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.
Kyle Korver and the value of the shot
Nathan Heck | @NathanHeck22 | Pelican Debrief
It should be obvious that a game predicated on putting a ball through an elevated hoop would place a premium on a player that is able to consistently toss a ball through said hoop from an extended distance. In fact, long range shooting is very much in vogue in the modern NBA, and teams are scrambling to coach up their players and unearth new shooters from under each and every rock. As a result of the rising popularity of pace-and-space schemes, shooting has never been more valuable and seemingly every player on the floor is expected to be able to step outside of the arc and hit looks from deep. Terms like stretch four and stretch five, which would have seemed foreign in the not so distant past, are commonplace.
The result is a league full of players that can kinda-sorta shoot as a result of front offices and coaches encouraging them to expand their range, but Kyle Korver stands as one of the truly elite shooters (and he has been one for nearly his entire career). The Boston Celtics were just the latest to feel his prowess. In the first quarter of the Atlanta Hawks 89-72 in in Game 2, Kyle Korver made four looks from deep, and all of them were a result of assists from his teammates. Korver’s scorching stroke from behind the three-point line and the strong team defense of Atlanta put the Celtics in a hole early in the game, and Boston was never able to regain the ground they lost. Despite only scoring five points in the remainder of the contest, Korver had accomplished his goal: the Celtics were playing his game.
This ability to absolutely bury an opponent beneath a mountain of points in a matter of minutes is one of the most underrated skills an NBA player can have. Obviously, if Kyle Korver had made five looks from long range over the course of the entire game, the result on Korver’s stat line would look the same. What is overlooked, though, is the emotional import. There is a critical mass of sorts that is reached by piling too many points on a defense in a short amount of time. Mistakes on the defensive end seem to endlessly breed more mistakes, and Kyle Korver is the perfect player to take full advantage of each and every opportunity. By endlessly working over the Celtics on that end of the floor, Korver and company encouraged Boston to force the issue on offense feeding a cycle of more catch-and-shoot opportunities for Korver as a result of fast break chances. The Celtics found themselves in a fiery feedback loop that did not spit them out until late in the first quarter, and by then, it was far too late.
Korver’s shooting touch largely abandoned him in last year’s playoffs and he was 0-of-7 on three-pointers in Game 1. By pouring in four of his five shots from beyond the arc in the opening frame, Korver released any accumulated pressure and dictated the very complexion of the game. For the remainder of the contest, the Celtics were forced to chase the Hawks, who operated with a fairly comfortable lead for almost the entire tilt. In a league populated by non-shooters forced to masquerade as sharpshooters, Kyle Korver is a rare talent.
25-footer: A three-point attempt and a six-second attempt to make sense of it
Daniel Rowell | @danieljrowell | Hardwood Paroxysm
Just a minute into Game 2 against the Boston Celtics, Kent Bazemore lept ahead of a crosscourt pass from Jae Crowder to Marcus Smart, tipped it back to midcourt, and broke away for an open basket. At 25-feet, directly in front of the Celtics coaching staff, he squared up and threw a high-arching three-point attempt. The ball rolled across the inside of the rim, dipping through the net and back up onto the rim. And then, it kind of just stayed there. Fortunately, I was at a sports bar and had a paper and pen on hand to record my thoughts during the six seconds it hung on the rim.
10:59 remaining in the first quarter. Atlanta leads 3-0. Kent Bazemore puts up the shot. The ball cascades down through the net but rolls back up to the rim.
It rolled around…
Oh no. The ball rolled back out. It was so close to going through. Bazemore’s break-away play was just so good, but he has to make this to make it great. How did that even happen? The ball was spinning so fast it pulled itself up off the net and onto the rim?
And around…
Wow, that ball it really not going down. It kind of reminds me of those coin vortex things that they have at the science centers and zoos. What is the plural of vortex… vort-ex-es… vort-ic-es? Either way, municipal zoos are a great public service. Giraffes, hippopotamuses, elephants, snow leopards, lemurs — I mean those animals that have no business living three miles from my house.
