Road Sweet Road
In the NBA playoffs, at least in Round 2, that's a real sentence
Will the home team ever win another playoff game?
The question is both an exaggeration and seemingly defensible after a circus start to the second round of the NBA playoffs.
The 64-win Cleveland Cavaliers are down 2-0 to Indiana.
The Minnesota Timberwolves couldn't win Game 1 against visiting Golden State even though Stephen Curry exited with a deeply concerning hamstring injury early in the second quarter.
The Denver Nuggets stole Game 1 in Oklahoma City against the 68-win Thunder with a comeback that is only believable because the Pacers followed it up and maybe even normalized it by erasing a 117-110 deficit with 1:06 to go on the Cavaliers' floor.
#thisleague
Only three teams in the NBA's play-by-play era, which began with the 1997-98 season, have won a game after trailing by at least seven points in the final minute.
Indiana has accounted for two of those resurrections in the past eight days.
The rallies and unravelings we've seen in the past 48 hours alone …
With last season's Coach of the Year (still can't get over Mark Daigneault calling for an intentional foul with 11 ticks left that allowed a stranded-at-the-scorer's-table Nikola Jokić to check back in when the Nuggets had zero timeouts) and this season's Coach of the Year (Kenny Atkinson) playing an undeniable part in the collapses …
We can only repeat: #thisleague
The Cavaliers were obviously compromised in the extreme Tuesday night with Darius Garland (toe), Evan Mobley (ankle) and De'Andre Hunter (thumb) all sidelined. But they clearly had enough to take a three-possession lead into the final 60-odd seconds in a game they had to win after dropping Sunday's series opener. Gotta win that one.
"They capitalized on every single mistake that we made," Cleveland's Jarrett Allen said.
What road team doesn't these days?
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The Modern Day Red Auerbach
I wrote extensively over the weekend about Gregg Popovich and his departure from the San Antonio Spurs' bench after nearly 30 years as their coach because, well, this is my 32nd season on the job and a huge part of it has been writing extensively about Pop and his Spurs throughout that reign.
I've covered them (and him) as closely as I've covered any franchise and the truth is that five championships and a slew of Hall of Famers and countless triumphs and disappointments in their fierce battles with the Lakers, Mavericks and Heat over the years provided lots of material.
Which made me think that this would be a good time and place to assemble a collection of links from my Pop reporting from the last decade-plus in case you, like me and so many others, find yourself being lured down some Spursian rabbit holes in search of the most pertinent historical tales about one of the most influential figures #thisleague has ever seen:
🏀 A 2013 feature for ESPN on Pop's, uh, relationship dynamic with sideline reporters.
🏀 A 2014 e-book for ESPN on the Power Couple known as Pop and Timmy … which was updated in July 2016 after Tim Duncan announced his retirement.
🏀 A 2015 piece for ESPN on Popovich landing his Dream Job when USA Basketball hired him to replace Mike Krzyzewski as head coach.
🏀 Coverage from the Walt Disney World bubble for The New York Times when the Spurs missed the playoffs for the first time in 23 seasons.
🏀 One of my first Pop pieces on my new Substack in 2021 when he was basking in the afterglow of Olympic gold in Tokyo:
Secret's out: Pop, at last, is happy
Gregg Popovich will not want to hear this. The strong likelihood is that he will never admit this.
🏀 My retrospective on Pop from Saturday after it was officially announced Friday that he is returning to strictly front office duty for the first time since the mid-1990s:
Pop
If any coach in modern NBA history appeared destined to walk away from the bench in precisely the manner he wanted to, it figured to be Gregg Popovich.
PS — I have another Pop Special planned for Wednesday after some top-shelf collaboration with my friends from Basketball Reference. Honestly don't think I’ll ever stop writing about him. Like the title of this section says: We're talking about the Modern Day Red On Roundball … whether you're a Pop fan or not.
Numbers Game
🏀 14
Are you ready for Monday's NBA Draft lottery in Chicago? Utah, Charlotte and Washington all have the best odds of landing the No. 1 overall pick and the right to draft Duke's Cooper Flagg … but we're talking just 14% for each in this era of flattened lottery odds.
🏀 4
Two other teams have a double-digit percentage chance of landing the No. 1 overall pick: New Orleans (12.5%) and Philadelphia (10.5%).
🏀 0.7
The Spurs have a second lottery pick (via Atlanta) in addition to their own that carries the lowest odds when it comes to winning the lottery at 0.7%. San Antonio has a 6% shot with its own lottery pick. Teams ahead of the Spurs: Brooklyn (9%) and Toronto (7.5%). The rest: Houston (3.8% via Phoenix), Portland (3.7%), Dallas (1.8%), Chicago (1.7%) and Sacramento (0.8%).
🏀 1997-98
When you hear that the 1997-98 season was the first year of "the play-by-play era," we're referring to the first season that the NBA kept play-by-play statistics that enable us to research things like …
🏀 20
This postseason, as noted by researcher extraordinaire
, boasts four teams that have already completed comebacks from at least 20 points down to establish a new league record. The Pacers came back from 20 points down in Game 5 at home against Milwaukee and did so again Tuesday night in Cleveland. The Knicks recovered from a 20-point deficit in their Game 1 win Monday night at Boston. And the Thunder rallied out of a 29-point hole in the first round in a Game 3 win at Memphis.🏀 2
Another one from Stat Keeks: The Pacers are the first team with multiple comebacks from deficits of 20 or more points in the same postseason since the play-by-play era began.
🏀 23
My PHNX Suns buddies say new Suns GM Brian Gregory used the words align or alignment no less than 23 times in a 37-minute news conference Tuesday. He was referring to Suns owner Mat Ishbia … whom Gregory coached more than 20 years ago at Michigan State when Isbhia was a walk-on and Gregory was part of Tom Izzo's coaching staff.
🏀 330
Tuesday was Gregory's 330th day as a full-time Suns employee. That is the extent of his NBA experience unless you count his role as a Suns consultant during the 2023-24 season. This past season was his first as vice president of player programming. Not quite the front office overhaul, one suspects, Suns fans were expecting.
🏀 50
Denver's first-round series win over the LA Clippers amazingly marked the first time that the Nikola Jokić-led Nuggets have beaten a 50-win team in the playoffs.
🏀 49
The closest Denver previously came: When the Nuggets overturned a 3-1 deficit against the Clippers in the Disney World bubble in 2020, LA was a 49-win team.
🏀 4-1
Clippers coach Tyronn Lue is now 4-1 in Game 7s after losing the series decider in Denver over the weekend.
🏀 4
The defeat also saddled James Harden with a Game 7 loss with four different teams (Rockets, Nets, 76ers and Clippers).
🏀 22
Game 1 of the second round was just the fifth game in 22 days for the Thunder. The rested team was 14-1 this century, according to this tweet from The Oklahoman's Joe Mussatto, when a team coming off a sweep faced a team in the next round that had just survived a seven-game series.
"Utah's Cooper Flagg"? Do you know something we don't, Steiny Mo?
0:57 left and Cavs up 7 seemed like a good time to head to the kitchen to make a snack. Came back and wondered why Indy was celebrating!