NBA Playoff Picture Update: Birthday boy Brook Lopez keeps Nets on top in race for 8th
With just a few weeks remaining until the NBA postseason, every night can impact the standings. The NBA Playoff Picture Update keeps you up to date on all the most important news for all 16 berths and seeds.
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Birthday flex: With the clock winding down in a somewhat shockingly competitive Battle of the Boroughs on Wednesday night, the New York Knicks gave Brook Lopez the best present a just-turned-27-year-old Player of the Week could ask for — a clean shot at an offensive rebound and putback over the top of a pair of smaller dudes who couldn’t do anything with him.
After Knicks big man Jason Smith came up empty on his attempt to block Deron Williams’ off-balance leaner, the only defenders left to try to stop the 7-foot Lopez from cleaning up the miss were 6-foot-8 forwards Cleanthony Early and Lance Thomas. Neither could dislodge the birthday boy from the spot, giving Lopez a pair of chances to put the ball back up off the glass and in, giving the Nets a 100-98 lead over their crosstown rivals with just two seconds remaining on the clock.
The way things wrapped up for the Knicks … well, let’s just say that it was pretty much perfect.
Derek Fisher got Early, who scored all 14 of his points in the fourth quarter and had made a game-tying 3-pointer a minute earlier, a clean catch and a halfway decent look. But the second-round draft pick out of Wichita State saw his potential game-winner come up with nothing but air, finishing off a 100-98 Brooklyn win that kept the Nets in playoff position after nearly blowing a 16-point third-quarter lead.
Birthday boy Lopez finished with 18 points on 9-for-15 shooting, seven rebounds (three on the offensive glass, including those two big ones on the final possession) and five blocks, while Williams led all scorers with 26 points on 11-for-21 shooting, including a 4-for-7 mark from 3-point land, to go with seven rebounds, seven assists and just one turnover in arguably his best performance of the season. Its top competition? His 29-point, 10-for-15-shooting, six-dime November outing against — you guessed it — the Knicks.
Thanks to the inside-out duo that Mikhail Prokhorov, Billy King and company once upon a time expected to carry Brooklyn to the ranks of the NBA’s elite before injuries punctured that particular dream, the Nets were able to hold off a surprisingly feisty fourth-quarter Knicks charge to win their fifth straight game. Brooklyn’s won nine of 11 overall and now sits at 34-40, giving Lionel Hollins’ club the same record as the No. 7-seeded Miami Heat — Miami still slots in above Brooklyn by virtue of sweeping their season series, four games to nil — and keeping the Nets a half-game up on …
Evanescence: … the Boston Celtics, who took care of business with a 100-87 home win over the slumping Indiana Pacers thanks, in part, to yet another kind of stunning all-around game from summertime bargain-bin pickup Evan Turner.
Just 3 1/2 months after sloughing off criticism from disgruntled fans of the Philadelphia 76ers (the team that drafted him second overall in the 2010 NBA draft) by saying, “Jesus was hated, too,” Turner’s somewhat shocking career resurrection in Boston continued apace on Wednesday. The 6-foot-7 swingman whose do-everything game turned heads at Ohio State scored 13 points (albeit on 6-for-17 shooting) while grabbing 11 rebounds and dishing 12 assists with just one turnover in 35-plus minutes of point-forward-y work.
That marks the third triple-double of Turner’s five-year NBA career … and by that I mean, the third triple-double of this season … and by that I mean, the third triple-double that Turner’s put up since the All-Star break.
Somehow, some way, Turner has found himself in some pretty elite company among dudes to have worn kelly green over the past three decades:
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A season after being all but left for dead at the end of Frank Vogel’s bench following a trade-deadline deal that some thought at the time made the Pacers title favorites, Turner’s averaging 11 points, 6.8 assists and 5.8 rebounds for Brad Stevens since the All-Star break. Sure, the Celtics are giving up 6.5 more points per 100 possessions on defense with Turner in the game since mid-February, but they’re scoring 6.5 more per-100 on offense, too, so it’s all a blessed wash and a weird-as-hell grace note in Boston’s ahead-of-schedule playoff push.
