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 biggest moments
Ian Levy | @HickoryHigh | FanSided
With just over three minutes remaining and the San Antonio Spurs trailing by 11, trying to complete a 26-point fourth quarter comeback, Kawhi Leonard patiently brought the ball over halfcourt. He took a screen from Tim Duncan, dribbled left to pull both defenders, and dropped a perfect pocket pass in the space between. Duncan caught the ball at the elbow, took two steps towards the rim and rose up for a dunk that would close the gap to single digits.
It was a set perfectly executed, perfectly controlled. The timing of Duncan and Leonard was not hurried by the dwindling game clock or the large margin still needing to be made up. They played it exactly as quickly as they needed to in order to create a high-quality scoring opportunity. The other three Spurs — LaMarcus Aldridge on the baseline, Andre Miller and Danny Green in the corners — were watching a play they had probably seen run to perfection hundreds of times in practice and games. They were also treated to a front row seat as Serge Ibaka left Aldridge and leapt from just inside the restricted area, meeting Duncan at the rim and easily blocking his dunk attempt. The ball found its way to Russell Westbrook who pushed his way up the floor and delivered it to Kevin Durant for a two-handed dunk and a 13-point lead. Timeout.
Tim Duncan stood at his own free throw line watching the aftermath of the fastbreak and letting the moment wash over him. His head dropped, eyes to the floor. Deep sigh. Then a slow walk back to his own bench. The game wouldn’t officially end for another three minutes and six seconds but it was pretty much over right there.
My writerly instinct is to take this one play and stretch it into grandiose series-defining metaphors. Individual brilliance over systemic brilliance. Youth over age. Dynasties crumbling. The funny thing is, I’ve soaked in those metaphors before and I already wrote that eulogy for the Spurs — three years, a championship, and one of the best regular seasons in NBA history ago. This moment didn’t need the metaphorical for grandiosity. What actually happened does just fine.
One of the greatest players in we’ve ever seen may have played his last game. One of the greatest teams we’ve ever seen was beaten. A shot was blocked. A game was lost. A series ended.
(Possibly) An ending undeserved
Cody Williams | @TheSizzle20 | Lake Show Life, FanSided
A player is drafted. A player puts on a jersey for an NBA team and a player plays the game of basketball, repeating these steps time and again — until he doesn’t. One day, every player takes his jersey off for the final time, walks out of the locker room, and never walks back into the locker room again. As they say, Father Time is undefeated and everyone has to call it quits at some point.
For some time, though, Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili have had the undefeated boss of life on the ropes as they’ve continued their run with the San Antonio Spurs.
As we look back on a regular season that was the last for Kobe Bryant after 20 years and remember all of the fanfare, confetti, pomp and circumstance that went into his goodbye to the league and basketball — not to mention the 60 points on 50 shots in his final game of his career – -Duncan and Ginobili may have just played their last game on Thursday night after losing to the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 6. And if they did, their goodbyes stand in stark contrast to something even similar to Kobe’s.
Not only will two cornerstones of a dynasty be going out of the league on a loss, if this were to be Duncan and Ginobili’s final game, but the last memory would be of two men having fallen from their highest levels of achievement and performance and unable to ever fully get back there again in the big moments. It would be unfortunate, but a reality of the situation nonetheless.
While Bryant certainly deserved his send-off and that final 60-point game, it was also less than surprising. An all-time great player with a propensity for high-volume shooting and that being one of his biggest criticisms going out of the NBA in a blaze of offensive glory where every shot was his to take was predictable. However, it’s a blaze of glory that players as low-key and mild mannered as Duncan and Ginobili had earned for their final games with the Spurs.
The Big Fundamental and the curator of the Eurostep both played the game throughout their careers with an elegant poise that has become the embodiment of Spurs basketball over the course of this dynastic run that’s now lasted closer to two decades than not. Humor was never in short supply and they weren’t as stoic as even a contemporary teammate of theirs, Kawhi Leonard. However, they were graceful in their approach and execution to the game of basketball.
And that’s all the more reason why they deserved a night to just let loose. A night where Ginobili is throwing every ludicrous pass he can conjure up in his brain and a night where Duncan isn’t putting shots off the glass at the perfect angle at the short-corner extended. But now there’s a chance that both players will never get that.
When talking to the press after the loss in Game 6 to the Thunder on Thursday night, Duncan was mum about his decision regarding his future and Ginobili followed suit. However, this has every bit of the feeling of their final time in a Spurs uniform and in the NBA. For two players whose next stop is the Hall of Fame — most likely only the first ballot — it’s a shame that they didn’t get the ending they deserved.
Billy Donovan finds his championship formula
Philip Rossman-Reich | @omagicdaily | Orlando Magic Daily, Hardwood Paroxysm
There were questions about Billy Donovan.
The wunderkind coach had built up a Florida program that had done virtually nothing in its history to that point, sneaking them into the Final Four behind a Mike Miller game-winning floater in the first round and Donnell Harvey and Udonis Haslem. These were NBA players, but not much to write home about. Success for the Gators was building.
