The NBA playoffs are here. The games are tighter, the lights are brighter, and the narratives are getting thick. It can be a lot to keep up with but don’t worry we’re here to help. Throughout the NBA postseason, FanSided will be gathering together some of the most talented writers from our network for a daily recap of our favorite stories from the night before.
Welcome to The Rotation.
The bullies get bullied
Ian Levy | @HickoryHigh | FanSided
The Golden State Warriors did not lose often, and when they do they generally do not get blown out. Over the past two seasons, the Warriors have a combined record of 165-33 between the regular season and playoffs. That record includes just 18 double-digit losses and just three by 20 or more. As a rule, one does not run up the score against the Warriors — it’s happened in just 1.5 percent of their games over the past two seasons.
This last one was a doozy.
The Oklahoma City Thunder took Game 3 from the Warriors, and control of the series, with a 28-point dismantling. They beat Golden State with energy and execution and were able to hold an almost unthinkable margin for most of the game. The Thunder went up 68-47 with 56 seconds left in the first half, and led by 20 or more for the rest of the game.
It’s not just that Golden State rarely loses by big margins, they rarely even let teams build them up. According to the statistics at Nylon Calculus, the Warriors spent about 5.2 percent of their minutes this season (about 206 minutes total) trailing by double-digits, and only 1.2 percent (about 48 minutes total) trailing by 20 or more. Compared to the sample of their entire regular season, they amount of time they were down big in Game 3 is simply stunning.
In Game 3, the Warriors trailed by 20 or more for more than half as long as they did during the entire regular season. Their time trailing by double-digits in Game 3 works out to be about 15 percent of their entire regular season total.
The Warriors have lost games, this season and last. They know what it feels like to have come up short when the final buzzer sounds. This kind of blowout, the kind the inflict on other teams with regularity, is unexplored territory.
Draymond Green’s volatility proves immensely costly for Warriors
John Buhler | @buhler118 | FanSided
While Stephen Curry is the league’s two-time reigning MVP, he is not the emotional driving force behind the Golden State Warriors. That would be defensive dynamo Draymond Green.
Green is not only able to defend all five positions at an elite level, but he provides the necessary firepower needed to ignite his Warriors team. He is the pacemaker for this Western Conference juggernaut that can eviscerate any team it encounters.
Over the last two years, Green’s ascendance to relevancy has been as crucial to the Warriors’ success as Curry’s climb to superstardom. Green isn’t the cherubic face of the franchise that Curry is, but his complete disdain for losing and antagonistic on-court attitude has set the cadence through which Golden State dominates its opposition.
Though brash and shamelessly unapologetic, the sheer volume of winning has allowed Green and the Warriors to continue to play this way. However in Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals versus the Oklahoma City Thunder, Green’s volatile nature got the best of him. His Flagrant 1 foul against Steven Adams proved to be the tipping point in Golden State’s embarrassing road loss.
Down 48-40 with six minutes remaining in the second quarter, Green got too physical with Adams in the paint. Adams was able to strip Green on his drive to the basket. Green hated every second of that turnover. Though Adams would foul him on that drive, it was Green’s swift kick to Adams’ groin that proved his ultra-competitive nature isn’t without consequences.
The Chesapeake Energy Center crowd in Oklahoma City chanted, “Kick him out!” hoping that the irreplaceable Green would have to exit Game 3 before halftime. While Green was only given a Flagrant 1 foul, it was a rallying point for Oklahoma City to massacre Golden State at home on Sunday night. At that moment, the Thunder knew that Adams had successfully broken Green and that Golden State stood no chance.
Oklahoma City would crush Golden State, 133-105, to take a 2-1 series lead over the Warriors. While Adams’ stat line wasn’t overly impressive (eight points, five rebounds, 0 plus/minus), he did hopelessly rattle Green causing him to play terrible basketball with six points on 1-9 shooting, four turnovers, and a game-worst -43 plus/minus.
Having Green off his game limited both Curry and Klay Thompson’s overall effectiveness. They were the only two Warriors to reach double digits in scoring (Curry 24, Thompson 18)).
Green’s inability to keep the Warriors’ beat allowed Oklahoma City superstars Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant to score at least 30 points. With Game 4 on Tuesday in Oklahoma City being a must-win for the Warriors, there is a chance Golden State will have to play without Green should he be suspended.
Even if Green is only slapped with a five-figure fine for letting out his frustrations on Adams, will he be enough to tie the series at two? Keep in mind that when Oklahoma City has had Durant, Ibaka, and Westbrook at full strength, they have yet to lose a playoff series.
The Gospel of Bismack Biyombo (Or, Can’t Catch a Pass, but Someone Will Catch These Hands)
Kevin Yeung | @KevinHFY | Hardwood Paroxysm
Halfway through the third quarter of Raptors-Cavaliers on Saturday, Bismack Biyombo rotated over from the weak side to block a LeBron James dunk. The refs called it a foul, and the home crowd, dissatisfied throughout the night, disagreed rather loudly. Biyombo didn’t seem to care — if he did, he didn’t show it. I looked up at the jumbotron, and this man was prancing around and wagging his finger with the goofiest smile on his face. It was called a foul, sure, but he also just blocked LeBron.
