NBA Playoff Picture Update: Nets beat Blazers, tighten hold on No. 7 seed
With just under two 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.
[DraftKings: FREE entry to huge cash Fantasy Basketball Contest with first deposit]
Just like they drew it up: The Brooklyn Nets’ vision of a team built around the inside-out combo of Brook Lopez and Deron Williams might not have panned out quite as planned, but it’s working right now.
Fresh off his second straight Eastern Conference Player of the Week nod, Lopez continued his torrid recent run by hanging 32 points and nine rebounds on twin brother Robin Lopez and his pals, leading Brooklyn to a 106-96 win over the Portland Trail Blazers on Monday. Pick-and-roll partner Williams bounced back from a quiet outing in Saturday’s loss to the Atlanta Hawks with 24 points to go with 10 assists and six rebounds — just his second 20-10 game of the season, with the other coming in Friday’s win over the Toronto Raptors — to help the Nets solidify their hold on the East’s No. 7 seed.
This game was originally scheduled for Jan. 26, with the Nets reeling after 10 losses in 12 games and the Blazers having just beaten the Washington Wizards behind 26 points and nine rebounds from star big man LaMarcus Aldridge and five 3-pointers from Wesley Matthews. Thanks to some winter-storm-sparked precaution, though, the tilt was postponed until Monday. Things have changed a bit since then.
For one thing, Lionel Hollins’ team has a pulse now. The Nets rank among the NBA’s top 10 teams in points scored per possession since the All-Star break, and entered Monday as winners of 10 of their last 13 games behind the rejuvenated Lopez, Williams and trade-deadline acquisition Thaddeus Young.
For another, the Blazers came to Barclays Center missing half of their late-January rotation. Matthews is out for the season with a torn Achilles tendon. Reserve Dorell Wright is sidelined with a broken hand. Several key Blazers — All-Star power forward Aldridge, swingman Nicolas Batum and backup center Chris Kaman — skipped the cross-country jaunt to nurse nagging injuries.
With the tables turned and Portland dressing only 10 players, the Nets had a golden opportunity to snag a needed win. Brook Lopez looked to seize it early, starting out hot with 13 points in the first quarter. But cold shooting from Williams, Young and Joe Johnson (a combined 3-for-17 from the floor) allowed the Blazers to stay in the fight, thanks to the shotmaking of All-Star Damian Lillard and surging sophomore C.J. McCollum.
With the Nets down by three after 12 minutes, Brooklyn’s bench advantage — admittedly kind of a weird thing to say — soon proved pivotal. Bojan Bogdanovic got loose for 11 second-quarter points, while Hollins got positive minutes from often (and often justifiably) maligned point guard Jarrett Jack and big man Mason Plumlee. When Terry Stotts went to his injury-shortened bench, though, all he got was a crazy handful of nothin’: Steve Blake, Alonzo Gee and Allen Crabbe missed all six of their field-goal attempts. The Blazers shot just 4-for-18 from the field in the quarter, as the Nets outscored Portland 32-13 in the second to take a 54-38 lead into intermission.
Led by Lillard, who scored 25 of his game-high 36 points after halftime, the Blazers battled back, cutting the deficit to six with just over 4 1/2 minutes left in the fourth. But — as seemed to be the case wheneverPortland made a push — Brooklyn answered with its expensive-but-worth-it two-man game. Williams found Lopez for a 10-footer that pushed the lead back to eight before draining his fourth 3-pointer to push the lead back to double-digits.
From there, Young put an exclamation point on the proceedings … and, for that matter, on Meyers Leonard:
[Follow Dunks Don’t Lie on Tumblr: The best slams from all of basketball]
In fairness, Leonard returned the favor to Brooklyn on the ensuing Portland trip, punctuating a strong fourth quarter and finishing with a season-high 17 points, a career-best 15 rebounds, four assists and two steals in 37 minutes in place of Aldridge. Still, Young got him, loudly, in the most energizing play of a game that Brooklyn finished off at the free-throw line.
Brook Lopez went 15-for-25 from the field to notch his seventh 30-point game of the season. Six have come in the last 2 1/2 weeks. Williams had his long-range touch, his crossover and his top-notch decision-making all working, putting up his first 20-10-5 line in more than two years and playing 37 turnover-free minutes. Young filled in the blanks, popping for 20 points on 9-for-16 shooting while grabbing five rebounds, dishing a pair of assists and logging a block and a steal, continuing to seem like a perfect fit at the four alongside Lopez.
