Welcome to the third act of the NBA regular season where the playoff picture is beginning to come into focus. We have officially entered Scoreboard Watching Time. Unless you’re an Atlanta Hawks fan, you can pretty much focus on your March Madness bracket for the next month or so.
Kyrie Irving’s big night
The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the San Antonio Spurs 128-125 in overtime on Thursday. An impressive win, but one that would hardly have been headline news if not for the fact that a) one of the Cavaliers players scored 57 points and b) that player was not named LeBron James.
Instead it was point guard Kyrie Irving who had what might have been the most impressive offensive performance of the season. His 57 points were the most scored in a NBA game this season. Not a small feat considering what we’ve seen from the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Russell Westbrook and the Golden State Warriors’ Klay Thompson. He also surpassed the highest single-game points total for a Cavaliers player, outscoring the 56 points James scored against the Toronto Raptors in 2005.
This last week has offered a tantalizing glimpse of how scary the Cavaliers could be should Irving reach his full potential. In his last two seasons, the wildly talented Irving has gained, fairly or not, the reputation of being something of an underachiever whose teams had yet to make the playoffs. An All-Star tasked with replacing one of the NBA’s all-time greats, Irving had to deal with expectations he couldn’t possibly meet.
That’s why James’s return to the franchise after four years with the Miami Heat was supposed to free Irving from such expectations. Irving wouldn’t have to be the team’s savior, or take on a leadership role that clearly didn’t suit him, he just needed to be the dynamic offensive force who ran away with the Rookie of the Year award in 2012. We shouldn’t expect another 57-point game from Irving ever again, but it might end up being remembered as a turning point not just for the player, but for a Cavaliers team starting to find their identity.
If so, the rest of the Eastern Conference should be worried. Imagine a Cavaliers team where LeBron James wasn’t even their best player.
The battle for the bottom of the Eastern Conference begins
In case you haven’t been paying attention to the Eastern Conference – and who can blame you if haven’t – you should know that there’s some drama going down. OK, so it’s not happening at the top of the standings where the Atlanta Hawks have essentially sewn up the top seed. The intrigue is all happening in those 7th and 8th seeds, where teams designed to be contenders are now desperately fighting teams that were supposed to be looking ahead to the upcoming draft by this point of the season.
There are now four teams battling it out for those last two spots in the Eastern Conference. The Miami Heat, the Charlotte Hornets, the Boston Celtics and, most surprising of all, the suddenly resurgent Indiana Pacers. The Pacers’ postseason hopes were supposed to have been dashed when Paul George suffered a gruesome injury last summer in a warm-up game for the Fiba Basketball World Cup. Instead they have managed a late run to get back into the postseason discussion and George might just be back in the lineup in a few weeks.
George might actually be holding off his return because he doesn’t want to disrupt the team’s current chemistry, which will probably be cited as a key factor should the Pacers manage to make the playoffs at the expense of the Charlotte Hornets.
Specifically, analysts will point out that the main difference between this Charlotte team and the one that made a surprising postseason appearance last season is that the Hornets signed noted clubhouse arsonist Lance Stephenson during the offseason. By many accounts, Stephenson played a major role in Indiana’s second half swoon last season and Pacers players reportedly were against the possibility of Stephenson returning to the club when the Hornets were desperately trying to unload their big ticket free agent signing earlier in the season.
The Celtics, meanwhile, are making a playoff push despite having traded away or let go an entire team’s worth of players during the course of the season, most notably Rajon Rondo and Jeff Green. Interesingly enough, the only move they made to add a significant player, the trade deadline deal with the Phoenix Suns to acquire guard Isaiah Thomas, seems to have been the catalyst that has revived Boston’s fortunes.
After Monday night’s win over the Philadelphia 76ers, the Celtics completed their first ever five-game win streak under head coach Brad Stevens. It’s a start, now they just have to hope that Thomas can return from the back injury suffered in the Celtics’ 100-90 win over the Heat last week, a win that just might prove the difference maker should the Celtics sneak into the playoffs.
As it stands now, the Pacers, Heat and Celtics all have identical 30-36 records while the Hornets sit just one game behind them at 29-37. If they had won their last game we would right now be looking at a messy four-way tie for two postseason slots. This is a good news for all of us who enjoy absolute anarchy in our playoff races, assuming that we are able to temporary forget that these teams are essentially fighting for the right to be eliminated by the Cavaliers or Hawks in the first round.
Serge Ibaka’s absence might be too much for the Thunder
Unfortunately for the Oklahoma City Thunder there is also now serious suspense about the final playoff spot in the Western Conference. Oklahoma City have suffered yet another possibly crippling injury as they will be without Serge Ibaka for up to six weeks as the power forward had surgery on his right knee.
The Thunder, of course, are already playing without reigning MVP Kevin Durant, recovering from a foot fracture. While obviously Ibaka’s absence doesn’t leave quite as big of a hole in the lineup, he essentially has been their third option over the last few years. It’s tempting to say that now Russell Westbrook has to pick up even more of the slack but, quite frankly, that’s not at all possible. Westbrook has already had 7.5 triple-doubles so far this season (we’re not really going to fully count the one that Westbrook was awarded after campaigning for a scoring change.) Even Westbrook will find it difficult to find a higher gear.
It’s a blow they can’t afford, especially not now that the New Orleans Pelicans have officially caught up with them in the standings. New Orleans has to be hoping that Ibaka’s injury will end up being the proverbial last straw. With their 85-84 win over the Milwaukee Bucks last night, the Pelicans and Thunder now share the same 37-30 record, with New Orleans owning the No8 seed thanks to a tiebreaker.
All that the Pelicans need to do now is to stop losing winnable games. They simply can’t afford to continue to do things like somehow lose games where Anthony Davis puts up a near quadruple-double. This is an opportunity for someone on the roster other than Davis to step up for the Pelicans. If that doesn’t happen, it might not matter how many players Oklahoma City loses to injuries.
The Injury Report
You didn’t think there would be just one major injury in the last week, right? There was plenty of other injury news, most notably one that probably sounds more significant than it will actually end up being. The Golden State Warriors will be without Klay Thompson for seven to 10 games as he recovers from a sprained ankle, but it shouldn’t be a major concern.
Now Thompson’s injury would be huge if the Warriors, like the Thunder, were fighting for their playoff lives. Instead, they were the first team in the Western Conference to clinch a spot in the postseason thanks to a 53-13 record which gives them a comfortable seven-game cushion over the second-seeded Memphis Grizzlies.
If anything, there’s a positive side here, as this will allow the team to give Thompson a break before the playoffs. Head coach Steve Kerr has also mentioned that it gives him the opportunity to evaluate and incorporate some of his bench players. In other words, he’s basically doing what San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich does with his veterans.
Other things we’ve learned
• Elsewhere in the world of the unofficially eliminated, the Denver Nuggets have hit blatant tanking mode. On Sunday, the Nuggets organization rested, against their objections, Ty Lawson, Kenneth Faried and Danilo Gallinari.
• Gregg Popovich went on an epic rant after the San Antonio Spurs were beaten by the lowly New York Knicks 104-100 in overtime last night, the gist of which can be found with his statement “I hope every player is embarrassed.” This is, of course, the correct emotional reaction to losing to the 2014-15 Knicks in any situation.
• Dwyane Wade looked a lot like his younger self in this remarkable save made during the Miami Heat’s 106-92 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday.
• John Wall gave us the basketball equivalent of Derek Jeter’s dive into the stands:
• A sad note: Jack Haley, a nine-year NBA veterans best remembered for being part of the 1996 Chicago Bulls championship team, passed away from heart disease on Monday. He was 51 years old.
