Kevin Durant once again looks like arguably the world’s best player and Kyrie Irving is a proven championship-caliber sidekick, but my gut feeling is the Nets will need Harden to get past the 76ers and/or whoever comes out of the West.
That might not be sustainable over three full rounds — especially given their own battles with injuries during the regular season.
Couple that with Blake Griffin’s reemergence and Joe Harris’ steady shooting and it’s not out of line to think they can win it all without Harden.
The reason is pretty simple: Even with a slew of talented superstar players remaining in the postseason, Durant is in a class of his own.
More importantly, Ayton has made life difficult on Jokic, who is 11-of-26 from the floor with only four assists when Ayton has been the primary defender on him, according to NBA Advanced Stats.
Let’s be real, there weren’t many out there who didn’t feel he was snake-bitten again after his injury in the first round.
But as steady as he has been — 26 assists to one turnover is absurd — the rest of the Suns’ youngsters have played their parts wonderfully.
Ayton is playing the best ball of his life, Cameron Payne is electric off the bench and the Jae Crowder/Bridges 3-and-D combo has been perfect.
It’s absolutely amazing to do it despite nursing a knee injury that put Embiid’s availability in question until just before the Game 1 starting lineups were announced.
That said, the way the Hawks played in the first half of Game 1, jumping out to a huge lead, was pretty surprising and deserves special mention.
It seemed admirable he was going to try to play through a meniscus tear, but how limited he might be, or the challenges he might face, was a key storyline.
Their bench players all had a negative plus-minus in Game 1 and had zero points in the first half of Game 2 prior to Milton setting the tone.
Pelton: Besides Atlanta stealing Game 1 on the road, I’d say the performance of Kevin Huerter off the bench.
MacMahon: Can the Clippers figure out a way to cool off Donovan Mitchell? LA has no chance in this series if Mitchell keeps scoring in the 30s or 40s efficiently.
For the Clippers to succeed, they have to contain the perimeter with a combination of Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Nicolas Batum or Terance Mann.
In fact, the Jazz’s 50.3% effective field goal percentage on shots with more than two seconds of touch time — sixth in the league during the regular season, per Second Spectrum tracking — was actually better than the Clippers’ 49.4% mark .
Games 3 and 4 in the Memphis series and Games 1 and 2 against the Clippers were all wide open in the fourth and the Jazz’s mix of active defense, great shooting and Mitchell have secured 50/50 games repeatedly.
George’s entire history as a star player is an ability to reach a peak level, on par with the absolute best in the world, but then follow that with a puzzling, wandering performance two nights later.
After we got beyond all the big-market handwringing that would go on, the focus could shift toward the reality that the league would have an opportunity to showcase two stars who could be featured players for the next decade.
Kawhi wasn’t quite there yet in 2016 when Durant’s Thunder upset Leonard’s Spurs, and we were denied this matchup in the 2019 NBA Finals by Durant’s injuries.
Having him and this young/fun group of Suns face a Nets team that looks like a juggernaut would be must-see TV.
Don’t count on Paul and Harden going out to dinner between games if they face each other in the Finals a couple of years after their two-year tenure as Rockets teammates ended.