The two best basketball months of the year start this weekend. It’s the time for the truth. The NBA playoffs kick off this Saturday after a regular season that has stuck to the script in the East and defied the established order in the West. The 82 days have left a good handful of milestones for history that are transferred to the playoff. In presences: four teams from California have gone to the postseason, the never seen. And absent: Several of the best scorers, including Luka Dončić (Dallas) and Damian Lillard (Portland), with more than 32 points per game, have been left out, something for which there is also very little precedent.
The one that is in the playoff, and in fact he opens them this Saturday against the Brooklyn Nets, is the best scorer of the season, the center of the Philadelphia 76ers Joel Embiid. The player born in Yaoundé (Cameroon), who He told a few years ago that he learned to shoot a basket with a Youtube tutorial, He has added 33.1 points per game and repeats for the second season as top scorer, something that a center has not achieved since Bob McAdoo, almost 50 years ago.
Embiid is participating in another milestone in the company of his teammate James Harden, leader in assists with 10.7 per game. The leaders of both categories have not shared a team for more than 40 years, but even that deadly duo does not guarantee those from Pennsylvania will go very far in the playoffs. They are clear favorites against some Nets that have left Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving on the road, but they would meet the Celtics in a hypothetical conference semifinal.
The Celtics have been second to the East in the regular season. The bumpy change of coach before the start of the season has barely taken its toll on Boston, with Jayson Tatum eager for prominence (30.1 points per game) well accompanied by Jaylen Brown (26.1). The Celtics haven’t had two players top 25 points per game in the same season since Larry Bird and Kevin McHale in 1986-87 and that’s big words.
And they have surpassed that mark of 25 points in 33 games together, something that has not happened in the entire NBA since the Shaquille O’Neal-Kobe Bryant duo of 2000-2001, according to ESPN statistics. The Celtics, runners-up last year after losing in the final against the Golden State Warriors, are second in the betting to win the NBA. They are far superior to the Atlanta Hawks and would then face the 76ers, predictably.
On the other side of the table are the favorites for the title: the leaders of the Eastern Conference and the team with the best balance in the entire league, with 58 wins and 24 losses, the Milwaukee Bucks of the Greek Giannis Antetokounmpo, champions in 2021 and that this year they seem even fitter. Anteto has scored 31.1 points and grabbed 11.8 rebounds per game, fifth and third in the NBA in those rankings. In addition, he has given 5.7 assists per game and his success rate has been 55.3%. That set of statistics (more than 30 points, 10 rebounds and 5 assists with more than 50% accuracy) Only Wilt Chamberlain had done it in all of NBA history. The Greek, then, is Embiid’s rival for best player of the season, a distinction he won in 2019 and 2020.
Also, Antetokounmpo is not alone. The team has achieved the highest winning percentage in its history thanks also to the contribution of Khris Middleton (the team fell to the Celtics seven games without him in the conference final last year) and those of Jrue Holiday and Brook Lopez , who have completed their best year. They should have no problems in the first round or to dispatch the winner of the balanced elimination between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the New York Knicks. In Cleveland, Donovan Mitchell has given a great performance and has beaten LeBron James as a Cavaliers player who exceeds 40 points in more games (12) during the same season. On the Knicks, Julius Randle, Jalen Brunson and RJ Barrett will make it difficult for him.
the wild west
Everything seems headed in the East for a Bucks-Celtics final, the first against the second in the regular league, with some option for the 76ers, who finished third. Order and logic. On the other hand, in the West anything can happen. Curiously, nobody gives a penny for the top of the table in the regular season. Both the Denver Nuggets, as well as the Memphis Grizzlies and the Sacramento Kings remain in the bets behind not only the Eastern teams, but also the Phoenix Suns and the Golden State Warriors, who had the worst balance in the regular season.
The Nuggets have Nikola Jokic as their great endorsement, the best player of the past two seasons and a candidate, along with Embiid and Antetokounmpo, to be chosen this year. No one has done it three years in a row since Larry Bird. Not even Michael Jordan. This year he has posted 24.5 points, 11.8 rebounds and 9.8 assists per game, on the verge of a full-season triple-double, something only two players in NBA history have achieved. Those of Denver, in addition, have recovered Jamal Murray, who spent last season in white.
They should get through the first round with no problems, but then they could find themselves against the Phoenix Suns (if they knock out a Clippers where Kawhi Leonard comes back on his feet) in the conference semifinal. And although the Suns have been fourth in the regular season, they are the best since Kevin Durant joined the team. They have played eight games with him and won all eight. It can be one of the most beautiful playoffs.
The other part of the west infield is very Californian and also very open. The Memphis Grizzlies, dependent on the controversial Ja Morant, were second in the regular season, but they face a Lakers who have closed the season with an eight-win, two-loss streak. Those from Los Angeles arrive at the playoff with LeBron James crowned, with Anthony Davis in top form and with the signing in the last window of D’Angelo Russell. With all three on the court, their record is nine wins for one loss. the tie is up in the air.
The other crossing is that of the current champions, the Golden State Warriors, with their closest neighbors in the league, the Sacramento Kings, the state capital, and Domantas Sabonis, the Lithuanian center. The Kings haven’t qualified for the playoffs since 2006 and although they have a better record this season, the Warriors, who qualified for the playoff in the last day, they are favorites in this first round. The question is how far they will be able to go after. Injuries aside, they’ve had a very strange season. Never have champions had such a bad balance away from home (11 wins and 30 losses), which they have compensated with a good performance in San Francisco (33-8). Without being able to count on home field advantage in the playoffs after finishing sixth in the regular season, their road will not be easy, but they cannot be ruled out.
The Warriors have been the dominators of the NBA in the last decade. Of the last eight finals they have played six and won four. The trio of Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson is one of the most successful in the history of playoff. The question is whether they are fit for a last Dance.
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