After the NBA playoffs meandered through the first round — boring outside of the scintillating series between the Clippers and Spurs, which had the feel of a Finals matchup – here’s to a much more entertaining encore in round two.
Four interesting matchups follow: Hawks-Wizards and Warriors-Grizzlies both kicked off Sunday, and Cavaliers-Bulls and Rockets-Clippers will begin Monday night.
Here’s a breakdown of each of the headliner-packed series set to start, along with some notes on Sunday’s pair of Game 1s.
Cavaliers vs. Bulls
Kevin Love took a beating this season for his lack of production after the Cavaliers traded the last two top overall picks – Anthony Bennett and Andrew Wiggins – to get him. Now, with Love out until next season after surgery to repair his injured left shoulder, we’ll find out just how valuable he is.
Frankly, much of the beating Love received was unnecessary. He averaged 16.4 points and 9.7 rebounds while shooting almost 37 percent from 3-point range, and he provided LeBron James and Kyrie Irving all kinds of room to operate simply by his presence on the court.
Cleveland now will be forced to choose one of two options: Play James at power forward, something he’s been open about not wanting to do, or take Tristan Thompson – their best bench player – and insert him into the starting lineup, making a weak second unit even worse.
The best option probably will be to move James to the 4 and start someone like Shawn Marion, Mike Miller or James Jones at the 3, but none of those options are exactly palatable. Cleveland coach David Blatt’s life has been made more difficult by J.R. Smith’s antics in the Cavaliers’ sweep-clinching win. Smith will sit for the first two games after hitting Jae Crowder in the face.
The Bulls are dealing with Joakim Noah hobbling around on a bum knee that has severely limited his usefulness, and Nikola Mirotic suffered a quad injury in Game 2 of Chicago’s first-round series with Milwaukee.
Key matchup: Derrick Rose vs. Kyrie Irving
With Love sidelined, the Cavaliers need huge production from Irving and James — specifically, they need Irving to be the best point guard on the floor. Rose was up and down in the first round: He scored 23 points in Game 1 and 34 points in Game 3, but went a combined 10-for-33 in the losses in Games 4 and 5.
How will Irving will react to his first real playoff series?
X-Factor: Iman Shumpert
With Smith sidelined for the first two games, the Cavaliers need a huge series from the other ex-Knick swingman on their roster. Shumpert must play 40-plus minutes a night with strong defense and the ability to knock down some perimeter shots.
It’s not going to be enough for Shumpert to play good defense on Rose or Jimmy Butler — whoever Blatt decides to line him up against — especially not with Love and Smith sidelined. If Shumpert isn’t knocking down shots, the Cavs likely won’t have enough spacing to allow Irving and James to be efficient enough in their scoring to advance.
Prediction: Bulls in 6
The Bulls showed both sides of themselves against the Bucks: They can go games at a time forgetting how to score, then they can score 120 in a game. This series will swing on how often the Bulls offense shows up.
Without Love for the whole series, Smith for the first two games and Irving in his initial real test in the postseason, the edge has to go to the Bulls, who have a golden opportunity to make it back to the NBA Finals for the first time since 1998.
Rockets vs. Clippers
The Rockets dispatched the Mavericks in five games, having an easy time with their Texas rivals thanks to excellent showings from Josh Smith and Dwight Howard and the usual excellence from MVP runner-up James Harden.
The Clippers escaped from their bloodbath of a series with the Spurs thanks to a spectacular game-winning shot from Chris Paul, a runner over Danny Green and Tim Duncan with one second left in Game 7 Saturday.
Paul’s status for the opening game of Rockets-Clippers is up in the air: The hamstring injury he suffered in Game 7 could leave him on the sidelines Monday night. Already a thin team, the Clippers simply can’t afford for Paul to miss time. Huge minutes for Austin Rivers will end in disaster.
Key matchup: Blake Griffin vs. Josh Smith
While Paul was spectacular in Game 7, the MVP of the Clippers-Spurs series was Blake Griffin. Just look at these video-game numbers: 24.1 points, 13.1 rebounds, 7.4 assists, 1.4 steals, 1.4 blocks on 46.7 percent shooting overall and 75.9 percent free-throw shooting. Griffin hasn’t gotten quite enough credit for how spectacular he really was.
Smith was a big reason why the Rockets were able to so easily dispatch the Mavericks, hitting 39 percent of his 3-pointers while scoring 17.4 points to go with 6.4 rebounds and 3.8 assists while forming a terrific partnership with Howard, his longtime friend and former AAU teammate.
