Every Season We Seem To Get A Surprise Playoff Hero And This Year Is No Exception
One of my favorite parts of every season's playoffs is there always seems to be a role player that bursts onto the scene and starts playing WAY ABOVE his weight. It seems like it happens overnight, but they become a bit of a surprise hero for their team and fans. The playoffs are all about leveling up and raising your game to new heights, and I'm always interested to see which players rise to the occasion and which seem to still have some more growing to do. Sometimes the moment is too big for young players, especially if they've either never been there before or if they only have a handful of playoff games under their belt. I think we're seeing that a little bit with KAT right now. Everyone knows what a talented player he is, he's an offensive monster. But shit changes in the playoffs. It's a different beast and the league's history is filled with guys who were dominant regular season heroes who ended up being playoff zeros until they figured things out.
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As we know, having one of these surprising heroes on your roster can really change the playoff ceiling of a team. We just saw it with Tyler Herro and the Heat during their bubble run
and how about the runs we saw last year with guys like Reggie Jackson/Terrance Mann and Cam Payne/Cam Johnson. You expect the stars to show up and produce, but when it's the secondary guys that take their game to another level, it can change the course of a playoff series and potentially a Finals run.
This year's playoffs are no different, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see which two guys currently fit the role of a surprise hero. What Jalen Brunson and Jordan Poole are doing for their respective teams right now is borderline insane. They've gone from very solid role players to legitimate stars to kick off their series. I'm talking like, best player on the court type shit.
For Jalen Brunson, he's been tasked with what I would deem a near impossible task. He needs to make up for the loss of Luka Donic for a Mavs team that relied on Luka to do pretty much everything. He needs to score, he needs to facilitate, he needs to come up in the clutch, he needs to defend, the list goes on and on. It's not like Brunson just has to fill his role like he's did all season, he had to play like a superstar for the Mavs to survive without their franchise player.
All he's done is be 3rd in the playoff field in scoring at 32.7 points a night on 50/41% shooting splits to go along with 5.3 rebounds and 5.0 assists. Yes, you read that right. A 32.7/5.3/5.0 average through 3 games to give the Mavs a 2-1 series lead with Luka's return on the horizon.
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To help put this into perspective, Brunson had a career year this year putting up 16.8 points a night. He's essentially doubled his scoring average to start these playoffs. In his 61 games as a starter this season, Brunson averaged 17.5/4.1/5.0, so it's not like he was some scrub before this series began. He was awesome. We just didn't see this level from Brunson on such a consistent basis. Maybe part of it is the fact that the Jazz perimeter defense has more holes in it than swiss cheese, but I also think it's more Brunson is growing as a player and taking full advantage of this opportunity.
This is where it gets interesting though. Jalen Brunson is a UFA this summer which means the Mavs have a decision to make. What type of contract do they offer? Will they match any sort of deal Brunson might land on the open market if he gives them the chance? There are a few point guard needy teams that will have big bucks to spend this summer like the Pistons (if they want to upgrade Killian Hayes), the Pacers (if they move Brogdon), the Blazers ($20M in space) and then some non taxpayer teams that should have the full MLE ($10.3M) to spend like the Knicks, Kings and Raptors. The Raptors desperately need to provide FVV with some ball-handling help, that guy cannot keep playing 46 minutes every game. For a guy in Brunson that has never made $2.0M in any season of his career, you could say he's in line for a massive pay raise. Of course, the Mavs could pony up and pay him as well and just take on whatever tax bill comes with it, and given how he's looked I wouldn't rule that out. Mark Cuban is rich as shit and has not been shy about putting up the cash to build a team he thinks can contend. If Luka comes back and the Mavs go on a run with Brunson continuing to look this good, I feel like Cuban won't let that walk out the door.
Then there's Jordan Poole. His situation in GS is a little different, but at the same time I don't think anyone had Poole being the 7th leading playoff scorer at 28.7 points a night on 66/59% splits. Please read those numbers again. Poole is putting up 28.7/3.0/4.7 on 66/59% with 4.3 3PM a night. That doesn't even seem fair that the Warriors are able to have a new toy like this
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Much like with Brunson, part of this is of course how bad the Nuggets perimeter defenders might be, but let's not pretend like Poole wasn't a problem during the year either. He did average 18.5/3.4/4.0 during the year and was a 20/4 guy as a starter so the potential for this type of performance was always there. But for another guy making his playoff debut, nobody saw this level of production coming. Find me a person that said in a game in which Steph Curry is on the court, Jordan Poole would be the best player. No chance.
The Warriors are a team that also has a decision to make this summer regarding this surprise hero. Jordan Poole is eligible for his rookie extension this summer. Let me ask you this, do we think Poole is going to take a massive team friendly discount? My guess is no. They could decide to let this ride and not extend him this summer and just wait until after next year when Poole hits RFA. I also doubt he signs his qualifying offer and plays on that. Nobody does that shit. The risk in waiting until RFA is another team could come out and go nuts, offering a max extension at around 4/137M. No chance the Warriors are running that risk and no chance they are matching a potential offer like that. So what if they go to him this summer and say hey, how about like 4/80 or 4/100M? If he keeps playing like this, a team will offer him a max offer sheet in RFA.
As we know, the Warriors tax bill is already outrageous. They had a $52M tax bill just this season and that's only going up once you add in Poole's new potential salary and all the repeater tax payer penalties. If you were curious, the next closest tax bill this year was the Bucks at $19M. The Warriors could live in a world where they have over $140M in guaranteed salary for only 6 players on their roster next season which is a bit insane but also the price of doing business when you keep hitting on all these draft picks. If they turn out, you have to fork over the cash and live with the bill if you want to contend.
There are of course other surprise heroes in this year's playoff field, guys like Tyrese Maxey (26.7 points on 60/47%), Brandon Ingram (27.5 points on 50/80%), Tobias Harris (19.0 points on 58/63%), but all those guys are locked into their current deals. When it comes to Brunson and Poole, they are really the only ones so far this postseason that are putting their franchises in a bit of a pickle as we head into the summer, and they deserve every penny they are going to get.