WATCH OUT For These Teams...

The New Orleans Pelicans started the season 1-12, dead last in the league. But did you know that ever since then, they’ve been playing 500 basketball, going 29-29 the rest of the way so far? That explains how they’ve put themselves in the playoff race, and somewhat saved their season.
So with the playoffs on the horizon, let me highlight some teams that are catching fire and becoming dangerous, and some that are sliding at the worst possible moment.
What up everybody, my name is Stefan and this is Heat Check. Let’s get into it.
The Minnesota Timberwolves have been a pleasant surprise in the second half of the season
and they’ve gone on a monster 18-5 run over the last 23 games, doing it on the defensive end surprisingly. Over the last 10 games they’ve had the absolute best defense in the entire league so their 9-1 record over that stretch is fitting.
And it wasn’t a schedule thing either. They beat teams like Golden State, Miami, Cleveland, and the Bucks although without Giannis.
With that the Timberwolves have climbed all the way to the number 6 spot out of the play in zone. At least as of today.
Their next 6 games are brutal, but I bet that the young wolves look at this as an opportunity since they play against their direct rival the Nuggets, as well as twice against the Mavs, which could take them even higher if they continue this hot streak.
Their leader Karl Towns is more and more aggressive attacking the basket and overall playing extremely well, and he would say that himself.
The Boston Celtics are even hotter, going 19-3 in their last 22 games. I made a video about their turnaround and you can check it out in the description, but basically all of it is still valid.
If Minnesota had the best defense over the last 10 games, well Boston is number 1 overall throughout the entire season. That’s impressive.
Also, for the first 2 months, the Celtics were 24th in assists per game as a team, and now over this stretch they are 9th which is a huge leap and explains a lot for them.
Both Tatum and are great at both scoring the ball and making decisions for others.
The thing that worries me is 3 point shooting, since they don’t have a reliable knock down shooter, but they’ve been able to make it work and became a playoff threat for all teams in the eastern conference.
On the other end of the spectrum we have the Chicago Bulls who are hanging on by a thread to the 5 spot in the East.
They’ve gone 9-11 over the last 20 games and can not win against a contender to save their lives. The Bulls are 0-15 against the 3 best teams in the east and the 3 best in the west, and guys on twitter are already throwing out the word pretender.
Again, like I said in my video from about 10 days ago, we gotta give them the benefit of the doubt and see them at full strength but this is not a good sign at all.
The bummer with this team is that Zach Lavine says that his knee is at about 70-80%. He’s trying to get through this season and will deal with it in the summer.
And when your main guy is playing just to play and to fight through the season, the ceiling cannot be too high for the team. Especially while having many other injured players.
The slump that the Warriors are in, is almost exactly the same. 9-11 as well over the last 20 games and this looks far from the conference finals contender that we saw at the start.
And again, just like the Bulls, they were counting the days when Draymond would come back, and got 1 and a half game of the Green, Thompson, Curry trio, before Steph went down with an injury. Curry says he’s hopeful that he will be back before game 1 of the playoffs, but you know what that means- things are not ideal, and Golden State will have to hold on to this number 3 spot in the west.
And some of their next games are against Miami, Atlanta, Memphis, Phoenix and Utah. So this is a big test ahead of them, and we’ll keep an eye on how they finish this season.
Another big question is can Brooklyn get out of the play-in, and can the Lakers stay in there, because they are really sinking down. Let me know in the comments.
That’s it for now, subscribe and talk to you in the next one. Peace out