Have you seen this? Are you aware of this? The NBA playoffs are about to begin! This is real. I would not lie to you.
This means that the time has come for you, the casual basketball fan, the dunce that you are, the grime on the bottom of a true basketball-knower’s shoe, to begin scrambling around for information about this so-called “NBA postseason.” There are 16 damn teams in the field, and you need to know stuff about all of them, lest you be driven from the village for your foolishness!
We are here to help. Below you will find a “preview”—this is a proprietary term invented by Defector Media, LLC—of every first-round series. Nobody else does stuff like this, so don’t even bother looking for information elsewhere. All you need is right here, should you be brave enough to reach out and take it!
Orlando Magic (7) at Boston Celtics (2), by Tom Ley
When the hell does this crap start?
Sunday at 3:30 ET. Game 1 is on ABC.
What’s going on with these damn teams?
Zzzzzzzzzzz. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Honestly, there’s not much to say about the deals of these teams. The Celtics are pretty much who they were last season, when they rolled to an NBA title without ever really needing to try that hard. Although they ceded the one seed to the fun and feisty Cavaliers this season, the Celtics finished with the league’s second-best net rating and kept their hyper-efficient basketball machine humming. This team still does all the same things that brought it a title last season: They defend with size, tenacity, and switchability, they spread the floor to methodically manufacture dozens of high-quality three-point attempts, and they leverage roster depth to never give an opponent a second to breathe. It’s possible they will win every game in this series by no fewer than 20 points.
The Magic should be very proud to be here. No team in the league was cursed with worse injury luck than these poor fellas, as they only got a combined 141 games from Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner, and Jalen Suggs, which is what I guess you would call their “big three.” They still managed to go 41-41 and advance through the play-in, mostly by maintaining a rough, physical defense. The Magic finished the season with the second-best defensive rating in the league, which is thanks as much to their size and athleticism as to their team-wide commitment to being nasty motherfuckers. The Magic should feel good about what they accomplished this season, given the circumstances. Go ahead and pat yourselves on the back, boys!
Having said all that, you will not make it 10 minutes into Game 1 of this series without demanding that this puke team be banished from your television forever. The thing with these guys is that they just cannot play offense, and you’re gonna be fed up after the third time you see poor Paolo Banchero receive a pass at the top of the key with seven seconds left on the shot clock, desperately try to create some room for a shot, and then just clank one off the side of the rim.
Who are the guys of note?
The guy of all guys in this series is Boston’s Jayson Tatum. It’s weird, because this guy is, objectively speaking, one of the most talented and unique players in the NBA. He’s basically a 6-foot-9 point-forward who can be his team’s primary playmaker, get to the rim whenever he wants, shoot a high percentage from anywhere on the floor, and anchor one of the best defenses in the league. He’s what you might call a perfect basketball player, and yet …. whenever I see this guy I feel like I’ve just been served a hot mug of chamomile tea and I want to take a nap for 10 years. I can’t explain it, and I can’t even really defend it. It’s just how I feel, OK???
The Magic have two important guys: Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner. They are both really big and strong and probably very annoying to defend. They are also both still a couple skill points short of being fully realized NBA stars, which means they still have plenty of weaknesses. Expect the Celtics defense to exploit these weaknesses, for both of them to have some rough stretches in this series, and for unkind thoughts like, “The fuck is going on here? I thought these two clowns were supposed to be good? to surface in your mind. Don’t dwell on that! Wagner and Banchero are fun and cool, it’s just that the Celtics don’t have the patience for things like “fun” and “coolness.”
Will this series be good or bad?
Bad!
Who will win?
Celtics!
Golden State Warriors (7) at Houston Rockets (2), by Patrick Redford
When does it start?
This Saturday at 9:30 p.m. ET, or, if you’re using the Persian calendar, the last day of the first month of 1404. Game 1 is on TNT.
The deals of these teams, explain them now.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre; the unc cannot hear the nephew.
This series is a matchup between two teams that are quite philosophically and stylistically distinct from each other, a difference that can be illustrated in any number of ways, though the one I find most useful is the simplest. The Warriors best three players are 37, 35, and 35. The Rockets’ best three players are 22, 22, and 23.
