#thisleague? Up. For. Grabs
If you've been waiting to see an NBA playoffs that could deliver pretty much any possibility and lacked a true favorite, 2022 is your year
Halfway through these NBA playoffs, uneven is a handy summation for what we've seen so far.
The first round was largely snoozy apart from the shock factor of seeing Brooklyn get broomed into an early summer by Boston. Round 2 oozed tension and delivered two Game 7s that eliminated last season's NBA Finals combatants, but there was also lots to lament — too much influenced by yet another long playoff injury list and, yes, too much griping seemingly every night about the refereeing.
We're up to eight current All-Stars, after Memphis' Ja Morant (knee) missed half of the Golden State series, who have been forced to sit out at least one game this postseason, which leaves the NBA only two shy of matching last season's unwanted playoff record. It was difficult to tune out the idea that the toll of three straight seasons crunched by a global pandemic is still being felt when the Grizzlies (Morant) and the reigning champions from Milwaukee (Khris Middleton) were being eliminated without such key contributors ... and when Philadelphia's Joel Embiid (orbital fracture) looked so discombobulated during the final two games of the Sixers' second-round exit to Miami after missing the first two games entirely.
The overarching identity of these playoffs is nonetheless a fun one — especially as we shift into the Final Four after the stunning Game 7 unraveling of the 64-win Phoenix Suns against the upstart Dallas Mavericks.
The field is W-I-D-E open now, even more so than these unusual playoffs were billed to be at the start, to the point that you can easily talk yourself into any of the four survivors emerging as champions from here.
The public seems to enjoy what it has been seeing, too, in spite of my nitpicking and incessant injury updates: The league announced Tuesday that this postseason has been the most-watched through two rounds since 2014, with TNT seizing the top spot among cable networks in prime time ratings for three of the past four weeks.
Perhaps it all adds up to a fitting stretch run for a season that has been about as badly misread by prognosticators as I can remember. Brooklyn and the Los Angeles Lakers were consistently treated as juggernauts going all the way back to last summer no matter how often they tried to show us that they had been overhyped, then combined to win zero playoff games. The Lakers, of course, finished 33-49 and didn't even make the playoff play-in round in the West.
The Warriors rank as the new darlings of Las Vegas as the conference finals begin, but it seems safe to suggest that Golden State has been awarded that status — like the Nets and Lakers before them — based more on reputation than current performance. The Dubs indeed won those three championships in a five-season span from 2015 to 2019 and continue to revolve around three pillars from that magical run: Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. Yet it's also true that the Warriors fell behind by (checks notes) a rather troubling 55 points in Memphis in Game 5 with an opportunity to close out the Ja-less Grizz. They also appear to have no defensive answer for the most fearsome offensive force still in the hunt for the 2022 championship: Dallas' Luka Dončić.
Many prefer the NBA when there is one behemoth for everyone to chase like the Warriors in their very recent glory days. I've always clung to the fanciful idea that the league had the potential to be more alluring when a variety of outcomes is possible and no favorite looms, which is playing out to the sort of extreme this spring we typically never see.
My pal Alberto de Roa of HoopsHype dug into the numbers and found that the composite regular-season winning percentage of the last four teams still standing (.637) is the second-lowest in the nearly 40-year history of the NBA's 16-team playoff format that was introduced in 1983-84. The only year that percentage was lower, he reports, was Year 1 (.631 in 1984).
Such parity, combined with the fact that the suddenly favored Warriors realistically advanced in the least impressive fashion of a conference finals foursome that also features Boston, Miami and Dallas, would suggest that anything can happen from here.
This carries short- and long-term implications. For as much as we expect the LA Clippers (Kawhi Leonard) and Denver (Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr.) to return to prominence next season with healed stars, along with a potential bounce-back for the Bucks when they are whole and the possibility that the Nets could finally start living up to their potential if they can nurse Ben Simmons back to functionality, no team on the map is looking particularly dynastic at the moment. Which should encourage aggressiveness in the trade market and free agency as the NBA prepares to crown a fifth different champion in five seasons for the first time since the back half of the 1970s.
Sounds pretty good to me.
The Stein Line is a reader-supported newsletter, with both free and paid subscriptions available, and those who opt for the paid edition are taking an active role in the reporting by providing vital assistance to bolster my independent coverage of the league. Feel free to forward this post to family and friends interested in the NBA and please consider becoming a paid subscriber to have full access to all of my posts.
