Dwyane Wade has the clutch gene

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 immeasurable impact of Dwyane Wade

Philip Rossman-Reich | @omagicdaily | Orlando Magic Daily, Hardwood Paroxysm

Dwyane Wade has made mistakes. He was tackled near midcourt (without a call) and lost the ball to give the Toronto Raptors a chance to cut the lead to one possession. Hassan Whiteside’s missed free throw set up Kyle Lowry for his heroics. This was a ball Wade could not get to and save his team.

It happened again in overtime. With the Heat holding onto a three-point lead, Luol Deng tried feeding him the ball only for DeMarre Carroll to tip the pass out of bounds off Wade (perhaps a fistful of jersey there too, but nothing to impede progress). The Raptors got the ball and a chance to tie the game — incredibly — again.

Wade has never been afraid of the moment. He has always stepped up biggest with the lights the brightest. That started his rookie season in his first playoff game, ended on an off-the-backboard floater for the win in Game 1 against the New Orleans Hornets. That was his announcement to the world.

And more than a decade later — with plenty of titles to boot — he is still doing that. Continually. And he did it again Tuesday.

With DeMar DeRozan trying to free himself, Wade shot in with his usual flair and bravado and stole the ball, racing to the other end, not to peal out and take the rest of the clock down to zero but to make one last dunk — an and-one as it turned out — and ice the game for the Heat.

Dwyane Wade can still finish a game off with gusto. Even at his age. Even when he looks like he is not supposed to be able to do it anymore. And in an age of analytics that can tell a coach and player every opponent’s tendency and favorite move or direction, something intangible still matters. Call it the clutch gene, if those final moments mean more than any other moment in the game. For drama’s sake, it certainly feels more important.

And Wade always seems to have an answer even when he is not playing well.

Entering the fourth quarter, Wade had 13 points on 5-for-12 shooting. In the fourth quarter, he put up four points on 2-for-4 shooting, but he added two blocks. One came right at the rim as the Heat were holding off the Raptors and trying to put the game away — they virtually had. In overtime, Wade had seven points on 3-for-5 shooting with two steals. He was as instrumental in Miami controlling overtime completely.

And all the while, he was the one barking on the bench, helping Miami keep its heads following Lowry’s half-court heave to force overtime. The composure and will that Wade has is not something that can fade with age.

He may not be able to get up that eighth time when he has fallen down for the seventh time anymore. He may not be able to put in the crazy scoring binges he did in his younger days that propelled the Heat to a title in 2006 and provided the perfect foil for LeBron James in 2012 and 2013. But something innate in Wade has not gone away. He can still rise up for his team in the big moment and give his team exactly what it needs.

Early on, he feels like he is something different. An edge Miami has over Toronto in this series.

Wade is a surefire Hall of Famer. There are some things no one can teach and no one can quantify. It is just something you know when you see it. And Wade has that for the Heat. Even in the face of momentum dying, and Game One slipping away, the Heat and its leader found a way.

Rebuilding confidence

Kevin Yeung | @KevinHFY | Hardwood Paroxysm

Kyle Lowry nearly saved Game 1 on a half-court prayer that secured overtime; instead, the extra period was mostly like the one that had preceded it, and Lowry’s struggles festered on in the loss. That half-court shot was his only three-point make on seven attempts and an unlikely slice of good in a 3-for-13 shooting performance overall. Instead of stepping off the court as the savior, Lowry was back shooting jumpers after the game had ended, simply trying to find himself.

“We know he’s not shooting the ball well. He’s not making the shots that he normally makes,” said Dwane Casey. “It’s just like a hitter. Hitters go through slumps, and he’s there.”

After having his elbow drained near the end of the regular season, Lowry has shot 30.6 percent in the playoffs. He insists the elbow isn’t the issue, but whatever is, the Raptors need him to get right. Lowry doesn’t feel like Lowry when he’s missing his signature pull-up three-pointers, and when he starts passing out of his shot, neither do the Raptors feel like the Raptors.

In the third quarter, Lowry took three shots, all misses, while DeMar DeRozan went 3-for-10. As Lowry defers to DeRozan, so too does the entire offense — a shift borne of individual passivity and leading to stagnancy at the team level as DeRozan’s mid-range jumpers monopolized the offense. DeRozan is unlike Lowry, disinclined to probe for the pass, and the Raptors need the ball in Lowry’s hands so that he can at least do that even if the shots aren’t going in. They need him to draw defenders and create something secondary within the offense.