That said, Boston owed Wednesday’s win less to Turner’s 13-12-11 than to the combination of Tyler Zeller, Brandon Bass and Kelly Olynyk absolutely wearing out Roy Hibbert, David West and the Pacers’ frontcourt to the tune of 47 points on 19-for-23 shooting. Olynyk’s evening was particularly impressive, as he popped for 19 points in 22 minutes off the Boston bench with one good eye:
Despite sporting the shiner to end all shiners taking an errant elbow from teammate Shavlik Randolph in pregame warmups, Olynyk made seven of his 10 shots, including a 3-for-4 mark from downtown, to help improve the Celtics to 34-41, keeping them in ninth place, just a half-game behind the Nets.
Both Brooklyn and Boston face playoff opponents in seven of their final eight games, with the Nets having two more meetings against the East-leading Atlanta Hawks and the Celtics looking forward to a pair of matchups with the No. 2-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers. Boston holds a 3-1 head-to-head tiebreaker over the Nets should the two teams finish with the same record.
While Boston kept pace with the win, the result was disastrous for the Pacers, who trailed for the final 43-plus minutes of the game en route to their ninth loss in 11 games. Indy now sits at 32-43, putting them 2 1/2 games back of Miami and Brooklyn, and two back of Boston, in 11th place in the East. Combine the drop-off in form with the fact that the Pacers have lost their season series with the Nets and Celtics, and the daylight seems to be fading in Indianapolis right about now.
Quickly: Elsewhere in the East:
• A balanced offensive effort (seven players in double figures) and a barrage of 3-pointers (13-for-30 from downtown) propelled the Toronto Raptors past the Minnesota Timberwolves for their third straight win;
• A dismal offensive display (41.9 percent from the field, 5-for-26 from 3-point land, 20 turnovers) and an inability to handle Michael Carter-Williams in the post (21 points, 10 rebounds, two assists) led to the Chicago Bulls dropping a 95-91 decision to the Milwaukee Bucks, allowing Toronto to move back into third place and giving sixth-seeded Milwaukee a 2 1/2-game cushion on idle Miami;
• The playoff-bound Washington Wizards took care of business against the lottery-bound Philadelphia 76ers, riding the pick-and-roll chemistry of John Wall (15 dimes) and Marcin Gortat (23 points on 10-for-11 shooting, 14 boards) to a 106-93 win that draws them within three games of the Raps and Bulls in fifth place;
• The Charlotte Hornets dominated the Detroit Pistons, 102-78, with Marvin Williams (18 points, six rebounds) and Kemba Walker (17 points, six boards, four dimes, three steals) leading six Hornets in double-figures to keep Steve Clifford’s club within two games of the Heat and Nets, while dropping Stan Van Gundy’s crew an all-over-but-the-shoutin’ 5 1/2 games back of the eighth seed with seven games left on a schedule that Stan’s still not happy about.
He took their essence: In a freewheeling game where seemingly everyone was taking and making big shots, Chandler Parsons took and made the biggest ones late for the Dallas Mavericks, with none bigger than this one in the final minute of Wednesday’s highest-scoring affair:
Parsons drove against the defense of Thunder superstar Russell Westbrook, pushed middle, faked back to his right and then faded to his left, draining a 16-foot turnaround that gave his Mavericks a 134-131 lead. Westbrook just missed a pair of 3-point answers on the other end, allowing Dallas to hold on for a 135-131 win in one heck of a shootout.
Parsons scored 13 of his 22 points in the fourth quarter, making all six of his shots in the frame (with a free throw to boot) as he matched the Thunder backcourt of Westbrook (10 of his 31 in the frame) and sniper Anthony Morrow (12 of his game-high 32) shot for shot before eventually besting them to improve Dallas to 46-29, keeping the seventh-seeded Mavericks three games back of the surging San Antonio Spurs.
Monta Ellis looked strong and explosive after sitting out of Sunday’s loss to the Pacers, scoring 26 points with five assists, four rebounds and four steals to lead the Mavericks, who shot a blistering 61.5 percent from the field. Dallas continually attacked the basket, scoring a whopping 72 points in the paint against a Thunder defense that seems unable to prevent opponents from getting to the rim and finishing without injured shot-blocker Serge Ibaka around to stop them. The main culprit there: Enes Kanter, who continues to put up monster numbers offensively and on the glass (30 points, 16 rebounds) but whom opponents relentlessly target in the pick-and-roll and off switches, and whose day-late-and-dollar-short help defense often leaves Oklahoma City vulnerable.
