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All the good, the bad, and the shot seen "around the world of two game 7 tight.
Game 7: Raptors 92, Sixers 90
Winner: Kawhi Leonard
The free agency will have to wait. Kawhi still has at least one playoff series to play – the next against the Bucks with a chance to qualify for the NBA finals – thanks to his dominance and the rim of the Air Canada Center in Toronto. The match being tied, Leonard's fadeaway kick leaves his hands with 0.3 seconds to the clock. As Kawhi fell on the baseline, his shot fell on Joel Embiid's outstretched arms, then hit the side of the rim, then the front of the rim, then the other side of the rim, not one but twice, before sneaking. It was like watching a Plinko match influenced by both gravity and fate. It was the biggest blow in the history of the Raptors franchise.
The daggers are no more sharp than this one, each of the four rebounds of iron ironing in the heart of the Sixers. But it was an appropriate conclusion to a game and a series defined by Kawhi's supernatural abilities. He wore the Raptors and their cursed city to the playoffs at this point. On Sunday, Kawhi's shot marked the end of a 43-minute performance for the ages. He scored 41 points on 39 shots (a career high), grabbed eight boards, added three assists and three interceptions. If the Raptors had needed him to wipe the ground between their possessions, he would probably have done so too.
The intensive use of Kawhi was essential because for most of the game, nobody in Raptors intensified his offensive. This is the theme of the post-season Raptors. How could a team that looked like a machine so deep and well oiled in the regular season become so dependent on its superstar that it boldly exchanged its beloved franchise player? Toronto was supposed to be an elite because of the sum of its parts, but in the seventh game, Pascal Siakam scored only 11 points, and Serge Ibaka's top 17 are the highest of all the unnamed Raptors Kawhi.
In the final seven minutes of Game 7, Kawhi scored 13 of 15 points in Toronto. The last two players have not only won the match and the series. They also managed to get something even rarer than a shot that bounced four times on the rim before returning: a spontaneous demonstration of Kawhi's emotion. He landed and bent his knees, his usual face with the language out of his side, waiting to see what had happened. Once the shot was fired, he jumped, opened his mouth and let out a scream. He held it for a few seconds while his teammates submerged him. For a player whose play and behavior are so often stoic, this glimpse of emotion was something new. A season that started with a viral laugh had a new life with a primal scream.
Loser: Brett Brown
From the moment the Sixers looked at the Process, no one has endured as much as Brown, who was hired as head coach six seasons ago. Her white hair and hairy beard may be personal choices in grooming, but they also show signs of wear and tear due to the sadness of the lost seasons and the stress of recent victories. Before the match 7 of Sunday, The New York Times" Marc Stein said that Brown was training for his job Sunday night and that a elimination of the Sixers would likely result in his dismissal. Laying the groundwork for Brown's future on a no-pay match between two teams is unfair and unfair compared to what Brown did for the franchise. But passable or not, the heat on Brown's seat over the past two years has oscillated between hot and hot. After the Sixers dropped out of Game 7, he may have caught fire.
If the Sixers were looking for a reason to let Brown go, they could do worse than watch three possessions at the end of the fourth quarter of Sunday's game. Out of the Sixers' timeout with 2:51 to play in a draw, Philly returned the ball in violation of the clock; raised a long pointer 3 that was missing to avoid another shooting clock violation; and then, with the clock going down to a third consecutive violation, forced a pass to Joel Embiid at the top of the 3-point line. Kyle Lowry flew it and, all of a sudden, Toronto climbed 4 points, thanks to the negligent errors of the Sixers and a foul of half the pitch that stalled without a shot.
Brown had to draw plans on the fly while his team had changed countless times over the past season. He needed to find a way not only to run Philly's starter lineup, but also to use his faulty bench, which has three backup centers, but no real goalkeeper besides TJ McConnell, who has never been a factor in this series. Brown's has had a tough battle: playing an often-injured 45 minutes seems a bad idea, but he can not afford to stay more than a few minutes without his star on the ground. Other options are also bad.
But the argument that Brown has not yet proven he can coach a championship team is not wrong. For a property group that had to make a decision based on a single game, this notion may be enough to force its hand.
Loser: Joel Embiid, for the moment
At the end, as the bell rang, Embiid had the seat that all Raptors fans could only wish for – the one just in front of the winner. Embiid had probably left to think that he had practiced thoroughly, to think that he had not done enough. All he could do was drop his head in shock and head for the tunnel. Marc Gasol caught him on the way, hugged him and told him a few words that Embiid nodded. Then he cried in the corridors of the arena.
Embiid turned 25 in March. He has been playing basketball for less time than the average player, and yet he is undoubtedly an NBA superstar. But so far his two best seasons have been defined by injuries, questions about his fitness and now the weaknesses of his team. The defects of the Sixers are not all his fault, but for a player as competitive as this one, it is obvious that the failures carry it. Embiid did not have a big game 7 – he scored 21 points on 18 shots, gave four assists and conceded three blocks – but it was not great, as if his 5th match was. But because of its 7-foot height and 7-foot-6-inch wingspan, it's impossible to look beyond its only offensive rebound – a category dominated by the Toronto 16-16 – on Sunday – and not to ask if he could have done more. This statistic is not just about him: none of the Sixers had more than one offensive board, Serge Ibaka had four. Given that Toronto scored only 38% of its goals, including 23% of its 3, offensive rebounds explain why the game was so tight despite the Sixers' top game.
