This Week In Basketball can only brace for the sixth different NBA champion in a historic span of six seasons
Actually there's lots, lots more to discuss, as always, in our latest recap of the week that was in #thisleague
Sunday night's Game 7 in The Tim Connelly Bowl was a true roller-coaster that delivered a stunning ending, eliminated the NBA's reigning champions after they had led by 20 points in the third quarter and gave the greater basketball public some playoff basketball we could truly savor as special.
We really deserved that!
All of it was preferable to me having to exclusively whinge about injuries in this space for the third or fourth time already this postseason, which is where I thought we were headed after the first of Sunday's two Game 7s. (I've lost count of the actual number of lamentation articles that this spring's #injuriessuck-a-thon has necessitated.)
The New York Knicks lost their Game 7 at home to some of the paciest Indiana Pacers we've ever seen and naturally also lost their MVP candidate Jalen Brunson to a fractured left hand in the process. I'm not even sure what to say any more about the Knicks and their injury woe.
Josh Hart, who clearly wasn't himself as he tried to play through an abdominal strain that he had no business trying to play through, ultimately was the lone Knick of the SIX highest-paid players on Tom Thibodeau's roster who was even available in the fourth quarter of the loss that ended what many regard as the most upbeat season at Madison Square Garden (brief Linsanity interlude aside) since the 20th century.
The Minnesota Timberwolves then swiftly changed the whole tenor of Sunday's farewell to the second round of the playoffs but rallying out of a 53-38 halftime deficit to score their third victory of the series on the Denver Nuggets' court, cementing it as a Round 2 Series For The Ages as we had billed it and ensuring that #thisleague will have a new champion for the sixth successive season.
I've been writing for weeks in anticipation of such a development and now it's here. Whoever wins it all — Boston or Indiana or Minnesota or Dallas — will represent a sixth new champ in a span of six seasons ... which hasn't happened in the NBA since 1974-75 through 1979-80.
That's how wild and crazy (and unpredictable) #thisleague has gotten since Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson sustained those devastating injuries during the 2019 NBA Finals that aided the Toronto Raptors' We The North quest to break through and win it all.
It was the Raptors in 2019, then the Lakers in the Walt Disney World bubble in 2020, followed by the Bucks in 2021 and the resurrected Durant-less Warriors in 2022. The Nuggets won their first championship in franchise history last season — emulating Milwaukee's achievement two years earlier — but also proved unable to repeat just like those Bucks.
Has the NBA actually hit on lasting NFL-style parity? Is this all just another offshoot of the 3-point variance that seemingly swings so many games in the 21st Century NBA? As we continue the search for firm conclusions, bear in mind that the road team is now a remarkable 8-4 in Game 7s in the playoffs across the past four seasons since we left the neutral site days of Orlando bubble.
Haven't we been telling you on this Substack for some time now that homecourt advantage has been steadily eroding? Recent playoff results only support that notion even louder.
Yup: Wild and crazy times. Now we've got Celtics vs. Pacers in The Larry Bird Bowl to decide the East's representative in the 2024 NBA Finals and a Western Conference finals matchup that unexpectedly reunites the two teams that went to Abu Dhabi together way back in early October to get this season started with the first two preseason games on foreign soil.
So much for the notion that traveling so far abroad in the preseason can hurt you when it matters most.
"We said to ourselves all series," Timberwolves coach Chris Finch shared after the Game 7 triumph, "[that] our best is better than their best.”
Major props to Finch, by the way, for steering completely clear of my woe-is-us attitude about the injury plague ... even though he's one of the most prominent victims. A first-round collision with Mike Conley, remember, left the Wolves' coach with a ruptured right patellar tendon that forced him to sit behind Minnesota's bench for the entire series against his former boss Michael Malone.
#thisleague
Onto the rest of the standout stuff from the week we just completed ....
Stories of the Week (published here)
Monday: This Week In Basketball pays homage to the Nuggets' response to falling into a 2-0 series deficit at home against Minnesota.
