Last Night In The NBA: For Some, It Was A Rude Awakening

Happy Friday everybody and welcome to another edition of Last Night In The NBA where we catch you up on everything that went down from the night before in the Association. We made it! The weekend is almost here, I know you’re looking for things to distract you so you can just push all your work until Monday, and we had two games last night we can talk about. I must say, there are two cities and two fanbases that woke up this morning and are pretty sad. All year they believed one thing, and now that the playoffs are here and it’s time to prove it, they are turtling. You truly hate to see it. As is becoming a trend so far this postseason, these second round games are starting to get good after things looked shaky to start, and if you missed the action last night that’s OK, here’s what happened

Philadelphia 76ers 103 vs Boston Celtics 108 (BOS leads 2-0)

We’ll be talking more about this game in depth in the normal Celts blog that will be out later today so in the meantime you can look at what the guys had to say about how last night went down

From a PHI perspective, yikes. This isn’t the first time the Sixers have blown a 20+ lead, and also not the first time they’ve done it against the Celts, we all remember the London game. But once again, to be heavily favored like they were coming into Game 2, and then to finally make your threes and STILL blow it is a part of the Process I certainly enjoy. The NBA world was ready to give the Sixers this series in 5 games, that there was no way the Celtics would be able to stop their two unicorn players.

Well, Embiid went 8-22 and got completely worked by Horford, again. Ben Simmons scored 1 point in his 31 minutes. And yet, nobody wanted to believe me when I said the Celtics know how to defend and how to stop these Sixers. They have Brad, they have the defenders, and they have the mental edge. Now Sixers fans while trying to cover up their nervousness will tell you they still feel great. That all the Celtics did was win at home and that’s true. Up until this point the Celtics have indeed won every game between these two teams that happened to be played at the TD Garden. But here’s the thing, now they know they can win even when they play like dogshit. And yeah they haven’t won on the road at all this postseason, but that doesn’t mean they won’t. Put simply, they are just a better basketball team than the Sixers right now. PHI has not figured out a way to get Simmons going, because if he can’t get out in transition he can’t score. With Embiid, it looks like he just stops trying at times. Part of that is being young, but that sort of stuff can’t happen at this time of year. That stellar PHI defense has allowed a team that basically can’t score to break 108 points in consecutive games.

Chances are the Sixers will not get swept so I would say to PHI fans that you’re day to have fun on Twitter is still coming. But for all the talk about how legit the Process is and how this team is coming out of the East, you sure look foolish right now.

Advertisement

Cleveland Cavaliers 128 vs Toronto Raptors 110 (CLE leads 2-0)

Much like PHI, TOR fans wanted to believe in their team and their own hype. A dominant regular season and the promise of things being different this year sure was convincing. But then they actually had to play their Boogie Man in Lebron, and I have sad news to report. Nothing is different

The Cavs have backed up what THEIR fans said all year, which was who cares about the regular season or the defense, they have Lebron. And when they get in a playoff series in the East with any team, they immediately have the advantage. Sure they had to work against IND, but now they get to relax in the second round because make no mistake, the Raptors are cooked. They’ve turtled once again, and that awesome Raptors defense is nowhere to be found. The Cavs finished with 59%/42% splits, 11 3PM, 23 FTA, and just 3 TOs. Lebron, a guy who has been known to turn it over from time to time, had just 1 in his 41 minutes.

What makes CLE dangerous isn’t just when Lebron goes supernova, but when the complementary players on CLE show up and contribute, which is what happened last night

Advertisement

I mean raise your hand if you anticipated Jeff fucking Green to be a major factor offensively in this series? Exactly. Guys like JR and Korver have found their stroke, and those three guys in the video above combined for 32 points on 15-24 shooting. That is a huge burden lifted for this Cavs team because they haven’t even played at home yet, where role players are supposed to be even better.

But at the end of the day, this game was mostly about Lebron. His 43/8/14 on 19-28 shooting is just something you have to accept. The Raptors have no answer for him and they know it, he knows it, everybody knows it. Hate him all you want as a person, but as a basketball player we are watching something legendary. The best part is you can tell Lebron has figured it out, does this look like a guy who thinks this series isn’t over?

For TOR, unfortunately nobody will ever take you seriously again. This was your chance to show the world things changed, that you were ready to get over the hump, that what we saw all year wasn’t a lie. Sadly, it was a lie. And even with Lowry/DeRozan having good box score nights

Advertisement

at the end of the day you need your star players to step up and stop the bleeding. They didn’t. At some point your star players have to carry you and save you from disaster, and how many more examples are we going to get where these two fall short? The Raptors have committed to these two, and that would terrify me as a Raptors fan. Add in the fact that they finally got a legit night from their second unit and STILL lost by 18 points certainly is tough to swallow as well. Also tough when you literally cannot play your $80M man in Serge Ibaka. He played just 12 minutes last night and it wasn’t because of foul trouble, he did not commit one foul. The Raptors can’t play him because he stinks in this series, and that then forces guys like CJ Miles to try and stop Kevin Love, which will never work in their favor.

So where do the Raptors go from here? In my opinion just don’t get swept. Show some fight and force this thing to go back to TOR. Not that I think you’ll win there either, but I want Lebron playing as many games as possible. Maybe something will magically click and the Raptors will make this a series, but probably not. And that’s a pretty big fall from where we were when we entered the playoffs, and the Raptors were one of the heavy favorites to at least make the ECF. Brutal.

And that’s it! You’re now all caught up on everything that went down last night in the NBA. We’re back tonight with two more games on the schedule, with GS/NO up first and then HOU/UTA the late game. As always since it’s Friday night and you want to go live you life and have fun, if you go out and can’t watch just check back tomorrow morning and I’ll fill you in.