There’s more. The Warriors have peerless top-end scoring talent, but their third-best scorer is either a Dutch rookie, the most boneheaded shooter in the league, or a bussin’-haircut sophomore with questionable decision-making skills. They had an obvious third option in Jonathan Kuminga, but Steve Kerr has benched him in favor of Gary Payton II, a guy whose superior brain and athleticism are matched only by his complete lack of anything you could fairly define as skill, because Kerr is too frustrated by Kuminga’s flaws to see the good player underneath them. The Rockets, meanwhile, have an extremely deep team, with 14 real players averaging more than 11 minutes per game. They have seven players who averaged double figures in scoring, which is the sort of thing that is fun when you are beating up on bad teams in the regular season but maybe does not matter in the playoffs. The Warriors’ guys have all starred in a million playoffs and won a million titles, while most of Houston’s stars have never even played in the postseason before.
The dynamic will not be quite the same as the Warriors–Grizzlies play-in game, which was a contest between skill and athleticism, though it will be quite similar, as Houston is slightly smaller and significantly more athletic than Memphis. They will try to outrun and outfight the Warriors, who are better at basketball. That does not mean they will win! Houston will probably play a bunch of double-big lineups, and they will crash the glass hard as the Warriors try to survive with either Draymond Green at center or by rolling the dice to see if Quinten Post can keep from getting mashed.
Things will get more interesting when Houston has the ball. Jalen Green and Alperen Sengun are both very good and cool and I like watching them, but they do not run a crisp or particularly smart offense. Jalen Green is super athletic, but he can’t help but do Kobe stuff, without the shooting ability to make that work; Sengun is a brilliant passer but not much of a shooter, and he makes bad decisions all the time. If the Rockets can score in the half-court, or can consistently get out in transition, they will be hard to beat, but I don’t know if they’ll be able to do so all that often.
Tell me of the men involved in this clash.
How does the Amen Thompson–Steph Curry matchup go? Of all the potential matchups in all the first-round series, this is easily the most exciting. The Thompson twins are the most athletic players in basketball, and Amen has jitterbug quickness, perfect balance, and an ideal wing-sized frame. He is a terror in passing lanes and in help, but he’s also great on the ball. The last time these two teams played, Thompson held Curry to three points, mostly because he was so good at denying him the ball.
You can only read into that game so much, and as Curry showed in the play-in, he is still the best shooter in the league. If he’s able to consistently get space, which will take a team-wide commitment to setting back screens and responding to Curry’s brilliant off-ball movement, he can kill the Rockets, but Thompson will be hard to shake. Thompson is also one of the more important players for the Rockets’ offense. No, he cannot shoot the basketball, but he can do everything else better than almost everyone else. The Warriors would like to be able to sag off of Thompson, but he’s so good at attacking the weak side and crashing that they can’t just fully leave him. This is where Jalen Green comes in. If he can navigate the base pick-and-roll coverage and create advantages, Thompson can feast.
Will it be good or bad?
Oh my God it will be so good. These two teams hate each other!
Who will win?
The Warriors will win, but doing so will kill them.
Milwaukee Bucks (5) at Indiana Pacers (4), by Ray Ratto
When does it start?
Saturday, 1:00 p.m. Eastern, on ESPN. The first of what could be 105 games if every series goes seven, which it never has, and it is already the winner of the Where’s Waldo? competition in that it will be the hardest series to find.
Explain to me the deals of these basketball squadrons.
Indiana finished fourth in the East by virtue of a 15-4 finishing run, which means the Pacers have not looked better than they do right now. They have largely been unnoticed by the snobby (and snotty) NBA elitist cognoscenti because of where they play and how modestly four-seeds are generally viewed, largely because no four-seed has ever won a title. Tyrese Haliburton was the ball-thinker’s favorite player a year ago and some people still think he is the sneaky force behind a young team whose oldest impact player, Pascal Siakam, is the perfect Pacer in about six different ways.
Unlike the Pacers, who shot middle fingers at the basketball world a year ago by reaching the conference final, the Bucks are reputationally still defined by their 2021 championship even though they have been quick outs in the three years since, including as first-round losers to Indiana last year.
When do we get off the “Bucks Matter, Pacers Spatter” fixation that dogs our cognitive processes and self-worth? Is the only real difference between these two teams the lack of a big-name superdupertrooper star on the one team?
Probably never, because we are lazy thinkers who are addicted to names rather than teams and aren’t as interested in the actual games as we claim to be. As a result, we are first-round losers to most other mammalian life forms, and are at best a play-in species looking toward a teardown and full rebuild made more difficult by know-nothing owners and blockheaded general managers. The Pacers are as young as any team in the league, and will up-tempo your ass with the best of them, though that is the counter-intuitive play in the postseason.
