The 2015 NBA Playoffs Have Become the 2004 and 2009 French Opens

At Bloguin, I also write about college sports and tennis — college sports at The Student Section and tennis at Attacking The Net. Perhaps I’m pre-conditioned to link other sporting events, such as the NBA playoffs, to college sports and tennis. Yet, as I watched two top-seeded teams with at least 60 wins look like 43-39 teams (at best) on Saturday evening, the thought hit me like a thunderbolt:

These NBA playoffs really have become one of the two more aberrational French Opens in the early 21st century. They’ve also become like a more chaotic NCAA tournament, in which no higher seed is safe.

You don’t have to be a tennis nut or a college sports junkie to appreciate these realities, either.

*

Before explaining this comparison, it’s worth advancing a compelling reason for bothering to make the connection in the first place.

I’ll make the point very simply and up front, then: We are easily led — not without justification — to think that professionals are more immune to pressure than college athletes, or that team-sport athletes can bottle in pressure more than individual-sport athletes who are left to themselves.

On plenty of occasions, this is true. College sports are more volatile not just because of the presence of single-elimination tournaments, but because the players involved are not accustomed to handling the heat. In tennis, the solo performer — not able to be coached during the match in a major tournament — is left to himself or herself to figure things out on court.

However, there are some occasions in which pressure doesn’t just affect one or two players on a roster, as was the case for Danny Green of the San Antonio Spurs in the first round of the playoffs (before he finally found himself in Game 7). Sometimes, even a professional team feels pressure to the extent that it seeps through one or two players and becomes absorbed by everyone on the roster. It’s not just one player who needs therapy, but the collective whole.

This is what has happened — or, if you think that’s too severe a statement, it is at least in the process of happening — to the Atlanta Hawks and, even more especially, the Golden State Warriors.

These two teams became members of the 60-win club. It’s extremely hard to win 60 games in the Association, especially in the Western Conference. Moreover, the NBA — unlike the NHL — has been a league in which regular-season dominance actually DOES translate into playoff success.

Hoops has become less of a stronghold for homecourt advantage in recent years, but over the longer run of history, playing a home game in the NBA playoffs has meant more than playing a home game in the NHL or MLB postseasons. The centrality of a hot (or weak) goaltender in hockey, or a starting pitcher in baseball, neutralizes the effect of playing at home. In basketball, that’s been less the case, even though the past three years have seen some degree of erosion in homecourt success.

This year, the reality of being a high seed in the NBA playoffs is more fragile and tenuous than what we’ve typically seen. After Game 3 in the second round of the playoffs, it seems reasonable to say that seven of the eight teams remaining have a legitimate shot at winning the NBA championship — Houston is the one exception, though the Rockets will get a chance to restore order in Game 4 against the Los Angeles Clippers. This level of volatility is very much in tune with the NCAA tournament, with the NHL playoffs, and with last year’s MLB postseason, when two wild card teams with fewer than 90 wins met in the World Series.

This is what happens when pressure is absorbed by full teams such as Atlanta and Golden State.

It’s as though the Hawks and Warriors have become individual persons, individual patients who are feeling the full weight of a moment and are struggling to deal with it.

This makes the connection with the 2004 and 2009 French Opens, men and women.

*

In 2004, the winners of the men’s and women’s French Open tournaments captured their only major championships in careers that did not exist at a steady and sustained height. Gaston Gaudio (men) and Anastasia Myskina (women) were never able to come remotely close to replicating their 2004 experiences. Gaudio never advanced beyond the fourth round of ANY other major tournament he ever played. The 2004 French Open was a complete aberration in the larger context of his career. Myskina was better than Gaudio, but she never advanced beyond the quarterfinals of any other major tournament she entered. Roland Garros in 2004 was a big gift for her.

In 2009, Svetlana Kuznetsova — a talented but erratic player — won her only French Open championship. Profoundly inconsistent throughout her career, Kuznetsova put the pieces together in that one fortnight. On the men’s side, the French Open produced its only non-Rafael Nadal championship since the 2004 Gaudio victory. Nadal has won every French Open but one from 2005 through the present moment. The 2009 tournament was that sole exception.

