Today’s NBA news is all about the storylines from a wild opening weekend in the NBA Playoffs. Including Trae Young shut down, Jamal Murray stepping up and more.
The opening weekend of the NBA playoffs was short on late-game theatrics — just three of the eight games were decided by five points or less. However, we did see some shocking upsets and four wins for the lower-seeded road teams.
Today we’re diving into all that, as well as how the Celtics shut down Trae Young, why Jamal Murray’s playmaking was key, what we can learn from Jalen Brunson’s isos and more.
The Celtics swallowed Trae Young
Right from the opening possession, the Celtics set the tone with their Trae Young defending him aggressively and working to contest every shot. Their defenders were picking him up high, encouraging him to drive out of the pick-and-roll. Early in the game, Derrick White was fighting over the top of every screen and did an excellent job of staying connected with Young and contesting his shots from the side or from behind.
Their pick-and-roll strategy wasn’t entirely consistent on Young — they switched on occasion and Marcus Smart went under the screen more than once, trusting his ability to recover and contest, which, good on you, Marcus.
But more often than not, the Celtics were trusting their guards and wings to get through or over the screen and stay attached to Young, trusting that the end result of any open space he was able to create would be a mid-range jumper or a floater over one of their interior defenders. Of Young’s 18 shot attempts, half came in the paint but outside the restricted area or in the mid-range. He was just 2-of-9 combined from those two zones.
The Hawks were outscored by 14 points with Young on the floor, in a game they lost by 13. Dejounte Murray wasn’t much more efficient and it’s difficult to read too much into small sample size. But it seems worth noting that the Hawks were plus-1 in the 13 minutes Murray played without Young.
The bottom line is that the Celtics are an elite two-way team and even if Young is able to break through their talented and well-disciplined defense, the Hawks are overmatched here. But this looks like it could be an especially tough series for Young if they’re going to continue to give him so much offensive primacy (which is what you pay him for) and he’s going to continue to take so many tough shots. All that is to say, I’d expect the Celtics to prevail here and the questions about Young’s future in Atlanta to only get louder.
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Jamal Murray was an off-the-dribble machine
As a relative blowout and a late-Sunday capper on the first weekend of the NBA Playoffs, you might not hear a lot about the Nuggets’ Game 1 win over the Timberwolves today. Explaining this one is fairly simple — the Timberwolves shot 30.6 percent from beyond the arc, Karl-Anthony Towns and Anthony Edwards were a combined 11-of-30 from the field and this one was basically over by the middle of the third quarter. (Nikola Jokic only played 8 minutes in the second half).
However, there was at least one extremely interesting wrinkle that could be meaningful going forward — Jamal Murray carved up the Timberwolves’ defense with his dribble penetration.
Murray had a lot more offensive responsibility because of all the garbage time and rest for Jokic but, he racked up 24 drives during the game after averaging just 9.9 per game during the regular season. As a general rule, Murray often uses dribble penetration to set up his teammates, passing on 40.8 percent of his drive during the regular season. But because he drives so rarely compared to some of the league’s other primary offensive engines, there’s a selective quality to those scenarios anyway. Seeing him drive so often and being so successful at continuing to collapse the defense was a relative outlier.
Murray finished with 8 assists but 15 potential assists and could have had far more if some open shots by his teammates had gone down. To put that in perspective, only Jrue Holiday, James Harden, Chris Paul and Draymond Green had more potential assists in their respective Game 1s and just six players averaged more than 15.0 potential assists per game during the regular season.
Nikola Jokic is still the primary offensive engine for this team and Murray’s effectiveness as a scorer and shooter is probably far more important. But if he can show up anywhere near this level as a creator it takes a lot of pressure off Jokic and gives Denver the offensive versatility they were really lacking the past two postseasons.
NBA news and content from around the FanSided network
- If you’re looking for more detailed breakdowns from the NBA Playoff games I didn’t cover here, check out This Week in Playoff Mode, from Wes Goldberg.
- The NCAA Tournament is done and so is the NBA regular season, setting the stage for an exciting summer of NBA Draft chatter. Chris Kline has a new NBA Mock Draft with an absolutely absurd outcome for the tanktastic Dallas Mavericks.
- The Bucks can beat the Heat, even without Giannis. But they’ll need a lot more from Brook Lopez.
- Why the Knicks’ bench was absolutely crucial to their Game 1 win over the Cavs.
Jalen Brunson, iso-king
It took Jalen Brunson 24 shots to get his 27 points in the Knicks’ Game 1 win over the Cavs. That’s a frustrating lack of efficiency but it was just enough for New York and might disguise a potential advantage for New York — Brunson was cooking in isolations.
He finished the game 4-of-7 with nine points out of possessions classified as isolations by the NBA’s play-type statistics — a rate of 1.29 points per possession. That’s an eye-popping number, inflated by some tough contested jumpers. But the Cavs’ biggest defensive advantages are Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen and simply dragging them out of the action by clearing out for Brunson puts a lot of defensive responsibility on Cleveland’s weaker links — Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland and Cedi Osman.
In a series with tight, competitive series, being able to count on looks like this in crucial, clutch situations is a huge advantage for New York.
Uh-oh, the 76ers learned how to shoot
That’s not to say they didn’t before, but when there’s an opportunity to reference a 25-year-old Adam Sandler movie you have to take it.
The 76ers thumped the Nets in a 20-point, Game 1 win, shooting 14-of-27 on catch-and-shoot 3s. It’s a significant outlier performance for the 76ers but mostly from the volume perspective. Philadelphia led the league in 3-point percentage on catch-and-shoot attempts during the regular season but averaged just 22.6 attempts per game, 21st in the league.
The Nets are overmatched in this series from a talent perspective, but if the 76ers’ role players are going to take and make 3s like this, it could be over in a hurry.
Today’s NBA Trivia:
The Lakers needed just 21 points from LeBron James to steal Game 1 from the Grizzlies. What is the fewest points LeBron has ever scored in a postseason win?
The answer for last Friday’s trivia question: With just 85 games, Greg Oden is the No. 1 pick (in the NBA Draft Lottery era) who played the fewest games during their first four seasons in the NBA.