Magic Rout Hawks and Warriors Edge Grizzlies to Clinch Playoff Berths
The NBA Play-In Tournament lived up (or down) to my expectations in the opener, as the physical, defensive-minded Orlando Magic stomped an Atlanta Hawks team that struggled to score and then compounded that problem by playing very little defense. The Magic won 120-95 and the game was not as close as the final margin suggested: the Magic outrebounded the Hawks 54-42, outscored the Hawks in the paint 58-52, and held the Hawks to 32-82 field goal shooting (.381), including 4-21 (.190) from three point range. The Magic's bench outscored the Hawks' bench 57-30.
Cole Anthony scored a team-high 26 points off of the bench for Orlando, and he passed for six assists without committing a turnover in 20 minutes of action. Wendell Carter Jr. added 19 points, and Paolo Banchero had a strong all-around game (17 points, nine rebounds, team-high seven assists) even though he shot just 4-13 from the field. Anthony Black contributed 16 points, four rebounds, and four assists as a reserve while posting a game-best +34 plus/minus number.
Trae Young scored a game-high 28 points, but he shot just 8-21 from the field and had the second worst plus/minus number (-22) in the game. Young capped off his performance by getting ejected for disrespecting a referee with 4:47 remaining in the game; in his post-game press conference, Young complained about his team not getting a fair whistle, even though the Magic committed more fouls (25-18) and the Hawks shot more free throws (34-27). I have never understood or agreed with the "Ice Trae" hype; yes, he has hit some exciting shots and he posts gaudy statistics for points and assists, but he is an undersized, inefficient offensive player who puts up empty calorie numbers while not playing a lick of defense for a mediocre team. Young has a 2-3 career playoff series record in seven seasons, and his Hawks have not won a playoff series since 2021. The notion that he is a great clutch player is refuted by his woeful playoff career shooting (.402 from the field, including .297 from three point range). He has never shot better than .441 from the field in a playoff series, and he shot worse than .400 from the field in two of his five playoff series.
The Magic outscored the Hawks 17-2 in the final 4:58 of the first quarter and led 32-17 after the first 12 minutes. There is so much talk about "clutch time" statistics, but the reality is that the NBA is often a first quarter league, and that was true in this game: the Magic outscored the Hawks by 15 in the first quarter, and then outscored the Hawks by 10 the rest of the way. The Magic built a 22 point first half lead before settling for a 61-47 halftime edge. The Hawks cut the margin to 71-68 on a Caris LeVert layup with 3:00 left in the third quarter, but the Magic outscored the Hawks 21-13 in the next seven minutes to reestablish a double digit lead that they never relinquished the rest of the way.
The Magic earned the seventh seed in the Eastern Conference, and will face the Boston Celtics in the first round of the playoffs, while the Hawks will host the winner of the Chicago-Miami game for the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference.
The second game of Tuesday night's NBA Play-In Tournament doubleheader looked like it was heading toward a blowout win for Golden State after the Warriors sprinted to a 55-35 second quarter lead versus Memphis, but the Grizzlies roared back to cut the margin to single digits at the 8:43 mark of the third quarter. The Grizzlies led 96-94 early in the fourth quarter, and did not trail by more than six points the rest of the way. I predicted that the Warriors would win "a close, hard fought game," and the Warriors eventually prevailed, 121-116.
Jimmy Butler added another chapter to the legend of "Playoff Jimmy" (or "Play-In Jimmy," in this instance), pouring in a game-high 38 points on 12-20 field goal shooting while also contributing seven rebounds, six assists, and three steals. The way that he forced his way out of Miami in the middle of this season instead of honoring his contract stinks, but there is no denying his talent. Stephen Curry shot a Trae Young-like 9-22 from the field, but he made all 13 of his free throws to finish with 37 points while also grabbing a team-high eight rebounds, passing for four assists, and committing just one turnover in 39 minutes.
Desmond Bane scored a team-high 30 points on 11-21 field goal shooting. Ja Morant added 22 points, but he had just three assists while committing a game-high five turnovers. Even more worrisome for the Grizzlies is that he scored just four points after suffering a nasty sprained ankle while hitting a 10 foot jumper with 4:25 left in the third quarter and the Warriors clinging to an 82-80 lead. Morant was fouled on the play and made the free throw to bring the Grizzlies to within one point. Jaren Jackson Jr. (18 points, six rebounds, four assists) and rookie Zach Edey (14 points, game-high 17 rebounds) played solidly in the paint but the Grizzlies needed them to shoot better from the field than 6-15 and 4-11 respectively.
The Grizzlies outrebounded the Warriors 50-39, but they squandered those extra possessions by losing the turnover battle, 19-10. If the undersized Warriors get outrebounded by a team that does not handle the ball with the dexterity of Edward Scissorhands they will likely lose, so they are facing quite the challenge as the seventh seed in the Western Conference with a first round matchup versus a Houston team that led the NBA in rebounding while ranking 11th in fewest turnovers. The Rockets are bigger, stronger, and younger than the Warriors while also having homecourt advantage.