In those details alone, one can begin to see how the landscape of these NBA playoffs matches those two French Opens. None of the eight teams left in the NBA playoffs know what it feels like to succeed in the latter stages of the postseason. LeBron James and a few of his former Miami Heat teammates on the Cleveland Cavaliers know the feeling, but Kyrie Irving, Iman Shumpert, J.R. Smith, Tristan Thompson, and other Cavs don’t.

The Derrick Rose Bulls; the Wizards, minus Paul Pierce; the Rockets; the Clippers; the Grizzlies, who made the conference finals once but never even won a game against San Antonio in 2013 — these teams join the Hawks and Warriors in knowing very little about playing for bigger stakes at a higher elevation. This larger context is creating the same kind of volatility — and strikingly similar responses to pressure — seen in the 2004 and 2009 French Opens.

*

If you want to read more, here are links to write-ups on the 2004 men’s final and the 2004 women’s final in Paris. The short story of each match is that they were both dominated by nerves. Gaudio won his men’s championship against an opponent, Guillermo Coria, who suffered a severe case of cramps brought about by stress. Myskina won the women’s title against a foe, Elena Dementieva, who committed 33 unforced errors and served 10 double faults in the space of just 15 total games.

In 2009, Kuznetsova won the women’s title against the world’s No. 1-ranked player, Dinara Safina, who was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the occasion. Safina was playing for her first major title, and the pressure of the moment got to her in a manner similar to both Coria and Dementieva five years earlier. In the men’s final that year, Roger Federer won his only French Open over Robin Soderling, the man whose upset of Rafael Nadal a few days earlier made Federer’s title possible… but also threw a boatload of pressure on Federer’s back.

The story of the 2009 men’s French Open is not so much about the final itself, but the lead-up to it. As soon as Nadal was ousted, Federer knew this was his one gleaming chance to finally make history and complete his career Grand Slam. The French Open was the one missing piece to the puzzle, and the awareness of prosperity actually increased the amount of pressure Federer felt. He fell behind by two sets in his fourth-round match against Tommy Haas, and by a two-sets-to-one margin in a very inconsistent semifinal performance against Juan Martin del Potro. Federer fought his nerves as well as his opponents as soon as Nadal left the 2009 French Open.

In many ways, with this being the first year since 1998 in which the NBA Finals will not have Tim Duncan, Kobe Bryant, or Dwyane Wade, one can compare the 2015 Golden State Warriors and Atlanta Hawks to Federer in 2009. The Dubs and Hawks achieved at a great height for an extended period of time, but this is the month that will reshape history for them and will define how they are remembered.

They’re not handling the moment well.

*

The Game 4 crucibles facing the Hawks and Warriors on Monday night could be likened to the third set of Federer’s 2009 French Open fourth-round match against Haas, in which the Swiss legend faced a break point at 30-40, 3-4. Had Federer lost that one point, Haas would have served for the match and probably ruined a longstanding career dream, one which probably would never have been fulfilled in light of Nadal’s subsequent dominance from 2010 through the present day at the French Open.

Federer won that one point, though, and from that small rediscovery of confidence, he found enough fuel and belief to dig out of that match. The realization he could overcome stress — and himself, and a formidable opponent — saw him through the del Potro scare in the semifinals and made him strong in a straight-set win over Soderling in the final.

Anyone who watched that 2009 French Open saw how fully Federer had to take in the scrutiny and the expectations that were thrown his way after Nadal lost. Federer teetered and wobbled, but he rescued himself just in the nick of time.

In an NBA playoffs where it’s very likely that we’ll witness the emergence of a first-time champion or a champion not seen since the 1970s, we can feel the volatility of these four conference semifinal series. We can see how pressure is infecting and inhibiting teams that won 60 games, teams that overachieved over the course of 82 regular-season contests and five and a half months.

Pressure is not just something the individual athlete or the collegiate athlete feels. It’s spilling out into whole rosters of professionals. How the NBA playoffs progress from this very tenuous midpoint will depend on how the regular season’s big dogs react when they stare into the gun-barrel of Game 4 pressure, trailing 2-1 in a series.

About Matt Zemek

Editor, @TrojansWire | CFB writer since 2001 |

Quantcast