The games, if not always artistic, were ridiculously compelling.
It was night after night of tight scores, unforeseen comebacks and individual brilliance from too many stars to list them all, most notably Durant, Atlanta’s Trae Young, the Clippers’ Paul George, Phoenix’s Devin Booker and an unheralded find from the N.B.A.
Yet chaos was a constant in daylight hours, too.
We already know Daryl Morey, Philadelphia’s president of basketball operations, will try to trade Ben Simmons because he has previously tried.
Yet Morey’s challenge is much tougher now — even tougher than completing a trade for Harden with his old team.
As hard as it was to watch Simmons’s free-throw shooting plummet to 34.2 percent in the playoffs — and his resulting unwillingness to register a single field-goal attempt in the fourth quarter of Philadelphia’s last four games against Atlanta — Simmons is just too good defensively to be shunned.
In 21 years of ownership, Mark Cuban has never hired a general manager from outside the Mavericks’ organization.
The sudden departures have only added to the perception of dysfunction in Dallas, since they followed reports of serious tension within Cuban’s decision-making cabinet after the Mavericks’ failure to turn three road victories over the Clippers into a second-round berth.
The onus is on Cuban, above all, to establish an organizational structure that is far more functional than it was because the Mavericks will need unity to correct the various team-building mistakes they’ve made since their 2011 title in trying to build around Dirk Nowitzki and then Luka Doncic.
Cuban needs to surround himself with as much versatility and experience as the Mavericks can muster, since he will always be the organization’s lead shot-caller and prefers to render the final say after consulting top aides.
We still haven’t heard that from Williamson directly, but the worrisome chatter started during last season’s restart at the Walt Disney World bubble and became more prevalent this season.
It is likewise fair to wonder how it landed with Williamson when Griffin absorbed pointed public criticism in late March from the veteran shooting guard JJ Redick, who said on his podcast after being dealt to Dallas that “I don’t think you’re going to get honesty from that office.” Redick and Williamson are former Duke players who bonded in their two seasons as teammates in New Orleans.
The trade forced the Celtics to part with the No.
That it happened before this week’s annual draft combine in Chicago, where off-season trade talks typically begin to percolate, won Stevens points for being proactive.
Washington decided not to retain Scott Brooks as coach despite the steady guidance he gave the Wizards in their recovery from the team’s many coronavirus challenges and a dispiriting 17-32 start.
Orlando management is said to prefer hiring a candidate with previous head-coaching experience, even with a roster full of younger players who will need time to develop.
Indiana, in its search to replace Nate Bjorkgren after just one season, is even more likely to than the Magic to seek a coach with prior head-coaching experience.
In Portland, there is a growing belief that Jody Allen, the team’s owner, has a strong interest in Becky Hammon, who has been an assistant coach in San Antonio for seven seasons in her quest to become the first woman to serve as a head coach in any of North America’s four major men’s team sports.
After just two seasons of retirement, Nowitzki, who turns 43 on Saturday, is holding off on taking an everyday role with the team.
Doncic will be eligible for the N.B.A.’s first rookie extension that crosses the $200 million threshold this off-season.
The Mavericks have a front office to reconstruct, major organizational tension to move past and will have little financial flexibility to make significant roster changes if they stick with their long-held plan to re-sign Tim Hardaway Jr.
Not even if Doncic is looking at the conference finals with understandable envy given the way Atlanta and Phoenix have fortified their rosters around Young and Deandre Ayton, Doncic’s rivals from the top five of the 2018 N.B.A.
It was too sudden and serious, in other words, for a lighthearted approach, since Paul was the first player leaguewide to be forced into isolation away from his team during these playoffs.
My pal Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports and Turner Sports reported on Sunday that the Suns anticipate Paul being cleared to rejoin the team sooner rather than later, though he will miss Tuesday’s Game 2.
Mann scored only 25 points combined through the first five games of the Utah series and had 9 points in the Clippers’ Game 1 loss at Phoenix in the conference finals.
We’ve seen three instances in these playoffs of teams winning a series after falling behind 2-0: Milwaukee in the second round against the Nets and the Clippers in their first two rounds of this postseason against Dallas and Utah.
Mike Brown, an assistant coach with the Warriors who doubles as head coach of Nigeria’s national team, is conducting a Nigerian training camp this week in Oakland with 35 invitees from outside the N.B.A.