So Are the NBA Playoffs Just Vibes Now?
AU on the once-eminently predictable pro-sports playoffs now becoming more of a hot-goalie situation -- and how that might ultimately impact the Sixers.
For a moment there on Friday night, it looked like the Indiana Pacers were gonna make all the Thunder-in-Five predictions look profoundly stupid. They led Oklahoma City convincingly, if not overwhelmingly, for most of the game, and still held a four-point lead with about three minutes to go in the fourth. Indiana's offense stalled pretty badly and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander took over just enough that the Thunder wrested control of the game late, sending the series back to OKC knotted 2-2. But Indiana could've won that game. Indiana really could win this series. Indiana could very possibly be your 2025 NBA champions.
This is of course wild for a bunch of reasons. It goes against all the long-accepted truisms of NBA playoff basketball -- that you need an obvious top-10-guy, no-doubt Hall of Famer to win it all, that depth becomes less important in the postseason, that you need a core Big Three that's much more Big Threeier than Tyrese Haliburton, Pascal Siakam and.... I dunno, Aaron Nesmith? Myles Turner? T.J. McConnell? But mostly it goes against the thing that's long defined the NBA's second season compared to other pro sports: That in basketball, the best team almost always wins, and it's pretty obvious going into most series who the best team is. Upsets are rare, extended Cinderella runs rarer. If you think it's going to be Warriors-Cavs in the finals, it's probably gonna be Warriors-Cavs in the finals. No alarms and no surprises.
Well not anymore. Now the two teams that seemed head-and-shoulders above the pack in the East, the two teams you could advance directly to the Conference Finals in your imaginary NBA playoff brackets, both lose in the second round. Now you go six straight years without the team that won it all the year before winning more than a single series the next year. Now the Pacers could win it all, why not. Now it's baseball. Now it's hockey. Now it's vibes. Now you just get in and see what happens.
It's all part of MOC's extended grievance that the NBA is now in its Nothing Means Anything era. (Ah shit MOC we probably should've workshopped that one until we coulda also backronymed it to "NBA," my bad. The "Nobody Believes in Anything" era maybe?) But anyway: Seeding used to be one of the things that really meant something in the NBA. Then we had a year where the eight teams that advanced to the second round were all the eight different seeds, and all of a sudden maybe not. Now if you saw Dikembe Mutombo lying on the court clutching that basketball and getting all emotional after upsetting the top-seeded Sonics, you'd roll your eyes and tell him to act like he'd been there before. Upsets aren't all that upsetting to anyone anymore. If it had been the fourth-seeded Pacers vs. the sixth-seeded Wolves for the Finals, I doubt the seeding would get more than a single cursory mention on the ABC broadcast.
It's not like we've never had an unlikely champion before. I remember folks predicting the Mavericks would lose to the Blazers in the first round of the 2011 playoffs. Maybe that famously superstar-less 2004 Pistons team -- which, it should be said, has now had multiple dudes elected to the Hall of Fame -- felt Pacersier at the time than it seems in retrospect. But if the Pacers do win, it'll feel less like a one-off fluke like those championships ended up being than the culmination of a half-decade-long trend now: the kind that's led to that second-round rainbow seeding in 2023, or the play-in Heat making it to the finals that same year, or the fifth-seeded Mavericks making it to the finals last year. It'll feel like the predictable championship runs are about to become more the exception than the rule.
That's a little bit of a bummer to me as an NBA fan -- or as whatever degree of NBA fan I used to be, before the Sixers kinda ruined the rest of basketball for me. But the thing I always liked about the NBA was that winning in the playoffs really felt meaningful, that you couldn't just luck your way through it, that if you looked like frauds in the regular season you'd probably turn out to be frauds in the postseason. We have plenty of sports already where anything can happen once you're in; the NBA separated itself by having a playoff system that really weeded out the unworthy -- and that, when you did have a major upset, it felt like a seismic cultural thing. The Lockout Knicks. The "We Believe" Warriors. The Uncut Gems Sixers. OK maybe not that last one but you get the idea.
Speaking of the Sixers, though: I guess if you're looking at it from their vantage point, this development is probably good news. All indications seem to present that this team is not currently built for the regular season -- not when we're built around two old guys who are bound to miss long stretches of time every year. The hope is now officially that the young guys carry us just enough through the first 82 games that we at least have a chance to see what happens for another dozen or two. And hey, if nothing means anything, then that means that however unconvincing the Sixers inevitably look during the regular season should have no bearing on how well they can do in the playoffs. Maybe they can get in and just catch the right vibe from there.
Not that catching the right vibe in the playoffs has ever really been the Joel Embiid-era Sixers' MO. But hey, it's not like the 21st century Pacers, Knicks or Wolves were ever really known for their postseason excellence before the last couple years, either. Playoff basketball being predictable certainly didn't end up going that well for us, so perhaps total postseason anarchy is our best bet. It's as good a reason as any to root for Indiana in Game Five on Monday night.
Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.
Am I the only one that thinks that when you lineup Haliburton, Siakam vs. SGA and Williams the fact this is even isn't that big of a surprise. You know if we had Holmgren and were goign up against Boston they'd probably have Horford back him down and it probably would work.
“backronymed“ is my new favorite word.
And frack Sam Presti, and his (hopefully) Okc Oasis Fail.