For Chris Paul, the morning of Tuesday, April 26, 2016, must feel like “The Morning After.”
For most observers of the league — as fans and chroniclers — the same feeling exists.
For a few teams, however, this Tuesday morning doesn’t bring with it the scent of carnage or rubble, but opportunity.
So much of the time spent waiting for the regular season to just get over with, and give way to the playoffs, has been wasted. So many columns, so much bandwidth, rendered obsolete, just like that.
Chris Paul’s injury is a major development in isolation, on its own terms, removed from any outside context. That it occurred during the playoffs makes it an exponentially bigger story.
That it occurred on the night of Monday, April 25, 2016, makes it an extraordinary event.
The basketball gods — if you believe in them — had opened the door for the Los Angeles Clippers to finally make a conference final for the first time in franchise history. The team which should have done the deed a year ago, but gacked against the Houston Rockets in the West semifinals, had been given a lifeline:
Report: Steph Curry’s injured knee will cost him at least two weeks https://t.co/3sFtOwU2BM pic.twitter.com/aefwxYPw9B
— The Comeback (@thecomeback) April 25, 2016
That two-week timeline (a minimum amount of time, not a maximum) would have kept Curry out for at least three games in the West semifinals, if not four, pending the start date for the series. The Clippers, up 2-1 over Portland heading into Monday night’s Game 4, had a chance to close down the series in five games and force a Sunday start, thereby increasing the odds that Curry would miss four games against them, not three — as an absolute minimum figure. That was the Warriors’ best-case scenario, the Clips’ worst-case scenario.
It was all lining up for professional basketball’s most luckless and snake-bitten franchise. Other organizations are almost as unlucky, but some are too young to be held in the same class of unfortunates (Charlotte, Toronto), while a few others (Denver, Atlanta) have reached a conference finals at some point along the line, and still others have even made the NBA Finals at least once (Phoenix, Utah, and Sacramento in one of its previous incarnations as the Rochester Royals).
The Clippers were hardly guaranteed to beat the Warriors, even without Steph Curry, but they at least had a legitimate chance to win. That much had changed when Doc Rivers led his team onto the court at the Moda Center on Monday night. One focused performance — and no injuries — against Portland would have put the Clippers in position to start the West semifinals on May 1… and forced Golden State to win at least one more game without Steph than it might have hoped to.
The architecture of an unlikely rise to prominence, of the fulfillment of a goal which has hung over the franchise for years, had been mapped out and safety-checked. The engineering, the blueprint, the materials — they were all sound and fit for use. The Clippers were ready to build something.
As has happened throughout their history, a tornado of fate ripped through their building site:
Chris Paul suffers broken right hand in Game 4 vs Blazers https://t.co/ZJVGdvTCMT pic.twitter.com/nguWuHNMPd
— The Comeback (@thecomeback) April 26, 2016
Oh, and did we mention that Blake Griffin got injured (again) and might not play in Game 5 of what is now a 2-2 series that’s completely up for grabs?
The domino effect of this injury is staggering.
First, the Portland Trail Blazers — a team expected to finish eighth in the West in an absolute best-case scenario, and 11th or 12th in the eyes of many (including this correspondent) when the season began — could very realistically win this series AND push the Warriors in the West semis. Portland thrashed the Warriors just after the All-Star break, and if Steph Curry’s two-way presence (his defense gets lost in the awe which surrounds his offensive prowess) is lost for four games, the Blazers could certainly play Golden State on even terms. That would not be a cakewalk series for the Warriors if Steph misses a majority of games.
On a broader level, pundits and bloggers will naturally focus on the Warriors as a bigger beneficiary of this development. Even if one accepts the claim that Portland would put up a fight against a Curry-less bunch of Dubs in the first four games of a West semifinal, the Warriors are still happy that the Clips-Blazers series will go at least six games, which opens the door for a Game 7. That’s what Golden State needs more than anything else right now.
In certain ways, the Clippers — even with Chris Paul — would have remained the more favorable matchup for the Warriors compared to Portland, which showed in February that it can hurt Golden State’s defense. Now that CP3 is out, Golden State definitely wants L.A. more than Portland in the next round. Nevertheless, even if Portland advances, the Warriors will face a team that’s not used to going deep into the playoffs. San Antonio rather easily handled the Blazers two years ago in the West semis. Golden State’s chances of reaching the Western Conference Finals definitely improved Monday night.
However, that’s still a result of the CP3 injury which will ripple through this round and the next.
What about the Western Conference Finals?
The San Antonio Spurs won’t necessarily benefit from the Chris Paul injury in an immediate sense, but in relationship to the full spectrum of playoff injuries, it’s rather obvious that no team’s championship odds have improved more than the Spurs. It might not be a point of absolute consensus, but it’s probably a majority opinion in the league that if Steph Curry isn’t fit enough to be appreciably close to his best, the Spurs should be able to beat the Warriors in the West Finals.
To this extent, the Spurs actually lost something Monday night — they would have wanted the Clippers to finish off Portland in five games so that the Warriors would start the West semifinals on May 1 and not May 3. Nevertheless, one can say that at the very least, the distance between the Warriors and the Spurs has shrunk to a considerable degree. If Steph suffers any slight aggravation of the injuries he’s currently carrying, he could be rendered ineffective enough (or be sidelined, or both) that San Antonio would become the favorite in the West.
If one accepts that San Antonio is the favorite in the West — it’s a highly debatable statement, but one that’s now a lot more legitimate than it was just a few days ago — one must also acknowledge that the Cleveland Cavaliers are not as much of an NBA title longshot as they once were.
When the playoffs began, the Warriors — with a much healthier Steph — were huge favorites to win it all. Accordingly, the Cleveland team which got run out of its own building by Golden State in January did not own much of a chance to win the NBA Finals. If the Spurs make the NBA Finals in good health, they’ll be favored… but Cleveland could realistically take that series if some of its players perform slightly above their pay grades. Against the Warriors with a full-strength Steph, such a claim was much harder to make.
Are we done documenting the domino effect of the Chris Paul injury on the NBA and its postseason?
Not quite.
The Spurs might have a clearer path to the title for all reasons noted above, but a hidden storyline — which could become a lot more prominent two weeks from now — is that the Oklahoma City Thunder, viewed by many to be the team most capable of taking down Golden State, own a bigger opportunity than previously thought.
Getting past the Spurs in the West semifinals (beginning Saturday) will be tough, but when the playoffs began, the prevailing thought around the league was that it would be very difficult for OKC to fight through two great teams in succession. If the Warriors limp into the West Finals without a healthy Curry, the Thunder — for all their myriad inconsistencies and noticeable vulnerabilities — would still stack up quite well in a head-to-head matchup.
If the Thunder can solve the Spurs, they could have the inside track to the Larry O’Brien Trophy… just as we all thought when these playoffs began.
One Chris Paul injury has changed so much about these playoffs and how we perceive them. What plot twists are just around the bend? Hopefully, nothing related to another player injury.