Embiid occupies a fascinating position as a young player with an elite skill set. He is not part of a team that is slowly trying to become a title, but rather a team that wants to win now. Unlike Denver, who has been successful with his youth at the forefront, the Sixers have attempted to complete this youth with Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris. This plan put the pressure and expectations that Philly could not satisfy. What's happening with Harris and Butler as a freelancer could set the next five years in Philadelphia, but the fact that the Sixers have someone as talented and competitive as Embiid is one thing about which they can continue to support.
Game 7: Trail Blazers 100, Nuggets 96
Winner: CJ McCollum
The Blazers love the playoffs. They seem to want to bring them to life during the most crucial moments of a tight high-stakes game. It may be a recency bias, knowing that we just saw Damian Lillard punctuate a series with one of the best shots in the history of the playoffs, but maybe that's what the Blazers do. On Sunday, while the series was in play, CJ McCollum concocted a heroic, wire-to-wire performance that sent the Blazers to their first conference final since 2000. A clash with defending champion Warriors waits . There was no winner this time, but with the season in play, McCollum put Portland on the back and made the entire seventh game its own playoff game.
While the Nuggets were preparing a clinic on how to smother Lillard – who fought (3 out of 17) instead of two out of 3 – this game was better suited to McCollum's metamorphosed style. McCollum is an expert in finding points on the ground where no one expects him to get up and shoot, with a kind of herk-jerk that leaves defenders lost without Google Maps . Denver was ready for anything, but the stuff that McCollum kept pulling from his bag, and it showed. The Blazers, on the other hand, needed everything McCollum had to play. The Blazers lost 17 points at one point in the first half, and it looked like the match was about to erupt. But McCollum was cooking and that was enough to reduce Denver's lead to one figure, while Portland had only managed one of its first 14. McCollum sank as many shots as the rest of his teammates. He continued to play the Nuggets defense in the second half and, to complete his titanic points total, McCollum finished with nine rebounds, a help and that block that modified the LeBronlike game:
LeBron was watching. And by the time Portland ended the game, all the Blazers – on the bench, on the pitch, even Lillard himself – had to do nothing but stay on the lookout and watch. McCollum get to work in isolation, mano a mano, no screen needed. He had taken his team to this stage and he was going to finish what he had started:
McCollum fired four times from this spot on the ground. He made them all. Memo to Jennifer: The man did not just win a playoff game; he won a series.
Loser: Outside Shot
Protect your analytical eyes, Daryl Morey. This game 7 was not meant for people allergic to bad 3-point shooters or big mid-range jumpers. If the Blazers and Nuggets were playing 2Kthen, in the seventh game, they disabled their players' abilities to make post-bow shots. The result was a nasty affair that did not look like the playoffs at all: Portland shot 4 times out of 26 and Denver 2 out of 19.
You think these numbers are bad? The Blazers finished the first half 1 of 14 out of 3. When Meyers Leonard went into the game for Portland, he botched two big 3s open so badly that when the Nuggets left him open, he claimed the balloon as he was Ray Allen. with his burning hand, his teammates did not even turn to him. The Blazers' third-place match came just one minute into the final quarter, when Zach Collins (who appeared to be pushing facial hair on Sunday when he gave Portland a precious 23 minutes in which he was a plus-5) hitting one of the right corner.
In a way, the Nuggets had even more trouble. They only made two, and at one point they missed 17 depth shots. Despite discussions about how role players and the bench play better at home, Denver Reservists won four and did not do one. Perhaps the most breathtaking detail of all: Nikola Jokic did both 3 – in the first quarter. He only shot 30.7% from the back of the bow in the regular season.
The absence of outside shooting was not only an aesthetic affront to modern basketball, it also set the tone. In the first half, Denver made up for his mediocre shots, often playing inside, eventually overtaking the Blazers 58-50 in the paint. But when Portland came back in the game, the situation became difficult. This type of competition is won by teams that have projectile manufacturers on the perimeter. Regardless of the severity of each shot (40% of the field for the Blazers and 37% for Denver), everyone needed a player to create and shoot when it mattered most. Lillard, who also grabbed 10 boards, scored the bulk of both 3 in the fourth quarter and McCollum did the same. Meanwhile, the Denver Guards did not find the back of the net. It was the game.
Loser: Jamal Murray
It's not an exact science, but if I were shown what Murray's line of statistics would look like in a game I had not seen, I'd bet I could predict if the Nuggets won or lost based solely on that. For Denver, this is how these tight and competitive playoffs unfold. Nikola Jokic presents himself (he had 29 points, 13 rebounds and two assists Sunday), Gary Harris and Torrey Craig play an outstanding defense, Will Barton makes some shots, and the rest of his players contribute in a modest way; it all depends on Murray's performance.
When Murray scored at least 20 points in those playoffs, the Nuggets went up to 6-2. When he scored 17 or less, they left 0-5. Murray had exactly 17 points on Sunday, and nine of them went through the free throw line. He shot down 4 of the 19 players on the field, 0 to 4 out of 3. These four duds of Deep were the most overwhelming. If one of his two 3 in the second half had passed, he could have been the hero. Instead, he is probably the easy scapegoat who will carry the bitter taste of this loss until next season.
Murray has invited this kind of criticism, both because he has shown a lot of flashes as a great scorer throughout the season and because he tends to be a gunner. This aggression makes him formidable, but it can also be his loss. The advantage for him and for all this Denver team, is that he has youth on his side. Murray is only 22 years old and the rest of the Nuggets are under 25 years old. Despite the loss, the future is promising. Although Murray eliminated Sunday's game in another playoff series, his assault could be the defining feature that will allow Denver to win a seventh game. But for now, the Nuggets will have to go home and wait.
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