Luka Only Does Things The Hard Way
And Two Other Thoughts on the Second Round of the NBA Playoffs
We have our conference finals set in the NBA. The retirement home has closed, having taken in all the past-their-prime superstars. We are now fully in “new face of the NBA” territory. No major player remaining has won a title. All four leading men can lay claim to the face of the NBA with four superb weeks.
The semifinals were glorious. We got three fantastic series / upsets, along with an obligatory Celtics snoozer. The defending champs got bounced, Anthony Edwards emerged, and there was an incredible amount of quality trash talk. Chef’s kiss.
Storylines abound for the last two rounds. The most interesting ones to me surround Luka Doncic. The Slovenian finished third in MVP voting this year, but has been battling back injuries in the playoffs. He has been limping at times. Despite that, he’s nearly averaged a triple-double (27.3 points, 9.7 rebounds, 9.1 assists) in consecutive upsets. He’s shot poorly, had many turnovers… and still been incredible. If he feels disappointing, it’s only due to his absurd bar: his lifetime playoff averages of 31 points, 8.2 assists, and 9.4 rebounds beat LeBron in each category.
There are a lot of empty-calorie playoff stats. Not Luka’s. Despite having been favored to lose every single series he’s competed in, his teams are 4-3. They are 6-1 against the pre-series Vegas line.
In my last post, I noted the Nuggets have feasted in the playoffs against poor opponents: against teams who won 48+ games, they are now 2-5 in the Jokic era. Against others, they are 6-0. Luka would kill to play a team that bad. Of his 7 opponents, six had the point differential of a 2-seed. The average team had 55 wins and a +6.3 point differential. LeBron / MJ combined were 11-11 lifetime against teams who hit those benchmarks1. Below, I plotted Luka’s playoff matchups below the same way I showed Denver’s, adding in the average #1-4 seed since 19952. Green are wins, red losses.
Luka, like Jayson Tatum, is taken for granted. He’s in the murky zone of (a) having been good for a while but (b) not having won a title. Players like this tend to be the most underrated in the NBA. Sportswriter Bill Simmons calls them ‘90-10’ players, where we focus wholly on the 10% of their game that isn’t great instead of the 90% that is. Since every round of the playoffs further exposes your flaws, as players stick around and accumulate playoff losses, the focus turns more and more to what you can’t do. Winning a title is the only way to shake the Etch-a-Sketch.
Vegas has the Mavs as nearly a 2:1 underdog in the conference finals. I’d pick against them too. But Luka has been in this spot before. If you run Luka’s average playoff opponent through my database, the closest comparable team is last year’s Boston Celtics. The next closest? His next opponent - this year’s Minnesota Timberwolves.
A couple other thoughts…
You Better Find a Unicorn To Compete
Looking at the teams who make the latter stages of the NBA playoffs gives great insight into what it takes to win. One trend I’ve written about is having a primary superstar between 25 and 30. Another well-documented one is his height. The NBA has always been dominated by tall players. The 1990-2005 range featured apex predator centers (Duncan, Shaq, Olajuwon), and since it has been elite wings (LeBron, Kobe, Pierce, KD, Kawhi, Giannis). Only Steph and Dwyane Wade have reached the mountain heights at 6’5” or shorter.
The new cheat code I have my eye on is three-point shooting big men. Traditionally, centers were asked to stay close to the rim on both ends of the court - defending your basket, and attacking your opponent’s. Recently, we’ve seen a new different archetype: the ‘3-and-D’ big man. This player defends your rim and offensively spends most of his time raining baskets from 25 feet. The first player of this type, Kristaps Porzingis, emerged 10 years ago. He seemed so mythical his nickname was The Unicorn.
Of our six legit contenders this year (the four teams left, plus OKC / Denver3), four play a ‘Unicorn’ center. A fifth, Minnesota, plays a Unicorn next to a traditional center. The Unicorns create significantly more floor spacing, making life easier for everyone else. This is true even if they rarely touch the ball. Getting elite shooting from your center allows more flexibility in building the full roster. Shooting is by a laughable degree the most useful skill in the league.
These players are becoming more and more common. The Rookie of the Year, Victor Wembenyama, is a unicorn of Unicorns. The second-place finisher in that same contest was Chet Holmgren, OKC’s starting center. One of Dallas’ playoff cheat codes for years has been Maxi Kleber, a 6’10” center who shoots 36% career from three-point range. The only year LeBron’s Lakers have won a conference finals game in six tries? The only one their center, Anthony Davis, shot better than 35% from three in the playoffs.
Parity Has Come To The NBA
With Denver’s elimination, this will mark the sixth different champion in the last six years. That will tie an NBA record from the mid-70s. The NBA has been known forever by its dynasties - the ‘60s/’70s Celtics, the ‘80s Lakers, the ‘90s Bulls, the ‘00s Spurs, and the Warriors last decade. But the 2020s are its first sustained stretch of parity in generations.
Consider this: over the past six years, the NBA has actually had more parity than the NFL, the league of “Any Given Sunday”. During the stretch, the NBA has…
Six different champions, compared to 4 for the NFL
Nine different finalists, compared to 7 for the NFL
Only four #1 seeds make the final, compared to 6 for the NFL
Parity is a delicate thing. Too much of it can make the playoffs feel random and create boring late-round matchups, as college men’s basketball and women’s tennis fans will tell you. Too little of it, and outcomes feel preordained, as women’s college basketball and men’s tennis fans will tell you.
The NBA is in a nice sweet spot. Boston stands as the team most likely to upend this, but a Celtics dynasty is anything but preordained.
MJ was 7-4, including all 6 of his Finals victories. LeBron was 4-7, 2-4 in the Finals.
I used this cutoff since 1995 was the last meaningful league expansion (the Bobcats / Hornets came in later, but they have not won a playoff series since entering the NBA so hard to count that as material)..
We could debatably exclude Indiana from this group. However, given their season-long +3.1 point differential despite having their best player injured for 2/3 of the season, I reckon they’re closer to an average 3-seed than 6-seed.