Basketball Tips

San Antonio couldn’t replicate their Game 1 success on Thursday as they fell to Oklahoma City 113-122 in Game 2. There was a clear change of game plan from the hosts in this one as they bodied up Victor Wembanyama on both ends of the floor, with Isaiah Hartenstein in particular putting a lot of attention towards the imposing Frenchman. It paid dividends for the hosts, but San Antonio will feel like a lot of fouls on Wembanyama went uncalled, with Hartenstein’s physicality perhaps crossing the line on multiple occasions. That seemed to have the biggest impact on the defensive…

New York produced a historic comeback in Game 1 to beat Cleveland 115-104 in overtime. Despite being down by 22 points with less than eight minutes to play in the fourth quarter, New York pulled together a 28-6 run to tie the game at 99-99 with 45 seconds to play, before Jalen Brunson replied to James Harden’s bucket to force overtime at 101-101. It was all New York in overtime as well, winning the period 14-3, continuing their defensive domination from the end of regulation to pull off an incredible come-from-behind victory. There were a few heroes for New York,…

One of the great playoff basketball games in recent memory resulted in a 115-122 upset win for San Antonio on Tuesday. Oklahoma City had no answer for Victor Wembanyama on either end of the floor in Game 1, with an amazing three-pointer from 28 feet out keeping San Antonio alive at the end of the first overtime, before Wemby and SA completely controlled double overtime to win the game. It was an incredibly high-level game of basketball, with extreme intensity being shown on both ends by both teams, but Oklahoma City often weren’t able to crack the visitors’ defence, constantly…

New York return to the conference finals for the second time in three years after breezing past Philadelphia in the second round. The series ended in a sweep, as Jalen Brunson found top gear to propel New York to an excellent offensive series. NY recorded an offensive rating of 120+ in three of the four wins and ended with a real bang, dropping a 172.9 offensive rating in Game 4 to record a 144-114 blowout win. Brunson finished the series with averages of 29.0 points and 6.0 steals per game on a clean 59.6% eFG%, and Mikal Bridges had a…

It’s the Western Conference finals that many would have been hoping for, with the newly crowned MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and his Oklahoma City team coming up against Victor Wembanyama and the up-and-coming San Antonio. There was plenty to chat about in the regular season when these teams met, with OKC really struggling to crack San Antonio’s defence an slipping to a 1-4 regular season record against their WCF opponents. However, as we have seen across the past month, playoff basketball is a different sport, and Oklahoma City have looked unstoppable so far in their postseason run. It started with a…

Detroit forced a Game 7 with a 115-94 beatdown of Cleveland on Saturday. The visitors were able to hand Cleveland their first taste of defeat at home in this year’s playoffs, outhustling them in every aspect and recording their second-best offensive game of the postseason to cruise to victory. A 22-4 run that ended early in the second quarter put JB Bickerstaff’s men in control and they kept the pressure coming all night long, to finish with a 103.3 defensive rating and a 123.6 offensive rating. Detroit’s shots were falling, going 16/36 from deep, with Duncan Robinson’s return from a…

Cleveland picked up their first road win of the playoffs on Thursday, and it couldn’t have come at a better time, with their 117-113 victory putting them up 3-2 in the series. They now head back to Rocket Arena, where they haven’t lost all postseason, with the chance to close out the series and they looked to have uncovered a major weakness in Detroit’s offence late in the piece in Game 5, with their double teams of Cade Cunningham making the Detroit offence collapse dramatically. Cleveland found themselves trailing by nine points with three minutes to play on Thursday, but…

Detroit put together a terrible second half in Game 4 to lose the matchup 103-112 and slip to a 2-2 series score. It was a solid opening half from JB Bickerstaff’s men, who got out to a seven-point lead early in the second quarter and looked to again be all over Cleveland on the defensive end, but that effectiveness disappeared in the second half, conceding 60 points to go on to lose in disappointing fashion. Caris LeVert was able to stop it from being a blowout, dropping 24 points on 73% TS% off the bench to be a +15 in…

A dramatic Game 4 saw Minnesota tie the series at 2-2, with a hot finish from the hosts getting them over the line against a Victor Wembanyama-less San Antonio. The superstar centre was ejected in the second quarter after elbowing Naz Reid in the neck and being assessed a flagrant two, but San Antonio were far from out of the contest in the aftermath. They headed into the half down 56-60 but used a 12-2 run to take a 76-68 lead midway through the third quarter, as Dylan Harper and Stephon Castle started to take over. The visitors couldn’t stay…

Cleveland continued their strong run of form at home in the playoffs, recording a 116-109 win over Detroit on Sunday. It was Cleveland’s first win of the series, making it 1-2 after three games and it was thanks to an elite offensive performance from Donovan Mitchell and some strong closing from James Harden, with The Beard scoring seven consecutive points in the final 1:30 to down Detroit. That saw him overcome what was a slow opening three quarters, in which he had just 10 points and six assists, but Mitchell was steering the ship during this part of the game,…