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https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/45057009/report-pacers-tyrese-haliburton-warned-game-2-celebration

Just a warning.

Even Adam Silver had to respect the balls on this guy.

Source: https://sospianalytics.com/en/articulos/how-do-nba-franchises-perform-in-the-draft-ranking-their-last-10-years-of-picks/

Over the last 10 years, each team has had an average of 20 Draft selections to make, as every team gets a first and second-round pick annually, which they can either keep or trade away. Given that each team has had a sufficient number of selections, we can fairly evaluate their Draft performance by establishing a few clear rules for this study.

Whether we look at traditional or advanced stats, the Nets come out as one of the top-performing teams in this analysis. Highlights include Nic Claxton, taken with the 31st pick in 2019, who ranks 3rd in his class by traditional stats and 5th by advanced metrics. Other successful picks include Jarrett Allen (22nd in 2017) and Caris LeVert (20th in 2016).

Toronto Raptors For the Raptors, Pascal Siakam (27th pick in 2016) clearly stands out, having developed into one of the best players in his class. Another win was Norman Powell, taken 46th in 2015, who has played over 700 games and had a strong season with the Clippers. OG Anunoby, the 23rd pick in 2017, has also proven to be a steal, developing into a highly valuable 3&D player.

The Magic have made several lottery picks that didn’t pan out. Mario Hezonja, the 5th pick in 2015, averaged just 7 points over five seasons before leaving the league. Jett Howard, 11th in 2023, has averaged under 10 minutes per game over his first two seasons. Other questionable picks include Anthony Black, Mo Bamba, and Jonathan Isaac, all chosen 6th in their respective Draft years (2023, 2018, and 2017).

Based on this, only one remaining western conference playoff team fits the bill - The Golden State Warriors. This is not an endorsement for any team nor or a prognostication, just an interesting observation I made.

2024 - Dallas Mavericks

2023 - Los Angeles Lakers

2022 - Golden State Warriors

2021 - Phoenix Suns

2020 - Los Angeles Lakers

Whether or not the Warriors will stick around long enough for it to matter, Draymond is dangerously close to serving a minimum one game suspension if he receives two more of either non-standard foul calls across the next 2 games (If the Wolves win Games 3 & 4, it won't affect the rest of the postseason if he got either amount during Game 5 since Golden State would be eliminated with a Minnesota win in Game 5). Given how the Warriors can't afford to lose another play - this time for entirely controllable reasons - the Warriors should be worried about Green potentially serving a suspension, especially if Ant's injury isn't serious come Game 3.

Begin the Draymond Green Foul Watch.

When it comes to technology, Apple is the standard. Whether it’s a computer or an iPhone, they dominate the space. Their products are elegantly designed and highly functional—sleek with a kickass iOS.

Few defenses in NBA history have possessed elite-level hardware and software, and this Oklahoma City team has both!

Strength. Length. Speed: All the athletic components needed.

Processing Speed: Their individual and collective Intelligence.

Oklahoma City is one of the most intelligent basketball teams in the Modern Era. Rarely do you see them blow a coverage or miss a rotation; their attention to detail in KYP is unmatched.

KYP stands for Know Your Personnel:

It's an IF/THEN thought process combining an offensive scouting report and defensive coverages. IF you understand a player's strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies. THEN you can apply the best defensive techniques to combat them. Here's a basic example: Malik Beasley is a better shooter than he is a playmaker, so IF there is a closeout situation with him, THEN the defender should sprint to run him off the line, turning him from a three-point shooter to a driver.

The better the offensive player, the more extensive the KYP thought process can get. For All-NBA-level players, the techniques and schemes needed to have a chance at not being embarrassed by them require all five defenders to be on the same page. Primary defenders have the undesirable job of attempting to force these elite players away from their strengths and towards whatever hint of a weakness exists. At the same time, the other four defenders must know precisely what the primary defender is attempting to do, so they can be in the proper spots to provide immediate help or rotate to help the helper.

Oklahoma City excels in these situations against the NBA elites; all five defenders consistently understand their KYP assignments and execute them flawlessly.

Athletic Outliers:

Raw tools such as strength, length, and speed are prerequisites for elite defensive players.

Between Holmgren, Hartenstein, Dort, Williams, and Gilgious-Alexander, Priest has assembled one of the league's biggest and longest starting fives in the league boasting a collective wingspan of thirty-five and a half feet. That’s an average of over seven feet per player.

