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You might be smart enough to pick the Celtics and Mavericks winners in their seventh games on Sunday, eliminating two NBA Finalists from last year. But odds are, you wouldn’t guess those matches would be decided by a total of 61 points.
With two of our favorite pre-season heroes taking down massive blasts, there is bound to be some narrative correction. Here are the legacies that should be affected the most in this game 7.
3. Luka Doncic is enough
The Dallas Mavericks may not win the title but it’s clear after they destroyed the Phoenix Suns that they can. The FiveThirtyEight drop model gives them a 30 percent chance at the moment, ahead of both the Heat Warriors. This list, with Jalen Bronson and Spencer Dinwiddy in second and third best players, is good enough to win the title because Luka Doncic is good enough to lead them there.
It feels lazy and silly to draw comparisons between Doncic and LeBron James at the moment. But the former is averaging 31.5 points, 10.5 rebounds, 6.6 assists and 1.9 steals per game over an actual shooting average of 58.7 with an over-use rate of 40. The Mavericks are 7-3 in their post-season games played against the team that had the best record in the league This season and the team that had the best record in the league last season.
It feels a lot like 2006-07 when LeBron James scored 25.1 points, 8.1 rebounds and 8.0 assists per game and took the Cavaliers to the Finals with Larry Hughes and Drew Godin as his best teammates. LeBron has managed to sweep through those finals but Doncic looks more experienced and more polished at this point in his career, more prepared for this moment.
This might end up with someone else winning everything. But if that was the case, it wouldn’t be because Doncic wasn’t good enough.
To be clear, Giannis will retire as an all-time great member. Even if he never wins another title, the accolades already accruing with a few more years of ridiculous productivity for the regular season will put him in a shambles. But his legacy also contains a few not-so-rare elements – back-to-back best players, and he won Player of the Year and Best Defensive Player in the same season. Leading the Bucks to back-to-back titles, not just helping a junior team break through to a junior team but become a fledgling dynasty, would have been an undeniable narrative arc.
Giannis has more chances to win titles. If Khris Middleton had been available against the Celtics, things could have gone differently. If he and Holiday can stay healthy next year, the coins will be there. And Giannis is young enough that another iteration of this team could be a contender while still in full swing after the holidays and Middleton.
But a win this year could have put him in the debate about the greatest players of all time, or at least the winger version dominated by Michael Jordan and LeBron James.
1. Chris Paul’s playoff record takes another flaw
Chris Paul is easily considered one of the greatest point guards in NBA history, but his long history of playoff disappointment will always be with him. Even if he is able to lead the Suns to a championship this season, his playoff failures will be one of the first two things brought up in any play-off conversation about him. With this latest meltdown, those failures seem to have been cemented as a stand-alone clause in the first sentence of his autobiography – Chris Paul was one of the greatest players in history, but he couldn’t make it through in the playoffs.
Paul has now lost a playoff streak five times with his team leading 2-0, and no one else in NBA history has suffered more than three such losses. His teams are now 3-12 in all of their post-season playoffs (this only counts games he’s already played in).
I’ve always thought that Paul takes a lot of the blame for his team’s playoff failures but the fact that this continues to happen means he cannot be fully waived. In the biggest game of the season, he only had 10 points and 4 assists, though to be fair, the Mavericks pretty much won the game by the end of the first half.
If you look at the post-season stats broken down by game context, you can see that it was basically productive in all settings but the real shot percentage dropped as the stakes went up.
The reality of Chris Paul’s playoff failures is a mixture of bad luck, bad timing and some bad performances. But, unfortunately for him, most of the accounts of his career will not pay much attention to all this context.
Other NBA Stories:
It’s time to start preparing for the Heat-Celtics Eastern Conference Finals, which kicks off Tuesday night. Kevin O’Connor is getting Rolling preview train.
Nineteen years ago yesterday, the 2003 Los Angeles Lakers were about to cement their dynasty — until Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs mini-market put an end to it.
Deandre Ayton is said to be refusing to re-enter the Suns’ disastrous loss in Game 7 and rumors have been circulating about his future with the team. The Portland Trail Blazers And Indiana Pacers It seems already interested. Knowing what to do with Ayton isn’t the only one huge question The Suns will have to answer this out of season.
The future of the Chicago Bulls closely related to development Patrick Williams and Ayo Dosunmo.
The Dallas Mavericks dismantled the Phoenix Suns in games 6 and 7 and there is every reason to believe they would give the Golden State Warriors a team. Same type of challenge.
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