And around…
That ball will just not quit. I bet they’re going to set the highlight of this shot to Kendrick Lamar’s Untitled 02. But will they even be able to fit this shot inside the length of a Vine? Will this shot ever fall? Is there even a time that exists outside this shot? Levitate, levitate, levitate, levitate.
And around…
Kent Bazemore looks an awful lot like Chance the Rapper. Maybe he is Chance the Rapper. I wonder if they could pull off a prince-and-pauper switch. But who is the prince in that situation? I mean Chance is an unsigned independent artist that’s maybe made a million dollars off his mixtapes and tours and Bazemore is in the final year of a two-year, $4 million contract. I’d think Bazemore has to be the pauper after Chance’s verse on Ultralight Beam, but it’s close.
And around…
What even is a basket? And who is to say a ball ever really should “go in”? I mean, what certainties really exist in this world? If you throw a ball up it has to come down, eventually, but do you really know when it will come down, and certainly not where it will come down. I mean, how crazy is it that we even exist at all, or that a person is shooting this ball in a world in Atlanta where it could have already fallen and I’m watching it in a world in Chicago where it’s just kind of there? And what even connects these worlds that puts this delayed image of a reality in Atlanta on a screen in a bar in Chicago. I mean we are all really just Ultra-Light-Beams.
And in. 10:53 remaining in the first quarter. Atlanta leads 6-0. Oh, thank God. What time is it?
Bazemore would miss the next four attempts from behind the arc, adding even further to the mystery of how one even makes a basket at all. I paid the tab and wandered home into a world I barely understand. I mean what really is anything?
Paul Millsap is Draymond Green-East
Philip Rossman-Reich | @omagicdaily | Orlando Magic Daily, Hardwood Paroxysm
The NBA is a copycat league. When the Golden State Warriors won the title last season, teams knew they could not find another Stephen Curry or Klay Thompson, those kind of skills are not easy to duplicate, but there had to be some secret and some reason for their success. Something that could easily be found elsewhere and replicated to success.
The league fixated on Draymond Green, the player everyone in the first round had missed on and then became the screen-switching, versatile key to Golden State’s title run. Now, the league was getting smaller, searching for stretch-4s that could guard players on the perimeter as much as they could in the post. The face of the league was and is completely changing.
The Atlanta Hawks, the team at the top of the other side of the bracket in last year’s playoffs already had their Draymond Green. They paid plenty this summer to keep him. In Game 2 of their playoff series against the Boston Celtics, that versatile weapon was put on full display.
Yes, Paul Millsap — a player much older than Green by experience and just now seemingly finding his fit on a playoff roster — is that player. That shot-blocking, defensive wizard who can guard the perimeter as well as he can guard the paint. And he can score too, although that is not necessarily his most important role.
Millsap has proven himself to be a key defender for the Hawks, who have the best defense in the league since the All-Star Break. There he was with four blocked shots, a few coming right at the rim helping snuff out any light for the Boston Celtics, even early on in the game. The Celtics were down big early as Kyle Korver buried them in three-pointers, and Millsap kept piling dirt on.
Even though Millsap made just one of his 12 shots, he was one of the most effective and impactful players on the floor. As Green seemingly proved last year in the Playoffs — at least more publicly — the ability to have one player able to guard Amir Johnson or Tyler Zeller on one possession and then Evan Turner or Marcus Smart on another is extremely invaluable. Especially in the playoffs.
And against a team like Boston with really only one individual playmaker, going up against a defender who can switch at will can really disrupt the offense. It explains at least partly why the Celtics have really struggled to gain much offensive traction through two games this series.