He also can match up pretty well with Griffin defensively, and given the weakness of the Clippers bench, if Smith can even make Griffin just a little less effective it would go a long way toward helping the Rockets make it to the Western Conference Finals.
X-Factor: Matt Barnes
The Rockets are going to find ways to give Harden as little to do defensively as possible, allowing him to rest up for the massive role he’ll have to play on offense, as always, serving as the team’s primary scorer and creator. That almost certainly means Harden is going to be facing Barnes at both ends of the floor: Houston will look to hide him on defense against Barnes, and the Clippers should have Barnes guard Harden at the other end of the floor.
If Barnes can provide some offense – knocking down some 3-pointers as he did against the Spurs (10-for-29 in round one) – he can keep Harden occupied defensively. Then he needs to remain out of foul trouble, which isn’t easy to do against the league’s best player at getting to the foul line.
Prediction: Rockets in 6
The Clippers were incredible against the Spurs, deserving winners of what likely will wind up as the best series in the entire postseason. But the the Clippers have to immediately go from that series — with Paul hobbled and a rotation of only six useful players — to facing a rested Rockets team will be too much to overcome.
Hawks vs. Wizards
There has been plenty of talk about how weak the Clippers bench is. But it’s starting to become apparent the second unit for the Hawks is just as bad.
Atlanta’s starting unit of Jeff Teague, Kyle Korver, DeMarre Carroll, Paul Millsap and Al Horford has carried over its dominance from the regular season, with all five players plus-33 or better through the Hawks’ seven playoff games. That group has the top combined plus-minus of any five-man lineup in the playoffs at plus-54.
As good as the starters have been, the bench unit has been just as bad. The top four reserves in minutes played – Dennis Schroder, Kent Bazemore, Pero Antic and Mike Scott – each have negative numbers, with Schroder the worst at minus-41. Though Thabo Sefolosha isn’t a household name, his loss (from an injury suffered during a skirmish with New York City police outside a nightclub last month) has really hurt the Hawks, as Bazemore (1-for-15 from 3-point range in the playoffs) has been a non-factor offensively. Schroder was a catastrophe against the Nets, looking completely lost, though he did manage to put up decent numbers (nine points, four assists, one turnover in 14 minutes) in Game 1.
Sunday’s Game 1 loss has to be discounted a little, given the Hawks had about 36 hours to prepare and the Wizards had a full week. But Washington has the best player in the series in John Wall, and Paul Pierce has given them a newfound belief in the locker room as well as some nice production playing as a stretch 4 – something he did with similar success for the Nets a year ago.
If the Hawks can’t get its bench sorted out, the top seeds could find themselves on the playoff rocks.
Warriors vs. Grizzlies
Golden State’s very comfortable Game 1 win confirmed the Grizzlies have almost no chance of making the series competitive without Mike Conley.
Even if Conley was available — he suffered a facial fracture when he was elbowed near his left eye by C.J. McCollum in Game 3 of the Grizzlies’ first-round win over the Trail Blazers — the odds are long for Memphis. That’s just how dominant the Warriors are.
The Grizzlies may be in a hopeless situation without Conley. Nick Calathes provides them with absolutely nothing offensively – he went 0-for-4 and didn’t score Sunday in Game 1 and shot just 25.6 percent from behind the 3-point arc this season. On a team with very little outside shooting, not having Conley basically means Stephen Curry can just focus on offense, making the league’s Most Valuable Player even more deadly than usual. And while Calathes is a good defender, Conley is one of the better defenders at the point in the league, as well.
On top of that, Memphis has a real problem with the Zach Randolph-Draymond Green matchup. A quick look at Randolph’s Game 1 stats – 20 points on 9-for-15 shooting to go with nine rebounds and five assists – would make it seem he had a nice night against Green. The problem for the Grizzlies is Randolph finished the game with a minus-17 in 35 minutes, while Green was plus-16. Green’s ability to shoot from the perimeter drags Randolph away from the basket, where he’s most effectively defensively as a rebounder, and leaves him on an island where Green can exploit him.
Perhaps Memphis coach Dave Joerger will eventually switch things up and put Randolph on, say, Harrison Barnes, but that’s not a great option for the Grizzlies either.
There really are no good options for Memphis. This series could be over in three more games.