Wednesday: My latest Intel on the Lakers' coaching search.
Thursday: Most Overrated NBA Playoff Storylines as curated by my longtime colleague .
Sunday: Around-the-league NBA notes on a Sunday (more details below).
Games of the Week (that I attended)
Monday: Thunder 100, Mavericks 96
Saturday: Mavericks 117, Thunder 116
Trivia Question of the Week
Game 6 of the Dallas/Oklahoma City series, BTW, was only the third one-point game of this postseason.
Can you name the other two?
Podcasts of the Week (that I co-hosted)
Monday alongside Turner Sports' Chris Haynes:
Thursday edition of #thisleague UNCUT:
Memory of the Week
This was a nice black-and-white surprise that popped up over the weekend. It's a photo by my former (and aptly named) ESPN field producer Ken Field from a nine-year-old practice facility interview with Stephen Curry during the Warriors' first run to the championship of the Curry Era in May 2015 … made even more notable by the fact that Curry's first MVP season was the last time that the NBA’s regular season MVP won it all:
The last nine regular-season MVPs since have fallen short of championship glory: Curry (2016), Oklahoma City's Russell Westbrook (2017), Houston's James Harden (2018), Milwaukee's Giannis Antetokounmpo (2019), Antetokounmpo again (2020), Jokic (2021), Jokic again (2022), Philadelphia's Joel Embiid (2023) and Jokic for a third time (2024).
Phone Notification of the Week
And here's the Intel-laden Sunday story that inspired it:
NBA trade talk and free agency chatter ... AND the latest on Bronny James' future
Around-the-league NBA notes on a Sunday? On a Sunday with two Game 7s? As it should be! To the latest from my notebook ...
Trivia Answer of the Week
Philadelphia scored a 105-104 victory over Miami in the Play-In round in the game in which Jimmy Butler sustained a knee sprain that knocked Butler out of the playoffs.
And Cleveland claimed a 105-104 victory over Orlando in Game 5 of the teams’ first-round series that the Cavaliers won in seven.
Quote(s) of the Week
"Did we win a championship? Did we get close?"
— Knicks guard Jalen Brunon … explaining to reporters after Sunday's Game 7 home defeat to Indiana why he refuses to consider this season a success.
“When someone beats you, they're just better.”
— Nuggets forward Nikola Jokic … rejecting the suggestion made by teammate Jamal Murray that the defending champions "feel like we should’ve won." based on the chances they had in their series with Minnesota even after losing the first two games of home.
Tweet of the Week
From my pal Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press:
Final Word(s) of the Week
As I've mentioned often previously, I loved loved LOVED This Week In Baseball in my youth and have frequently compiled what I've referred to as TWIB Notes on this Substack to pay homage to the great Mel Allen and that life-changing show which debuted in 1977. Now my goal is to make it more of a full-on roundup of what I wrote, said, did, saw and maybe even ate, bought, etc., in a given week … with categories that I suspect will evolve as I get a better handle on what this piece should look like. Your feedback is appreciated in the comments section below.
(Editor’s note: After affixing two banners to this file for the fifth successive week, one at the top and one at the bottom, it is probably time to concede that running This Week In Basketball on Mondays has become a thing … which unfortunately crowds out Monday Musings. The NBA, of course, always names its Players of the Week on Mondays during the regular season, so maybe I shouldn’t fight it.)
I personally love the parity and unpredictability of these playoffs. I know dynasty teams probably are better for ratings but I am here for basketball and both Game 7s were pretty good to great (even with the injuries). And it's all these teams last chance before Wemby starts winning every title. Get 'em in while you can boys.
I wonder how this finals can "hurt" the NBA as a business. I mean, of course they are great for basketball and true hoops fans, but let's face it, the general audience wants to see big names and all stars. The Finals hasn't been hitting the same tv ratings as before the pandemic, or the last time we saw Lebron vs Curry. The NBA was never a "faceless" league, but who can be that guy now?