And that group utilizes all that length to its advantage, generating six steals and five and a half blocks per game. Those 12 opportunities are rocket fuel for their transition offense, creating moments where their collective speed can turn defense into easy baskets.

If that starting five wasn’t scary enough, Oklahoma City also has a plethora of chaos agents they can bring in off the bench; Wallace, Joe, and Caruso possess the elite quickness needed to smother ball handlers and get into the passing lanes.

This team is built to get its hands on everything! This season, Oklahoma City generated more deflections and forced more turnovers than any other team in the league. They also scored more points off those turnovers than any other team in the league, turning their defense into an accelerant to ignite their transition offense.

And during their first round sweep of Memphis, it was more of the same: Oklahoma City forced 72 turnovers and scored 54 points off them.

No player embodies this team's defensive intensity quite like Alex Caruso. This season, he averaged a deflection every five and a half minutes, one of the top rates in the league. And so far in the playoffs, he’s found another gear, increasing his deflection rate to one every 4 minutes. The guy is absolutely unhinged out there, yet somehow he does it all under control and intelligently.

During the second half of Oklahoma City’s 29-point Game Three comeback, Caruso recorded seven deflections, and Memphis scored an utterly anemic 13 points during his 13-second half minutes.

The Most Difficult Action To Guard Requires BOTH:

Pick and roll actions have become the lifeblood of the NBA game, and no action is run more. Second Spectrum categorizes the four core actions of a basketball game as pick-and-roll, handoff, isolation, and post-up. Over 158,145 PnRs were run during this season, and the other three core actions were run for a combined 109,739 times.

OKC was the best team in the NBA this season at guarding the PnR. Almost every other guard on the Oklahoma City roster can occasionally blow up a pick-and-roll. However, exceptional pick-and-roll defense requires all five players to do three things in quick succession:

1. See the same picture. (Quickly--Remember, "Do your work early.)
2. Communicate. (Clearly--He who talks first controls the actions.)
3. React (With force--Time to put all the athleticism to work.)

Oklahoma City's pick-and-roll defense can check all three boxes: It's a potent mixture of intelligence, athleticism, and attention to detail.

Oklahoma City led the league in pick-and-roll defense, giving up a staggering 94 points for every 100 pick-and-rolls defended. It's a remarkable number when you consider the best pick-and-roll players in the league would score between 115 and 120 points with those same 100 opportunities.

You can’t just flip the defensive switch in the playoffs, especially in regards to defending the pick-and-roll; every team must build its Rolodex of habits throughout the 82-game season. That way, when the playoffs come around and everything is faster and more intense, those habits are so ingrained that they turn into instincts.

If you stop to think, “Where do I go?” “What's my next rotation?” The offense wins, and your season is over. It's pretty simple.

They consistently do the work early each possession to give themselves the best chance at success. Oklahoma City's habits are as sharp as they come, making their instincts as quick as lightning.

They have an extensive Rolodex, or as the kids would say, A deep bag, that they can get to in terms of coverages:

• 9th in Drop (40.4%)
• 14th in Switch (24.75%)
• 18th in Blitz (3.2%)

Contrast that with teams that have limited PnR defensive profiles and how it leaves them susceptible in bad playoff matchups (Edwards vs. Lakers):

• Lakers 1st in Switch (39%) and Last in Blitz (0.96%)
• Brooklyn 1st in Blitz (14%) and Last in Drop (20.7%)

Oklahoma City’s deep bag allows them to cover a wide variety of opponents, and they perform all the coverages at an elite level. They’re a daily fantasy player with a high floor and ceiling, the perfect combination.

Oklahoma City didn’t invent a new defense; there's no proverbial smoking gun here—just simple coverages executed at lightning-fast speeds by some of the best athletes in the world.

Is it possible to score on them? Sure, it's possible, but it's certainly not easy. It takes one of two things:

A special effort of individual shot-making efforts: The level of shot-making and individual skill it takes to beat this team does exist. But to beat this team four times would take a historical effort of individual brilliance.

Offensive compounding: No defense can take away everything, although Oklahoma City's defense sometimes makes me question that statement. If an offensive team can string together enough tiny wins within any given possession, they can find their way into semi-open to open shots.

However, as Oklahoma City gets into the later rounds of the playoffs, some teams can bring both elements to the table, as Doncic and Dallas did last season. Denver, Minnesota, Golden State, and Boston all fit the bill. Superstars like Jokic, Edwards, Curry, and Tatum are all capable of the individual brilliance needed, and if they get enough help from their teammates, who knows?

