1. Fallen Stars
Just as far right politicians, in France and the United States, indulge in theories that warn of the danger of being “replaced” by a population intent on taking not only their rightful place, but destroying them (annihilating their very being), the basketball world is experiencing an analogous phenomenon. And why not? Those “Basketball Is Life” t-shirts had it at least partially right: let’s settle for “Basketball Mirrors Life.” One can always find a parallel phenomenon.
And so it is with the ever-increasing number of injuries that plague the NBA and distort its power balances. Who will replace Lebron James, Anthony Davis, Kawhi Leonard, Kyrie Irving, Jamal Murray, Trae Young? The list goes on, but I won’t, lest my theories become inundated with the data intended to support them.
With the NBA conference finals beginning on Father’s Day (by which time, in The Pre-Pandemic Era, the champion would have been crowned), a great majority of the most captivating of the league’s ever-expanding constellation of uniquely brilliant players and cutting-edge super-teams had already been sent home.
For starters The King, Lebron James, along with Anthony Davis, went out in the first round. Mid-season injuries to this unparalleled twosome had sent the defending champion Lakers into such a tailspin that they struggled even to make the playoffs. Easy to write that off to the COVID-dictated shortened interval between seasons: for the Lakers, there were less than three months between their October championship celebration and the Christmas beginning of the compressed 72 game season, but there were so many other injuries, and so many early exits of the greatest and most compelling players, such as Damian Lillard, whose Portland team also exited in the first round.
Round Two ended the season for the league’s MVP, Denver’s Nikola Jokic, whose early exit was prefigured by the April 12 season-ending ankle injury to his 2020 playoff co-star. 24 year old Jamal Murray, who had followed up last year’s playoff heroics by averaging 21.2 points, until he was carried off the floor, never to return all season. Jokic survived the trend toward injuries, but not the Phoenix Suns, who convincingly swept his Denver Nuggets.
Among the bright stars (many of them “franchise players”) that remained, in the West, Chris Paul was sidelined for two games because of COVID protocols, and Kawhi Leonard, who had been on an historically efficient playoff run, was nursing an injured knee that left him uncertain from game to game, and we know the kind of secrecy-shouted uncertainty that Leonard’s injuries can bring.
Kawhi’s injury occurred in Game Four of the Clippers’ series with Utah, in which the Clippers rallied back from 0-2 to win 4-2, their last two victories coming without Leonard. A primary reason was Terrance Mann’s phenomenal and decisive 39 point (on 15-21 shooting) Game Six. Throughout the series, there was never a definitive prognosis for Leonard; he never returned, missing eight games after averaging 30.4/7.7/4.4 over eleven playoff games. He has a torn ACL and will need surgery, with no timetable given for his return.
In the Eastern Conference (and overall), the most notable loss was the dramatic exit of Kevin Durant, after a playoff series that cemented his claim to the unofficial Best Player in The World designation that has long seemed to belong in perpetuity to Lebron James. Riding the crest of the wave generated by Sam Anderson’s wildly popular [1], New York Times Magazine piece, Durant’s reputation was soaring, despite his having missed way more than half of the past two seasons with injuries.
Even with their myriad injuries, Durant’s Nets, who had assembled an unprecedented triad of superstars (Durant, James Harden, and Kyrie Irving), all of whom had won either an MVP award or one or more NBA titles (both for Durant), went 48-24, good enough for a second place finish in the East, but the vaunted threesome played together for just 202 regular season minutes, spanning only eight games. Apparently healed and ready, they joined forces for 130 minutes in their victorious five game series versus Boston (which was without injured star Jalen Brown), but against Milwaukee, they managed to be together for just 43 seconds!
