and home-court advantage throughout the playoffs for the second straight year.
Predictably, there’s been a bit of a backlash to SGA this season. He’s become sort of a poster boy for the foul-baiting tactics that many fans find annoying and which the league really ought to do something about once it “fixes” the tanking problem. But, whether you appreciate his style or not, Gilgeous-Alexander has truly mastered the modern game and is the overwhelming favourite to become the 14th player to win consecutive regular-season MVPs.
The likely runner-up in the MVP race is Wembanyama, the young 7-foot-4 San Antonio Spurs centre who astonishes fans on a nightly basis with his guard-like moves and Gumby-like reach. The 2024 rookie of the year has bounced back from an injury-shortened second season to average career highs in points (24.8) and rebounds (11.5) despite playing fewer minutes in order to preserve his health. The league leader in blocks at an exceptional 3.1 per game (no one else is averaging even 2) while also altering countless other shots, Wemby is a big favourite to win his first Defensive Player of the Year award and will surely garner some first-place MVP votes as the ascendant Spurs (61-19) trail OKC by just three games for the best record in the league.
Can anyone beat the Thunder?
It’s hard to pick against an Oklahoma City team that is outscoring its opponents by an average of 12.1 points per game. That’s not far off the Thunder’s NBA-record plus-12.9 point differential from last year, and it’s almost four points better than the second-place Spurs’ mark. But there are a handful of teams with realistic hopes of stopping OKC from becoming the NBA’s first repeat champions since Golden State in 2017 and ’18.
Along with Wembanyama’s Spurs, the list includes Jokic’s Denver Nuggets (52-28), who have won 10 games in a row to climb to third place in the West. Canadian guard Jamal Murray is averaging a career-high 25.4 points for Denver and is enjoying his healthiest season since his breakthrough performance in the Disney World bubble in 2020.
In the East, the surprising Detroit Pistons (58-22) have clinched the top seed in the conference just two years after going an NBA-worst 14-68, and franchise player Cade Cunningham just returned last night from a collapsed lung that caused him to miss 11 games. But the second-place Boston Celtics (54-25) are favoured to represent the East in the NBA Finals after star Jayson Tatum returned from a torn Achilles last month to rejoin 2024 Finals MVP Jaylen Brown, who’s been playing the best ball of his career.
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