Kawhi Leonard’s game winner bounces in for Toronto, sends Philadelphia home (VIDEO)

By Kurt HelinMay 12, 2019, 9:56 PM EDT
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Is he really going to leave Toronto after that moment?

July will be July, but in May Kawhi Leonard is the king of Toronto.

This is why Raptors GM Masai Ujiri bet big on getting Leonard last summer, to make at least one run at a Finals for Toronto with a guy who had done it before on the biggest stages. Toronto had a good team before that kept falling on its face in those big games, but in Toronto’s biggest moment this season — tie game, 4.2 seconds left — Leonard did this.

“I was telling them I work on it every day, driving baseline,” Leonard said of his shot that bounced on the rim four times. “I said I missed the last one short so I just wanted to put it up in the air and got the shooter’s bounce.”

The Raptors advance to the Eastern Conference Finals against the Bucks starting Wednesday night in Milwaukee.

Game 7 was not pretty — the defense was intense and players on both teams were tight. Toronto won shooting 38.2 percent for the game. Pascal Siakam, who had been brilliant all series, seemed afraid to shoot. Kyle Lowry was 4-of-13. So Toronto turned Leonard loose and got 41 points on 39 shots — the most shots ever taken in regulation in Game 7 (Elgin Baylor took 40 in 1961 in a 1961 Game 7, but that game went to overtime). Leonard had 15 points in the fourth quarter, including those finals two.

Toronto also got 17 points off the bench from Serge Ibaka on 6-of-10 shooting, plus he had 8 rebounds.

Joel Embiid had 21 points to lead Philly, but he was gassed at the end having played 45 minutes. Still, Embiid was +10 in his 45:11, the Sixers were -12 in the 2:49 he rested. Embiid was in tears heading back to the locker room, having given all he could.

“It’s going to be a life memory that, as painful as it feels now, it will help shape his career and give him greater clarity of what this time of the year represents,” Sixers coach Brett Brown said of Embiid. “It’s hard to be the last man standing.”

Philadelphia GM Elton Brand traded away a lot of depth to get Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris, and that lack of depth became an issue in this series.

Butler was everything Brand and Sixers fans could have wanted from the trade in this series and in Game 7. He took over down the stretch, including hitting a transition layup with 4.2 seconds left to tie the game.

It was just one shot short.

It sends Philadelphia into a summer where Butler, Harris, and J.J. Redick are free agents. How this playoff run shapes their decisions remains to be seen — it is far too early to tell — but Philly has to look at why they fell short on this run and make changes.

Brown may also be in trouble as the coach, reports have surfaced that he needed to reach the Finals to save his job. Even though Brown was the better coach in this series.

Toronto moves on to the Eastern Conference Finals and a showdown of Leonard and Giannis Antetokounmpo, not to mention two of the top five defenses in the NBA this season. It’s going to be another tight, grinding series.

Toronto has shown it can win those, even when they don’t play their best, thanks to Leonard.

 

On scars, sutures, and healed wounds in Portland

By Dane DelgadoMay 12, 2019, 10:06 PM EDT
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From Mount Tabor to Slabtown, Rip City has been waiting for this for a very long time. After a 19-year hiatus, the Portland Trail Blazers are headed to the Western Conference Finals for the first time since 2000.

CJ McCollum was the hero at Pepsi Center on Sunday, scoring 37 points and grabbing nine rebounds, closing the game with an incredible fourth quarter effort as the Blazers beat the Denver Nuggets, 100-96. It’s a game that fans in Portland will be talking about long after this season concludes, whenever that may be.

Right now it’s a celebration. In Oregon, Instagram stories have filled with posts with people screaming, crying, and hugging their friends, sometimes back-to-back and often all at once. Twitter has been set ablaze, the caps lock button stuck for some, a form of Internet yelling omnipresent. Phone calls have been made between fathers and daughters, e-mails sent, and horns honked down Hawthorne, Burnside, Couch, and Flanders streets.

After a long winter, the sun is shining in Portland. But this story started long before May 12, 2019.

At a distance, it might not be obvious that Sunday meant more than just a redemption of what went wrong last season for this team. Their Game 7 win over the Nuggets was, for many fans, the cosmic payback for so much of what has been “almost” for the Blazers; a salve to heal the wounds of nearly two decades.

For the sweep at the hands of the Pelicans last year.

For the LaMarcus Aldridge-led teams that saw their hopes dashed when Wesley Matthews tore his Achilles against the Dallas Mavericks in 2015.

