The Rotation: Jonathon Simmons and LaMarcus Aldridge are heroes

Welcome to The Rotation, our daily playoff wrap-up of our favorite stories, large and small, from last night’s NBA action.

Jonathon Simmons and the glory of the self-made man

By Ian Levy (@HickoryHigh)

Today, Jonathon Simmons is a hero.

Despite his pre-game statements to the contrary, Kawhi Leonard was a late scratch from Game 6 as the Spurs took no chances with his injured ankle. In place of one of the most productive players in the entire league, Simmons started and played 32 minutes. He scored 18 points, shooting 8-of-12 from the field, and helped harass James Harden into a nightmarish evening of bricks and pencil-in-eye turnovers. The Spurs were +33 while Simmons was on the floor.

This fill-in heroism of Simmons, and really everything he does, carries the extra sparkle of his self-made mythology. Simmons started at a junior college and played for two other schools before going unselected in the 2012 NBA Draft. More than a year later, he now famously paid $150 to attend an open tryout for the Spurs NBA D-League affiliate. He made it and spent two years with the Austin Toros before finally making the Spurs roster at the age of 26.

That’s a heck of a journey from there to here, bootstraps stretched to their breaking point and all that. It’s worth celebrating all the work that Simmons has put in, and all the trust the Spurs have invested him, to arrive at this moment where everything works out for everyone.

I’m happy for Jonathon Simmons and his self-made moment of glorious utility. But he wasn’t the only self-made man on the floor last night. After filling the box scores of the first few games of this series with armpit farts and dog poop emojis, LaMarcus Aldridge rose to the occasion for the Spurs, pouring in 34 points in the win. Aldridge sacrificed dollars and individual attention to be here in San Antonio, for a moment like this. He too has left blood and sweat on basketball courts, and been victim of the slings and arrows of outrageous bad fortune.

On the other side of the court, there was Patrick Beverley who used to inhabit swamps of obscurity at least as thick as the ones Simmons once called home. And Ryan Anderson who has rebounded from unspeakable personal tragedy to seemingly rediscover the simple joy of putting a ball through a net from great distances. And James Harden, who was supposed to be too slow. And Mike D’Antoni, who was supposed to be a one-trick pony (it’s the damn Little Sebastian of tricks though).

Let’s celebrate tonight’s heroes, Simmons and Aldridge, what they’ve overcome, what they’ve earned, and the opportunities that lie ahead. But don’t forget that these are all self-made men, winners and losers both.

Spurs get the Warriors and we’re going to need more pie

By Matt Rutkowski (@MontaWorldPeace)

I was eating pie during the game. That’s the context. That’s all there is. Does this matter?

Good question. Let’s dig deeper. How confident are we that any of this matters? The Spurs are going on to play the Warriors. The Warriors have won eight straight games in these here playoffs by an average of 46.756 points. They’ve looked more dominant than they have all season.

The math is pretty much the same as it has been. 73 + Durant = X. You can double the amount of X’s because it’s the playoffs. That’s two X’s. What does that math look like?

Oh no. How terrible.

If we can agree that the Spurs are better than either the Trail Blazers or the Jazz, maybe they’ll lose by only 40.282. It’s a foregone conclusion, right? Yeah. As good a time as any to assume stuff and then form opinions around those assumptions.

Or no. I vote no. I don’t want to do that. Cynicism is boring. It’s more boring than these playoffs. Cynicism is recalling the worst tendencies of your pissy teenage years and thinking “Man, I really had it right back then.”

As someone who was a pissy teenager until about the age of 29, I’d rather go back further. Eight-years-old was good. Eight-year old me would watch the neat basketball and think it was neat just because.

I didn’t want or need to defend my point of view. If this playoffs was my only point of reference, all the better. I didn’t feel compelled to defend it versus playoffs of the past or try to correct what I saw. I understood my perspective was limited. What I was seeing was more important than how.

I also didn’t try to project out what was going to happen because I couldn’t. I still can’t. The only difference is that now I have to suppress a flawed notion that I can.

Last year’s Finals was an outlier. The Cavaliers should not have beaten the Warriors. They did. It was an unlikely outcome. That does not mean that unlikely outcomes are going to happen in the coming conference finals. It does mean that discounting their possibility is a bad idea.

Next: The 20 different emotions of Gregg Popovich

I didn’t see the Spurs blowing out the team just below them in the really-dang-good-team rankings without their best player on the road. That was unexpected. I like to think we can expect more of that.

The games are going to be played, and things are going to happen in those games. I don’t know what those things are. I’m looking forward to them.