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The Phoenix Suns were looking to bounce back in Game 2 in Oklahoma City, and while a 13-point loss does not scream “bounce back,” it kind of was. The adjustments showed up. The competitiveness showed up. It looked more like a real game.

The first change was obvious. Pace. Phoenix pushed it. That matters against the Oklahoma City Thunder, because living in the half-court against that defense is a tough way to survive. They are too connected, too disruptive, and too quick on closeouts. When the Suns played faster, moving the ball after makes and misses, it created cleaner looks. It worked, especially in the first half.

The third quarter hurt. Oklahoma City came out of the locker room and took control, outscoring Phoenix 35-20. The aggression ramped up, the game tilted, and the lead pushed to 22. It felt like it could get away from them.

Then the fourth happened. For the first time in a while, the Suns dictated something late. Pace. Physicality. Energy. They fought back and cut it to nine. Dillon Brooks set the tone with his aggression, and Devin Booker followed. Jalen Green tried to find it, but could not, going 1-of-6 in the quarter. Khaman Maluach played the entire fourth, and that is something worth circling moving forward.

More than anything, the Suns showed fight again. The kind that defined them early in the season. The kind that had faded in the final two months of the season. It showed up when it mattered most, and it reminded you of what this group can look like when they lean into their identity. Outscoring OKC 30-20 in the fourth was something.

They head back to Phoenix for Game 3 feeling better about where they are. Whether that turns into a win is another question. But for a night, it felt like the Suns again.

Bright Side Baller Season Standings

Wow. How bad was Game 1? Rasheer Fleming played 7:34 minutes of garbage time. He went 3-of-3 from the field, scoring 9 points in his postseason debut. And that was enough, with over 200 votes, to easily win the Bright Side Baller of the Game. I think that alone tells you where this fan base is.

Bright Side Baller Nominees

Game 86 (Game 2) against the Thunder. Here are your nominees:

Dillon Brooks
30 points (12-of-23, 5-of-9 3PT), 6 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 turnover, -11 +/-

Devin Booker
22 points (7-of-14, 0-of-3 3PT), 7 rebounds, 4 assists, 8-of-10 FT, 5 turnovers, -12 +/-

Jalen Green
21 points (8-of-23, 1-of-8 3PT), 5 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, 7 turnovers, -12 +/-

Royce O’Neale
16 points (4-of-5, 4-of-5 3PT), 9 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals, 2 turnovers, -4 +/-

Collin Gillespie
7 points (3-of-9, 1-of-5 3PT), 6 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 steals, 2 turnovers, -14 +/-

Oso Ighodaro
7 points (3-of-8), 8 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 turnovers, 1 block, -23 +/-

Cast your vote.

Eleven years ago, Eric Martin cringed as he watched LeBron James dismantle the Atlanta Hawks in Game 3 of the 2015 Eastern Conference Finals with a 37-point triple-double in overtime.

The 42-year-old retired sales executive, who’s a Golden State Warriors fan, fired off a tweet from his couch in his home in Phoenix. 

“Lebron is 30, this f–kery won’t go on for much longer, thank god,” he wrote from his X account, @urkle91. 

That tweet has become a viral sensation, having more than a decade-long shelf life.

Superstars have retweeted it.

It has been repurposed to include players in other sports, such as Shohei Ohtani and Patrick Mahomes. It has been viewed millions of times.

It even reached James himself. 

“I saw that Tweet throughout all of my 30s,” James said on the “New Heights” podcast. “Want to know what’s funny? When I turned 40, the same f–king guy said, ‘LeBron turned 40, this f–kery won’t go on much longer.’

“He’s going to be real upset when I turn 50.”

The man responsible for one of the most infamous tweets in NBA history has understandably had twinges of regret. 

“There are many times I considered deleting the tweet,” Martin said with a laugh. “He was 30. And then 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 — and there was just no regression in sight.”

Now, things have only gotten worse for Martin. 