Milwaukee is obviously heavily leveraged via Giannis Antetokounmpo, especially since it looks like the Bucks will have to dance without Damian Lillard for a portion of the series. The wins over Detroit in Games 81 and 82 were wins seven and eight in an eight-game winning streak to close the regular season and make the Bucks at least positioned properly for their own wonky self-esteem. The Bucks are more dynamic offensively, but then you have to ask why they needed to win their last eight just to be the five-seed. Well, you don’t have to ask, but I will.
Will it be good or bad?
Depends on the metric you use. We tend to use the Can You Find It Easily Ratio, and this one is the worst by far: ESPN for Game 1 at lunchtime Saturday, followed by NBA TV, ESPN U/NBA TV, and then TNT. But if you prefer the Secondary Market Economy/Cheapest Available Ticket measuring stick, this has the lowest aggregate figure at $267 for the seven-game series. You can probably get a card table at mid-court for Game 6.
Who will win?
Indiana is the tougher out, and Milwaukee has Giannis. It’s going the route, and Game 7 will be on BYU TV.
Detroit Pistons (6) at New York Knicks (3), by David Roth
When may I observe this basketball contest?
Saturday, April 19, 6:00 p.m. Eastern, on ESPN.
What’s up with these fellas?
The Knicks are really good, and reliably more fun to watch than I expect. They are a Tom Thibodeau team in ways that are good and bad and helpful and less helpful, but they play extremely hard and really were one of the best teams in the league on both ends of the floor for much of the season. This was despite Jalen Brunson, the team’s emotional leader and offensive fulcrum, missing a month with a gnarly ankle sprain.
Due to that injury and the natural attrition that afflicts all Thibodeau teams for reasons that every living human besides Tom Thibodeau understands, they faded some down the stretch, and won just one more game than last season despite pushing their chips in during the offseason on deals that brought in Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns. They’re better than last year’s model, though, and the two-man game with Brunson and Towns is one of the league’s most reliable. When it’s all working they’re exhausting in the ways that really good basketball teams tend to be, but they are also literally physically exhausted in a way that Thibs teams always are at this time of year. Complicated guy! Or maybe just a guy who can’t or won’t adjust his personal preferences to reflect the realities of the NBA season and the limits of the human body vis-a-vis how many screens it can run around over the course of that season!
The Pistons are also really good, but much more interesting. They won 14 games last year and 44 games this year, and the roster isn’t really that different. New coach J.B. Bickerstaff deserves a lot of credit for swapping out whatever it was that Monty Williams was doing—scowling and shaking his head in disappointment, mostly—for a fast-paced, state-of-the-art offense and an agreeably psychotic defensive approach. The Pistons have been one of the better teams in the league since December in ways that feel real, and went 3-1 against the Knicks. The energy is that of one of those end-of-the-rebuild teams with a roster full of talented young players, some affordable but effective veterans, a wild surplus of shared self-belief, and a spot at the top they’re waiting to devote to a superstar free agent TBD. That is one of my favorite types of NBA teams, if only because of how illusory those good vibes tend to be. The crucial difference between those types of teams and the Pistons, though, is that they already have that superstar in hand.
That’s Cade Cunningham, whom you might remember as the first pick of the draft in 2021. You also might not! It’s been a rough few years in a global sense; maybe you fell behind on monitoring the Detroit Pistons and Cade Cunningham. The Pistons were pretty well stuck in a Suck Vortex that made Cunningham’s (always impressive) stats hard to parse, but this year-long sample of meaningful basketball games played alongside authentic NBA players and even a few minutes of your more subjective watching-that-ball-game stuff suggests that he is in fact Good As Hell. Instead of importing a superstar who curdles the good vibes, the Pistons are growing symbiotically around one of their own.
The guys! Who are they?
Here is where Thibs really adds some value: To ascertain who the Knicks’ Guys are, simply consult the statistics for Minutes Per Game and sort from high to low. All five of the Knicks’ starters played at least 35 minutes per game this year, and Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges, and OG Anunoby ranked second, fourth, and sixth respectively in the league. (Because Bridges and Hart played in 82 and 77 games, respectively, they led the league in raw minutes by a lot. Bridges played 3,036 and Hart 2,897; only one other NBA player, Anthony Edwards, cracked above 2,800.) This seems like a lot of Guys for a team to have, especially when you consider that the Knicks’ actual caps-bold-and-italic GUYS are Jalen Brunson (35.4 mpg) and Karl-Anthony Towns (35.0 mpg), but a Thibs team will have A Lot Of Guys and then a bunch of people who might as well be nude under their warm-ups.
