There wasn’t a soul on the face of this earth that questioned what the Brooklyn Nets would look like on the offensive end this postseason. They’ve got 3 superstars (and I don’t use that term lightly), 1 former superstar (who’s had more dunks in this series against the Bucks than he did in the ENTIRE 2019-2020 season), and a host of excellent role players that can stroke it from three, attack the closeout, and play within themselves. Perhaps there were some individuals out there who questioned the 3 stars’ lack of minutes played together during the regular season, but those concerns were very quickly answered after the Nets whooping of the Celtics in games 1 and 2. The focus then, and rightfully...
What Kawhi did as a scorer throughout the Dallas series has been widely discussed. He took over the 2nd half/4th quarter of games multiple times and in a variety of different ways. Step back threes. Getting to the rim and finishing over defenders, with contact. Getting to his spot in the midrange and rising up. He looks like a robot, a machine, whatever you want to call something that looks the exact same every time. But, I would argue, what he did as a defender in this series (specifically in the 2nd half of the series) was not only more impressive, but was FAR more important to his team’s success.
First of all, it isn’t even clear who the second best player on the Dallas Mavericks is. It’s supposed to be Kristaps Porzingis, but his mere 12.7 ppg in these playoffs, as well as his inability to create his own shot in any capacity, make him a poor candidate to be their secondary option offensively. The only other logical option is Tim Hardaway Jr, a guy who came off the bench for the majority of the regular season and scored 16 a game from there. He’s averaging 18 ppg in these playoffs, but almost none of those are coming from his own creation; he usually finds shots within the flow of the offense, and I don’t think the Mavs EVER...
What Lebron James did yesterday was very uncharacteristic of himself. In a must-win game 6 with 3 minutes left in the game and down 13, Lebron James quit on his team, he quit on the city of LA, and he quite frankly quit on NBA fans everywhere. He had multiple zero-effort plays that essentially made it impossible for the Lakers to dig into the lead; he spent multiple defensive possessions arguing with the refs on the other side of the court, he made no effort to get back on defense or to get out to shooters, and he even walked off the court before congratulating anyone on the Suns team. Despite this poor display of effort and intensity, not many...
Like most hardcore NBA fans, I tune into every NBA playoff game. But, also like most NBA fans and like most human beings, I don’t have an NBATV subscription, and I therefore must watch some of these games via other methods. This has some obvious negatives associated with it; 1) It means that I’m unable to watch on the big screen (I must watch on my laptop) and 2) it is often laggy and a few minutes behind, resulting in me routinely seeing what happens on Twitter before I see it live on my computer. Yesterday, with 3 games on the schedule, game 5 of Blazers-Nuggets (the best game of the 2021 playoffs so far), was not nationally televised. This marks...
