NBA playoffs are seeing close games become the norm. And there have been some heroic moments, too
Aaron Gordon went to the postgame interview room after his latest heroic moment for the Denver Nuggets, took a seat with his two nephews on his lap and waited for somebody to say something.
He finally broke the silence.
“Any questions?” he asked.
Seems about right that he would ask that, given that so far in these NBA playoffs Gordon has been one of the players with all the answers in the biggest moments — when games are on the line.
He has become the Mr. Game Winner of these playoffs, with a no-time-left dunk — believed to be the first of its kind in postseason history — to beat the Los Angeles Clippers in Round 1, then a 3-pointer with 2.8 seconds left to beat the Oklahoma City Thunder on Monday night.
“Did I know it was in? I knew it wasn’t a miss,” Gordon said of his latest game winner.
And Gordon isn’t alone in being part of these down-to-the-wire moments.
Round 2 is just getting underway in the NBA postseason and already there have been 14 games decided by three points or fewer, matching or exceeding the total from each of the last 10 playoff years. The New York Knicks have won five games so far in the playoffs, four of them by three points or fewer.
“We’re just going to keep fighting,” the Knicks’ Mikal Bridges said after the Game 1 win at Boston. “That’s who we are … and we keep showing it.”
This is not normal: So far, 30% of games in this year’s playoffs going into Tuesday have been decided by three points or fewer. It’s happening about twice as often as it did last season and about three times as often as it did in other postseason runs over the last decade.
And of those 14 games so far decided by three points or fewer, four of them have had a go-ahead basket in the final 10 seconds. Gordon had two of them with the dunk vs. the Clippers and the 3-pointer vs. the Thunder.
The others: New York’s Jalen Brunson hitting a 3-pointer to beat Detroit in Round 1, and Indiana’s Tyrese Haliburton getting a layup with 1.4 seconds left in overtime of the Pacers’ series-clinching, frantic Game 5 rally in the final moments to oust Milwaukee.
“We got fortunate … and Ty made a play to win the game,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said that night after Haliburton’s winner — a play that got overshadowed by an on-court dustup involving, among others, Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo and Haliburton’s father. “Fortune favors the bold.”
Brunson was the NBA’s top clutch player this season. Haliburton is an Olympic champion. Gordon was part of Denver’s run to the NBA title two years ago. In the biggest moments, they know what is required.
“It’s not about putting the team on my back,” Brunson said. “I have confidence in them. They have confidence in me. We’re going to compete. We’re going to find the best way to attack each possession. It may look like I get the credit … but it’s not just me.”
Brunson had a chance to win Game 1 with a last-second floater in regulation — “not clutch enough,” he mused when asked about it after the Knicks finished off the overtime win — but the Knicks found a way anyway.
New York was down by 20 in that game and won; Boston was 40-1 this season in games when it had a lead of 20 or more.
Denver was down by 14 at Oklahoma City and won; the Thunder are 64-2 this season in games in which they led by at least 12 points against anybody besides the Nuggets, but they’re only 2-3 in such games against Denver.
The Nuggets now have three wins by three points or fewer so far in these playoffs. Gordon is one of two players in the last quarter-century with two go-ahead shots in the last 10 seconds of playoff games in the same year: Nuggets teammate Jamal Murray did it last year, LeBron James has done it in two different postseasons during his career and Robert Horry — “Big Shot Bob,” some called him and rightly so — did it twice in the 2002 playoffs.
“We make stupid mistakes,” Denver star Nikola Jokic, who had a historic 42-point, 22-rebound effort, told Altitude TV after the Game 1 win. “But we find a way.”
At this time of year, finding a way is the only thing that’s required.
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