The New Orleans star had done that deed in 2015, when his Pelicans were swept by Golden State in the first round en route to the Warriors’ championship. And as he neared his second playoff berth in six tries recently — the Pelicans fighting with all those other teams in the Western Conference until the very end of the regular season — he made it clear that a return trip to the postseason was hardly the end of his to-do list.
“It means a lot to get in, but you don’t just want to get in,” the sixth-year big man said after New Orleans beat Golden State on April 7. “I’ve been in before and nobody remembers that, nobody cares about that. Our goal is to get in and make some noise.”
Davis did just that on Saturday night, finishing with 35 points, 14 rebounds, four blocks and two steals as his sixth-seeded Pelicans downed the third-seeded Trail Blazers 97-95 at the Moda Center. For Davis, the 25-year-old who is widely considered one of the game’s greatest talents, the postseason file finally has a little padding.
Yet as Davis has said so often in these past few months, it was the playoff-tested presence of veteran point guard Rajon Rondo that proved so pivotal.
Nikola Mirotic shook his head late Saturday evening, then smiled, while sitting in front of his stall in the Moda Center visiting locker room. He’d seen this exact scenario before, roughly 365 days earlier, while playing for Chicago in Boston’s TD Garden: Rajon Rondo, the 32-year-old who won a title with the Boston Celtics in 2008 and was playing in the 97th playoff game of his career, controlling a road playoff game, in the point guard’s unique and incomparable way.
“This was the playoff-mentality Rondo,” said Mirotic, a Bulls teammate last spring when Rondo staked Chicago to consecutive road wins in Beantown to open Round 1. “You see what he’s capable of doing. He’s on a completely different level than the regular season.”
Indeed, the 12-year NBA veteran wasted no time demonstrating how “Playoff Rondo” can make a postseason impact, tying a New Orleans franchise playoff record with 17 assists in a 97-95 Game 1 win. Rondo also grabbed eight rebounds, but his stamp on Saturday’s game may have been greatest on the defensive end. En route to helping hold Portland to 37.8 percent shooting and a meager 36 first-half points, the 6-foot-1, 186-pounder seemed to have already memorized large portions of the Trail Blazers’ playbook.
“Defensively, he was talking to our guys all game,” said Mirotic (16 points, 10 rebounds, four blocks in Game 1). “Every time he knew what (Portland) was running, so he was telling us, ‘Here comes the pindown. Now it’s a flare (screen).’ He was a huge piece. That’s why we won this game.”
It took quite an effort for the Pelicans to even get here, as they won their final five games to seal the playoff deal. And if this is the new norm for Davis & Co., a first-round upset that would elevate Davis’ stature might be on the way.
“We’re all hungry, and the guy who is really leading it is Rondo,” Davis had said after that Warriors game. “He’s telling us how good we are, how good we can be. ..He’s been through all this before, won championships, so he’s kind of been the leader of the team as far as this playoff race is going.
“The way we’re playing, I think we could do some (damage). Like I said, guys are hungry. So when you’ve got a team that is talented and hungry, it’s pretty scary.”
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Play he did, finishing with 17 points (5-13 from the field), 14 assists and 9 rebounds — falling just shy of his 13th triple-double of the season — as the Sixers took a 1-0 lead in their best-of-seven series with their 130-103 win. Simmons’ 14 assists were the second most all-time by a rookie in his playoff debut, behind only Magic Johnson’s 16.
“Playing a team, like the Heat, you gotta come in and be locked in the whole game,” Simmons said after the contest. “There are no breaks. That’s the biggest thing I’ve noticed with this first [playoff] game than the regular season is you’ve got to be locked-in the whole game.”
Simmons opened the first quarter with an aggressive mentality, attacking the rim and finding open teammates when Miami’s Justice Winslow used his length to limit Simmons’ drives to the rim. If you were using a race car as an analogy to describe the Australian’s start to Game 1, you’d say he was in the red right from the tip.
The Sixers’ point guard said he was extremely focused prior to the game.
“I was just locked-in the whole time,” he said. “I try not to change [routine] too much before the game. I like to get here nice and early, get through my routine, stretching.”
