NBA Playoffs and Windows
The fantastic postseason has exposed a variety of options for success in the NBA.
This week has felt like a month and in all of the right ways.
As I mentioned in my intro post, my bandwidth to follow and write about local hoops was close to freeing up with my youngest set to graduate from high school and move down the Bloomington later this summer.
Well, the first part of that equation has passed, with the boy graduating on Sunday which capped off several days of activities, including our four family graduation party on Saturday which was nothing short of epic…and a wee bit exhausting. My older son graduated in the Covid year of 2020, and while there was eventually a ceremony in the summer and parties with varying degrees of distancing, the kids (and families) missed out on much of the normal graduation process.
So, yeah, we made up for the last time and enjoyed everything about this graduation season with family and friends. I’m so proud of my son, who started high school during the Covid year and struggled mightily at times with the way his social and academic development was thwarted. But all’s well that ends well, and he wrapped up his high school career quite well. What a blast!
OK, sorry, thanks for indulging me, I’ll hop off the couch and get back to my initial reason for starting this post — the NBA playoffs have been incredible!!!
Not every game in particular, although most, but the intrigue surrounding the results and how we arrived at the conference finals has forced the folks who have to follow via narratives to shift course day after day.
The Heat were so close to being eliminated by the Bulls in the play-in games after a very underwhelming regular season. Then suddenly, Jimmy Butler said, ‘we aren’t going out like this.’ And even more suddenly, Butler has lead the Heat to the cusp of the NBA Finals and none of the narrative makers can make sense of it.
On the other coast, the Lakers had a comparably rough regular season to the Heat, mainly due to injuries and/or load management, but after a quality trade deadline, LeBron and AD had better running mates for a postseason run. They are hanging on by a thread against the Nuggets, but with the way the past two games have been called, rallying from down 3-0 can’t be dismissed.
Regardless of how the Lakers finish, and it seems there is no way Jokic and the Nuggs will lose two games in Denver, let alone one, the postseason run from the seven seed has been entertaining.
So does the regular season matter? Apparently not, if you have the talent to nurse your way through the 82 games and then show up for the playoffs healthy and ready to go. Heck, the Heat aren’t even fully healthy without Tyler Herro, but they have thee guy and a supporting cast stepping up like they believe like Jimmy believes.
Talent always shows up when it matters, but the NBA talent pool has been getting deeper and deeper over the past several years with no end in sight. NFL parity may not have arrived, nor be the goal, but as we saw with the Pacers this past season, on any given night the team records don’t matter. The Pacers can roast the Bucks, even without Tyrese Haliburton, or knock off the defending champion Warriors on the road without Haliburton or Myles Turner.
But the playoffs? Postseason games are a different beast and what these playoffs have revealed, is that you still have to have the talent (Celtics, Lakers) or teamwork (Heat) or both (Nuggets) while also playing at your best at the right time.
We see this in the NFL quite often, when a team that dumps a couple of games in September and ends up battling for a wild card, suddenly finishes strong and goes on a run to the Super Bowl. In fact, seems like the Steelers have followed that script a couple of times.
Think back to the Colts 2006 Super Bowl team that had a really good season, but didn’t stack up to prior years when impressive regular season results ended in postseason misery. Who can forget that 2006 team looking absolutely awful in Jacksonville late in the season, getting drubbed 44-17 as Maurice Jones-Drew and Fred Taylor ran all over the Colts’ D. That one game minimized all of the expectations for the Colts that year and then they got hot.
After winning beating the Chiefs in the Wild Card at home, they won a brawl on the road in Baltimore. Then after rallying at home to beat the Patriots in a game no one who was around at the time will ever forget, the Colts were suddenly poised to win it all.
While the NBA is trying to address the load management issue in the regular season, more teams will likely follow the trend of trying to peak at the right time of the season. While there full parity throughout the league, the tiers of teams competing for the playoffs and then hoping to make a run has certainly broadened. From there, playoff luck and injuries make just making the playoffs a goal worth chasing, since you never know what will happen. Opportunity windows are opening and closing quickly around the league. Look at Phoenix and Boston for the most recent examples.
Will Boston stay the course, hoping to fix their coaching situation and adjust their roster around Tatum and Brown to cash in on the continuity later? That formula has worked for Denver who took the shots of narrative makers over the past couple of years when in reality they were missing a healthy Jamal Murray as reliable fire power next Jokic.
More importantly for those of us in the 317, are the Pacers closer than we think to making a postseason run? They seem fun, talented and on the rise, but also many miles away. But…those NBA windows of opportunity are opening and closing quickly these days.
The right vets joining the young beasts on the Pacers squad this summer could unlatch the frame and open an unexpected window to let some fresh playoff air into the Fieldhouse.
If we are to believe what we hear.
About half the teams in the lottery are looking to trade picks for veterans.
If that’s true … the price for what we want and need is going to be high.
IMHO .. it’s a great year to take advantage and turn a few guys.
Buddy … Daniel .. and one of our 2 excellent back up point guards.
Take a breath.. commit to another year of development.. go for 2 picks in the top 8
Walker …. Hendricks … Thompson. … or Whitmore.
All can play defense.. all have excellent upsides.
And pretty much any 2 of them would fill our most glaring holes.
One more year KP ..
then you’d have most of your foundation for the future.
Just my thinking