ITS THE OFFS BABY THE 2023 NBA PLAYOFFS

they’re putting a shit ton of shooting on the floor and are still able to play good defense

also there’s an element of basically… what kawhi has tried to do in LA — pace his way thru the regular season and then become one of the elite 16 game players — is what jimmy is currently doing. when he can give max effort on both ends for a full game every game they look a lot better.

Yah and thibs usually gets the most out of his players in the reg season and they don’t have another gear they can lock into

spo is also playing the right cards today. the heat are putting bam on randle, showing brunson tons of help like he’s trae young & making the knicks role players do stuff

it’s striking to watch ayton and bam play back to back

wow heat tuned em up only caught a few mins int he 1st half

the knicks... do not belong in this round

pic.twitter.com/2qRgCDBVgE

— Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz (@LeBatardShow) May 6, 2023

the heat are exposing the knicks shooting. their guys can’t make enough threes

it seems like they should be able to but also its not like theyre stocked with snipers

deangelo russell heat check 4 mins into the game

eyes on the prize

???? pic.twitter.com/FX5Po0ruAs

— Daniel Starkand (@DStarkand) May 6, 2023

i love vanderbilt so much

curry should shoot instead of passing to jamychael green

Did the Dubs drop into a zone there?

This has gotten ugly.

rough scene on the warriors side of things

Warriors so frustrating

Referees on their high horse, boring quarter

warriors not serious

have been checking the score at various points and what the hell is going on in this game

Well if they can't come back at least they have the Wiggins dunk.

did someone replace Kerr's playbook with the Harlem Globetrotters one? why are they just chucking it all over like that

lol bron running halfway out of the building

LeGone

is there like Vaseline on the ball or something

lol at the teenage girls sitting next to bron and ad

yeah what is that

dubs saving their focus for an even numbered game when they know they won’t have to deal with a locked in ad

yeah I guess if you’re gonna play every other game do the odd ones so you play good in game 7

it’s smart really

Dubs in 8

man how do you get absolutely cooked by Year 20 Lebron

trading blowouts is a lame excuse for playoff hoops

agree, and was just saying this to my wife. these series are falling into an alternating intensity / alternating blowouts pattern that feels right on brand with a league where the players just seem to be less and less focused on playing basketball.

i think its just bad luck that they're coming out that way other than maybe the lakers/warriors series no idea whats going on there

i dont think thats fair, i think its less a function of players not caring and more of the variance that comes with the game being higher scoring and faster paced. if one team is on their game and shooting well and the other isnt, its just so easy for a game to get out of hand.

Warriors in particular seem prone to that kind of variance. I mean they just don't charge the basket. also they all play like total garbage every third game

celtics and nuggets seem like better teams who lost to a really strong individual performance each, no real swing in intensity there thats just normal playoff stuff sometimes the weaker team's guy goes off otherwise there would be a lot more sweeps

and the other two series, well you just cant expect much from low seed vs low seed can you

Warriors and lakers best players are old so being able to bring your A game every other day isn’t really feasible. And Dray got in foul trouble too. Warriors needed an outlier performance something like what d lo gave and didn’t get it.

look at that

The Lakers, Nuggets, Heat and Celtics are all up 2-1 in their respective playoff series.

The same teams were the final four teams in the bubble 👀 pic.twitter.com/IIiezECr0w

— NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) May 7, 2023

setting up the big reveal that we've been in the bubble this whole time the past few years

makes a lot of sense when you think about it

still some way to go on this but the heat & celtics in particular are poised to play in 3 of the last 4 ECF with the one off year being the post-bubble season where the “offseason” was barely two months long & those teams coincidentally put up no fight in the first round

agree, and was just saying this to my wife. these series are falling into an alternating intensity / alternating blowouts pattern that feels right on brand with a league where the players just seem to be less and less focused on playing basketball.

should also be noted that the focus on playing basketball is surely at an all time high as evidenced by maniacal year round training increasingly complex and intense style of play etc

if anything the nba is —too optimized—

yeah with the current pace and intensity of the game is it really that surprising that some guys can't put up their best performance in consecutive games when the games are even 2 days apart

for some reason i always remembered them getting an extra day off every time the series changed cities but i guess i was imagining it

i do think there are prob more blowouts now because as bise said of 3pt shooting variance and fast pace, but that also made lead one to the question what is a blowout, you see big leads but you also see big comebacks, a ten point lead used to be a big deal in the nba now its some sort of joke, you see one totally wiped out in 90 seconds in seemingly the majority of games now

fast pace shouldnt actually increase variance on its own should it? more possessions per game = lower variance. but the 3pt effect is huge