Re-assessing Western Conference title contenders

Pro Basketball Talk on NBC Sports podcast

The NBA playoffs began with three-to-four Western Conference teams – Lakers, Clippers, Jazz and arguably Suns – looking like championship contenders.

All four have have taken dents to their cases:

• The Clippers might be imploding as they've fallen behind 2-0 to the Mavericks.
• Lakers star LeBron James has looked only relatively healthy (at best) with his ankle issue.
• Suns star Chris Paul is injured.
• The Jazz had a rough showing in Game 1 then a key defenseless stretch in Game 2.

On the latest ProBasketballTalk Podcast, Dan Feldman and Andy Larsen of The Salt Lake Tribune give progress reports for the West contenders and assess whether Dallas belongs in the conversation.

They also got into a Philadelphia fan dumping popcorn on Russell Westbrook, a Knicks fan maybe spitting on Trae Young, Kyrie Irving's comments about racism in Boston, fallout from Utah sitting Donovan Mitchell in Game 1, whether Jazz teammates Jordan Clarkson or Joe Ingles should have won Sixth Man of the Year and why Bojan Bogdanovic got a Most Improved Player vote.