Grizzlies vs Clippers and the NBA Playoffs

The Grizzlies and Clippers play tonight, and if you’ve been following the playoff seeding, you know they both need to lose this game to avoid getting fourth seed Dallas in the first round. Whoever has the worse record will play third seeded Denver and actually get homecourt advantage, as well. Trust us – it makes sense.

How are the teams preparing to pretend they’re trying to win? Although we can’t imagine Mike Fratello being capable of throwing a game, he’s likely to be resting his starters at least to some extent as he puts up the “we don’t think about these types of things” front.

“I’ve tried to keep practice to 40 or 45 minutes and work on one or two things,” Fratello said. “It’s showing in our defensive effort. I’d just like for us to go into the playoffs executing well.”

Fratello said he’s proud of the way his team has handled the stretch run — playing hard into the final week.

“We’re not trying to slow down,” Gasol said. “We’re trying to keep our minds in a competitive mode. We’ll face whoever we have to face.”

The Clippers, being in the power position, are playing it a little differently. They lose and they’re in, and they’re well aware of it.

“We’ve got to be sixth to have the home court, and we’d like to have the home court, so then we need to finish sixth. It’s that simple,” co-captain Sam Cassell said. “You could say that isn’t right, but life isn’t right, and this is how the minds of the NBA made it with this alignment.”

Predicting this game is so difficult – we’d say the Clippers are the better team, despite having the worse record. Plus they’re on the road, but Memphis might sit Pau.

On the other hand, Sam Cassel is pretty openly admitting they want to lose tonight. If it were us, we’d throw the game, but then we’re total cheats and have low moral fiber. You know that, right?

Normally this is the section of the post where we go into some horrible thing we did which may or may not be true, but is likely based in some sort of fact, but considering what we did for real this morning, we’re not in the mood. Let’s just say don’t take your nutritional advice from a GNC employee, especially if it’s their first day and your mood is best described as “desperate for any type of pills”.