Millsap had a career-best +4.2 defensive Box Plus-Minus this year, meaning Millsap’s contributions made his team an estimated 4.2 points per 100 possessions better on the defensive end than an average player. How that did not get him some consideration for Defensive Player of the Year is beyond reason. He clearly showed why he is such an integral cog for the Hawks and will be moving forward.
In a past generation, Millsap would have been a tweener. In today’s NBA, Millsap is the valuable player who can do it all. The kind of player who can put a team over the top.
All by his lonesome
Ian Levy | @HickoryHigh | FanSided
The San Antonio Spurs have a two-game lead in their first round series with the Memphis Grizzlies. In those two games, Tim Duncan has a grand total of five field goal attempts. His level of offensive responsibility has been eroding for years and this regular season was a deep valley — by far the lowest usage percentage of his career. Duncan does have four assists through two games, and three “screen assists” per the NBA’s new hustle stats hub, but that is mostly the offense flowing around him rather than through him. This change is not sudden, it has happened at glacial speed, but the idea of the San Antonio Spurs winning a playoff series with Duncan’s offense not just marginalized, but almost completely irrelevant is a little jarring.
What Duncan has been doing while he’s not scoring, is defending like crazy. He has 20 rebounds in 48 minutes, more rebounds per minute than he has ever averaged in the playoffs before. Duncan has contested 22 shot attempts, blocked three, and pulled out two steals. He has retreated fully into the fabric of San Antonio’s defense abandoning any pretense of contributing something other than dirty work.
Duncan is one of the last few active players drafted in the 1990s. Just last week, we watched Kobe Bryant celebrate his retirement with a 50-shot experiment in self-immolation. Kevin Garnett has channeled his aggressive intensity into the mentoring process, trying to help shape the young talent in Minnesota. Duncan has continued to serve the culture and structure of the Spurs which elevated him for so long. Every star becomes a role player at some point in their careers, willingly or not. Duncan’s eagerness to not just embrace this role but breathe excellence into it honors all those who filled it for him.
Tim Duncan is banging, contesting, boxing-out, and setting screens for his team, his legacy, and for his basketball values. He’s also doing it for Malik Rose and Antonio McDyess. For Fabricio Oberto and Rasho Nesterovic. For Tiago Splitter, Nazr Mohammad and DeJuan Blair. Believing in a system means believing in all parts of it, and being willing to be all parts of it.
Chris Andersen’s (sort of) happy ending
David Ramil | @dramil13 | Hardwood Paroxysm
Just over three years ago, Chris Andersen’s career was all but over. Then he flew in on tattooed wings to help save the Miami Heat’s championship hopes. He might have been a mere complementary player but he joined the team right as they began building towards a historic 27-game win streak, a franchise-record 66 regular-season wins and the Heat’s second-straight championship. His tenure soared at right from the start and will forever be linked with that most-successful of eras in South Florida basketball.
Now the tattoos are still there (there might even be more of them) but catching lobs off pick-and-rolls and occasional blocks are gone. What’s left is a stiff-legged, ground-bound rebounder who can only watch the last sparks of his career die slowly as the Memphis Grizzlies’ season, at long last, burns to the ground.
It’s not an ideal ending, to be sure. The Heat have looked great in the second half of this season and dominated their lone playoff appearance; all this success followed the trade that sent Andersen (and his bloated salary) to the barely ambulatory Grizzlies. If the universe was fair, he would’ve stayed with Miami, the team that salvaged his career and perhaps his life, and provided a mentoring role to their young, growing center, Hassan Whiteside. He might’ve gotten some playing time and found just enough energy to remind the waning, fourth-quarter crowds at the AmericanAirlines Arena of the halcyon days of 2013.
Alas, the Heat already had Udonis Haslem on the roster and Andersen didn’t have the luxury of spending his whole career in Miami. He was cut loose to save money and sent to a team that was so racked by injury that even a clipped-wing version of Andersen was better than the detritus left on the roster.