Against Milwaukee, Durant alone was almost enough. Had he been wearing size 17 sneakers, he would have been! It was both ironic and sad, as well as deeply frustrating, that Durant’s fabulous 49 point performance in Game Seven would have decided matters if he’d stepped about an inch further back on his otherwise perfectly planned game winning three pointer, as regulation time expired. But for Durant’s size 18 sneakers barely failing (watching it, one was so impressed by the deliberate execution and timing of the step-back probe to clear the three point line that he deftly strove to leave behind with his step-back that it seemed it HAD to be a three-pointer) to clear the arc! Understandably spent, the Nets succumbed in overtime, and Milwaukee assumed the role of overall favorite in most people’s minds. Were they to win it all, that inch would grow much longer over time.
2. Next Man Up
Sometimes only a cliché can counter a cliché: to echo the new popular trope of describing having a head of steam as “going downhill,” “It’s all downhill from here” was one way to look at the carnage, but the trump card for that, as industrialists and coaches the world over would agree, is “Next Man Up.”
Still standing between Milwaukee and the Finals were the Atlanta Hawks, who had upset Philadelphia, a team many thought could win it all. The 76ers had, in theory, two youthful stars Joel Embiid and the mysteriously underperforming Ben Simmons, who seems determined never to develop even a rudimentary jump shot or free throw [2], but Embiid, intermittently bothered by a torn meniscus, had too much of a load to carry alone.
The Hawks too had to weather injuries (to two young rotation players: Cam Reddish and De’Andre Hunter), but were led by the daring, diminutive (listed at 185 pounds! Be serious, please!), and mercurially brilliant Trae Young. Or were they? Just as he had shown himself to rank with the league’s true superstars (even as you thought you’d seen every conceivable sort of injury), Young suffered a right ankle sprain and bone bruise by stepping on the foot of a referee! What are you gonna say or do about that?!
This injury occurred at the critical juncture of Game Three, with Atlanta barely ahead in a game they needed to retain home court advantage after their “service break” in Game One, thanks to Young’s amazing 48 point game.
3. Giannis and Trae
After Embiid and Durant had been eliminated, Trae and Giannis Antetokounmpo remained. These young [3] superstars, together, appear to span the entire spectrum of physical equipment for the game of basketball. Imagine them as team-mates! Giannis generates so much forward motion (everyone is quickly downhill of him), whereas Young is a genius at creating and generating coordinated movement among all five players. It’s as if he’s a puppet on five different strings at once, but actually he’s orchestrating it all! I’m reminded of five jellyfish in a rectangular tank in The Monterey Aquarium: constant movement again and again reconfiguring the constellation, all of them affecting the movement of each. Sorta like Brownian Motion, as best I remember it [4].
Some people question Young’s shot selection, but his really long ones (from Curry/Lillard distances that are beyond others’ range) are actually “keep the defense honest” shots. Good shots for him to be taking, when you look at them in isolation, or at his percentages? Maybe not. Until you factor in that his being willing to take them forces defenses to play him a half step further out, and to go over screens, thereby opening up driving and passing lanes.[5] Extra credit to Hawks’ coach Nate McMillan here, for how well he uses Trae and for getting his team to jell at just the right time.
Significantly, McMillan was one of three Black coaches in the conference finals, which, equally notably, featured three teams that were predominantly home-built and “small-market.”
Who could replace an injured Young, one had to wonder, after his injury in Game Three? Well, there turned out to be an answer in Game Four, which Atlanta won handily: a committee of wild three point jump-shooters, of all nationalities, races, and sizes. Great overall balance was the key to the Hawks’ victory. Filling in as a starter and go-to guy for Trae Young, Lou Williams achieved great synergy with dunker Clint Cappella. Amazing, playing so well without their leader, motor, and star. Perhaps Bob Dylan was right: “They say everything can be replaced.” His next line too is worthy of adaptation in our three-point era: “They say every distance is not near.”
So who would the ultimate replacements be [6]? An entire race of Greek freaks with ultra-durable bodies that are mass produced by Amazon? A tribe of Patrick Beverlys and Reggie Jacksons, to replace the recently departed K.C. Jones and his ilk of indestructible would-be NFL corner backs?
Just as I was thinking about this question–as Atlanta had rallied into a 62-52 lead [7]–the seemingly indestructible Antetokounmpo’s leg buckled as he descended, after an attempted block.
