Revisionist History in the Playoffs: 2000's Edition
Sometimes one injury is all it takes to turn a contender into a flaming pile of garbage barreling towards an early Playoff exit. But it can also create a sports writer’s dream — hypotheticals.
As Kawhi Leonard’s perfect jump-shot culminated into his perfect ankle landing on Zaza Pachulia’s perfectly positioned foot underneath his body, you could hear thousands of Twitter fingers tapping away frantically on their keyboards, like hamsters on cocaine, hurrying to attach an asterisk to this GSW season. At which point I looked around and said to myself: “dear God, it’s 2015 all over again.” I still remember the time Kelly Olynyk confused basketball for competitive Tug-Of-War and yanked Kevin Love’s shoulder out of it’s anatomically appropriate alignment as well as Kyrie going down in Game 1 of the NBA Finals.
Those are weird memories to look back upon to consider what could have been different. Just as I will look back at the first Warriors — Spurs game and wonder what happens if the best, most emotionless defender in the NBA doesn’t go down with a 23 point lead. Maybe the Golden State offense still undergoes mitosis and creates explosive energy out of nowhere for the win. Or maybe Kawhi’s defense is worth at least a 6 point swing in a game that ended by two… We’ll never know (HE IS).
But we could imagine? So let’s take a look at some of the most pivotal injuries that changed the trajectories of entire series and possibly playoffs. Bring your staple gun and paper mache asterisks. For brevity we won’t be diving deeper than the year 2000, where we can find such examples as Magic Johnson versus the Pistons or Byron Scott versus the Pistons.
2017: Blake Griffin vs. Utah Jazz
Blake Griffin has a dubious history with both injuries and coaching assistants. If it wasn’t for the Amare PPV 12 round bout with a fire extinguisher, the Blake Griffin injury last year would have been one of the most comical instances in the NBA. As it stands, it remains the second. The fact however, remains that Blake Griffin has gotten injured at some very inopportune times for the Clippers. And, for a team who’s bench is basically held together by a Jamal Crawford shaped paper clip, that is, in basketball terms, considered a very not good thing.
The Clippers were a higher seed and had the benefit of a game seven at home, plus the Jazz had to operate without Rudy Gobert for a few games. Luckily, Joe Johnson’s very strict diet in which he isn’t allowed to play defense saved most of his energy reserves for enough offensive pushes to get the Jazz to the second round. Without Griffin, the Clippers not only had to stretch their bench even thinner, they had to do such things as playing Marreese Speights close to 20 minutes per game or over, which let’s face it, is not sound basketball game winning strategy. For a team with no bench, losing one of their key contributors is basically a death sentence. Frankly, it’s impressive the Los Angeles Pauls were able to stretch the series to 7.
2016: Chris Paul vs. Portland Trail Blazers
Hug a Clippers fan. Seriously, envelop him in this gesture of pure affection and don’t let go for like five minutes. Or ever. Just hold them. They need to let it all out.
The Clippers were on the way to a date with the Warriors who either would have been without Curry for a stretch of the series or had to bring back a slightly less effective Steph to try and counteract Chris Paul. When Curry went down, the whole NBA started to murmur speculations of what it meant for the potential upcoming Clippers — Warriors match-up. That is until Paul and Griffin (2 for 1 bonus apparently) went down against the Blazers. Without Paul, Damian Lillard feasted on a steady diet of irrational confidence basketball plays and took his Blazers to the second round before being unceremoniously discharged from active basketball duty by the Warriors.
If Paul doesn’t go down, the Clippers stretch this series at home and maintain control in tight situations to come out on top against the Blazers, riding into the Bay to pillage given Steph Curry’s condition. The combination of healthy Paul / hurt Curry would give the Clippers an advantage early on and maybe they don’t surrender it by, I don’t know, playing Spencer Hawes for extended minutes?
2015: Kyrie Irving vs. Golden State Warriors (bonus: Kevin Love vs. Celtics/Warriors)
You knew we eventually had to get here (and given how we’re going chronologically you should have probably figured this one fairly quickly). The Cleveland situation is two-fold.
It all started when Kelly Olynyk did what I imagine guys named Kelly do, and that is on an incredibly unfortunate and possibly intentionally dirty sequence of events (some basketball related, some more WWE in their nature) yanked Kevin Love’s shoulder out of alignment, sidelining love for the rest of the playoffs. The gravity of the situation however did not hit Cleveland until the NBA Finals, as they once again steamrolled the East behind the Magic Human Bus LeBron James. Unfortunately, the final boss in 2015 was the Golden State Warriors.
Taking on the Warriors without their second best rebounder was always going to be hard, but the Cavs were honestly giving it a go in Game one, at which point God promptly looked down, considered the possibility of good sports things happening to the city of Cleveland and casually shrugged “nah.” The Kyrie injury depleted the Cavs’ depth nearly to Clippers level, forcing Matthew Dellavedova into basically a starting role and allowing the Warriors a clear path forward to the Championship.
Without Kyrie and Love, the Cavs offense revolved around “give LeBron the ball and suggest that maybe he can also play football out there.” Sure, to this day Cleveland still sometimes reverts to the “he’s bigger and faster and more athletic and scarier than anyone else, so just give LeBron the ball” strategy. But having the Love and Kyrie deterrents makes the opponents think about tightening their rotation and spreading their own defense rather than locking into Weapon X and letting Iman Shumpert beat you. As the Cavs proved the next year, with a healthy team, a bit of luck and a mistimed natural shooting motion to someone’s crotch, anything is possible.