He’s started both of Memphis’ blowout losses to the Spurs, far more of an opportunity than he would have received in Miami. And while it’s impossible to call his contributions noteworthy, he’s at least a part of something. If his colorful, 15-year career is like the tattoos that he sports from head-to-toe, then his early years in Denver and New Orleans were an outline, his stint in Miami was the shading that gave it substance and now the pen is in his own hand to add the final flourishing touch.
It’s a fitting end, even if it’s not a perfect one. Andersen is too incendiary a personality to simply fade into obscurity at the end of a bench. Better that he burn as part of Memphis’ gritty final stand, matched up against a familiar foe.
It’s late as I write this and I’m tired; watching playoff games is supposed to be exciting but Tuesday’s slate was anything but. And yet as I watch Andersen shuffle along the court through 24 minutes of (in)action, I’m buoyed by the sight of him still being moving, still fighting the good-yet-ugly fight. It reminds of better days, when he played a role to perfection, becoming an unexpected part of NBA history. There was a time when fans wore huge, cardboard wings and children sported faux-tattoo sleeves and mohawk skullcaps in honor of an unlikely hero.
Those days are over but easier to remember with the Birdman still flying, just barely, for a little while longer.
Silver linings playbook
Kevin Yeung | @KevinHFY | Hardwood Paroxysm
This season’s rookie class has been a special one. We’ve talked about Karl-Anthony Towns, Kristaps Porzingis and all of those others who established themselves during the regular season. None of those guys were among the rookies playing for the Memphis Grizzlies last night, when Jarell Martin and Xavier Munford broke the 20-minute threshold in a Game 2 loss to the San Antonio Spurs.
This is the playoffs and unknown rookies are playing meaningful minutes. Logical alarm bells should be going off, because these two things don’t naturally go hand in hand, but it goes to show that circumstances arise and opportunity comes along. Marc Gasol and Mike Conley have been, ah, dinged up, and others have had to step up.
So, good for Martin and Munford. They’re getting the chance that some of their classmates won’t get for years, if at all, and with that comes experience in the fire, which will help them undoubtedly (if rather vaguely). Look at Norman Powell, the 46th overall pick last year now playing a key role for the Toronto Raptors after filling in as DeMarre Carroll’s injury replacement. Experience counts.
That said, this conversation is more interesting in concrete terms, and how these rookies can establish themselves in their coaches’ eyes. That holds the promise of being a much more enduring benefit than anything there is in unpacking the more nebulous good of averaging 20 minutes per game on the wrong end of a playoff sweep.
I’ve never seen anybody with a body like Martin’s move like he does. He’s somewhere between small forward and center, but not quite power forward — which, these days, seems to be the default position for the guys who intersect big man size with outside skill. Martin doesn’t perfectly fit that sexy, modern mold, but I’m biting. Munford is intriguing as well.
We know this, because they’re playing. They haven’t played particularly well against the Spurs, which is a sure sign that they’re rookies playing against the Spurs, and you wouldn’t blame Dave Joerger for sitting them out if this roster is fully healthy. Because it isn’t, the rookies are showing what they can do, which functions as a base for what they can improve upon (maybe this goes hand-in-hand with ‘gaining experience’), but it also goes to show what they’re worth right now, today, in games that matter.
Joerger may only be playing Martin and Munford circumstantially, but this is still one way to fast track a career. It seems to be happening already. Chris Andersen and Jordan Farmar are somehow starting for the Grizzlies, but the playing time relationship between those two and their younger counterparts is tenuous. Martin and Munford are winning out, and under a coach who has traditionally preferred vets to rookies, it (hopefully) speaks volumes. Maybe Joerger is just now starting to realize that Andersen and Farmar are washed, but I like to think opportunity does more for rookies than retreads in general and that there’s a lesson there.
Anyway, this series is a formality, and this is the silver lining that I came up with after interrogating a purpose out of this doomed and awful game. I’m a Grizzlies fan and silver linings are my lifeblood.