Playoffs Week 1: King Threedora; Let the Boys Play; Praise for the Pelicans; Utah Suck
The first games of this postseason have been a glutinous mess of excellent and entertaining basketball timed perfectly with the glutinous mess of eating a thousand easter eggs. This intro serves as an apology to the Minnesota Timberwolves, and particularly to Anthony Edwards. I was wrong to doubt the Timberwolves would make the 7th seed, but I’m so glad they were – Anthony Edwards has taken this team for his own and is one playoff series win away from genuine superstardom.
King Threedorah – the new Warriors Dynasty
Now that every Western Conference team has played two games, all of the series are tied at one a piece aside from Golden State and Denver, where the Warriors lead 2-0.
If you have been following along throughout this season, you will have found that this is a very pro–Jordan Poole publication.Before a game had been played, I was cautiously optimistic that Poole could be the stop-gap until Klay Thompson’s return, and then become a devastating six man with the ability to torch secondary lineups.
Poole finished the regular season strong, averaging 24 points per game in the last 2 months and showing himself to be a reliable and slippery scorer who was unafraid of the big moment, confident enough in himself not to defer to Klay when the spotlight was brightest.
I’m more than prepared to acknowledge my biases towards Poole and this Warriors team – but even with those biases, I could not have expected how Poole has started his playoff career, scoring 59 points in his first two games and looking completely unstoppable. Game 2 was all over when Poole stepped back against DeMarcus Cousins and buried a 3 in his face, just an absurd display of footwork and bravado.
It’s clear now; Poole is the piece that makes this Warriors team a proper finals contender again. The real issue is what to nickname the trio of Klay, Steph and Poole. A three-headed dragon with near unlimited scoring potential, who is impervious to any form of attack, who possesses an insane competitive drive and a desire to dominate all teams in the NBA. I’m not particularly versed in my Godzilla knowledge but I am very well versed in my MF DOOM knowledge, and that sounds like King Geedorah to me.
So, in an effort to award this trio with a more inspired nickname of King Threedorah. You might think that’s lame but I respond thusly: it can’t be worse than the current “3G” nickname, an outdated technology that makes me want to throw my phone away whenever it starts using it, and I spent too much time on this photoshop.
After two games, Denver are starting to fall apart in this series. Jokic was ejected early in the fourth quarter of game two after expressing his anger that Draymond Green was allowed to foul him five times before he even took a dribble. Even if Draymond is not being called for fouls which he is arguably committing, he is still doing a job of pushing Jokic outside of the painted area where he operates so well. So much of Denver’s offense is sparked by Jokic receiving the ball at the elbow or lower and making a move or a pass to an open teammate. In this series, Draymond is pushing him closer to the 3 point line, putting Jokic on the back foot and allowing the rest of the defense to close off cutters.
That’s not to mention the sideline scuffle between Monte Morris – who has actually been an effective scorer in this series – and known sensible man with a controlled temper, DeMarcus Cousins. Add to this that Aaron Gordon has been completely ineffective on both ends of the court and things are looking pretty bad for Denver.
There is every chance that Denver manages to win one of their two upcoming home games, as well as the chance that Jokic records a 50 point triple-double in one of those games. The problem is what it was always going to be, Jokic’s teammates are not of a quality to support him when it comes to playoff basketball. That is not to criticise Jokic or diminish what he did in the regular season, but when the playoffs start and referees start swallowing the whistle, focusing on one player in the way that Denver do makes a liability if that player is effectively defended.
It’s hard not to overreact to 2 very good wins by the Warriors when they are playing in a way which is so reminiscent of their dynasty run, particularly the ball movement and small ball dominance of the ‘15 championship and ‘16 regular season.
For the time being, Steph Curry is playing the perfect role as six man of the bench but it is an insult to Steph and his legacy for that to continue for longer than this series. Steve Kerr has a helpful headache figuring out how he will split starting minutes between Steph, Klay and Poole. That headache might go away when playing the new death lineup 3.0 from minute one; being Steph, Poole, Klay, Wiggins and Draymond. In 11 minutes that this line up has shared the floor they have scored 47 points and shot 87.5% from deep. The team scored 70 points in just 19 minutes in game 2, it’s not just this lineup.
The lineup of death is a tradition stretching back to the 2015 championship, its first incarceration being Steph, Klay, Livingston, Iguodala and Green. The death lineup was a mix of playmaking, shooting and defense which made it practically impossible for any other team to stop the bleeding as Steph and Klay began darting around, appearing suddenly metres away from the closest defender. The second iteration only added the greatest scorer of all time in Kevin Durant in place of Shaun Livingston. To see another death lineup emerge brings back memories of a species of dominance which lay dormant while everyone else in the league thought it was over.
Let the boys play
As mentioned before, referees in the playoffs have a tendency to swallow their whistles and you see less of the tick-tack fouls present in the regular season. In some cases you end up with games like game 1 of the Brooklyn Boston series, one of the most entertaining and most physical games of the past five years. Some could complain that Durant was receiving a level of physicality which bordered on flagrancy, but that’s not fun to watch. I would rather watch Durant fightfor his points and make the difficult mid range shots that he was forced into than see him at the line 45 times.