The Grizzlies will host the winner of the Dallas-Sacramento game for the eighth seed in the Western Conference. Morant's swift recovery from his ankle injury is important, but the Grizzlies should have enough firepower to beat Dallas or Sacramento--and they don't have enough firepower to pose much of a threat to the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder.
The best news is that the Play-In Tournament will soon be over, and the playoffs will begin on Saturday April 19.
Labels: Atlanta Hawks, Cole Anthony, Desmond Bane, Golden State Warriors, Ja Morant, Jimmy Butler, Memphis Grizzlies, Orlando Magic, Paolo Banchero, Play-In Tournament, Stephen Curry, Trae Young, Wendell Carter Jr.
posted by David Friedman @ 2:32 AM
4 Comments:
Young is a good player, an AS-caliber player, but his hype is overrated. But, his cast is horrible, too. Insert any other player for Young, and Atlanta still loses last night, but it's hard to see Young even being the 2nd best player on a title team given his size and limitations.
Curry maybe shot 9-22, but his eFG% was solid and his TS% was great. He played at an elite level, as did Butler. Butler has been a great player overall in his career, but his teams have underperformed for most of his career and he has been disgruntled at most of his stops. Sure, he made the bubble Finals and somehow made the 2023 Finals after his team barely even made the playoffs. But, these are bizarre circumstances where his teams only won 44 games each season, and both of his teams were decidedly dismantled in each Finals. Him and his teams are very head scratching for me to decipher exactly what's going on with him and them.
Anonymous:
Part of the reason that Young's cast does not seem good enough is that he is miscast as the number one option. If he were the number two option, Atlanta would look like a pretty good team. That is partially Young's fault--it has been obvious for a while that he has a big influence on the team's decision making--and partially the fault of management and the coaching staff for not creating the proper hierarchy.
I have pointed out that a team can make one fluky run to the Conference Finals; we saw Atlanta and Portland (among other teams) do that in the past few years. The NBA is built to foster parity, so over a 10-15 year period most teams will reach the Conference Finals at least once unless they are mismanaged. However, a team rarely if ever makes a fluky NBA Finals run, because a team has to win three playoff series to get there. No team has ever made two fluky NBA Finals runs in a four year span, so Butler deserves credit for leading the Heat to the NBA Finals in 2020 and 2023--and it's not like he had a super team around him during those Finals runs. I don't like the way that Butler hops teams, but I give him credit for the way that he plays.
Maybe but I don't anything about that, but who should be the #1 option on Atlanta then, if Young shouldn't?
I'm not saying Butler doesn't some credit for the Heat's Finals run, though it should be said that it had a lot more to do than just Butler, who only made the AS team in 1 of those seasons. Several different guys outplayed Butler in series in those seasons, including teammates. But, Butler also deserves blame for many of his other seasons then, too. They were 44-win teams who wouldn't even make the playoffs some seasons. The first one was the bubble year. As we've seen in NBA history, weirder things happen in shortened seasons. The Bucks would've destroyed them if not for Covid. And then his team barely hung onto the 8 seed in the play-in tournament in 2023. I know it happened 2x, but they were both fluky playoff runs. I've never seen a great 44-win team.
Anonymous:
My point is not whether Young should be the number one option on the Hawks as presently constructed; my point is that the Hawks were built badly, because Young is their highest paid player making more than twice as much as the second highest paid player. When a team invests that much money in a player who should be the second (or third) option that has a rippling effect on the rest of the roster. For example, before this season the Clippers balked at paying Paul George, and they used the money that they saved to sign multiple players who increased the roster's depth and talent. There are better ways for the Hawks to spend more than $40 million/year for the next three years than paying Young to jack up wild threes, turn the ball over, not play defense, and not demonstrate great leadership.
You conveniently left out that in the 2022 season Butler led the Heat to the number one seed in the East en route to losing to Boston in seven games in the Eastern Conference Finals. The Heat were one shot away from being a three-time Finalist in a four year span. So, no, I don't consider their two Finals runs fluky when they also had an ECF run during that stretch as well. There are a variety of reasons that they did not consistently do well during the regular season in those years, but their deep playoff runs were not fluky.
The 1978 Bullets went 44-38 and then won the NBA title. That squad featured three Hall of Famers (Unseld, Hayes, Dandridge). Unseld and Hayes led the Bullets to three Finals in a five year span (Dandridge was on the team for the last two of those Finals runs), and during that time their regular season win totals ranged from 44-60. I'm not calling those Bullets an all-time great team, but those multiple Finals runs were not fluky just because they were 44-38 in a season.
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