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The Raptors beat the Wizards 94-91. As the buzzer sounded and the victorious Raptors funneled through the home tunnel and into their locker room, their exquisitely tailored president, Masai Ujiri, clapped his hands as his players breezed by.
Who was Ujiri’s target here? Perhaps an army of pundits who have been hammering home the Raptors’ futile record in recent Game 1s in the lead-up to the postseason. Maybe critics around the league who, even as the Raptors tallied 59 wins this season and nabbed the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference, still whispered doubts.
Most likely, it was relief disguised as invective, and an affirmation that, for the next several weeks — as it has been for several years — it’s Toronto against the world. After 10 consecutive Game 1 losses, the Raptors won the first battle of their campaign, a 114-106 victory over the Washington Wizards.
DeRozan is right, and the albatross draped around the team’s neck has been magnified unduly. Multiseason streaks in the NBA are funny things because each team is its own organism — different players, different schemes, different vibes. Should the 2018 team pay for the misfortunes of its 2015 ancestor? Randomness happens in sports, and the narrative was becoming stale, particularly for a team that has demonstrated marked improvement.
Instead, the Raptors want to talk about the depth of their well-constructed roster, of which 11 players had meaningful minutes in Saturday night’s win. They want to talk about a core of young players who have outperformed projections — guys such as Delon Wright (18 points on 7-for-10 shooting with four assists in 25 minutes) and rookie OG Anunoby (12 points on 5-for-9 shooting, a couple of 3s, a few brilliant cuts to the basket and yeoman’s work defending John Wall to start the second half), along with big men Pascal Siakamand Lucas Nogueira (both a plus-8 in Game 1, the latter a catalyst in the fourth quarter, when the Raptors wrested control of the game).
They also want to talk about their star guards, DeRozan and Kyle Lowry, neither of whom had an effective first half but responded to Washington’s aggressive pressure by empowering teammates. Opponents scheming for Toronto tend to adopt a specific game plan: Take the ball out of the hands of Lowry and DeRozan and make it find Toronto’s big men. From the opening tip, the Wizards deployed this strategy, and Serge Ibaka and Jonas Valanciunashappily obliged, combining for 13 points in the quarter.
“He’s always got the green light to force the issue if it’s there,” Raptors coach Dwane Casey said about DeRozan. “The key point is … when it’s not there. You don’t force the issue. You have to give it up and make a play. That’s what Kyle and DeMar have been doing all year — different than last year. If this were last year, they would be feeling the pressure of having to score and put all of the burden of their backs. I didn’t feel that tonight.”
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Playoffs!
Warriors take Game 1 as Spurs crumble without Kawhi Leonard
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The Golden State Warriors stormed past the San Antonio Spurs in Game 1 of their NBA playoff matchup, 113-92, in a game that never felt particularly close. The Spurs were without Kawhi Leonard as they have been for most of the season, and it showed. The Warriors won’t get Steph Curry back likely until the second round, but the rest of their stars have made it clear that they can live without him for now.
JaVale McGee scored 10 of his 15 points in the first half, with most of that production coming in the opening quarter. Head coach Steve Kerr made a bizarre decision to start McGee along with Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, Kevin Durant and Andre Iguodala, though that lineup had played 0 minutes together in their careers. It worked anyway.
Going with a long-armed lineup, the Spurs had trouble finding space to launch from deep. Even worse for them, Golden State trapped LaMarcus Aldridge on the catch, and flustered his offensive routine. He had just 14 points on 5-of-12 shooting. The team struggled to find answers without Leonard on the floor.
Meanwhile, Golden State rolled. Kevin Durant was the playmaker the Warriors needed without Curry on the floor. He had 24 points, eight rebounds and seven assists. Thompson was on fire all game, shooting 11-of-13 from the floor for 27 points. Green had 12 points, eight rebounds and 11 assists as well.
For San Antonio to recover in Game 2, it’ll need to find ways to counter Kevon Looney’s, McGee’s and Green’s swarming defense on their offensive star, Aldridge. There aren’t enough pieces to get the job done without him at 110 percent.