Brunson missed a month but looks like himself; that injury, and only that injury, means that he is probably the freshest that any Thibs-coached star has been at this point in the season. Hart, Bridges, and Anunoby all do the absolute most on both ends of the floor. They just absolutely play their asses off in an admirable way, and I think someone who had never really watched basketball and did not really understand what was going on would watch all five of these guys playing together and think, Wow, these guys really are doing their utmost. Why won’t that screaming man in the moisture-wicking clothes ever let them sit down and drink some water? Buddy…
The Pistons also have a notable number of Guys, especially for a team that won 14 games last year and augmented that roster with veteran role players who are generally available on the waiver wire in eight-team fantasy leagues. Some of those veteran role players have had really good seasons, but it would demean us both for me to write at length about Malik Beasley and Tobias Harris, and you’ll notice Jalen Duren and Ausar Thompson and Isaiah Stewart mostly on defense, or because they have gotten into some kind of altercation. Cunningham is the main Guy, and really was one of the better players in the NBA for most of the 2024–25 season. He’ll make an All-NBA team and deserve it, and he also absolutely whomped the Knicks in four games against them this year. There were extenuating circumstances in most of those, but when a player averages 30.8 points and 8.3 assists per game against a team while shooting above 50 percent both from the field and from distance there is only so much explaining away warranted. Cade Cunningham is that particular guy, and if the Pistons win this series it will be because he does some stuff to capitalize the T, P, and G in that statement.
Good? Bad?
In my opinion it will be extremely good—pretty easily the most interesting first-round series in the Eastern Conference, and quite possibly the only one.
Winner?
Ah, this is why it is good. I think the Knicks will win, but despite them having most of the best players this feels pretty close to a toss-up; the Pistons not having won a postseason series in 17 years is not really germane, but feels like something worth mentioning. That this feels like such a close match-up is neat, provided you don’t have an emotional investment in either team. It’s probably harrowing if you do, but that’s not really my problem.
Damphis Mavzlies (8) at Oklahoma City Thunder (1), by Ray Ratto
When can the game be viewed?
Sunday, 1:00 p.m. on ABC. You can probably check in at halftime to see if it’s worth the bother just for Nico Harrison being booed for enriching the Lakers at the Thunder’s expense.
I desire to know more about what is going on with these squadrons.
Oklahoma City plays the winner of tonight’s Memphis–Dallas game, and even if you think the Grizzlies will look as they did Tuesday in San Francisco, they are punching uphill with a unidextrous (one-legged) Ja Morant. OKC is everything a team should be by acclimation, starting with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and plowing through Jalen Williams, Lu Dort, Isaiah Hartenstein, Chet Holmgren (the first NBA Chet in the last 50 years) and a seeming army of support staff that kicked all the available ass on the schedule, be it talented or Jazz. The Grizz have been Jackson Pollock’s idea of a team photo since February, and if Morant can’t perform up to standards on his wonky ankle, Memphis will either lose outright or ask if it can pick new teams for the upcoming series. If it’s Dallas, well, any game without Mavs owner Patrick Dumont at court side is a gift from the galactic pixies.
Will it be good or bad?
This is the NBA playoffs, and even if you believe anything can happen, it happens so infrequently that as a mathematical construct it can be said that “anything” never happens. Eighth seeds are 6-74 in the 16-team format, which tells you everything you need to know about this series, and there has never been a nine-seed. Any minute of exertion the Thunder need to expend past minute 192 is an affront to the dignity of all mankind.
WHO WILL WIN?
What are you, high? Reading not your gig? This isn’t a series, it’s a poorly disguised bye week.
Miatlanti Heawks (8) at Cleveland Cavaliers (1), by Luis Paez-Pumar
When does this stuff commence?
The first game in this series is Sunday night at 7:00 p.m. ET on TNT. The intra-squad Miatlanti Heawks scrimmage is Friday night, also at 7:00 p.m. ET, and also on TNT.
Tell to me the deal of these teams.
