IT’S on to the second round – conference semifinals – of the 2018 NBA playoffs.
It features the top four seeds from the East and the top two seeds and a pair of lower-seeded first-round survivors from the West.
In the East, the No. 1 seed Toronto Raptors take on the No. 4 seed Cleveland Cavaliers and the injury-depleted No. 2 seed Boston Celtics go up against the No. 3 seed Philadelphia 76ers.
Out West, the pairings are the NBA playoffs’ top-seeded Houston Rockets against the No. 5 seed Utah Jazz and the second-seeded and reigning NBA titlist Golden State Warriors versus the No. 6 New Orleans Pelicans.
The Raptors, Celtics, Rockets and Warriors enjoy home-court advantage over their respective opponents.
Both Houston and Golden State have moved a game ahead of Utah and New Orleans, respectively, with victories in their series openers.
Behind top NBA Most Valuable Player candidate James Harden’s 41 points, the Rockets blasted the Ricky Rubio-less Utah Jazz, 110-96, at the Toyota Center despite Jazz rookie backcourter Donovan Mitchell’s 21 points (his seventh consecutive 20-point output to start a playoff career). Game Two, also to be held on Houston’s home floor, will be on Thursday (Manila time). Houston beat Utah, 4-0, during their head-to-head regular season duel.
Golden State hosts Game Two once more on Wednesday (MT) looking for a 2-0 lead following a 123-101 shellacking of New Orleans at the Oracle Arena in Game One behind 2017 NBA Finals MVP Kevin Durant’s 26 points and 13 rebounds and do-it-all Draymond Green’s triple-double (the fourth of his postseason career) with 16 points, 15 rebounds, 11 assists, three steals and two blocks.
The Pelicans became the last playoff team to fall out of the unbeaten ranks when they could not match the Warriors’ up-tempo game and stars Anthony Davis and Jrue Holiday, who had normed 33 and 27.8 points, respectively, in the club’s 4-0 sweep of the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round, struggled offensively. Davis got his 21 points and 10 boards but scored just 11 after the first quarter and finished with an anemic 9-for-20 from the field. Holiday was held to 4-for-14 floor shooting and wound up with just 11 markers.
More bad news for New Orleans, which dropped a 3-1 decision to Golden State during the regulars: The Warriors’ two-time NBA regular MVP Stephen Curry is likely to make his playoff debut in Game Two after missing 16 straight games (including the last 10 of the regulars) due to a left knee sprain he sustained in late March.
The East conference semifinal series get underway today with Boston hosting Philadelphia (Manila time) at the TD Garden.
Already without top stars Gordon Hayward and Kyrie Irving and backup German power forward Daniel Theis, the Celtics could be without second-year swingman Jaylen Brown, who suffered a right hamstring strain in the first half of the club’s Game Seven win over Milwaukee in the first round, in the series opener. Brown is averaging 17.9 points in the postseason, just a shade behind center Al Horford’s 18.1 ppg. During the regulars, Boston beat Philadelphia, 3-1, in their head-to-head series. The two teams also faced each other during the 2012 East conference semifinals – the last time Philly qualified for the playoffs and advance that far – with the Green emerging triumphant at home in Game Seven.
Still and all, I like the chances of a young and healthy 76ers team making it to East finals with six men in double-digit scores in the playoffs. Resurging shooting guard J.J. Redick, a summer free-agent acquisition out of the Los Angeles Clippers, leads the pack with his 20.0 ppg and (12-year) veteran leadership. Seven-foot Cameroonian center Joel Embiid’s norming 18.7 ppg, 10.3 rpg and 3 bpg after missing his team’s first two games due to an injury and 6-foot-10 point guard Ben Simmons, the leading Rookie of the Year contender out of Australia and Louisiana State University, is averaging close to a triple-double with 18.2 ppg, 10.6 rpg and 9 apg. Aside from Simmons, three other international Sixers are also hitting double digits – Italy’s Marco Belinelli (16.6 ppg), Croatia’s sophomore Dario Saric (16.6 ppg) and Turkey’s Ersan Ilyasova (10.8 ppg).