An immediate 15-2 spurt then lead ballooned the lead with Giannis gone, and the Hawks won handily (118-100) to tie the series.
But Milwaukee, even without Giannis, overwhelmed the Young-less Hawks in Game Five, mainly by exploiting their great size advantage, as Brook Lopez dominated with 33 points. At the point, Jrue Holiday finally played like the all-star he’s become. In Game Six, Young returned, but Giannis did not. Yet Milwaukee dominated, with Khris Middleton, who had scored twenty in the last quarter of Game Four, having another great game, with a twenty-three point third quarter. It was enlightening to see just how good Milwaukee’s other players (Lopez, Jrue Holiday, Middleton, Bobby Portis, P.J. Tucker) are: their talents shone more brightly when they were not deferring to Giannis, often standing around while he cavorts and jukes.
4. Out West
The Western Conference Final opened just as the second round Hawks-Sixers series was having its seventh game. Facing the Clippers, the Suns were without their great leader Chris Paul (who would miss two games because of the league’s COVID protocol), but Devin Booker’s brilliant 40-13-11 game pulled them through Game One. Under Booker’s direction, the Suns compiled 31 assists, and made an 18-0 third quarter run that completely changed the game.
In Game Two, the Suns weathered an off-night for Booker in squeaking out a 104-103 win on Deandre Ayton’s sensational dunk of an in-bounds pass with just 0.7 seconds remaining on the clock, in a game that had already twice seemed heroically won in the last eight seconds; first on a Booker basket, then on Paul George’s counter.
But Booker too would soon suffer injury, of a unique kind, as Patrick Beverly (arguably intentionally) broke his nose in three places. Beverly had quite a series! In Game Five, he followed up with a flagrant against Chris Paul. The announcers were divided as to whether it should have been called a flagrant foul, but Beverly showed his true colors at the end of Game Six, getting himself ejected for pushing the triumphant Chris Paul from behind, thereby casting doubt on Jeff Van Gundy’s dictum that if Beverly had “crossed that line,” he wouldn’t be in the league. Perhaps after this series, he shouldn’t be! But he will, and he’ll continue to be an incredible force, since he has explosive speed and ever-improving skills.
The Clippers, down 3-1, were still without Leonard, and had to play Game Five with their 24 year old 7’ Croatian year old starting center Ivica Zubac, out with a sprained MCL; but they had a formidable replacement player: the oft-rehabilitated DeMarcus Cousins, a much traveled veteran making the rounds among West Coast teams, punctuated by a brief stint in New Orleans. His contribution helped the Clippers get to Game Six, but Chris Paul would not let it go to seven: CP3’s breathtaking 41 point zero turnover masterpiece in Game Six was on the heels of his 35 point game in the closeout game of the previous round (their sweep of Denver). In support, Booker, though not scoring big as he had only in Game One, was Booker once again.
5. The Finals: Who is Left Standing?
Even though some might pronounce the Finals tainted because of all the fallen stars that were cleared from the paths of both surviving teams, they featured two proven yet humble high character small market teams, with exemplary coaches and personnel, and minimal current injuries.
Giannis was pronounced ready to play just a week after his injury. He seemed iffy at first, but his true greatness rapidly emerged. His limbs seem to bend infinitely, like giant bamboo stalks. If that fall in Game Four of the Philly series didn’t snap one, probably nothing could [8], except maybe a return to an 81 game schedule!
“Who would remain standing at the end?” is–more and more every day–a question with a double entendre. But this was, from beginning to end, a “real basketball series,” featuring two great stars (Paul and Giannis) enjoying overdue first opportunities: it was CP3’s first championship series in his sixteenth year; for Giannis, it was his first Finals, after twice underperforming during the playoffs his consecutive MVP seasons.
As it turned out, the series was in effect a hand-off from Paul to Antetokounmpo. In Game One, Paul bookended his 41 point closeout masterpiece versus Los Angeles with an equally brilliant 32 point (on 12-19 shooting)/9 assist gem. Booker then stepped up to pull the Suns through Game Two, despite Giannis’s first of two consecutive Shaq-reminiscent forty point games, in which he also collected of 25 rebounds, quite incredibly after his injury in Game Four against Philadelphia, breathing life into the flailing Bucks, and sending the series into a pivotal Game Four.