After last season’s five-game loss to the eventual champion Celtics in the second round, the Cleveland Cavaliers put it all together this regular season, romping through the Eastern Conference to a 64-18 record and the No. 1 seed. While the Cavs recorded a top-10 defense by net rating, the offense is the show here: Cleveland’s 121 offensive rating was the best in the league, a product of efficient scoring leadership from Donovan Mitchell—who might end up on the All-NBA first team—as well as sidekicks Darius Garland, Evan Mobley, and mid-season trade pickup De’Andre Hunter. If the Cavs stick to their offensive game plan, the looks will come for everyone, and they proved over 82 games that no one can truly stop that. Even if the threes and open drives to the basket are harder to come by, Cleveland’s guards can score from the mid-range. Mitchell in particular has had some big playoff games in his career, so look for the Cavs to lean on him.
On defense, it all stems from Mobley, who became one of the best big-men defenders in the league this season. He might not win Defensive Player of the Year, but it wouldn’t be shocking if he did; he’s gotten consideration for the award before, finishing third in 2022–2023. He’s rangy, finished sixth in the league in blocks, and anchors a defense that jumped four net-rating points from last season; thanks to improvements by the team around him, his résumé looks even better this year, even if his counting stats are around his career averages.
On the other side of this matchup are the Miatlanti Heawks. Despite a supercharged roster, the Heawks struggled under the pressure of playing 164 games, falling to 77-87 for the season. In its first of two play-in games, Miatlanti lost to the Orlando Magic, but the team achieved some form of redemption by steamrolling the Chicago Bulls on Wednesday night. Head coach Querik Snoelstrayder rode the hot hand of Tyler Herro to the tune of 38 points in the latter game, while his other star guard, Trae Young, got kicked out of the former for having a ref-taunting meltdown.
Young will be on the court for Game 1 of this series, though, and he and Herro form one of the most offensively inclined backcourts in the league. Elsewhere, the Heawks feature two Defensive Player of the Year–caliber stalwarts in Dyson Daniels and Bam Adebayo, and plenty of depth in scoring. Even with Daniels and Adebayo, though, defense is a big deficiency for this ragtag group, especially at the point of attack. Keep an eye on the team’s two rookies, though, as both Kel’el Ware and Zaccharie Risacher, last summer’s first overall pick, have shown flashes of potential this season.
Is this series good or bad?
This series is bad. The Cavs are just too good, and the Heawks are so lopsided and over-stuffed that they feel like a joke, a meme team at best.
Who’s gonna win?
The double length of their season, as well as a lack of true star power, makes Miatlanti easy pickings for the Cavaliers, whose top-tier offense will make short work of the Young–Herro backcourt. There will be tougher tests for Cleveland, but this one is not it. Look for the Heawks to steal a game just based on that backcourt popping off, but the series should be over quick. Cavs in 5.
Los Angeles Clippers (5) at Denver Nuggets (4), by Tom Ley
When does this series start?
Saturday, I say! It starts on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. ET., on ESPN.
I must know more.
How much freakin’ time you got, pal? Just kidding, I’ll be brief.
The best way to describe this series is as a matchup between the league’s least- and most-impressive 50-win teams. The Clippers, the impressive ones, have been playing like a true championship contender since the all-star break. They went 19-6 in their last 25 games, and over that stretch they had the second-best net rating in the league, just behind the Oklahoma City Thunder. This is a team that spent most of the first half of the season just treading water while Kawhi Leonard was injured, but the bones for a great team were always there: The Clippers are well-coached, play smart defense, and have championship-level offensive talent. Once Leonard returned and reformed his deadly partnership with James Harden, the team took off.
The Nuggets, on the other hand, never felt like a 50-win team. This is not a pessimistic fan casting unnecessary gloom over an objectively impressive season. The owner himself was so fed up with how rancid the vibes had gotten and how poorly the team was performing that he fired head coach Michael Malone and general manager Calvin Booth with just three games left in the regular season. Those firings were the consequence of a years-long schism between Malone and Booth that infected the whole organization with a sense of paranoia and discontent. Nobody who played or worked for the Nuggets was having any fun this season.
An optimist might consider the fact that, despite all the turmoil surrounding them and the bad injury luck that kept their starting five apart for most of the season, the Nuggets nevertheless won 50 games, and call the season a success. A pessimist would point to the fact that the Nuggets had two, maybe three truly impressive wins against good teams this year, and also managed to go a combined 1-7 against the Wizards, Spurs, and Bulls. This team did not have the juice at any point over the last 82 games, and unless Malone’s firing provided a late-season juice transfusion, there’s not much reason to think things will suddenly flip in the playoffs.
Who are the men of import?
C’mon, you know these freakin’ guys. Don’t stand there and tell me that I need to fill you on these guys, some of the most known and identifiable guys in the whole dang NBA.