“He can do other things. He doesn’t have to depend on the three ball or jumpshots,” said Casey.

For that to happen, Lowry will have to play like Lowry, whether or not the shot follows. Hassan Whiteside may be the ultimate deterrent, spooking Lowry out of a wide open layup at one point in the fourth quarter, but he has to keep attacking, damnit. For a multitude of reasons, the least of them being the Miami Heat defense, it’s a bygone conclusion that Lowry would ever make them all. Even still, the best shots that the Raptors can get will be predicated off his attack. Go at Whiteside, and that may yet spring free Jonas Valanciunas for a clean dump-off or putback.

Overall, ball movement was rare in Game 1. Both teams combined to assist on fewer than 40 percent of their makes, and the Heat were every bit as content to post up Joe Johnson or Dwyane Wade (reasonably seaworthy, like Philip says) as the Raptors were DeRozan. If that’s how the series is going to be played, it’s all there for the taking.

Conversely, adjustments will come. Lowry’s shot may or may not, but either way, the Raptors can operate differently around him. They just need him to believe it.

“It’s a make or miss league,” said Dwyane Wade. “The same shots that he missed, he can make next game.”

Damian: Impossible

Daniel Rowell | @DanielJRowell | Hardwood Paroxysm

On the last possession of the third quarter, Al-Farouq Aminu rebounded a missed Warriors layup, contested by Gerald Henderson. Aminu passed to Allen Crabbe, out for a 4-on-3 fast break. Crabbe lined up for a three on the nearside before passing crosscourt to Henderson in the corner, and as the Warriors rotated over, he passed once more to an open Damian Lillard for the shot at the buzzer. The three-pointer was the end of a 17-point quarter for Lillard that had the Blazers up 11, 87-76. The fast break for a buzzer-beater was the kind of shot you’d expect from the 73-win Warriors, but here were the Blazers, twelve minutes away from a tied 1-1 series with the best team in the NBA.

Lillard got a friendly bounce off a rimmed technical free throw (from Klay Thompson of all people) at the nine-minute mark of the third quarter, before making four three-pointers, a step-back jumper, and a tip-in off his own miss. It was the takeover moment that the Blazers had been waiting for from Lillard. For nine minutes he was a cheat code, a third splash brother, a glass of lemonade, the best player on the court. But then, he had to sit. Terry Stotts pulled Lillard a minute into the fourth and by the time he subbed back in three minutes later, the lead was cut to five. Lillard would miss his last three attempts on the night, failing to score in the final quarter.

It has to be frustrating for the Lillard and the Trail Blazers to be down 0-2 in two games without Steph Curry. It’s a situation they found themselves in just two weeks ago against the Clippers before a couple of hard-fought home games and a fortuitous pair of injuries to Chris Paul and Blake Griffin gave the Blazers a distinct advantage, winning the next four games. Against the Warriors, with longer odds but the MVP out for at least two games, the opportunity was there. And as the Oracle let out its signature “Warriors!” taunt in the second half, Lillard watched his opportunity transform into reality. He wasn’t going to beat the Warriors at home, with or without Steph Curry.

Failure is hard to manage. It just wasn’t enough. It was 36 minutes of great basketball and a few minutes at the end, where the lead was lost and Lillard’s cheat codes was over. Lillard and C.J. McCollum combined for 47 points while Draymond Green and Klay Thompson shot 7-of-20 from the field each. The stats tell the story of an opportunity that failed to actualize. And now with three days to dwell in it, Lillard has to find a way to pick himself up, pick his team up, pick his city up, and win a Game 3. It’s the first in a series of must-win games, a series that most are ready to write-off, and a corner with which Lillard has grown accustomed.

The story will say Lillard and the Blazers outperformed expectation. They weren’t supposed to be here, they weren’t supposed to make the playoffs. The model at FiveThirtyEight predicted 36 wins for the Blazers and a 34 percent chance to make the playoffs; it now gives them a 3 percent chance to advance to the Conference Finals. It’s impossible, but maybe that’s just the place Lillard and his Blazers need to be.

