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Welcome back to The Bubble. This time, fans are welcome.
The last four teams in the 2020 NBA playoffs that were held in a closed-off bubble at the Walt Disney World complex in Lake Buena Vista, Florida because of the pandemic are the last four teams in the 2023 playoffs as well.
Out West, it's Denver and the Los Angeles Lakers. In the East, it's Boston and Miami. The West series starts Tuesday, the East series starts Wednesday.
The Lakers and Heat won the conference finals in the bubble. This time, according to FanDuel Sportsbook, it's the Nuggets (by a little) and the Celtics (by a lot) who are favored to make it to the NBA Finals.
Those four rosters have changed quite a bit since 2020, of course, but the biggest names have remained in place — LeBron James and Anthony Davis for the Lakers, Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray for Denver, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown for Boston, Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo for Miami.
WHAT'S NEXT?
Victor Wembanyama will find out Tuesday night where his NBA story begins.
Before Game 1 of Lakers-Nuggets, the NBA draft lottery will be held in Chicago. That'll determine the order of next month's draft, and whichever team wins the No. 1 pick will surely use it to select the 7-foot-3, 19-year-old French phenom.
After that, there's at least eight (and probably more) consecutive nights of basketball. The Lakers-Nuggets series starts Tuesday, the Celtics-Heat series starts Wednesday and the teams just keep alternating days from there. Unlike the first two rounds, there are no extra off days in these conference finals — teams play every other day.
HOW TO WATCH
— The Western Conference finals are on ESPN.
— The Eastern Conference finals are on TNT.
— All games are scheduled for 8:30 p.m. Eastern.
— Team broadcasters will no longer air games. Everything after the first round is exclusive to national windows and not available for local telecasts.
— The NBA Finals on ABC begin June 1.
MR. GAME 7
Golden State's Stephen Curry had the Game 7 scoring record for about two weeks.
Boston's Jayson Tatum scored 51 points in the Celtics' easy Game 7 win over Philadelphia on Sunday, the most anyone has ever scored in the ultimate game of a series. Curry scored 50 in Golden State's Game 7 win over Sacramento on April 30.
It was the third time in the last three postseasons that the Game 7 record got broken. Kevin Durant — then of Brooklyn — had 48 in an overtime loss to Milwaukee in the East semifinals on June 19, 2021.
Boston’s Sam Jones scored 47 against Cincinnati on April 10, 1963 and nobody topped that for nearly 60 years. Atlanta’s Dominique Wilkins tied him with a 47-point game against the Celtics on May 22, 1988.
Then came Durant to break their record, and then Curry, and now Tatum.
PAST MATCHUPS
The regular season doesn't mean much of anything when trying to figure out what's going to happen in these conference finals matchups.
The Lakers and Nuggets haven't faced off since Jan. 9. The most recent Celtics-Heat game was Jan. 24.
Much has happened since.
Consider: The only player to start for the Lakers in all four games against Denver this season was Patrick Beverley — who got traded to Orlando in February and ended up in Chicago. The Lakers used 18 different players against Denver this season; eight of them no longer play for the Lakers. And the leading scorer for the Lakers in their most recent game against Denver was Russell Westbrook, who finished his season with the Los Angeles Clippers.
Miami's Jimmy Butler hasn't played against Boston since Dec. 2. Kevin Love — now a Heat starter — was still in Cleveland when Miami and Boston last squared off. And Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla was still Celtics interim coach Joe Mazzulla for the most recent Miami-Boston meeting; he didn't get the interim tag removed until February.
But for the record, though it means nothing, the Lakers and Nuggets went 2-2 against each other this season, as did the Celtics and Heat.
QUOTABLE
“No one's safe in our business. I get that." — Philadelphia coach Doc Rivers, when asked about his future with the 76ers and amid a stretch where three big-name coaches who had recently been (or won) the NBA Finals — Monty Williams in Phoenix, Mike Budenholzer in Milwaukee and Nick Nurse in Toronto — all recently got fired.
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