On balance, beating a team that’s missing half its dudes might not seem like headline news. This late in the playoff chase, though, every win calls for celebration. This one kept Brooklyn in seventh place in the East, giving the Nets (36-41) a one-game cushion over the eighth-seeded Boston Celtics (35-42) and a two-game advantage over the ninth-place Indiana Pacers (34-43) with five games left on the schedule.
It won’t be an easy run in for the Nets, who still have to face four playoff teams, starting with the East-leading Hawks (albeit without All-Star forward Paul Millsap) on Wednesday. With Lopez and Williams clicking like this, though, you’d forgive Nets fans for feeling like their squad not only stands a solid chance of holding onto a playoff spot, but maybe even that Brooklyn has a puncher’s chance of surprising one of the East’s heavyweights in Round 1.
It’s understandable that Stotts decided not to drag his wounded Blazers across the country for the makeup game. (“It’s a five-hour flight [each way],” he said, according to Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News. “[…] Getting our players healthy is probably the most important thing right now.”) Still, it’s a painful loss for the Blazers, who now sit at 50-27, a game and a half below the 52-26 Los Angeles Clippers and one game beneath the 51-26 San Antonio Spurs.
While the Blazers are assured a top-four seed by virtue of winning the Northwest Division, they are not guaranteed home-court advantage in the opening round of the playoffs. If they end the regular season with a worse record than whoever finishes fifth, Lillard and company will open the postseason on the road. With three of their final five games coming against Western playoff squads — the Golden State Warriors, Oklahoma City Thunder and Dallas Mavericks — and the Clips and Spurs both playing extremely well, it’s growing more and more likely that the Blazers will find themselves traveling come April 18, even if they saved some of their big guns a trip on Monday.
Tuesday’s Most Important Games
Warriors at Pelicans, 8 p.m. ET: New Orleans remains just a half-game back of the No. 8 seed and holds the head-to-head tiebreaker over Oklahoma City. After playing everybody and getting waxed by San Antonio on Sunday, will Warriors coach Steve Kerr elect to take the foot off the gas a bit, having already clinched everything there is to clinch? If he doesn’t — if the Pelicans get the same pretty-much-full-squad look that Golden State gave the Phoenix Suns — will Anthony Davis and company be able to withstand the Dubs and keep the pressure on OKC?
Spurs at Thunder, 8 p.m. ET: Oklahoma City’s lost three straight at the absolute worst time, and now welcomes to town not only the hottest team in the NBA, but also one that very recently hammered the Thunder by 39 points. Russell Westbrook will have to deal with Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green, which you’d suspect he won’t find very fun. Likewise, I’d bet Gregg Popovich can’t wait to direct the Spurs to run motion and pick-and-roll right at Enes Kanter, early and often. It’ll be an uphill climb for an Oklahoma City team that’s seemed to be running on fumes for the past couple of weeks, but if Scott Brooks’ crew can stop the Spurs, their reward will be a far softer schedule to finish than either team chasing them.
Suns at Hawks, 7:30 p.m. ET: Phoenix enters Tuesday in 10th place in the West, three games behind the eighth-seeded Thunder and 2 1/2 games behind the No. 9 Pelicans. With only five games left on the schedule, the Suns are just about drawing dead anyway, but a loss puts them within a hair’s breadth of elimination, while a win keeps a prayer of a miracle finish alive just a little bit longer.
Hornets at Heat, 7:30 p.m. ET: Miami’s reeling, having lost four straight to fall to 10th in the East, one game back of eighth-seeded Boston and behind the Indiana Pacers, who beat them Sunday in Paul George’s return. A plague of injuries could leave Erik Spoelstra’s club with only seven healthy (or “healthy”) bodies against Charlotte, but a win over the Hornets would, for the moment, get Miami back ahead of Indy into ninth place.
On the flip side, the Hornets have stayed alive by alternating wins and losses for the past week — .500 ball will get you everywhere in the East — and sit 1 1/2 games behind the C’s with six games left. They can’t pass the Pacers with a win Tuesday — Indy won its head-to-head season series with Charlotte, three games to one — but they can take 10th from the Heat and keep hope alive.
– – – – – – –
Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
Stay connected with Ball Don’t Lie on Twitter @YahooBDL, “Like” BDL on Facebook and follow Dunks Don’t Lie on Tumblr for year-round NBA talk, jokes and more.