2013: Russell Westbrook vs. Houston Rockets
The history of Oklahoma City Thunder is basically a letter written entirely out of magazine and newspaper cutouts, outlining how close the franchise has been multiple times with a foreword by Bill Simmons talking about the James Harden trade. Up until Brutus Durant leaving his friend Caligula Westbrook for dead in the depth of a state where… (what do you do in Oklahoma exactly?) this may have been the hardest (Hardest > Hard > Harden > James Harden > Harden Trade — call me up Bill) pill for OKC fans to swallow.
The combination of Westbrook and Durant has long been one of the most explosive duos in all of sports, terrifying in particular in the variety of ways they could beat you. Kevin Durant has always been the calculated professional in the OKC killing tandem while Westbrook is forever Mr. Blond. The luxury of having two exceptional players slowly bomb the opposition out of basketball existence was a rare luxury at the time, cut a little bit short by Russ going down with a torn meniscus. Losing Westbrook halved the Scott Brooks playbook (1. Durant ISO 2. Russ ISO) and allowed the Memphis Grizzlies to go all hell in the cell style on OKC in the 2nd round, downing them in five.
2012: Derrick Rose vs. Philadelphia 76ers
There is an alternate universe where Derrick Rose never tears his ACL and him and Westbrook battle in the NBA Finals gladiator style for 3 years straight until the NBA changes the rules and lets them don actual armor and fight with spears to the death to establish final dominance. In this reality however, Derrick Rose turned out to be the most fragile man on Earth. And, while I don’t look at Derrick Rose’s hypothetical career, same as I pine to know what kind of joyous world it would be if Brandon Roy was allowed knees made of regular human cells instead of the extra rare fragile glass knee cells, there is no arguing that Derrick Rose was one of the most explosive players in the world at the time he went down.
Despite struggling with injuries all year, the Bulls secured the number one seed in a lock out shortened season and ran into a severely outmatched Sixers team. Except when Rose went down (due presumably to Tom Thibodeau riding his starters like their farmers trying to squeeze the most out of their harvest before daylight savings time) it all unraveled and the Bulls never reached that competitive peak again. With a healthy Rose, the youngest MVP in league history, Joakim Noah and the rise of Jimmy Butler (later, not then), this Bulls team was primed not just for a deep run in those playoffs, but an established stretch of dominance across the board, cut short.
2010: Kendrick Perkins vs. Los Angeles Lakers
In 2010 Playoffs, Kendrick Perkins averaged a replaceable 5.7 points and 6.2 rebounds per game until going down in Game 6 (with the Celtics nursing a 3–2 lead). Unfortunately for the Celtics he also averaged 3.5 illegal screens, a multitude of well placed elbows with the precision of a cover Russian agent and about a scowl per minute. Perkins’ presence in the series was far beyond his statistical importance. His mission could best be described as “hold the door” or see what you can get away with in the span of your 28.2 minutes per game that is technically considered basketball, but is more like backyard wrestling.
Perk going down freed up the space for the Lakers and revealed that when you’re not getting pushed into your solar plexus on both defensive and offensive possessions you retain energy to do actual good basketball things. Without Perkins enforcing his will on LA, they didn’t really cruise to their Game 7 win in the Finals, but it did make the road less perilous.
2009: Yao Ming vs. Los Angeles Lakers
Thinking about Yao Ming makes me feel old. Think about how Yao Ming’s last meaningful season was about 8 years ago, makes me feel even older. Seeing kids go to school with backpacks makes me want to move to the woods and never interact with younger human’s again. For years, the Rockets were on a path to success only to have it stripped away at the last possible moment. Even with T-Mac in decline, Houston was a contender in the West, back in the age where big men were big men, marijuana cost significantly less and wasn’t legal and nostalgic statements haven’t quite fully fermented in Charles Barkley’s head.
With losing Yao, the Rockets lost their only real chance to challenge the Lakers who were on a mission to prove that Shaq in fact “ain’t shit to Kobe.” Yao going down cut down an impressive career and paved the way for two storied franchises to meet twice in the Finals for two years straight, splitting the series.
2003: Chris Webber vs. Dallas Mavericks
This Sacramento Kings is the fondest memory beacon in the heads of each and every Sacramento fan surrounded by other memories that are less memories and more collections of trash cobbled together by organizational ineptitude. This team could have challenged the Lakers at the peak of the Shaq era and was legitimately one of the worst basketball decisions by Vlade Divac away from beating LA.
Still at peak power and barreling towards the top, the Kings lost Chris Weber in the beginning of a pivotal series against the Mavs, which was, how do you say this, very very bad, considering Webber also played the same position as the Mavs best player at the time (And to this time really) — Dirk Nowitzki. With Webber this Kings team was a complete unit with a perfect balance of responsibilities, without him, they were missing its low post fulcrum.
2003: Dirk Nowitzki vs. San Antonio Spurs
Karma works swiftly and often without warning, like you kicking a ball at someone only to have it bounce off an object that is in the way and hit you in the face. Instantaneous karma is the best kind for the modern world of 5 seconds or less social media response. This is the kind of karma that happened to the Mavs. After beating out the Kings, Dallas secured a date with the San Antonio Spurs (the invitation to this basically just reads “DOOM” in all caps and three exclamation marks), only to lose Dirk Nowitzki and to lose to the Spurs.
Just like the Kings reaped the reverse benefits of losing their best player at the same position as the oppositions best player, losing Nowitzki allowed San Antonio to spread Tim Duncan offensively with Dallas downgrading on offense significantly at that particular position. From that point, it was just a numbers game for San Antonio who rode this momentum into the Finals and eventually to the NBA championship.