The Gospel of Biyombo is endlessly optimistic. It holds that no matter how many passes or rebounds you fumble away, you keep going hard. Even though so many of Biyombo’s basketball inputs are thrown through the jumbler of his skill level and turned to wasted plays, he’s forever unfazed, which might actually be the key to how he pulls it off. When he finally gets free for a dunk or flies in for a block, it’s not with the energy of someone trying to make up for past miscues. It’s with the energy of someone singularly focused on the present, looking forward to the next chance to wag his finger or do the Usain Bolt pose. I wish I could look at the world with such unfettered sincerity.
“Just… giddy up,” said Dwane Casey after Game 3, relaying all he had to say to get Biyombo going. “You don’t have to say anything to Biz. Biz is a self-starter, he understands what he does. He’s a kid that just plays hard. He knows who he is, he knows what he can do, he knows his role on the team, he understands his role and he accepts it.”
Biyombo finished with seven points, four blocks… and a franchise-record 26 rebounds. By the time he scored his first point of the game, off a free throw in the late third quarter, he’d already collected 20 rebounds. He sticks to what he does, of course, but that doesn’t do him justice. It takes an unfathomable focus to finish with such an idiosyncratic stat line. Casey compared him to Dennis Rodman. Biyombo himself pointed out the influence of players like Hakeem Olajuwon and, of course, his “big brother” Dikembe Mutombo (reminder that Biyombo is actually 38 years old).
That’s high praise. But to Biyombo?
“It’s great and I appreciate it, but at the end of the day, I’m Bismack Biyombo.”
Damn right you are. There will always be adversity, there will always be Dahntay Jones nut-punches, but Biyombo doesn’t care. We should all aspire to the same outlook.
Growing pains
Daniel Rowell | @DanielJRowell | Hardwood Paroxysm
With 43 seconds remaining in the second quarter, Tristan Thompson bumped into Bismack Biyombo from behind at midcourt and received an elbow to his chest in return. As the two turned and began to jaw at each other, Corey Joseph jumped between the two, pushing Thompson away. LeBron James and DeMarre Carroll approached the huddle, and a frustrated Thompson threw back his elbow as he walked away. In a rather comical oversight and oversell, Thompson walked ahead without looking back, thinking he had the last shot on the Raptors, as James grabbed his face, having been elbowed by Thompson, and fell back four steps in a full-on flop. Through the first half, a friendly-fire elbow was Thompson’s sole highlight.
Twelve minutes later, Thompson was sitting on the bench, having just one shot attempt in 25 minutes, a dunk blocked by Biyombo. Thompson and Kevin Love, the Cavaliers’ starting center and power forward, sat out the entire fourth quarter of Saturday’s Game 3 in Toronto. Up to that point, the pair had combined for just 12 rebounds, two offensive boards, after leading the team in that category all season. Tyronn Lue abandoned a lineup (with Irving, James, and Smith) that played 222 of the Cavalier’s 528 minutes through 11 games (the next highest being James with the second unit at 55 minutes.) Instead, Lue opted for the three-point shooting of Channing Frye and the perimeter defense of Iman Shumpert to try and stage a comeback. The lineup scored just 11 points and failed to bring in a single offensive rebound.
It was a rough 12 minutes for the Cavaliers and a quarter that symbolized a difficult question the team faces, “What kind of team are they?” Through 11 games of the postseason, the team has shed Timofey Mozgov from the rotation and limited Thompson, a move that could be expected as Lue pushes for a higher pace offense with the spacing and scoring as was seen in sweeps of both the Pistons and Hawks. But with Thompson’s tapered minutes, what’s left of the Cavaliers paint-protection and offensive rebounding has diminished with it. Per nbawowy.com, the Cavaliers get almost four more offensive rebounds and eight total rebounds per 100 possessions with Thompson on the court (13.8 vs 9.7 ORB, 53.4 vs 45.5 TRB).
One one side, a fast-paced, three-point shooting lineup that rotates with Love, James, and Frye at the center can spread the floor better than Thompson and opens up the paint for drives and pick-and-pops from James and Irving. On the other side, Thompson’s presence on the offensive glass earns the team second chance possessions at a higher rate than any of his teammates (close to twice as many). Thompson has less than ideal paint-protection stats, almost no outside shooting game (he attempted just 30 shots outside 8 feet all season), and with James moved to the second unit with Richard Jefferson, Thompson’s only designated play, a screen-and-roll with Matthew Dellavedova, is obsolete. With just ten shot attempts in three games, he doesn’t seem to be a part of Cleveland’s game plan.
And so, with the Cavaliers attempting to shift identities in the postseason, they have to leave their best rebounder on the bench in situations like Game 3’s fourth quarter. When the team’s 46 percent shooting slumped to 35 percent, the talents of Thompson on the glass looked more needed than ever. It’s the growing pains of the transformation that Lue is attempting through 11 games. The rebound heavy, slow-paced lineups that got the Cavaliers to a 2-1 series lead in the 2015 Finals have being replaced by the spacing and speed offered by Frye and Love. But the team still needs to fill the holes lost by Thompson’s rebounding and length.
Tristan Thompson, the errant elbow to the face of Cleveland’s new look. The Cavaliers need six more wins to become NBA world champions. To get there, they need Thompson. Right now, with James in the second unit and Thompson left out of the pick-and-pop sets, out of the off-ball James baseline drives, his only place is on the high screen and roll with Irving, where Love and James are better options. There doesn’t seem to be much of a place for him on the new-look Cavaliers. But walking away from his rebounds could cost the Cavaliers the second chance they are looking for to win in 2016.