Your mission Damian, should you choose to accept it, defeat the Warriors in four of the next five games. As always, should you or any of your Trail Blazers be caught on the switch of a 1-5 pick and roll with Draymond Green, Basketball Twitter will disavow any knowledge of your greatness and turn you into a crying Jordan . This series will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Dame.

Offensive adaptation

Ian Levy | @HickoryHigh | FanSided

The Golden State Warriors are now 4-1 in the playoffs without Stephen Curry. It took a 17-point comeback to take Game 2 from the Portland Trail Blazers, but the best offense in the league this season hasn’t appeared to miss a beat, despite being without the best offensive player in the league. In the regular season, Golden State averaged 102.3 points per 100 possessions without Curry, a sample that is somewhat warped by the garbage time nature of many of those minutes. In the playoffs, without Curry, Golden State is scoring 111.8 points per 100 possessions, less than a point below the league-best mark their offense averaged across the entire regular season.

The Warriors have been able to survive because they have Klay Thompson, perhaps the second-best shooter in the NBA, Draymond Green’s defense-bending playmaking, and a system that is able to adapt. If we look at a style chart for the Warriors offense this season and last, comparing them to the rest of the league, we can see they are extreme in all four stylistic categories.

Their shot selection, ball movement, and player movement have all been roughly the same without Curry in the playoffs. However, they have slowed the pace fairly dramatically. During the regular season the average offensive possessions for Golden State lasted 13.5 seconds, per Inpredictable, the fastest in the league by a healthy margin. In the playoff games in which Curry did not play, Golden State’s average possession length has been 14.8 seconds. That would have been roughly league average for the regular season, essentially the same offensive pace as the Los Angeles Clippers.

A little more than a second per possession may not sound like a lot, but it’s a significant change. Some of it can be attributed to simply wiping away the possessions where Curry is pulling up for a three-pointer as soon as he crosses half-court, but it’s also indicative of an offense that is running through more of the options and progressions in each offensive set. The fact that they’re doing it with such enormous success should emphasize that what has made Golden State so special is not just Curry, but the marriage of Curry, a terrific supporting cast, and a fluid offensive system.

Take a breather, Stephen Curry

Cody Williams | @TheSizzle20 | Lake Show Life, FanSided

At every mention of the Golden State Warriors in the Conference Semifinals, it feels like an update on the health of Stephen Curry is accompanying it. If he took two ibuprofen as opposed to three that afternoon, it gets reported as everyone is waiting with baited breath for the MVP to make his return to the lineup.

But maybe he shouldn’t anytime soon. Maybe the NBA and the fans would be better off if Stephen Curry just sat this one out.

Game 1 of the Warriors’ series with the Portland Trail Blazers was a thrilling affair with Damian Lillard and Klay Thompson dueling as Curry was out of the lineup. Game 2 was an even better version of that with both guards again duking it out. However, the head coaches in Terry Stotts and Steve Kerr got involved in mixing it up this time around as well.

Game 2 truly resembled two generals relaying strategy to their troops to counter the offensive attack of the other for 48 minutes. Whenever Thompson and Draymond Green started getting into rhythm, Stotts found ways to disrupt their flow with ball-pressure and how he controlled the pace. Likewise, Kerr found ways to disrupt Lillard after the Trail Blazers point guard exploded in the third quarter and tried to help Portland pull away.

Though both games in this series to this point have resulted in double-digit victories for Golden State, both games have been the height of entertainment and pure bliss for basketball fans to digest from both the play of players like Thompson and Lillard to the coaching to even the dirty work being done by the likes of Shaun Livingston and Al-Farouq Aminu in this series. More important to note is the fact that Stephen Curry has been in a suit on the bench for both of these games and the entertainment has still been there.

With Curry, the outcome of this series isn’t even remotely in question. The real curiosity would be how close the Trail Blazers could hope to keep the score in each game rather than if they actually have a chance at winning a game. Without Curry, the Warriors may still have the advantage — though it’ll be interesting to see what the shift to the Moda Center looks like. Even if Golden State is still favored, the intrigue is substantially higher and the playoff feel is there.

So really, this is just a plea of basketball fans everywhere to the Warriors. Make sure that knee is healthy, Steph. Make sure that you’re going to be 100 percent for the Western Conference Finals. Have faith that your team can make it to the conference finals without you and give NBA fans a bit more enjoyment in the process. Just stay out of this series; the ultimate outcome isn’t going to change and fans will thank you for it.