Basketball: Thunder vs Warriors

Basketball: Oklahoma City Thunder star Jalen Williams exited Wednesday’s 105-101 win over the Golden State Warriors with a right eye injury just before halftime and did not return. Williams went down grabbing at his eye after Jonathan Kuminga dunked over him with 39 seconds left in the first half. Williams stayed on the floor for a couple of minutes before he limped and got helped to the locker room, and was seen with an ice bag on the area during halftime.

In 16 minutes of action, Williams had 13 points, 7 assists, 6 rebounds, and 2 steals, helping the Thunder to a 62-50 lead at intermission. Williams is second on the Thunder averaging 22.1 points per game and leads the team with 6.5 rebounds and 2.2 steals per game. On November 24th 2024, the Los Angeles Lakers were ready for their first 2024-25 matchup with the Denver Nuggets at Crypto.com Arena.

For the first time since November 13th 2024, Rui Hachimura returned to the lineup after missing four straight games due to an ankle injury. The Lakers played well in Hachimura’s absence, winning road games at SAS and NOP and a home game against UTA before a tough home loss against ORL in which Los Angeles missed 4 free throws in the final minute. Nonetheless, JJ Redick was happy to have Hachimura back.

Hachimura’s size and athleticism was important to the makeup of the roster, shooting 50.0% from 3, including an impressive 13 for 22 above the break of 59.1%.

The area where Hachimura had been below his career averages was from 2-point range, where he was converting only 39.1%. Furthermore, Hachimura was 21 of 41 in the restricted area, 5 for 23 in the non-restricted area, and 1 for 7 from mid-range. Those numbers would come up as Hachimura converted 76.2% of his looks in the restricted area in 2023, 40.7% in the non-restricted area, and 41.9% from mid-range.

In Hachimura’s place in the starting lineup, Dalton Knecht was terrific on offense, averaging 23.8 points on 60.3% shooting and 57.6% from 3. Knecht averaged 4.8 boards, and was a +6.3, second only to D’Angelo Russell’s +6.5. Before the ORL game, Redick was asked if he had considered keeping Knecht in the starting lineup. There was no definitive decision, but Redick’s expectation was Hachimura would stay in the starting lineup.

Redick went on to say that even if Knecht returned to the bench, he had clearly earned more minutes. Whatever designation Knecht had, coming off the bench or as a starter, his role would not change at all. Coaching staff had to be cognizant about getting Knecht longer stretches on the court. The Nuggets lost a tough home game against the Dallas Mavericks and likely did not arrive in Los Angeles until around 2 a.m. ahead of the back-to-back against the Lakers.

Nikola Jokic returned after missing the previous three contests due to the birth of his second child, but he looked dominant, scoring 33 points with 17 rebounds and 10 assists.

The Nuggets had also been playing without Aaron Gordon. In Gordon’s place, third-year pro Peyton Watson played well, averaging 13.3 points and 5.0 rebounds, blocking three shots against the Mavericks. The Nuggets lost Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in free agency to Orlando, and replaced him internally with third-year wing Christian Braun, who was averaging a career-high 16.2 points on 55.0% shooting, including 42.5% from 3, plus 5.3 boards, and 1.4 steals.

November 14th 2024 was the second meeting of the season between the Memphis Grizzlies and the Lakers with a few new faces and some missing. The Lakers were 6-4 this season and had won two straight before this meeting. The Lakers lost 131-114 to the Grizzlies earlier this season but the Lakers did not have Anthony Davis in the lineup. Davis was probable for the matchup and he led the National Basketball Association (NBA) with 31.2 points per game and 13th in rebounds 10.4 per game.

The Grizzlies were 7-4 on the season while being one of the most injury-riddled teams in the league. The Grizzlies would be without Ja Morant, Desmond Bane, and Marcus Smart for this matchup. The Grizzlies won three straight and five of the last six games with all five wins coming by double-digits and the lone loss by two points to the Nets. There was no love lost between the Grizzlies and the Lakers, who faced off for the second time in the season.

The two sides memorably matched up in the first round of the 2023 NBA playoffs, with the Lakers victorious in six games.

The series was headlined by the interactions between LeBron James and then-Grizzlies forward Dillon Brooks. However, the bad blood between the Western Conference foes started earlier than that. James and Bane engaged in trash talk during a January 2022 game, including James yelling at Bane. It created a viral moment, but, over two years later, any potential bad history looked to be in the rearview mirror.