Source

Danny Ferry has formally interviewed for Atlanta's president of basketball operations vacancy, league sources tell The Stein Line.

Ferry's re-emergence as a candidate for the lead front office post in Atlanta comes a decade after his removal from the same post. In June 2014, Ferry read aloud from a report filed by an unidentified scout on a team conference call that included racially insensitive comments about former NBA All-Star Luol Deng and stepped down a year later.

For some stupid reason known only to TNT, this year when the home team makes a shot the crowd noise is turned up super loud for a half a second. It's really jarring and annoying to have such a blast of noise happen over and over throughout a game. I usually end up just muting the audio (which I already do every time Greg Anthony is on the broadcast team anyway, lol).

This seems like it has to be some manual process from them, because I don't see a way it could be automated (although I'm not 100% sure).

Is there any solution for viewers to level out broadcast audio volume somehow? Is this bothering y'all, the wider NBA audience?

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6342759/2025/05/08/cavaliers-injured-stars-game-3-pacers/

A league source with knowledge of the Cavs’ workout Thursday said the swelling on Hunter’s injured thumb has subsided, whereas Mobley and Garland were moving as though they’re trying to play through lower leg injuries.

“I don’t think he has a choice,” one league source who is close to the Cavs said of Garland, who hasn’t played since Game 2 of the first round.

The Cavs held a walk-through Thursday before leaving for Indianapolis, and coach Kenny Atkinson said all three players “touched the ball” during the workout — which means they were all participants. All will still be listed “questionable” on the team’s injury report ahead of Game 3.

For me it’s Matt Bonner which is so weird since he never played for the Cavs and I wasn’t an nba fan until 2014. Though I guess it’s because whenever I played 2k15 online the spurs was my main team and I remember him from that.

Is it a missed field goal? I feel like that wouldn’t be a great way to score it as it’s clearly not a shot attempt, and sometimes they are just straight upwards.

Is it a turnover? What if it never goes out of bounds?

Is it just considered a pass? And the game ended before it was caught?

I was just wondering as this happened at the end of both Knicks Celtics games where mikal chucked the ball away in the last few seconds, and I believe both of them stayed inbounds, and in game 2 Brunson actually ran down the floor and grabbed it.

Randle has had a couple of bad game 1s but otherwise these playoffs, he’s been incredible. Just such a steadying hand. Keeps the ball moving, has played surprisingly good defense, and has provided timely buckets while drawing a ton of fouls.

Feels like he knows exactly what the Timberwolves need from him right now without being too high usage or dominating the ball. Ant is incredible, but there’s a strong case for Randle to be Timberwolves most valuable player these playoffs so far.

https://www.vegasinsider.com/nba/playoffs/second-round/series-odds/

Cavs-Pacers (Pacers -190)

Celtics-Knicks (Celtics -110)

Thunder-Nuggets (Thunder -600)

Timberwolves-Warriors (Timberwolves -300)

Here's a breakdown of shot location and how well they've been shooting from those locations in the 2nd Round:

• Restricted Area: 67.4%
• Paint (Non-Restricted Area): 30.0% (EFG% of 30%)
• Mid Range: 27.8%
• Corner 3s: 21.2% (EFG% of 32%)
• Above The Break 3's: 25.9%

Despite only shooting 21.2% on Corner 3's, they are more efficient from there than they are anywhere within the arc that isn't the restricted area. And they are EVEN MORE efficient on Above the Break 3's. You can argue they should be taking more shots from the restricted area, which like, yes that's what every team is trying to do but also:

• Celtics in the Restricted Area: 21.5 FGA's per game
• Knicks in the Restricted Area: 17.0 FGA's per game

Some other data:

• Cavs are shooting the 2nd most shots in the restricted area on the highest % among all 2nd Round teams and they are down 0-2
• Celtics are averaging 25% from 3 on WIDE OPEN 3's

Conclusion

Despite, the topic of shot diet, they are still generating the most efficient shots they can given their shooting percentages from almost everywhere else on the floor. They are already outpacing their opponent in Restricted Area FGA's and when we look at their 2 point shooting from other locations, the efficiency is MORE grim than their 3 point shooting.

It's too late in the game to change their identity, but their identity is still of a team that generates the most efficient looks for itself. If they can just hit their wide open shots, then they'll be fine. If they can't? Then shooting from a different location isn't going to help either.