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Highlights: Jazz vs Nuggets
(2:20)
Day 1 of the 2020 NBA Playoffs Bubble Edition is in the books, and what was an otherwise thrilling hoops day turned out, as LeBron James put it, on a ‘bogus’ note . In a tweet that spoke to pretty much everyone who watched Kristaps Porzingis get kicked out of Dallas’ series opener against the Clippers (a game he ultimately lost), LeBron summed up one of the events most disappointing of an NBA playoff game I can remember.
Porzingis should not have been ejected. We’ll get into that in more detail below, but let’s be clear from the start: it was a ridiculous decision, and it could have cost the Mavericks a Clippers Game 1 upset.
Earlier, the Utah Jazz wasted a 57-point performance by Donovan Mitchell (who, to be fair, had an eight-second hand in his own demise) by losing to the Nuggets in overtime; the 76ers’ offense continues to be nearly impossible to digest; and the Nets … well, the Nets won’t stay in the bubble for long. The Raptors made them look like a JV team on Monday.
Having said that, let’s go. Here are three key takeaways from Monday’s playoff opener.
1. The Mavericks got hosed down
When Porzingis was ejected at 9:10 of the third quarter, the Mavericks were five points ahead (71-66). They were upgraded by 13 the rest of the way. And there’s your eight-point margin in a 118-110 Clippers win. Now no one can sit here and say that the Mavericks would have won the game if Porzingis had stayed. But Dallas deserved to find out.
After losing 18-2 out of the gate, Dallas beat the Clippers 48-18 to take a 14-point lead less than halfway through the second quarter. There is a reasonable alternate reality in which the Mavericks were simply the better team on Monday night.
Porzingis received a questionable technical foul in the first half for momentarily showing minimal emotion after what reruns confirmed to be a fairly suspicious foul, and then he got his second tech, seemingly worthy of a ejection:
For what it’s worth, former ESPN official Steve Javie told the show he believes officials made the right choice on Porzingis’ second tech, claiming he’s stepped into the situation not as a peacemaker, but as an escalator. This is very questionable.
At worst, the guy made a small mistake. An offense. You don’t give him the death penalty. I don’t want to hear anything about the letter of the law or the officials had no choice. Bull … you know what. They had a choice. An official always has discretion. Use it. The qualifiers are moving. The guys will react in the heat of the moment. You already gave the guy some weak tech. Don’t double your own mistake and potentially deprive a team of a playoff win, or at least a fair chance.
For the record, the team that wins the first game of an NBA playoff series wins the series more than 76% of the time. That is, the officials may have just decided this whole series with a nervous appeal. Not true.
2. Doncic, Mitchell’s wasted story
Donovan Mitchell and Luka Doncic both made history on Monday night. And they both lost. Mitchell scored 57 points in Utah’s 135-125 overtime loss to the Nuggets, the highest score in Jazz playoff history and the third best score in NBA playoff history, behind Michael Jordan’s 63 points in Boston in 1986 and Elgin Baylor’s 61 points against Boston in 1962.
Meanwhile, Doncic – who finished with 42 points, nine assists, seven rebounds, three steals and … 11 turnovers – became the first player in history to score 40 points on his playoff debut and just the fourth player under-21 to put 40 in a playoff game, joining LeBron James, Magic Johnson and Tracy McGrady.
Doncic’s story has been potentially wasted by the referees, which is a tragedy (those 11 turnovers didn’t help either). But Mitchell, as crazy as it sounds for a guy who scored 57 points, could have coped.
With 1:54 to go in the fourth quarter, Utah had a four-point lead and one possession. This is what they call the driver’s seat. But after Mitchell took the inbound pass, he started to casually push the ball up a bit too much, focusing on the direction of traffic rather than how long it took to get it across half the pitch. And it cost him. Just before crossing the timeline, at 1:46, the whistle sounded. Eight second violation.
In the play that followed, Jamal Murray did this:
It’s a monster swing. To potentially take a six or seven point lead with a minute and a half to go to just one. Denver eventually equalized and sent him to overtime, where Utah collapsed, and that was it. Denver takes a 1-0 lead in the series.