At least that was what it seemed. The Grizzlies defeated the Lakers 131-114 at home and the beef slightly percolated. In September 2020, on the night the Los Angeles Clippers landed Kawhi Leonard as a free agent and traded for Paul George in July 2019, Clippers coach Doc Rivers talked with the team’s president of basketball operations, Lawrence Frank, dozens of times.

There was a debate over just how much the Clippers should give up in the trade with the Oklahoma City Thunder for George. The conversation had been ongoing for days, but by the night of July 5th 2020, it was time to decide. Four future first-round picks and promising young guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was a lot. But trading for George and signing Leonard would make them instant title contenders.

Clippers chairman Steve Ballmer would make the final decision, but he wanted their opinion, too.

For Rivers, the choice was simple. If you had a chance to win a championship, you went for it. Because those chances did not come around very often. In August 2020, the first day of the NBA playoffs was chalk. The No. 1 seeded Milwaukee Bucks started the second day by losing to the Orlando Magic, and the No. 1 seeded Lakers ended the day by losing to the No. 8 seeded Portland Trail Blazers.

It was the first time since 2003 in which both No. 1 seeds lost their openers. James scored 23 points, pulled in 17 rebounds, and dished out 15 assists while Davis poured in 28 points of his own, but the Lakers role players shot 4-of-22 from 3-point range. The Lakers simply could not score enough to win when that happened. Trail Blazers’ role players were not great either, but Damian Lillard’s 34 points were enough to lead them to a victory.

Now the Trail Blazers would need to only win three games out of six to stun the Western Conference’s No. 1 seed. The Lakers would have to go back to the drawing board if they wanted to avoid such a humiliation. What happened was completely and utterly unacceptable. The Lakers were outscored by nine points in JaVale McGee’s 13 minutes on the floor, they lost the game by seven points.

That was not a coincidence.

The Lakers were outscored during McGee’s minutes in all seven of his appearances in the bubble. In Orlando, the Lakers were outscored by 66 points in McGee’s 121 minutes on the floor. The Lakers outscored opponents by 26 points in the minutes they played without McGee. This was not rocket science. The Lakers started every game down several points because they were starting the wrong lineup.

The Lakers exacerbated the problem by sending that same lineup out there at the start of the third quarter. The version of the starting lineup that included Avery Bradley outscored opponents by 12.6 points per 100 possessions during the regular season. The version with Caldwell-Pope was outscored by 1.2 points per 100 possessions. The McGee-Caldwell-Pope-James-Davis-Danny Green fivesome did not work.

At a minimum, McGee needed to be excised from the rotation entirely. Whether that meant playing Markieff Morris at center more or hoping Dwight Howard could avoid foul trouble was another matter, but there just was not any evidence to suggest that McGee could contribute to winning in the postseason. There was a reason McGee was a benchwarmer for the Golden State Warriors.

The Caldwell-Pope situation was more complicated, tinkering with the combinations was critical.

Alex Caruso deserved a look as the fifth starter. Kyle Kuzma’s place in the first five should be obvious. This was not March anymore, these games counted. Coach Frank Vogel could not afford to fritter them away by playing the wrong players. The Lakers were better than the Trail Blazers. That much should be obvious. The Lakers just had to use the right lineups to prove it.

It was hard to argue with 23 points, 17 rebounds, and 15 assists. Those numbers did not even tell the entire story. James was great on defense as well. Nearly every decision James made, in a vacuum, was the right one. But the Lakers scored 93 points against a defense that allowed an average of 123 points over its past six outings. Shooting was the primary reason for that, and the Lakers would probably hit more than 5 of their 32 long balls in Game 2.

But role players had bad shooting nights. It happened. When it did, superstars were supposed to pick up the scoring burden themselves. For all of the great things James did in Game 1, he did not score.

Despite drawing incredible matchups in Carmelo Anthony and Gary Trent, James was determined to play total team basketball.

What the Lakers needed was something closer to the James of 2018. In Game 1 of that postseason run against the Indiana Pacers, James scored 24 points en route to a triple-double, but the Cavaliers lost. James came out and scored 46 in Game 2, a win, and wound up averaging 34.6 points per game through the rest of the Eastern Conference playoffs. If no other Laker was going to create shots, James had to do something like that for the team to win the title.

James had to be more like Michael Jordan and less like Magic Johnson, his roster demanded it. It might have happened by accident. Wenyen Gabriel started at power forward for the Trail Blazers but got into early foul trouble. So the Trail Blazers did something that few 2020 teams would ever consider, they played their two centers together. It was a look they experimented with a bit prior to the playoffs, but without much success.

