The 2024 NBA playoffs are approaching us quickly. They will start on Saturday, April 20th and today is Monday, April 15th. But first we have the play in games. Let’s look at those matchups. We have the New Orleans Pelicans, Los Angeles Lakers, Sacramento Kings and the Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference. In the Eastern Conference we have the Philadelphia 76ers, Miami Heat, Atlanta Hawks and the Chicago Bulls. Let’s get started.

Tuesday’s action:

Lakers vs Pelicans @ 7:30 PM Eastern (4:30 PM Tucson)

There’s a lot of chatter out there that the Lakers should intentionally lose to the Pelicans to avoid a matchup with Denver. While I too was hoping the Lakers could avoid a Nuggets matchup, they are not in a position to lose a game on purpose and set up a one game situation where if they lose, their season is O-V-E-R. Play to win and let the chips fall where they may.

Don’t mess with the basketball gods and try to get an 8th seed. You could get exactly what you ask for, with a young team in OKC that runs the Lakers off the floor, regardless of LA’s regular season success against them. Just win if you can and take it from there.

As for the Pelicans, yeah they lost badly against the Lakers on Sunday. But that’s then. That game should have taught the Pels exactly what type of intensity is needed to play against the Lakers. Zion probably won’t turn the ball over and be as bad in this upcoming game as he was on Sunday.

But will the Lakers have the same intensity? Will they shoot as well? Something tells me that this game is going to be very close even if the Lakers try to come with their A-game. I think they already played it on Sunday and will have to scrap hard to beat a motivated Pelicans team.

But I still got the Lakers in a 3 point victory.

Golden State vs Sacramento @ 10:00 Eastern (7:00 Tucson)

As for the 2nd game of Tuesday night, this one should be a high scoring, fun game. The two teams split their regular season series matchup at 2 games to 2.

But that was before injuries to two of Sacramento’s top 8 players and 2 of their 4 best shooters, Malik Monk and Kevin Huerter. Monk averaged 15 pts, 5 assists and 2 made three pointers a game while Huerter averaged 10 pts and 2 made threes a game. The Kings haven’t quite been the same in the past month since both of those guys went down. However, Fox and Sabonis still form a great tandem and usually get everybody else going.

Harrison Barnes and Keegan Murray will be the keys. If one or both of those guys get going tomorrow, that will make it very tough on the Warriors to reign in Sabonis and Fox. Keon Ellis has stepped up recently but the four guys mentioned previously, Fox, Sabonis, Barnes and Murray is where Sac has to get the meat of their production from to win this game.

As for Golden State, Klay has been hot recently. He’s finally settled in and started playing like the Klay Thompson of old and not a washed up version of himself. He averaged only 17.9 pts a game this season, his lowest scoring output since the 2013-2014 season. However, lately he’s had some explosive games where he has gotten hot, as shown below.

As you can see here, he had 4 games where he made 5 or more three pointers. In each of those games he produced 25+ pt performances. Additionally, all four games were wins by Golden State. That’s what the Warriors need from him to advance out of the play-in and into the playoffs. But they’ll need Jonathan Kuminga to keep ascending as he has this year too. He’s made a nice jump from 9.9 pts a game last year to 16.1 pts a game this year.

They’ll need Kuminga, Thompson and one more unsung scoring hero (maybe Chris Paul, maybe Andrew Wiggins) to help out the All-world Stephen Curry. Also, the energy, rebounding and blocked shots from their new starting center, Trayce Jackson-Davis, has been much needed. I couldn’t quite understand what took Kerr so long to play this guy more. But hey, even great coaches take a while to figure things out sometimes.

I got Golden State in this one, by a 4 or 5 pt margin.

And that wraps up a preview of Tuesday’s games. Check back here tomorrow for a preview of Wednesday’s games.