The other East semifinal matchup that features Toronto against Cleveland could go either way. The Raptors, who own home-court advantage with Games One (May 2 Manila time) and Two (May 4 MT) at the Air Canada Centre, have moved away from their isolation-heaving offense with high-scoring All-Star backcourt duo of DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry more refined with their shot selection. Their bench corps has stepped up in the postseason, too.
However, any time a team has a LeBron James on its side as Cleveland does, you got a chance to win from the get-go. The Cavs, who beat the Raptors, 2-1, in their regular-season series, got a Superman-like performance from the 33-year-old James during their 4-3 first-round victory over Indiana – 34.4 points, going .553 (83-for-150) from the field, including .353 (12-for-34) from three-point territory, and .818 (63-for-77) from the charity stripes, and averaging 10.1 rebounds, 7.7 assists, 1.43 steals and 1.0 block in 41.1 minutes per game.
But even a well-conditioned LeBron cannot get the job done without his supporting cast. And that can’t be more evident than in the first round when the combined winning margin of Cleveland’s four wins totaled only 14 points – three (Game 2), four (Game 4), three (Game 5) and four (Game 7) – and it was his supporting cast that gave the team a huge lift.
Six of the eight first-round NBA playoff matchups lived up to their billing with the higher-seeded teams emerging victorious. The twin off-chart results came in the West when New Orleans swept No. 3 seed Portland in four games and Utah posted a 4-2 decision over No. 5 seed Oklahoma City as Jazz rookie guard Donovan Mitchell averaged 28.5 points per game but lost Spanish playmaker Ricky Rubio to a strained left hamstring in the first quarter of the series-deciding Game Six.
Mitchell, a 6-foot-3 University of Louisville product, joined Milwaukee’s Lew Alcindor (now known by his Muslim name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) as the only first-year players to tally 20 or more points in each of their first six career playoff games over the last 50 years. His total of 171 points during the same stretch is also the third-most by a frosh in NBA history behind the Milwaukee Bucks’ Lew Alcindor, now known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, in 1970 (216) and the Philadelphia (now Golden State) Warriors’ Wilt Chamberlain in 1960 (199).
The other six first-round series were captured by the home team.
In the East, Toronto downed the eighth-seeded Washington Wizards, 4-2, having won Game Six on the road after the first five games of the series went to the home team. Boston improved its record to 20-4 in Game Sevens at home) in edging the seventh-seeded Milwaukee Bucks, 4-3, in a series where the road team was defeated each time. Philadelphia whipped the sixth-seeded Miami Heat, 4-1, after winning the last three games, including Games Three and Four on enemy soil. Cleveland whipped the surprising fifth-seeded Indiana Pacers in a maximum seven games.
In three of the four victories, the 6-foot-8 James, who remains perfect with a 13-0 record in the playoffs’ first-round series during his distinguished 15-year NBA tenure, chalked up 40 or more points – 46 in Game Two, 44 in Game Five and 45 in Game Seven. (He “only” scored 32 in the Game Four win.)
In the series-clinching Game Seven, a 105-101 success at the Quicken Loans Arena, James collected 45 points (16-for-25 from the field, including 2-for-3 from beyond the arc, and 11-for-15 from the foul line for the second-most scores by any player in a Game 7 victory), nine boards, seven dimes and four thefts in 43 minutes and also moved ahead of Scottie Pippen for most steals in postseason history.
The King, who made his first seven shots from the field (the first to accomplish the feat in a Game 7 over the last 20 seasons), though, got a lot of help from his supporting cast.
Underperforming Canadian Tristan Thompson started at center in Cavs’ head coach Tyronn Lue’s 34th different opening lineup this season and contributed 15 points (5-6 FGA, 5-6 FTA) and 10 rebounds in 35 minutes after sitting out Games 2, 3 and 5; Kevin Love, who had struggled nearly throughout the series (11.4 ppg and 9.3 rpg with three single-digit scores, two of them in losses), moved back to power forward and made four triples (out of eight attempts) and 14 points in 32 minutes, and guard George Hill, who had missed the last three games due to back spasms, netted 11 points (9-11 FTA) in 19 second-half minutes off the bench.
Out West, Houston advanced to the second round with a 4-1 whipping of the eighth-seeded Minnesota Timberwolves and Golden State knocked off the seventh-seeded San Antonio Spurs in identical (4-1) fashion.