That was for good reason. Neither Hassan Whiteside nor Jusuf Nurkic were particularly strong shooters, nor could they defend the perimeter all that well. But Whiteside and Nurkic survived those minutes in Game 1 by crashing the boards and protecting the rim. The Lakers missed the open shots the Trail Blazers created with their two-big lineups, and while it might not be sustainable, Portland might not have much of a choice but to go back to those groups until Zach Collins is healthy enough to return.

The Trail Blazers were a thin team, their lineup options were limited.

The Trail Blazers could fall apart if the Lakers started making shots. But until the Lakers do, the Trail Blazers might have found a way to shift some minutes away from the worst players on their bench and towards better ones. Thanks to the Trail Blazers’ struggles in the bubble, there was no clear-cut favorite to win the NBA championship entering the playoffs, for a change.

Some sportsbooks had the Bucks as the team to beat, while other bookmakers had the Lakers pegged as the favorites. And in Las Vegas, the Clippers could be found atop the odds to win the championship. It was the first time there had not been a clear-cut title favorite heading into the playoffs since 2015, the beginning of the Warriors’ run. The Warriors were the overwhelming favorites in each of the past five postseasons, with odds never longer than +175.

This season, though, the favorite’s odds, be it the Lakers, Bucks, or Clippers, were about +250 on average. SuperBook at Westgate Las Vegas made the Clippers the favorites at 11-4. At one point, before the NBA suspended play because of the covid pandemic, the Lakers looked to be distinguishing themselves from the Bucks and Clippers. But the Lakers was unimpressive since the restart, going 3-5 in Florida.

Some of the Lakers’ performance could be chalked up to their situation.

The Lakers was locked in to the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference early in the restart, Vogel experimented with different lineups in the games that had less meaning. However, the Lakers finished the seeding games with the second-worst net efficiency rating. The experimental lineups did affect their rating and perception, because people were enthralled by the Trail Blazers in this series.

SuperBook had taken 6 bets on the Trail Blazers for every 1 they had received on the Lakers in the teams’ first-round playoff series, including a $5,000 bet and a $1,000 bet on Portland at 4-1 odds. The Trail Blazers also were a popular bet to upset the Lakers at sportsbook PointsBet, which reported taking sharp action causing Portland’s odds in the first-round series to improve from +450 to +375. The Lakers’ title odds fell behind the Bucks and the Clippers at PointsBet.

The Lakers’ performance in the bubble, in addition to their tough path in the Western Conference, caused its odds to lengthen. Still, the Lakers attracted more bets and more money to win than any other team at multiple sportsbooks, and Caesars Sportsbook listed them as the favorites at 2-1, due to heavy early betting support. But Caesars Sportsbook acknowledged that the Lakers probably would be underdogs to the Bucks and Clippers in potential postseason matchups.

While the Lakers took a step back in oddsmakers’ eyes, the Clippers ascended.

The Clippers would be favored over either the Bucks or Lakers in a playoff series. As the Clippers progressed and got a healthy team, it had on both sides of the court, offense and defense, the most complete team, so from a power-rated standpoint, bookmakers rated them the highest. The Clippers were -650 favorites over the Mavericks in its first-round series, which tipped offs 2020.

Luka Doncic made history in his playoff with 42 points, 9 assists, and 7 rebounds to set the NBA record for most points in a postseason debut. But Doncic could only sum up his Game 1 performance against the Clippers with one word, “Terrible.” Doncic turned the ball over 11 times, helping the Clippers take a 1-0 lead in this Western Conference first-round series with a 118-110 victory.

Doncic should never had 11 turnovers. That was 11 more possessions. Doncic thought a lot of this game, he got to do way better than that. Doncic never had 11 turnovers that much, he just wanted to win. The Mavericks fought till the end, the team tried, and Doncic was really proud. In addition to setting the NBA record for most points in a playoff debut, Doncic joined the Mavericks when it came to his big postseason debut.

Only Johnson and James had recorded 40-5-5 in a playoff game at a younger age than Doncic.

It was a nightmarish start, though, for the Mavericks. The Mavericks not only trailed 18-2 in the first 3½ minutes but also had to hold their breath when Doncic hobbled off the court early. Doncic returned after a brief exit to have his left ankle re-taped. But the Mavericks stormed back, going on a 48-18 run at one point. Doncic gave the Clippers defense problems, even with Kristaps Porzingis ejected early in the third after picking up his second technical foul.