“Pivotal” because a Milwaukee loss would mean that the Bucks would need to win three straight, two in Phoenix. A 3-1 deficit had only been surmounted once, by Lebron James’s 2016 Cleveland team, against the pre-Durant version of the Warriors, and even that would not have happened, had Draymond Green not gotten himself suspended for what might have been a concluding fifth game. The thought of making up a 3-1 deficit against the shining brilliance of Chris Paul would have been too daunting.
But something had apparently changed for Paul, who had seemed on an inexorable path to his first championship. During his three biggest scoring nights in the postseason (his 37-point closeout against the Nuggets, his 41-point closeout of the Clippers, and his 32-point opener in the Finals), Paul had turned the ball over a total of only four times; he had zero turnovers in Game 6 of the West Finals. In his six first round games against the Lakers, Paul committed only nine.
But then, suddenly and mysteriously, his dominance seemed to end, with much credit due to Jrue Holiday’s swarming defense. Paul had fifteen turnovers in the next three games, exceeding his combined total of thirteen for his eight games in Rounds Two and Three! Largely due to Holiday’s strength, speed, and persistence, Paul could no longer break down the defense after a screen, and was forced into making last-second desperation passes, often picked off by defenders waiting in the lane, or fumbled by teammates expecting a bail out pass.
For his part, Booker–perhaps due to his backcourt partner’s troubles–became erratic and inconsistent, his great talent as a shot-maker notwithstanding. He was held to ten in Game Three. In the next three games, all losses, he was a prolific scorer, but less reliable in clutch situations. In Game Four, although he shot 16-24 on his way to 42 points, he missed a critical shot toward the end, just before which he had been inexplicably spared a call on what would have been sixth personal foul. Milwaukee’s 109-103, victory was finally assured on an otherworldly (i.e. Chamberlain-like) block of a Deandre Ayton dunk attempt: Giannis was guarding the eventual passer (Booker), who penetrated and then lofted the lob, but Giannis–somehow–managed to recover and block Ayton’s near-certain dunk. Giannis had not only covered an enormous space fast, he’d had enough strength left to repel Ayton (who generally had to guard Antetokounmpo, and was rendered ineffective for most of the series).
It had thus become a best of three series (the three earlier games had all been decided by double digit margins, two by 18 or more), which seemed exactly right.
6. Game Five
In Game Five, Phoenix’s 37-21 first quarter made it look like the series was continuing according to form, with no service breaks, but the Bucks’ 43-24 second quarter gave them a three point lead at halftime (64-61), a margin that stood at game’s end: 122-119, though Milwaukee’s lead reached eleven points on two occasions. Holiday’s key steal against Booker in the last minute led to a quick lob for a Giannis dunk to seal matters, as their transcendent star finished with thirty two points (on 14-23 shooting), with Middleton and Holiday chiming in with twenty-nine and twenty-seven. Paul had just a single turnover, and scored twenty-one, with Booker getting forty, in his second straight forty point game in a losing effort.
7. Game Six
Needing to break serve back, Phoenix overcame a ragged start (down 29-16 at the quarter), to lead 47-42 at halftime, echoing Game 5 in reverse.
The Bucks rode Giannis to take a 58-55 lead. Suddenly we had a barn burner, with a 35-30 quarter in which Antetokounmpo had twenty points (making 12-13 free throws!) and saddled Ayton with his fourth foul.
Booker suddenly turned timid, making terrible decisions, missing critical shots, leaving it to Paul to carry the offense, while Giannis continued to punish, relentlessly. The lead vacillated between four and six points. The Bucks’ supporting cast was solid all through the fourth, and their star, incredibly (a word one needs to use frequently with him), kept making free throws, going 17-18 before missing his last one, by which time he had fifty points!
