The East: Celtics vs Pacers
All right, the Celtics didn’t really face much resistance. It’s not that the opposing teams weren’t capable of giving them trouble, fully healthy. But no one was: The Heat was without its leader, Jimmy Butler, and a scorer picked up midseason, “Scary” Terry Rozier. (I’ll always remember Rozier, while he was with the Hornets, for executing one of those fakes so good that everyone, including the audience, looked the wrong way. He did this fake on a behind-the-back pass, freezing his defender, and used that half-second to smoothly score with a finger roll. The commentators went silent for a moment. Then one said: “Now that was nasty.”) Miami: out in five games. The Cavaliers, after beating the rising Magic in seven, were missing a crucial rim protector, Jarrett Allen. Donovan Mitchell was having one of the best playoffs of any individual player. Then he went down in the middle of the series. Cleveland: out in five games. A Celtics starter, Kristaps Porzingis, had been out with an injury since the middle of the Miami series. Boston has everything, though, or just about, including a big that can take his place, Al Horford. The team didn’t miss a beat.
I
had to look up what a “pacer” is. This year the team was living up to its name.
The Bucks were missing the face of the franchise, Giannis Antetokounmpo. But
they still had Khris Middleton. And they had this season’s big name pickup,
Damian Lillard—until he went down. Pacers in six. Then Indiana faced off
against the rejuvenated Knicks franchise. But New York was the most injured of
any team in the playoffs: Julius Randle, out for the season. Bojan Bogdanovic, a
recent acquisition from the woeful Pistons, out for the season. Mitchell
Robinson, out. OG Anunoby, a recent acquisition from the woeful Raptors, out. Rising
star Jalen Brunson was hobbled. More minutes to fewer players means more
fatigue and a greater chance of injury. And still the Knicks took it to seven
games.
The
Pacers came out on top and were back in the Conference Finals.
Game
one: In the last seconds, with the Celtics down, Jaylen Brown forced a
turnover. Then, in the next play, he got the ball in the corner, hit a clutch three. All tied up. Overtime. Boston goes on to win. Game two: Tyrese
Halliburton left with a hamstring injury. Boston won easily. Game three:
Without the team’s All-Star, I wasn’t sure it’d be close. But the Pacers were
in a position to win, only the team lost in the final minutes. Boston, up
three games to zero. No team has ever lost up three-zero. Game four: The Pacers
keep it close and take the lead for stretches. And the team had it in the last
few minutes. Except execution down the stretch was once more the difference: The
Celtics have seen everything. They never looked panicked, took control, and
didn’t let the Pacers score another basket. Three close-game, what-if heartbreakers
for Indiana before the team was through.
No
twist ending here: The favorites have returned to the Finals. Jaylen Brown:
Conference Finals MVP.
The West: Mavericks vs Timberwolves
I
hadn’t been following the Timberwolves that closely through the regular season.
The team doesn’t have the prettiest brand of basketball. The offense looked a
bit lopsided in favor of rising star Anthony Edwards and All-Star Karl-Anthony
Towns. It was the team’s defense, the best in the league, led by four-time
Defensive Player of the Year award winner Rudy Gobert and his eight-foot
wingspan, that truly set them apart. The T-Wolves have a lot of size. No player
on the floor looked like a cone on that end. They hounded opponents,
consistently forcing them into numbers from an earlier era of basketball. Undeniably
it was effective. The team rose to the third spot in the West and the doubters
from the previous season had gone silent.
Still
wasn’t expecting what I saw in these playoffs. The Phoenix Suns, with all their
stars—Devin Booker, Kevin Durant, and Bradley Beal—healthy, though missing a
starter, one of the league’s best three-point shooters, Grayson Allen, were
expected to be the worst matchup for Minnesota. The idea behind the
construction of the team was unstoppable offensive firepower. And yet, game
after game, they were stopped, in roughly the same way. Finally I saved myself
time and watched only the highlights of game four. The Suns: swept. Another
high-expectation, underwhelming playoff run for the franchise. Next, the T-Wolves
faced the defending champs, the Denver Nuggets. Now Denver, at its best, does
have some of the prettiest basketball I’ve seen, with the three-time MVP Nikola
Jokic at the center of it all. But, after seeing the team play the Lakers in
the first round, I wasn’t sure they were at their best. Unlike last year, the
Lakers managed to get a win. Not much better, one may think. The Nuggets,
however, played from behind most of the series. And Jamal Murray, playing
through injury, made career highlight-worthy plays that belied his
inconsistency. And who would come off the bench and score, particularly when
Jokic sat? The T-Wolves took game one, in Denver, which, with its
high altitude, is supposed to be particularly difficult. Fine, I don’t make
much of game one victories, anyway. It was game two that proved to be this
year’s most shocking: That Minnesota defense made the reigning champs look like
a sub-500 team. The frustration was palpable. Coach Michael Malone nearly got
tossed out. Jamal Murray was throwing things. I had two thoughts afterward.
One: The Nuggets, playing like this, would be lucky to get a face-saving win. (You
know it went bad when the opposing team is laughing in the postgame interview.)
Two: I had to pay more attention to the T-wolves because this looked like a
defining win for a potential champion.
Then
the Nuggets, incited by all the commentary counting them out, started looking
more like themselves and won the next three. Game six? The Nuggets got blown
out. Game seven! Back in Denver. The home team, on paper, had the advantage. The
first half went as planned. I believe they built up a 20-point lead or
something. But the T-wolves erased it. Perhaps the single most representative
image of the series: Jokic getting sandwiched in the paint by the double-team. Anthony
Edwards, the 22-year-old leading his team to its first conference finals in two
decades, waved farewell to the crowd.
Waiting
for them there would be Luka Dončić and the Mavericks.
They
took out the Clippers, another high-expectation, underwhelming team (albeit
without the face of the franchise, Kawhi Leonard, again). They took out the Oklahoma
City Thunder. PJ Washington, fouled on a three-point shot. Made two free throws.
Deliberately missed the last, running out the precious few seconds on the
clock. And it was over. And, through it all, I felt some aches just watching Luka
Dončić. He was walking around tenderly. He kept bleeding at the knee. At one
point he fell on his face and injured his tooth. Then, game after game, he hit the step-back three, found the open man, drew the foul, roared, talked back to
the crowd…. His running mate, forming a lethal scoring back court, is Kyrie
Irving. I tentatively enjoy his game again.
It
was Anthony Edwards that eventually slowed down, shoulders slumped, breathing
hard, clearly having succumbed to the after effects of going seven games with Denver.
And when he misses shots, I'm unsure another T-Wolves player is going to
step in and pick up the slack, especially with Dallas’s defense about as
stifling as theirs. On the other side: Dončić and Irving could hardly be
stopped. The pattern would largely repeat itself through the series. The
representative play, from game two: Dončić, with the game on the line, putting the Defensive Player of the Year on an oil slick and hitting the three to seal the game. It's what he does. Conference Finals MVP: Luka Dončić. He makes his first Finals appearance as the best player.