As a reminder: Tuesday editions, on this and every Newsletter Tuesday, go out free to anyone who signs up, just as my Tuesday pieces did in their New York Times incarnation.
Screen Time
There are, at most, only 21 game broadcasts left in this NBA season. It will realistically be fewer than that.
Some consolation if that number sends you into convulsions: NBA matters continue to get Hollywood's attention just as we are saying goodbye to the first season of HBO's polarizing Winning Time docudrama on the Showtime Lakers of the 1980s.
After all that energy we've poured into debating the (perceived) merits and (confirmed) flaws of Winning Time, word quickly began to circulate last week that two more NBA-inspired stories — one fictional and one pure fairy tale — will be out soon for your viewing pleasure.
Just in time for the NBA Draft, hoops-loving Adam Sandler has a Netflix drama Hustle debuting June 8 in which he portrays a Philadelphia 76ers scout named Stanley “Sugarman” Beren, who discovers a foreign-born prospect (played by Utah's Juancho Hernangómez) facing various obstacles to reach the big time. A teaser trailer for the project dropped in February, but I must confess that I missed it completely.
Then on June 24, Disney will begin streaming Rise, its film that traces the unlikely family journey of Giannis Antetokounmpo and his brothers from Greece to the NBA.
A project I need to start working on: Assembling a comprehensive list of every basketball movie, show and/or documentary in existence. Something tells me I would not be alone in relishing the ability to have a list like that to consult in one click. (If there's already a good resource out there for such a list, please let me know in the comments.)
Numbers Game
🏀 7
Seven of the 16 franchises in this spring's playoffs have never won an NBA championship and all seven have been eliminated after Phoenix lost Game 7 of its second-round series to Dallas at home by 33 points. Brooklyn, Denver, Memphis, Minnesota, New Orleans and Utah are the six other clubs besides the Suns.
🏀 25
The Warriors have won at least one road game in an NBA record 25 consecutive playoff series. The streak began in 2013 — two seasons before Golden State's run of five consecutive trips to the NBA Finals.
🏀 3
Phoenix's early exit made it just the third team in league history to win at least 64 games and fall short of the conference finals. The only others: Dallas (67-15) in 2007 and San Antonio (67-15) in 2016. Those Mavericks lost to Golden State in the first No. 8-beats-No. 1 upset after the first round became a seven-game series; Oklahoma City eliminated the 2015-16 Spurs in the second round.
🏀 38
As close as the regular-season MVP race proved, with Philadelphia's Joel Embiid, Milwaukee's Giannis Antetokounmpo and eventual winner Nikola Jokić of the Denver Nuggets all putting forth worthy cases to win, it's always amazing to be reminded yet again that Jokić went 38 spots below No. 3 overall pick Embiid in the 2014 draft. Antetokounmpo was selected with the 15th overall pick in 2013.
🏀 13
Jokić is the 13th player in league history to win back-to-back MVPs. With a hat tip to our research pal extraordinaire Justin Kubatko, he joins: Bill Russell (1961-1963), Wilt Chamberlain (1966-1968), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1971-1972 and 1976-1977), Moses Malone (1982-1983), Larry Bird (1984-1986), Magic Johnson (1989-1990), Michael Jordan (1991-1992), Tim Duncan (2002-2003), Steve Nash (2005-2006), LeBron James (2009-2010) and 2012-2013), Stephen Curry (2015-2016) and Giannis Antetokounmpo (2019-2020).
🏀 9
Orlando's Wendell Carter Jr., who placed ninth in the league this season at 10.5 rebounds per game, was the only American to finish among the top 10 rebounding leaders. Other countries represented in the top 10: France (No. 1 Rudy Gobert), Serbia (No. 2 Nikola Jokić), Lithuania (No. 3 Domantas Sabonis and No. 7 Jonas Valančiūnas), Switzerland (No. 4 Clint Capela), Cameroon (No. 5 Joel Embiid), Greece (No. 6 Giannis Antetokounmpo), Montenegro (No. 8 Nikola Vučević) and Bahamas (No. 10 Deandre Ayton).
🏀 37
Chris Paul turned 37 last Friday with the Suns holding a 2-0 series lead over Dallas. As the two enclosed tweets indicate ... it did not go well after that. (My good friend Marc J. Spears reported Sunday night that Paul has been plagued by a quad injury.
