The one-game nature of NFL playoff football — how one day’s breaks and bounces affect a team’s postseason fate — gives the province of pigskin a constant unpredictability.
The reality of playoff hockey reduces that sport to puck luck and the quality of the two goaltenders on a given day.
The nature of playoff baseball is governed by the quality of your starting pitcher in October — just as Madison Bumgarner and Clayton Kershaw about that point.
Football, hockey and baseball all feel uniquely precarious in the postseason. Do favorites win sometimes? Sure, especially in football. However, hockey routinely frowns upon President’s Trophy winners (teams with the highest regular-season point totals in the NHL). Last year in Major League Baseball, two wild card teams with fewer than 90 wins advanced to the World Series, reaffirming the extent to which winning a division with 97 victories just doesn’t mean what it used to in the Grand Old Game. For much of the NFL’s past 15 years, a team with a first-round bye has made the Super Bowl… as has a wild card team.
In football, pucks and hardball, the big dogs don’t always have the final say.
In professional basketball, it is harder for underdogs and surprises to make a stunning run to a title. Dorothy, you’re not in March Madness anymore.
Thursday night, we were reminded why the NBA is a uniquely and admirably challenging professional sports league. There is something about pro basketball which demands familiarity with the cauldron of postseason pressure. To an extent not matched by other sports, pro hoops requires failure in one postseason before success can be tasted in future years.
Just ask the Boston Celtics, Milwaukee Bucks, and New Orleans Pelicans.
Three organizations with bright futures will generate a lot of optimism next October, when the 2015-2016 NBA season begins. However, the present tense for those teams is marked by the bitter and piercing agony of seeing winnable playoff home games slip away.
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It is the law of the jungle in the NBA: With very few exceptions, teams have to lose in the postseason and endure a very harsh summer of “what-ifs” before they can graduate to the next level. This is a well-documented dynamic, one which affirms the NBA’s identity as a league where the best teams generally do win championships.
The late-1970s Los Angeles Lakers had to fall short against Portland and Bill Walton before Magic put them over the top in 1980.
The Philadelphia 76ers of the early 1980s had to lose to the Lakers before Moses Malone helped them break through in 1983.
The Lakers had to lose to the Boston Celtics in the 1984 NBA Finals before getting the formula right in 1985 and 1987.
The Detroit Pistons had to lose to the Celtics in the Eastern Conference playoffs before crossing the threshold in 1988. The Pistons had to lose to the Lakers in 1988 before beating them in the 1989 Finals.
The Jordan Bulls had to lose to the Pistons before climbing past them.
The Utah Jazz spent many seasons of losing in the Western Conference playoffs before making the Finals twice.
The Miami Heat had to lose to the Detroit Pistons in the 2005 East Finals in order to learn what it took to take the next step in 2006 and win it all.
The Kobe-Pau Gasol Lakers had to endure the humilitation of the 2008 Finals in order to then win two world titles in 2009 and 2010, one of them against Boston in the Finals.
The LeBron-era Heat had to lose in the 2011 Finals in order to figure out the 2012 version.
The new-look Spurs, many years removed from their 2007 championship, had to lose to the Heat in 2013 to win the 2014 Finals.
You will obviously note that these are examples of winning and losing at the highest levels of competition, in the conference finals or NBA Finals.
This dynamic is also very much in evidence for the first two rounds of the playoffs, and we saw as much on Thursday.
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One of the great truths of sports is that nerves can spill out and manifest themselves in many ways. Sure, nerves are often found in an airballed jump shot or a badly mishandled pass, but nerves also emerge by means of omission, not just commission.
The rebound you don’t get because you’re standing around and watching; the defensive rotation you don’t make because you’re in a state of panic and are deep inside your head, worrying about what might go wrong; the failure to foul right away — these things all happened to the New Orleans Pelicans against Golden State. The inability to get a defensive board also plagued the Celtics in Game 3 against Tristan Thompson and the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Milwaukee Bucks — like New Orleans — allowed a massive lead of at least 18 points to evaporate on home hardwood.
These playoffs? They’re brutally unforgiving to the newbies… and by newbies, one means players unaccustomed to the playoff grind.
The 2008 Boston Celtics were “new” to the playoffs in the sense that the organization didn’t make the playoffs the year before. However, the trio of Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett had endured rough playoff losses in prior years — Pierce with the Celtics, Allen and Garnett with other teams. When that “Big Three” united in 2008, its collective experience was able to guide Boston through the crucible of two Game 7s, leading the Celtics to their most recent NBA title.
For the 2015 Celtics, Bucks and Pelicans — also teams that did not make the playoffs a year ago — the reality of their situations is not the same. These aren’t merely teams that failed to make the postseason in 2014; these are teams with core players who are unused to the playoffs, and that lack of familiarity was exposed against the likes of LeBron, Kevin Love, Derrick Rose, Stephen Curry, and Draymond Green.
It was rough to see these young teams falter in must-have home games. Yet, that pain is part of what makes the NBA so special. It’s why Thursday night was a compelling night of basketball… even though the prospect of seven sweeps is still alive in the NBA’s first round.
That was the good part of Thursday night.
The not-so-good part? A simple reality of sports fandom, balanced against basketball analysis.
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When Stephen Curry splashed that tying three against New Orleans last night, Twitter exploded with a Curry-gasm. That’s completely understandable — Curry did have to step up and hit that shot. It required some onions, to be sure. However, any student of basketball knows that much as Chris Bosh had to grab a rebound before Ray Allen could tie Game 6 of the 2013 NBA Finals between Miami and San Antonio, Golden State’s Marreese Speights had to get an offensive rebound before shoveling the ball to Curry for the tying trey.
Similarly, Kevin Love’s dagger three late in Cleveland’s win over Boston was notable for Love’s evident joy after hitting the shot. However, while the common fan was focused on Love, Tristan Thompson was the one who truly made the play. It is easy to react to tying threes by praising the maker of the shot as the second coming. However, when tying or winning shots are made possible by offensive rebounds, the true hero of the play should be recognized as the rebounder. This persistent deficiency in our sporting culture — as manifested in and through a public reaction to game-defining playoff events — was the only negative to emerge from a compelling night of NBA playoff action…
… unless, of course, you hail from Boston, Milwaukee, or New Orleans.