The 41-year-old James, who’s the only NBA player to reach season 23, is trying to lead a Lakers team without Luka Doncic (hamstring) and Austin Reaves (oblique) past Kevin Durant and the Rockets in their first-round playoff series.

How’s it going? 

The Lakers have a 2-0 lead and James has been the star of the series.

 In Game 1, James had 19 points, a game-high 13 assists, eight rebounds, two steals and one blocked shot. In Game 2, he had a game-high 28 points, eight rebounds and seven assists. 

“It’s kinda like pie in my face,” Martin said.

Since turning 30, James has won two championships, made 11 All-Star teams, 11 All-NBA Teams and he became the league’s all-time leading scorer. He has had 80 of his 155 playoff games in which he had a 25/5/5 line since turning 30, more such performances than Michael Jordan had his entire postseason career (73). Last season, the 40-year-old was sixth in MVP voting. 

Martin is reminded of James’ stunning longevity everyday. 

“Anytime he has a good game, people retweet the comment,” he said. “Every single game. I look at my mentions, I look at my notifications, and it’s just people clowning the tweet. Every. Single. Game. 

“It’s a shrine for people now.”

Martin’s tweet actually went unnoticed for years. 

Then, during the 2017 NBA Finals, Martin was trash-talking James on X when he pissed off the wrong Cleveland Cavaliers fan, who went digging through his past tweets and unearthed that gem with a retweet.

The tweet was then reposted by the X account “Freezing Cold Takes” which has over 600,000 followers. 

A viral sensation was born. 

Over the years, the flame just kept being fanned. 

By 2018, the tweet was all over the internet. Martin realized the extent of its reach when his son’s and daughter’s friends started seeing it on Instagram and saying, “Isn’t that your dad’s page?”

Things only got worse from there. 

After James had a 47-point, 10-rebound and nine-assist performance on his 38th birthday on Dec. 30, 2022, the Instagram page House of Highlights (which has 51 million followers) posted the tweet alongside a photo of James pointing and laughing. 

James then reposted it on his Instagram (which has 156 million followers), adding a bunch of emojis of a face crying with laughter. 

“It just took off,” Martin said. “It just went to another level. Every six months, I’d see another publication just retweet, retweet, retweet.”

For Martin, things reached a screeching point when James led the Lakers past his Warriors in the second round of the 2023 playoffs. 

“I’ve never seen so many notifications before on my phone,” Martin said. “It damn-near malfunctioned.”

Martin, however, decided to get in on the joke 10 years later, posting on X, “Lebron is 40, this f–kery won’t go on for much longer, thank god,” That tweet has 3.3 million views. 

Martin can laugh at everything now, even though his social media has been accosted by James’ fans. 

He just has one wish going forward. 

He doesn’t want the Lakers to beat the Rockets. 

“If they do beat them, it’s just going to make the noise around LeBron even louder, which I dread,” he said with a laugh. 

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INDEPENDENCE — The Toronto Raptors made their first major lineup adjustment of the series against the Cleveland Cavaliers when they decided to bench their typical starting center, Jakob Poeltl, for the entire second half in Game 2. Instead, they opted to go small with the 6’7” Collin Murray-Boyles and the 6’9” Sandro Mamukelashvili nominally playing the five.

After Game 2, Raptors head coach Darko Rajaković said that the idea behind going smaller was to provide a different look defensively. “We wanted to be able to switch more in the pick-and-roll.”

That idea made sense, but didn’t work out well for Toronto.

Instead of feasting on Poeltl in the pick-and-roll, the Cavs were able to attack and hunt out mismatches by forcing switches on screens. This was seen most clearly in how James Harden, Donovan Mitchell, and Evan Mobley all attacked Brandon Ingram whenever matched up against him. And without a center, there wasn’t additional help defense waiting to bail Ingram out.

The numbers highlight this problem. Toronto has had an abysmal 128.1 defensive rating (0th percentile) in the 128 possessions they’ve played without Poeltl. The defense hasn’t been stellar with Poeltl, it’s been considerably better (117.7 defensive rating, 22nd percentile).