Chris Paul’s Finals numbers of 21.8 ppg with 8.2 assists (averaging only 2.2 turnovers in the Finals, despite his three-game stretch of fifteen) amply acquitted him, but there was no getting around the fact that needing only two more wins for his coveted first title, his team got none.
8. Milwaukee: At Last
Whereas: Milwaukee finally had a true hometown hero, home grown from the time he arrived at age eighteen from Greece, where he was raised by impoverished Nigerian immigrant parents. The city that saw its Hawks depart in 1955 after Bob Pettit’s rookie year, and could milk only one title (in 1970-71–the year the Hawks acquired Oscar Robertson [9]) from Jabbar’s six year tenure (1969-1975), despite his three MVP awards, had a championship. The team, whose star is under contract for four more years and whose still-young nucleus (Holiday, Middleton, Lopez, and assorted role players), will remain intact. One more time for Bobby Portis…BOBBY!!!!
In the pantheon of Milwaukee stars (Pettit, Jabbar, Robertson), Giannis takes it a step further: drafted by the Bucks, staying with them as his stardom took off (waiting for a Jrue Holiday), winning consecutive MVPs, enduring two playoff disappointments after great regular seasons, overcoming a hyperextended knee, joining the exclusive Fifty Point Finals Club [10].
His breathtaking dominance was reflected in his statistics. Kind of special, huh? Even freaky. But enough of that awful nickname. Seemingly indestructible, equally incredible, Antetokounmpo can do everything but fill Kevin Durant’s shoes!
The league has flirted with assessing and addressing the causes for the ever-increasing frequency and severity of injuries, but, in the end, players remain commodities to be consumed, enjoyed, and eventually discarded. Their union has not come down forcefully for a shortened season, which would help, but the economics are too great a hurdle. Try to leap over it if you dare, but you could easily get hurt.
NOTES
1 Anderson, Sam, “The Moody Monkish Genius of Kevin Durant.” NYT June 6, 2021
2 Simmons took only three second half shots in the seven game series against Atlanta! He made them all.
3 Tres young in Trae’s case
4 Brownian motion, or pedesis (from Ancient Greek: πήδησις /pɛ̌ːdɛːsis/ “leaping”), is the random motion of particles suspended in a medium (a liquid or a gas). This explanation of Brownian motion served as convincing evidence that atoms and molecules exist and was further verified experimentally by Jean Perrin in 1908.
5 Credit to David Liss here, my knowledgeable and enlightening son, who corrects an old guy’s misconceptions about today’s game.
6 Already, college ball is on the verge of being replaced, as professional leagues spring up to feed the NBA the steady stream of players that they’ve routed through the college system with their imposition, in 2011, of an age floor of nineteen in order to enter the league. (Lest they suffer the terrible fate of players under nineteen like Moses Malone, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, and Kevin Garnett. Poor fools. See how much these youngbloods need protection?) On the high school level, there are already the equivalents of farm teams in baseball–the analogy also extending to the NBA’s relationship with their “G League.”
7 Inducing in me a sudden state of glee, as I regressed to my adolescent fan frame of mind, when I fervently rooted for the St. Louis Hawks, with Bob Pettit as my hero. Pettit and Shaq share an LSU background, and are memorialized together with statues outside the LSU fieldhouse. Me and Shaq! Fellow travelers, flapping our giant wings to express allegiance to the Hawks.
8 Throughout Wilt Chamberlain’s long prime, we used to joke, with all due incredulity, about what he might look like when he was old, the trademark rubber bands he wore around his wrists fraying with the passage of time.
9 Oscar stayed until the year before Kareem departed for Los Angeles, slipping into retirement because of a contract dispute. Then Jabbar, seeking a warmer climate and a more cosmopolitan milieu, insisted on being traded to the Lakers or the Knicks
10 Bob Pettit’s 50 point closeout Game Six in 1958 made him the first player to get there. The 50 point club now includes (along with Pettit, Baylor, West, Rick Barry, Michael, LeBron) Giannis, who averaged 35/15/5 on 62% shooting for the series.