Throughout the NBA play-offs, The National's resident NBA dudes Jonathan Raymond and Kevin Jeffers will be breaking down the key talking points of the night before. Below, the takeaways from Monday night's action in the 2016 post-season:
• Read more: 2016 NBA Play-offs – Previews, predictions and what we learned day-by-day
Monday, April 18 scores:
Toronto Raptors 98-87 Indiana Pacers (Tied 1-1)
Oklahoma City Thunder 84-85 Dallas Mavericks (Tied 1-1)
Golden State Warriors 115-106 Houston Rockets (Warriors 2-0)
The Thunder give one away
In a game that is ostensibly a severe mismatch, usually there comes a moment that, in hindsight, becomes The Moment the good team began to put the bad one away.
We kept waiting for that moment on Monday night from Oklahoma City. Some Russell Westbrook explosion, some piece of Kevin Durant art, some dunk or three-pointer or anything that would get Cameron Payne up and dancing on the Thunder bench and finally be the spark for a 15-0 run or something that would put the Mavericks away.
It wasn’t Russell Westbrook’s glide to the basket to put them up six in the third quarter. It wasn’t the back-to-back shots by Kevin Durant and Serge Ibaka to cap an 8-0 run and put them up seven with six and a half minutes to go.
It just never came.
Durant and Westbrook combined to miss 40 shots. This was the Thunder at their worst, the Thunder as they too often are – a bunch of non-contributors standing around while Durant and Westbrook chuck. When they make more than they miss, it masks Oklahoma City’s deficiencies. But when they aren’t hitting, the Thunder are suddenly vulnerable against a Dallas team who are, frankly, really just not in the same league.
And yet it was that Dallas team who won on Monday night.
The final two minutes, with the game tied at 81, Oklahoma City’s possessions went like this: Russell Westbrook turnover (1:50); Kevin Durant misses 15-footer (1:15); Russell Westbrook misses 25-foot three (:40); Kevin Durant misses 16-footer (:24); Kevin Durant misses 23-foot three (:19); Kevin Durant makes 24-foot three (:09); Kevin Durant blocked (:03).
Steven Adams’ too-late-by-a-fraction-of-a-second put-back would-be-winner could have been that fraction of a second earlier and could have indeed won the game. That it didn’t doesn’t really matter.
The Thunder are still going to win this series. The talent discrepancy is just too glaring.
But if in the weeks ahead Oklahoma City exit the play-offs, disappointed and lamenting another wasted season of the Durant-Westbrook era, it will be because the Thunder, in all the years of team-building around those two, have never quite figured out how to exorcise that worst version of themselves.
Raptors respond
Toronto missed their first five shots in Game 2 – here we go again, it felt like.
The funk that afflicted them as they went cold over the final five minutes of Game 1 extended into the first two minutes of Monday night’s contest. Luis Scola, Jonas Valanciunas, DeMar DeRozan, DeMarre Carroll, Kyle Lowry – they all missed their opening attempts. It didn’t matter who took the ball.
And then DeRozan turned a broken play into an easy lay-up for Valanciunas, and like that the Raptors were fine. They made eight of their next 11 shots, built a 21-7 lead and took it from there, a near wire-to-wire win that never saw the Pacers get all that close after they went down for good just over three minutes into the game.
If the first two minutes of Game 2 was Game 1 (and past Toronto trips to the play-offs) in a nutshell – baffling wide-open bricks, agonising rim-outs, desperate heaves; general, inexplicable ineffectiveness – then the rest of the game is what we should be able to expect from the New Raptors: Just fine.
Valanciunas was his explosive, bullying best inside. Patrick Patterson and Cory Joseph were critical in support.
And as important as anything, on another night where Lowry (4-for-13) and DeRozan (5-for-18) struggled to score, Toronto were fine.
The Raptors are going to be fine. (Probably.)
Still golden
Remember when Andre Iguodala won the Finals MVP last year largely on the strength of his bailing out the Warriors when the going got tough for Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Co?
Turns out he can still do that.
Iguodala, the NBA’s premier overqualified bench guy, was back to his game-saving ways against Houston in Game 2 with Curry out. The 32-year-old all-star turned bench backbone provided 18 points, three assists, three rebounds, two steals and a block in his 33 minutes.
It’s not something Golden State will want to rely on. But it had to be at least a little relieving to know they can probably get through this series without any Curry at all.
Which is good, because they may need to do just that. The ESPN report on the MVP wasn't exactly encouraging:
“He cut his extensive pre-game routine short after about five minutes, appearing to be in discomfort, and left the court shaking his head.”
The Rockets are a mess, and as Iguodala – Shaun Livingston, too – stepped up on Monday night, the Warriors at least knew they can buy some time on Curry’s ankle.
Arab League
Tunisia’s Salah Mejri is, to the best of our knowledge, the first Arab national to grow up in the Mena region, begin his career with a Mena club team (Etoile du Sahel) and advance all the way to the NBA. (Egyptian Alaa Abdelnaby was raised almost entirely in the US and Sudanese Manute Bol played college ball in the US and was drafted straight into the NBA.)
So it was cool to see the big man play such a central role in Dallas’ win, with 12 points, three blocks and some energetic dunking. A cool moment for basketball fans in this part of the world to appreciate.
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