For the injury-plagued teams who had to do without No. 1 overall pick Greg Oden.

For the shortened legacy of Brandon Roy, whose career finished having never made it past the first round, and who never played in a Game 7.

For the fourth quarter collapse to the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2000 Western Conference Finals, a Game 7 disaster that saw that team fail to make it out of the first round again.

The underlying opinion in Portland is that the franchise is snakebitten. A culture of supporting their lovable losers — even if “losers” isn’t a fair description — was how Blazers fans operated. Deprived of stars to injury, coming up short, failing projections… all of it wired the synapses in the collective brains of Portlanders to expect the worst. And with a hum-drum offseason in 2018, who could blame Rip City on their lack of belief that this spring would be any different?

That thinking started to shift as the 2018-19 season started to gather steam. Before, the Blazers were criticized for keeping its major core intact. But at a certain point, that consistency began to be additive for Portland over the course of the season. This year, outside of Lillard, this team’s chemistry slowly became its best asset.

The Blazers swelled forward, with Jusuf Nurkic coming forth as Portland’s second-most important player on both sides of the ball. Mid-season additions of Rodney Hood and Enes Kanter bolstered Portland’s bench, and guys like Zach Collins, Seth Curry, Evan Turner, and Jake Layman all produced for Portland in a way they hadn’t before.

Still, heading into this postseason, gallows humor was the vernacular of choice in Multnomah County. Nurkic broke his leg with three weeks left in the regular season, and despite a strong coming on by Moe Harkless late in the year, it wasn’t a guarantee that the plucky Blazers would be able to get out of the first round.

Now Portland is heading to the Western Conference Finals to take on the Golden State Warriors. That in and of itself is medicine for the soul of Rip City.

Portland has been one of the best franchises in the NBA since 2000. That’s due to their dedicated fanbase and because of their former owner, the late Paul Allen. The Microsoft billionaire’s desire to win was only surpassed by his willingness to spend, and Portland has had just five losing seasons since the last time it was in the WCF.

Call it small market disease, underdog syndrome, or a chip on their shoulder, Blazers fans have craved the respect they’ve felt they deserved. They’ve wanted it for being good but not great; for loving this team so much; for being an outlier in success for a city its size. And yet, real or imagined, the answer has always come back: what have you done lately? In beating Denver, Portland now has something real, something measurable, to offer in support of how they’ve felt about this team all along.

Here we are, and injuries, almosts, and alley-oops be damned. This one you can’t take away from the Blazers.

Blazers beat Denver, advance to first Western Conference Finals since 2000

By Dane DelgadoMay 12, 2019, 7:06 PM EDT
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Sunday’s Game 7 between the Portland Trail Blazers and Denver Nuggets was not a pretty one.

The Nuggets, who had relied on Portland’s inability to hit a jumper for the entirety of the first quarter, never were able to capitalize on an early 17-point lead. Slowly but surely, it dribbled away from the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference playoffs until the Blazers crept back into the game. By halftime, Portland had cut the gap to just nine points.

Then, with 12.1 seconds left on the clock at the end of the third quarter, CJ McCollum hit a floater to briefly put Portland ahead, 71-70.

It was a shot that would foreshadow how the fourth quarter would go.

McCollum, who scored a total of 37 points on 17-of-29 shooting to go with nine rebounds, was Portland’s hero. His face steely and flat, Portland’s “other” guard kept scoring and making impact plays.

A layup with eight minutes left. A rebound with seven minutes left. A chase down block with 4:44, then a recovery four seconds later to contest a Torrey Craig 3-pointer that would have cut the lead to one. Another skying rebound with 4:09. A pull-up 16-footer with 2:57. A second at 1:25.

Then finally, the dagger that sealed the game.

Save for which side of the floor it came from, it was a move that mirrored Michael Jordan’s shot over Bryon Russell in Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals. With Craig guarding, McCollum got Craig to put on skates one more time for the signature bucket with 12.4 seconds left.

For the Nuggets, it was a lesson that perhaps only the young can learn. That is, how to close out in the biggest moments. Jamal Murray went 4-of-18, scoring 17 points. Paul Millsap struggled similarly — a testament to Terry Stotts’ decision to put Zach Collins on him in Game 6 — shooting just 3-of-13. Nikola Jokic scored 29 points to go with 13 rebounds, but had just two assists.

