NBA Playoffs: Opening Salvo In The Conference Finals

Each series is through the first two games. The Boston Celtics have held serve. The Dallas Mavericks have delivered a massive blow, grabbing two wins on the road. Here are some early thoughts regarding the opening segments of both the Eastern and Western Conference Finals.

(1)Boston leads (6)Indiana 2-0
For the better part of Game 1, Jaylen Brown looked on his way to a quiet 20-point night—the kind that looks good in the box score, but where he seems to be missing at the key moments. And the Celtics looked on their way to losing a game they had opened with a 12-0 run and led by 11 in the third quarter. In the blink of an eye, everything changed. With his team down three, and the clock down to six seconds, Brown hit an incredible double-clutch corner trey to tie the game and electrify the Garden. Boston won on overtime. Then Brown dropped 40 in a much easier Game 2 win and definitively put his mark on the opening salvo in the East.

If Indiana doesn’t rally like they did against New York, when the Pacers won four of five after losing the first two on the road, they are going to look back on Game 1 with deep regret. It’s a game they did most of what was needed to win. They got big games from Pascal Siakam and Myles Turner down low. Tyrese Haliburton was insanely hot from three-point range. But what the Pacers did not do was take care of the basketball—21 turnovers were the biggest problem. And they turned it over 16 more times in Game 2. Now, Haliburton is questionable for Game 3 with a bad hamstring. At this time of year, I take “questionable” to mean “he’ll play.” We’ll see what that means from the standpoint of effectiveness.

Jayson Tatum continues to struggle with this three-point shooting, going 3-for-15 in the first two games. This has been a theme of the entire postseason. With the Celtics having now played 12 games, I’m wondering if I should just stop waiting for him to heat up. But I also wonder if this isn’t a paradoxical good thing for Boston. Because the coldness behind the arc doesn’t mean Tatum hasn’t been effective. He continues to aggressively drive the ball, a trend that started in Game 3 of the Cleveland series. His aggressiveness creates so much for both him and other players. Would Tatum be driving this consistently if he had a hot game from outside?

Indiana’s formula for getting back in the series continues to be getting their scoring down low. Siakam and Turner were great in Game 1 and they should have won on the road. Turner was in foul trouble and non-existent for Game 2, and they lost decisively. With Kristap Porzingis not coming back any sooner than Game 4, the Pacer bigs can still control the interior.

As for Boston, what I would like to see is some defensive tightening—Indiana shot over 50 percent both games. The Pacers are a very efficient offensive team generally, while lacking on defense, so you can play that way and beat them. But a shutdown defensive effort, where you keep Indiana in the low 40s percentage-wise would be a nice statement.  

(5)Dallas leads (3)Minnesota 2-0
Both of these games have been absolute sizzlers that have come down literally to the final moments. It’s a series that’s already shaping up as one massive missed opportunity for Minnesota. The door seemed wide open for the franchise to make its first-ever trip to the Finals. But at the decisive hour, Luka Doncic seems to be slamming that door shot.

In Game 1, Luka’s final of 33/6/8 don’t even tell the story. He was at his best in the fourth quarter, when he scored 15 of those points, as the Mavs pulled out a 108-105 win. Game 2 was even better. He came out scoring early and kept Dallas in the game, as Minnesota otherwise held double-digit leads through much of the second and third quarter. The Mavs closed hard at the end of 3Q, and then Luka again took over. He capped off a 32/10/13 night by drilling a step-back trey with three seconds left to pull out a 109-108 win.

By contrast, Minnesota has made mistakes in key possessions down the stretch. In Game 1, they turned it over twice at big moments. Game 2 was even more heartbreaking. Holding a 108-106 lead, they turned it over two more times when one basket could have sealed the win and put them back on track in the series.

It’s easy to say this series, at least so far, is just down to Dallas making plays at the decisive moments and Minnesota not. That’s certainly a fair top-line assessment. But there is more that has to be concerning for the Timberwolves.

Anthony Edwards, after dominating performances in the first ten games of the playoffs, went ice cold in Game 7 at Denver. It didn’t cost his team in that one, and I was ready to write it off as a just a bad night. But it’s continued. Edwards is 11-for-33 from the floor—his home floor–in these Western Conference Finals. That’s three straight poor shooting nights.

Shooting can come and go. Even more problematic for the T-Wolves is that their big-man tandem of Karl Anthony-Towns and Rudy Gobert has also shown a tendency to come and go. Towns has been a non-factor and wasn’t even on the floor at some big moments in the fourth quarter of Game 2. Gobert has not been impactful. The Dallas role players—Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively—are beating them on the boards.

The shortcomings of KAT and Gobert are coming in the context of Minnesota getting clutch performances from their role players. Jaden McDaniels came up big in Game 1. Naz Reid hit a ton of clutch threes in Game 2. At the start of this series, I confidently predicted the T-Wolves would run away with this series and saw them as the favorite to win the championship. If you had told me they would get that kind of performance from McDaniels and Reid, I’d have felt even better. But the Minnesota stars are AWOL, while Dallas is coming up big.

Oddly, the fact their best player is ice-cold and the post duo non-existent, is where Timberwolves fans can look for some hope. Even with that, and even with Luka and Kyrie Irving playing great basketball, Minnesota has only been a play away. It wouldn’t take much to turn it around. But it’s a long road ahead.

Coming Up

The conference finals continue on their one-game-a-night schedule. Boston will be in Indiana tonight and Monday. Dallas goes home to try and close it out on Sunday and Tuesday. Whatever happens, we’ll have an update in this space on Wednesday morning.