He recruited McDonald’s All Americans and seemed set up to establish Florida as one of the great new dynasties of college basketball. But from that 2000 trip to the Final Four (a national championship loss to Michigan State) until 2006, the Gators never made it out of the first round. Those supremely talented, ranked teams and SEC regular and tournament champions lost to teams well below them — Creighton with Kyle Korver, Manhattan, a scrappy Temple team. They did not get out of the first weekend in these six seasons. Talented teams went home with virtually nothing but disappointment.
Donovan knew how to get the talent but he struggled to harness it. It was set to be his legacy. He was a coach capable of getting a team to the dance but do little else since then.
Then his team seemed to coalesce. Selfless players delivered back-to-back national championships and boundless opportunity. He had accomplished everything he could in the college game.
After a brief foray to the NBA (really brief), Donovan rebuilt the Gators and returned to the Final Four seven years later. But he again struggled to push the Gators above and beyond. He was always looking for that special mix, not of superstar McDonald’s All Americans, but of a team. Without seasoning that perfect mix, the Gators always seemed to fall short.
His first Oklahoma City Thunder team shared those same characteristics as his perhaps disappointing Florida teams. They were supremely talented with Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. They underused their bigs with Serge Ibaka perhaps having his worst season since his rookie year. They lost leads late. No one ever took them as potential champions.
And in one series, that narrative changed.
The Oklahoma City Thunder slowly found a way. They shed their late-game troubles with a wild Game 2 victory, somehow surviving an offensive foul on an inbounds and turning it over all at once. They got the big plays from Durant. The raw energy and athleticism of Westbrook. They cut off LaMarcus Aldridge, limited Kawhi Leonard and forced Tony Parker to beat them.
Every adjustment Donovan made, worked. The subtle changes the team made to their pick-and-roll coverage and offensive attacks to take down the Spurs’ stellar defense all worked. Gregg Popovich had no answer. None that his team could execute.
He somehow made Enes Kanter a competent defender and got the most out of his bench with Kanter and Dion Waiters producing. Things all began to click as they had before in Florida with his successful teams. The confidence was oozing out of this team as the series progressed, finally putting the nail in the coffin with a Game Five win at AT&T Center and the blowout win Thursday.
In Game 6, Gregg Popovich simply said after the first quarter as his team was falling apart things went bad when he took his starters out. Donovan somehow had left Popovich without any options.
And in his first year in the NBA, Donovan had done what he struggled to do consistently in college at his celebrated career in Gainesville. Donovan is winning and bringing his team deep into the playoffs. When he did that in college, his teams typically won the whole thing.
Effort grew into something more
Nathan Heck | @NathanHeck22 | Pelican Debrief
Kevin Durant may have scored an absurd 37 points and Russell Westbrook may have, once again, put in a brilliant performance in terms of orchestrating for his teammates and creating his own opportunities, but the two Thunder superstars would not have been able to brush aside one of the most impressive regular season teams of all time with such relative ease without the help of two role players. Two guys that very well may be growing into something much more right before our eyes.
Andre Roberson and Steven Adams were viewed largely as one dimensional specialists prior to the postseason. A few short weeks later, and that viewpoint is beginning to sound awfully silly. In an elimination game against one of the most decorated rosters ever assembled, both of these high-energy defensive dynamos showed the ability and desire to be so much more than role players that are to simply be plugged in next to superstars.
Tenacity, the defining characteristic of both players, was on full display from the pair of men while the Thunder pushed the Spurs over the cliff to their inevitable dismantling.
A clutch chase down block to hold back the surging Spurs in the final minutes by Andre Roberson.
A lightning quick rotation by Adams to cut off the driving lane of an opposing ball handler.
These are the things Adams and Roberson are known for, representing the teeth of Oklahoma City’s formidable defense. When it all came down to one final game to put a team of legends away, though, both players put in both the effort on the defensive side of the ball observers have come to expect from the duo and something more.
Coming out of their respective shells, Steven Adams and Andre Roberson both chose the most opportune time to emerge from the proverbial cave and add substantial firepower to the Oklahoma City offense, which has shown a tendency to stagnate. Roberson, a career 27.4 percent three point shooter, drained three back-breaking attempts from long range, which forced the San Antonio Spurs to actually respect the wing defender who had made just one attempt from behind the arc in all of Oklahoma City’s postseason games so far.
Steven Adams, a player rarely known to score points in bunches, worked well inside for the Thunder, and his continuous attacks on the basket resulted in multiple easy attempts at the rim, something the Thunder surely appreciated greatly. Finding himself on the receiving end of Westbrook passes with consistency, Adams was able to take advantage and shoulder some of the scoring load for the Thunder in this pivotal game.
When coupled with their passion and desire to fight during each and every possession, these new found talents could propel both players to heights previously unforeseen. Sure, their performances could be a result of streaky offensive play, but even if both players become just that, streaky scorers who are also elite defenders, there are worse outcomes for an NBA player.
This willingness to put forth the utmost effort on each and every possession (call it hustle, heart, tenacity, etc.) may be the defining characteristic for both players, but, as viewers bore witness to on Thursday as the Thunder dismantled a team led by some of the most respected names in NBA history, Steven Adams and Andre Roberson can be so much more.