The worst of these playoffs so far was the opening five minutes of game 2 to the Minnesota-Memphis series, where six points were scored, eight fouls were called, and the referees went to the review screen to assess for flagrant fouls twice. Both teams combined to shoot 33 free throws in the first quarter alone. I hated it and I never want to see that bullshit again. In the first game of that series, there were 50 fouls called between the two teams and the game went for more than three hours, a rare occasion since the introduction of the “freedom of movement“ rules in the beginning of the year.
If there is a line to be drawn and a standard set for what actually constitutes a foul in the playoffs – and I do not care if it is a different standard from the regular season – then please draw it far closer to the Boston game then to the Memphis game. I realise that this probably will come back to bite me when I inevitably complain that Steph Curry was taken out under the legs on a crucial shot in a later series, but for the purpose of the present moment and for how entertaining it was to see Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum get in Kevin Durant’s space and physically challenged him without being called unnecessarily for a foul, I am content to put myself through the misery of a potential missed call if it means that more games are of a higher quality.
Praise for the Pelicans
It’s probably already too late to give the New Orleans Pelicans their flowers, but they have been deserving of attention for reasons not related to the health and weight of Zion Williamson, or in the back half of the season when they became the team to eliminate the Los Angeles Lakers. This is a team that faced genuine soul-crushing adversity in the beginning of the season starting three for 16 in the opening stanza, who just took a game from the Phoenix Suns in the playoffs.
Pelicans coach Willie Green, who was an assistant coach to Steve Kerr and Monty Williams, has turned out to be not only a competent but inspiring coach for his now diverse team of veterans, all stars, and a surprising number of rookies.
The rookie trio of José Alvarado, Herbert Jones and Trey Murphy were all at some point in the fourth quarter against the Suns, contributing on both ends of the floor and out performing both their experience and their salaries.
Alvarado has become famous for his sneak attack steals where he hides in the corner of the backcourt on an inbound pass and waits expectantly for the point guard to inevitably lose focus, stealing the ball and running away for an easy layup. Even if Chris Paul did catch Alvarado out on this move, the base principles of Alvarado‘s mix of speed and the unexpected has helped the Pelicans offense greatly.
Whenever the pelicans inbound the ball to Alvarado, he’s in the half court with 20 seconds left on the shot clock and even before the defense has a chance to get set – leading to easy buckets on the break or match ups early in the shot clock. This lets experienced shooters and absolute killers like CJ McCollum and Brandon Ingram generate shots against defenders unprepared for them to be in that position. The romantic in me wants Zion to return in this series, but it’s not necessary for this team to continue functioning as a high-powered offense.
Ingram and CJ closed out game 2 with a relentless shooting display, Ingram taking full advantage of his absurd length to make shots completely unbothered by Mikal Bridges of all people. It would be easy to blame Phoenix’s loss in this game on referee Scott Foster, Chris Paul’s arch-nemesis, who has refereed 14 straight losses for Paul, but that wouldn’t be giving enough credit to the Pelicans, who played out of their skin.
This team is actually good now, but will be better next year with more reps and some playoff scars – and maybe even the greatest freak of nature to enter the league in over a decade, but we’ll see.
Even with Devin Booker due to miss some games with the hamstring injury he fell to in game 2, I still have confidence in this Phoenix team to make it through the first round- which should come as no surprise – but I’m enjoying watching an inexperienced opponent play out of their skin and and give Phoenix one of the few challenges they have faced this season.
Utah sucks so much
As it goes with Utah, there’s just nothing about this team that is entertaining any more. This season what started as encouraging signs became ambivalence and has now become hatred – I really struggle to watch this team. This is the number one performing offense in the league during the regular season and now they can only generate a shot for either Mitchell or Bogdanović.
This was a beautiful game offense with heavy ball movement that somehow falls into iso-bullshit any time that the defense gives them the slightest amount of pressure. How many times have we seen Donovan go off and score 30 or more points in a losing effort only to look at the box score and see that maybe Bogdanović has 20 and Gobert has five? I just don’t care to even ponder how this team could improve, I just want them to tear it up. I’m sick of it.
And once again, Rudy Gobert cannot defend a three-point shooting team. WAIT, every team in the NBA is a three-point shooting team! Donovan Mitchell cannot stay in front of his man in the pick and roll and has not been able to do so for three consecutive playoffs, Jamal Murray lit him up in the bubble, Terrence Mann and Reggie Jackson did last year and Jalen Brunson just did it again on his way to 41 points in game 2. If cannot be coincidence that Utah have completely destroyed by good-to-average three-point shooting teams who shoot ungodly numbers against them in three consecutive playoffs.
Heading into the back half of the second round, there’s still a lot to be decided. The battles between Boston and Brooklyn and Memphis and Minnesota will give off enough energy to power a small city. Meanwhile, spare a thought for everyone’s favourite villain, Trae Young, who is fighting for his life to make it through a pick-and-roll that doesn’t put him directly in front of Bam Adebayo. In two games, Trae has had a career worst shooting performance and a career worst for turnovers. The man is having nightmares right now.