Westbrook added 11 rebounds and 11 assists to his 31 points to log his 10th triple-double of the season (for the second time!), but it wasn’t enough. Oklahoma City to 42-33, four games behind Dallas with seven games left on the schedule, while opening the door just a bit wider for the New Orleans Pelicans and technically-still-alive Phoenix Suns in the race for the eighth and final Western playoff spot.
Point god mode: One day after late-game struggles against the Golden State Warriors, the Los Angeles Clippers battled back from 19 down in the second quarter to top the Portland Trail Blazers 126-122 at Moda Center. Chris Paul was tremendous with 41 points, 19 assists, and the impetus for a minor skirmish to lead the Clippers back to homecourt advantage in a prospective first-round series against the Blazers.
Meanwhile, Portland (48-26) now holds a worse record than both Los Angeles (50-26) and the San Antonio Spurs (49-26), a team we’ll talk about in greater detail in just a bit. The Blazers are holding onto the No. 4 seed by virtue of their 6 1/2-game lead over the Thunder in the Northwest. Division winners can’t finish any lower than fourth in the conference but can lose homecourt advantage against teams with superior records, which certainly isn’t intuitive. On other hand, that supposed benefit may not end up helping them much if they end up matched up with the red-hot Spurs.
A shocking surprise: San Antonio clinched its 18th-consecutive playoff berth with a 103-91 road win over the Orlando Magic that wasn’t as close as the final score suggests. That’s five straight for the Spurs and 15 of their last 18. While much is still to be determined, the Spurs look like the one team no ostensible West contender wants to play before the conference finals, which is probably a roundabout way of saying that they’re actually as much a threat as any team other than perhaps the league-best Warriors. Not bad for a squad that looked in crisis a little more than a month ago.
Walk Harden: James Harden went for a career-high 51 points to offset a historically complete night from DeMarcus Cousins (24 points, 21 rebounds, 10 assists, six blocks, three steals) and lift the Houston Rockets to a 115-111 win over the lottery-bound (but not tanking!) Sacramento Kings. Dwight Howard missed his second-straight game to rest his sore knee but plans to play in Thursday’s tough matchup with the Mavericks. The Rockets are now tied with the Memphis Grizzlies for the second-best record in the West at 51-24 but would currently lose any tiebreakers due to their inferior record within the Southwest Division. See, divisions really do matter!
Hey, these guys are back: The Thunder’s loss to the Mavericks handed an opportunity to the New Orleans Pelicans, who beat the Los Angeles Lakers 113-92 at Staples Center to draw within 1 1/2 games of the No. 8 seed with eight left to play. Four Pelicans scored at least 16 points as self-effacing MVP candidate Anthony Davis led the way with 20 plus seven rebounds, six assists, and four blocks. New Orleans is still a longshot contender, but they do hold the tiebreak advantage with OKC.
Thursday’s Most Important Games
Well, there are only three, and they all have playoff implications, so let’s consider ’em:
Heat at Cavaliers, 8 p.m. ET: Cleveland is really just playing to stay in shape as they appear locked into the No. 2 seed, but the Heat have much to play for now that they’re tied with the Brooklyn Nets at 34-40 and sit just a half-game ahead of the Boston Celtics. A team that once seemed like a very likely playoff team is in danger of falling into the lottery. Maybe LeBron James will be nice to his old friends and take it easy.
Rockets at Mavericks, 8 p.m. ET: The best game of the night is also somehow the one not on national television. Houston call move into sole possession of the No. 2 seed with a win, while Dallas can increase their three-game buffer ahead of the Thunder to increase the odds they avoid a first-round series with the Warriors.
Suns at Warriors, 10:30 p.m. ET: The Suns will catch a break if the top-seeded Warriors decide to rest key players for a mostly meaningless game. It was tough to read Golden State’s effort level in their Tuesday win over the Los Angeles Clippers — only Draymond Green sat and they beat a good team, but head coach Steve Kerr played some very atypical lineups and the team generally appeared to lack the capacity for a blowout, which is somehow a rarity for them. Unfortunately for Phoenix, that may not end up mattering — they’re four games back of OKC and on a collision course with mathematical elimination. Why postpone the inevitable?
