A season-ending injury to ironman Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder is just one of the early surprises in the NBA playoffs. Photo Credit: Keith Allison, Flickr.com
The NBA playoffs are a week old and they’re already over for a couple of teams, as the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers were eliminated in sweeps by the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs.
While these playoffs have mostly gone according to the script, there have been some surprises. Here are the five biggest surprises of the NBA playoffs so far.
5. Russell Westbrook going down
In this injury-filled season, if there was one player who we thought we could count on to be there for his team night after night, it was Russell Westbrook.
After all, the Oklahoma City Thunder point guard had not missed a single game in five NBA seasons. Before that, he never missed a game in two seasons at UCLA. Prior to that, he never missed a game in high school.
Dude was durable.
But after a collision with Houston Rockets rookie Patrick Beverley in Game 2 of the Thunder’s first-round series with the Houston Rockets on Wednesday, April 24, Westbrook was diagnosed with a torn meniscus in his right knee and after surgery on Saturday, April 27, the team declared Westbrook done for the year (per ESPN.com).
On the positive flip, Westbrook’s streak of 394 consecutive regular season games will remain intact going into 2013-14.
4. The Los Angeles Lakers going down the way they did
Going into the first round, few people expected the Lakers—without injured superstar Kobe Bryant—stood much of a chance to take down the San Antonio Spurs. Heck, not a lot of people would have expected the Lakers to beat San Antonio with Bryant.
But what few expected was for the Lakers to be completely depantsed in a four-game sweep.
The Spurs won by 12, 11, 31 and 21 points—the latter two at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Yes, the Lakers lost Metta World Peace, Jodie Meeks, Steve Blake and Steve Nash during the series. But to not even put up a fight? To have Dwight Howard sent to the locker room after a silly technical foul (his second of Game 4) just after halftime? It was a dysfunctional end to a dysfunctional season in L.A.
3. The Chicago Bulls hanging 142 on the Brooklyn Nets
Yes, it was a triple-overtime game. But the Bulls’ offensive explosion against the Nets on Saturday, April 27, was more than just a matter of having 15 extra minutes—Chicago had 111 at the end of regulation.
Let’s put this into perspective. The Bulls averaged 93.2 points per game this season and their pace rating of 89.3 ranked 27th in the league (coincidentally, the Nets were 28th in the NBA at 88.8).
The last time Chicago scored at least 111 points in regulation was on March 15, in a 113-95 win over the Golden State Warriors. The Bulls only scored that many points in regulation three times in 82 games.
Surprised? Heck, this is a flat-out stunner. Chicago got a lot of help when Nate Robinson went insane in the fourth quarter, scoring 23 points.
2. Stephen Curry’s coming-out party
Stephen Curry set the NBA record for most 3-pointers in a season with 272 this year. So it’s not a shock that he’s been stroking it from long range against the Denver Nuggets. But the Golden State Warriors’ star guard has taken things to a whole new level in his first-ever taste of playoff basketball.
He is averaging 27.3 points per game as the Warriors have surged out to a 3-1 lead in the series. That’s impressive. But Curry is also averaging 10 assists a game in the series. So using my second-grade math skills, that’s 47.3 points a night that Curry is responsible for so far in the series.
That’s not good—that’s off the charts. And Curry is doing it efficiently, shooting 50 percent from the floor, 47.4 percent from 3-point range and doesn’t have a miss in 15 free-throw attempts.
We knew Curry was good. But, wow. He even threw together a 22-point third quarter against the Nuggets in Game 4 on Sunday, April 28.
1. The Denver Nuggets are still … the Denver Nuggets
This was the year it was going to be different for the Nuggets. All those years of first-round frustration were going to be cast aside. After a franchise-record 57 wins (at least for their NBA days), Denver was poised to get beyond the opening round for the first time since 2009, when it reached the Western Conference Finals.
This is not a franchise that has enjoyed a great deal of playoff success, and that’s putting it kindly.
Between nine years in the ABA and 37 more in the NBA, the Nuggets have been to a Finals series once—when they lost to the New York Nets in the last ABA championship series in 1976.
Since joining the NBA in 1976, Denver has made the playoffs 24 times (including this year). They have been one-round-and-out in 16 of those seasons.
The Nuggets trail the Golden State Warriors 3-1 in their first-round series this year, which would be their 17th one-and-done playoff appearance as an NBA franchise, unless they can find a way to win the final three games of the series. But of those early exits, this one might just sting the most given that the expectation level was off the charts after such a great regular season.
The lone highlight of this year’s playoffs for the Nuggets has been Andre Miller’s turn-back-the-clock performance in Game 1—Denver’s lone win of the series.