In Portland, as fans rejoiced, it was the payoff the Trail Blazers had been waiting for since their first-round sweep at the hands of the New Orleans Pelicans last season. It came in odd fashion, too.

Damian Lillard, who looked timid all game, used Denver’s concentration on him to his advantage in the final quarter. Instead of letting the Nuggets force the ball out of his hands, the Blazers star instead purposefully deferred. To McCollum, to Evan Turner, to Enes Kanter… to anyone who was in position to make the right play.

Turner, who hadn’t had a made field goal since Game 2 and who had just two baskets all series leading into Sunday, came up big. The Blazers’ point-forward guarded Millsap and Jokic while scoring 14 points off the bench for Stotts. Turner was impactful, including six free throws in the fourth quarter. No bigger were the two that Turner sank with eight seconds to go, the last of which pushed Portland’s lead to four.

In their second-straight series ending with a Game 7, Denver played uneven down the stretch. They gave Portland several chances to stop their eventual run, which the Blazers did. Despite the obvious advantage of the Nuggets’ defensive strategy against Portland, it was the visiting team that was able to counterpunch in a way that pushed the more experienced team to the next round.

The Trail Blazers are heading to the Western Conference Finals for the first time since 2000. Sunday will be huge in Rip City, as will Monday morning, all the way until Tuesday when they’ll meet the Golden State Warriors in Game 1.

For the Nuggets, it will be a chance to learn from their mistakes, and regroup, and try again next year.

The Blazers beat the Nuggets, 100-96, in Game 7.

Report: Kristaps Porzingis bloodied after being jumped in native Latvia (VIDEO)

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By Dane DelgadoMay 12, 2019, 4:00 PM EDT
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This season has been an interesting one for Kristaps Porzingis. The former New York Knicks big man was traded to the Dallas Mavericks, and he has been embroiled in a sexual assault case.

Now reports are floating about that Porzingis was involved in an altercation back in his native Latvia. According to The Athletic’s Shams Charania, Porzingis was jumped at a nightclub in his home country.

Video of what appeared to be Porzingis after the dust-up surfaced on the internet on Sunday, with no real context other than what could be seen on film.

In the blurry video, Porzingis is shown with a bloody mark on top of his forehead, his t-shirt torn. Porzingis can be seen pushing a woman — presumably trying to keep him from continuing the situation — out of the way before several more men step between him. A man who looks like a police officer then can be seen talking to Porzingis as the NBA star gesticulates.

Via Twitter:

We don’t know the extent of his injuries, if he has any. At this point information is sparse and we are simply looking for answers.

Adam Silver says ‘one-and-done’ rule could be gone by 2022 NBA Draft

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By Dane DelgadoMay 12, 2019, 2:00 PM EDT
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Just about everyone believes that the NBA’s one-and-done policy is bad for the league. Fans hate it, as it keeps players from earning a living despite their clear ability to do so. Players hate it for the same reason.

Seemly the only folks holding on to the one-and-done were the NBA and the NCAA. The Association liked the rule because it allowed teams to get a look at players in a more organized fashion before using draft picks on them. The NBA also liked to say this helped protect players who might flame out and could use a year boosting their draft stock and growing their basketball abilities, a point that is debatable. The NCAA wants to keep the restriction in place because it profits off universities’ ability to unfairly compensate athletes with regard to their market value. Keeping the most exciting players — NBA players — in that cadre is an added benefit.

Now it seems like we are moving toward a point where the one-and-done rule will be gone once again. Speaking on Thursday, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said that he believes the 2022 NBA Draft will be the best place for high school entrants to jump to the league.

Via Washington Post:

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has made clear he thinks the controversial one-and-done rule is no longer good policy, and he said Thursday at an event in Washington that the 2022 draft likely will allow the best high school players to jump straight into the NBA rather than playing a single season of college before turning pro.

“There are a bunch of issues that need to be worked through between us and the players association, so it’s something we’re in active discussions about,” Silver said. “It’s a few years away, I think.”

…

“So if the rule were to change, we and our players association, USA Basketball, other groups would be working much more directly with those young players to prepare them for the NBA,” he said.

Silver also said that he felt criminal proceedings, as well as his own understanding surrounding the recruiting of college basketball players, has swayed his opinion on whether the one-and-done rule should be abolished.

It doesn’t seem as though Silver would set a public date in this fashion without it being something that had a likely chance of becoming a reality. But time will tell, and all sides need to come together and make sure it’s beneficial for players and the NBA.