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Honestly none of those first round match ups look interesting to me.
Honestly none of those first round match ups look interesting to me.

The West is nothing but interesting matchups.
The east won't get popping til the second round.
Flip Spurs and Warriors without Durant. Flip Jazz with Rockets. Then both 1st and 2nd rounds look good to me.
bball "writers" have a serious love affair with Kawhi...I can easily see them talking themselves into giving it to him

I saw Zach Lowe and Howard Beck setting up the okie doke a few weeks back in real time.
Started driving the Durant/Kawhi narrative, now that Durant went down Kawhi will be the new "purist" movement. Most of these lower level media people regurgitate what the top few guys say and this will be the move.
Russ slipping closer and closer to 9.9 assists, Kawhi's stats aren't dependent on 0.01 ruining his case. With him being a low seed, his case is so invariably linked to maintaining 10 it could slip away at any minute.
Despite Kawhi watching extensive tape on Harden and modeling parts of his offensive game after him, Harden was never gonna get that same elitist hype. The media had spent too much of the last two years bashing him excessively to do that fast of a 180 on him; even though most have mellowed their unobjectivity by now. They know they will look like a$$holes propping up a guy they themselves didn't even give an All-NBA team they previous year.