OK, fine: For the Clippers, you’ve got Harden and Leonard, who when healthy and motivated form the best one-two perimeter scoring punch in the NBA. Harden still carves people up with his step-backs, foul-baiting, and pick-and-roll orchestration; Leonard is currently shooting (this is a real stat, don’t look it up) 100 percent from the field when isolated against a defender in the mid-range.
For the Nugs, you’ve got the big man himself, the bat-like wonder, Nikola Jokic running the show. Jokic will probably not win the MVP award this year, but that doesn’t make what he’s accomplished over the 70 games he played in any less impressive. This guy put up a 29-12-10 for the season, shot 41-percent from three-point range, and became the first player ever to finish in the top three of points, rebounds, assists, and steals per game. He’s really good, folks!
As important as the three aforementioned fellas are, it is likely that this series will be decided by players a little further out on the margins. If the Clippers win, expect there to be a lot of praise heaped on the shoulders of Ivica Zubac, who is maybe the best big man that nobody ever thinks or talks about; he is both a perfect roll man for Harden and a stout defender against Jokic. If the Nuggets win, it will be because Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon are both feeling spry and strong. The Nuggets aren’t a good playoff team unless Murray is locked in and capable of scoring 35 on a nightly basis, and Gordon is one of the few players in the league who can be called a decent defensive matchup for Leonard, due to his size and strength.
Will this series be good or bad?
It should be good! Three of the best players in the league, plus several more competent guys will be mixing it up in this one, and so it has the potential to be the most entertaining matchup of the first round.
Winner? Speak quickly!
The Clippers will be most people’s pick, which means I just have one thing to say to the Denver Nuggets:
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Minnesota Timberwolves (6) at Los Angeles Lakers (3), by Patrick Redford
Whence?
Saturday (8:30 p.m. ET, on ABC), or the 2,460,784.5th day of the Julian calendar.
The deals of the teams: Tell me.
In the third seed, we have the Lakers, a bunch of compromised, middling role players propelled by two all-time unstoppable geniuses. They are the picture of imbalance. They will play one guy taller than 6-foot-8, and he sucks.
In the six seed, we have the Wolves, who are not quite the Lakers’ opposite, though they are remarkably more balanced. Now that the guys for whom they foolishly traded away Karl-Anthony Towns are healthy, you can see the shape of a very good playoff roster. Their entire top eight is battle-tested, they are bigger and meaner than the Lakers at every position, and they just made the conference finals a year ago with a different version of this core. The problem is, they are prone to inexplicable bouts of stupidity. Watch this team beat the crud out of the Bucks for 36 minutes and you will think Wow, these guys can win the title. Watch them score three points in 10 minutes and you will think, Do they know what a zone defense is?
Both are flawed, is my point, in really interesting ways. This series does not perfectly adhere to the young hotshot depth monsters vs. aging millennial traditionalists dynamic that I laid out earlier this week, though it does come close. The Lakers will pray they are able to stay alive on the glass—Luka Doncic and LeBron James having to commit to rebounding will be critical, and fascinating to watch– while the Wolves will have to remain as level-headed and normal as possible—difficult with a roster stocked almost exclusively with weird guys.
Share information about the guys, please.
If Anthony Edwards decides that he alone has to go win the series, the Wolves might be doomed. Edwards is incredible, and he reinvented himself as a high-volume, high-difficulty, high-efficiency three-point shooter this season, making a strong first-team all-NBA case in the process. The Wolves really blew it against the Doncic Mavericks last season in part by letting Luka off the hook and failing to attack him. They need to put Doncic through a million screens so he has to deal with Edwards, who is way too quick for him. Minnesota’s offense is at its best when Edwards is surrounded by Julius Randle on the second side with shooters on the perimeter, and while they should be able to run their stuff against a totally fraudulent Lakers defense, Ant could decide to go hero mode, which would be fun to watch but ultimately kind of dumb.
You know who the Lakers guys’ are. The coolest thing about the Luka–LeBron Lakers is that for the first time in his career, LeBron is getting the ball in advantageous situations, after the defense has compromised itself to manage the threat of someone else. He’s had good teammates before, obviously, but the Lakers smartly have Luka operate with the rock more often than LeBron, which allows the latter to cut, spot up, and receive passes with a head of steam and a runway. It’s really fun to watch and makes me think that LeBron can keep running second-side stuff until he’s 60.
Will it be good or bad?
It will be so good.
Who will win?
I have no idea. Let’s say Wolves.