“It was my fault as a leader and point guard at the time,” Mitchell said of the violation, via ESPN. “It’s terrible of me. … there’s really no one else to put it on. I was just taking my time to ride it, and I need to be more aware. I think that was a part of it. crucial part of the game. At the end of the day, I’m not going to put everything on this piece, but it was a crucial part. “
It really is a shame. Mitchell was so brilliant in this game. He generated 75 points via points and assists. Only four other players have generated so much offense in a playoff game: Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Allen Iverson and Russell Westbrook. And the Jazz always lost. Without Bojan Bogdanovic and Mike Conley, Mitchell’s offensive burden is remarkably heavy for a jazz team that – unless you count Jordan Clarkson – really doesn’t have another player capable of creating a consistent attack. Mitchell has to do it all. He tried on Monday. He had 57 points. But the number he will think about for a long time is eight.
3. The Philly offense is a mess
The Sixers lost to the Celtics on Monday night, 109-101. I still have no idea how it was so close, let alone how Philly had any chance of winning this game before Boston pulled out late. In short, the Sixers’ half-court offense is a failure of both design (and I mostly mean roster building) and execution. Watching these guys try to create any kind of space, let alone a decent basket look, in a half court setting is honestly painful.
No one can beat their guy on the dribble which means the defense never has to crumble which means there are never any kick-outs open to shooters (not that the Sixers have a lot of them no plus, after swapping Robert Covington, Dario Saric and Landry (Shamet while letting JJ Redick – not to mention Ersan Ilyasova and Marco Belinelli – walk in free agency so they can sign Al Horford).
With virtually no spacing (even with Ben Simmons), there’s no schematic creativity to set the guys free. At the end of what was a close game against Boston, the Sixers, whether by design or courtesy of an unbelievably terrible conscience and execution, made multiple possessions without even giving Joel Embiid a single touch in the post while Josh Richardson, Alec Burks and Tobias Harris called for pick-and-roll when they weren’t content with 3-point pull-ups.
It’s Joel Embiid. Give him the ball!
Embiid was not great in this game. His recognition of doubles teams was a mess, and he turned the ball too much when the Boston perimeter defenseman leaned over him. After the game, Brett Brown was asked if he had any interest in a formation with four shooters around Embiid to create more spacing and, theoretically, make it harder for Boston to overtake him.
“Zero,” Brown said of his interest in deploying a four-shooter range. “It’s – and it doesn’t make me right – but it’s my experience: I’ve lived with Tim Duncan for five NBA Finals, four of which we’ve won, in 12 years with Pop. And I’m very privileged. to have experienced the post player world in regards to spacing and patterns and the way people attacked it. And one thing that resonates the most is four on the perimeter is the easiest environment for defenses to overtake a post player and have the capacity to have too many people. And so occupying a low zone and space the court interests me the most for the reasons I just said. “
The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor asked the question, and O’Connor followed up with this: “Are you saying you’re trying to make this an easier outlet for Embiid in a double? ? “
Brow continued, “Really – and Kevin, that’s a good question and I love to talk about it because it’s really an offense in itself. And in my opinion, it’s mostly driven from the experience. [with Duncan], as I just shared with you, that if you don’t occupy the dunker I think when Marcus Smart or Tatum or Jaylen Brown go double-team Joel – which they often do – if you pass out, their athletes can put out fires with 3 on 4, more easily than 2 on 3. And I think you’re in an offensive rebound position too if you can take that dunker space. I think the big dunkers, if you look over the years, they pretty much turned the sport into a 4v4 game because they were just lethal, like offensive rebounders there, and played a sort of by peek-a-boo. in a great-great relationship. And that’s probably too much of a clinic, but that’s what I think. “
So here is the long and short of that answer: the point of the dunker is along the baseline. It would be on the opposite side of the picture if Embiid posted, and this dunker (who would likely be Ben Simmons if he was healthy) has a defender. So now if two guys go to Embiid, and one is on the dunker, that only leaves two perimeter defenders to scramble over three Philly shooters, rather than three defenders to cover four shooters.
That’s right, two guys trying to turn to cover the entire perimeter is more difficult than three guys. What Brown says makes sense. But with the way Embiid handled the doubles on Monday, Brown’s theory didn’t come to fruition. And it’s not like Simmons is part of the roster and moving down, the Sixers’ spacing is particularly optimal.
Maybe having another shooter would discourage the double team in the first place. Of course, that would require employing good menacing shooters, something Sixers general manager Elton Brand apparently doesn’t believe. So here we are. Embiid doubles up, and when he doesn’t turn it over, he gives it to non-shooters who are also not good enough to create a constant attack on the dribble.
Like I said, it’s a failure on every level. And one way or another, the Sixers still had a chance to win the game.
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