Despite Cleveland’s success, Jarrett Allen wasn’t able to take advantage of Toronto’s smaller front line. He registered just four points in the second half and wasn’t included in the team’s closing lineup despite being guarded by a much smaller RJ Barrett.

Despite not making an impact as a scorer, head coach Kenny Atkinson liked what he saw from Allen.

“These are the little sacrifices you have to make,” Atkinson said after practice on Wednesday. “Obviously, we got to reward him if they’re going to go small and get him down on the mismatches, but he sacrificed himself with screening.”

Allen did do a good job as a screener. He had a game-high six screen assists, leading to 16 points.

Atkinson said that he wants to keep Allen in the dunker’s spot against some of these smaller lineups. This would allow him to clean up missed shots and potentially finish lobs if the help defense steps up.

“I give him a 10-out-of-10 in terms of understanding that and then sacrificing for the squad,” Atkinson said. “After I watched the film, [I realized] this guy is way more impactful than even I think. His impact is monumental for the team.”

It’ll be interesting to see if the Cavs can get Allen more involved against these smaller lineups.

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Despite not helping Toronto’s defense, going smaller did jump-start the offense.

“[It] probably increases their transition offensive rate,” Atkinson said. “They’re going to double down on their speed.”

The smaller lineups have, in fact, done so.

Toronto is getting out in transition on 14.8% of their offensive possessions (93rd percentile) this series without Poeltl on the floor. That’s up from the 11.1% of possessions in transition (24th percentile) when he’s playing. This has all resulted in the offense being better in these smaller lineups.

“It makes them space the floor a little more and makes them play faster,” Max Strus said. “It’s a new thing that we’re gonna have to figure out, and I think we did some things to prepare for it today.”

The Cavs came into this series talking about needing to keep the Raptors from running in the open court. They’ve succeeded at that front in the first two games of the series, and will need to do so again if they want to steal a game in Toronto or potentially end the series there.

Going smaller hasn’t produced considerably better results for Toronto. They’re just 0.5 points per 100 possessions better with Poeltl off the court, and have registered a -12.5 net rating. That isn’t going to get it done.

Even though benching Poeltl may be the best move for the Raptors, it isn’t going to close the talent gap that we’ve seen through the first two games, at least not on its own. They need better performances from their best players — mainly Brandon Ingram — and hope that the Cavs’ stars cool off.

Despite how stress-free the first two games have been, the Cavs aren’t taking anything for granted as the series shifts north of the border.

“The series hasn’t even started yet until you go on the road,” Strus said. “So we got to come in with an aggressive mindset, just like we treated games one and two, and play our best basketball.”

It was hard to watch on Tuesday as Victor Wembanyama collided with Jrue Holiday just minutes into the second quarter. Upon impact, Wemby lost his balance and landed face first onto the hardwood. In the immediate aftermath, it was unclear if Wemby had been knocked unconscious. After a few moments, he turned around appearing to stand up, only to need another moment to regain his composure.

Dusty Garza with Spurs Reporter posted this doctor’s opinion:

As Shams Charania reported, Wemby’s 48 hours began immediately after the diagnosis. He is being re-evaluated and monitored. As of this post, the 2-days ends this evening, Thursday, April 23rd at arounf 8:00 p.m.

Wemby is hoping to travel with the Spurs in the event he is available to play in either game 3 or game 4, but no decision will be available until he’s been fully checked out and given the go ahead.

Dr. Brian Sutterer, who independently analyzes sports injuries for his own YouTube channel, posted this video:

According to NBA protocol, which is less stringent than the NFL, Wemby “theoretically, could come back for game 3,” but the doctor states that he doesn’t think that time should be the only metric used in making the decision.

If past is prologue, the Spurs will not release any information until necessary and will not play Victor Wembanyama until it is believed he is in the right physical and emotional state and that his injury won’t hamper his playing ability or harm him.

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