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      Paul George, Victor Oladipo Talk Return From Injury as Playoffs Begin

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      Paul George is back for the Los Angeles Clippers; Victor Oladipo, for the Miami Heat. The road to return was long but has them back in time for the playoffs.For about a month after he was sidelined with a torn ligament in his right elbow, Paul George could do nothing but wait.He had been through serious injuries before, but the waiting process for this one, in December, was new to him.No activity for a few weeks. He couldn’t get back on the court for more than two months. His body, doctors told him, just needed rest.George would watch N.B.A. games at home with his fiancée, young daughters, newborn son. The children would watch sometimes, but mostly stayed occupied with their iPads while George focused on work.He would pay close enough attention to offer suggestions or words of encouragement to his Los Angeles Clippers teammates via text message. After a while, though, he felt an acute sense of regret.“Early on they did a great job of kind of rallying and keeping together and having a strong season, but as the season went on, they kind of hit a wall and ran out of gas,” George said. “It was very noticeable. It was tough. It was tough to watch that and not be able to help them. I think that was probably the hardest part for me — watching.”When George finally returned on March 29, he promptly scored 34 points to help the Clippers to a comeback win against the Utah Jazz.George is among an unusually large group of players with proven talent who were injured for a considerable part of the 2021-22 regular season. He and others sustained serious injuries, and watched their teams go on without them, while embarking on an often lonely road back. Like George, some of them are returning to their teams just in time for the playoffs and have a chance to change their team’s fortunes dramatically.Victor Oladipo said he had to be be his own “best friend” in motivating himself to push through the long recovery from a leg injury.Marta Lavandier/Associated Press“Having one of our best players back, one of the best players in the league, a guy who’s tremendous on both sides of the ball, does absolutely everything that we ask him and more,” Clippers guard Reggie Jackson said. “Just having him back, having more of our leaders back, you know, face of the franchise and one of the best players in the world, it just gives us more confidence.”George’s teammate Kawhi Leonard has been spotted shooting at the team’s practice facility, having missed the entire season while recovering from A.C.L. surgery. Denver’s Jamal Murray, who had the same surgery, has shown positive signs of recovery, though it is unclear if he will return.Center Brook Lopez returned to the Milwaukee Bucks on March 14 for the first time since the season opener. He had back surgery in December and was listed as “out indefinitely.”“I’ve been through injuries a few times. It’s always just made me appreciate basketball and love it even more,” Lopez told reporters after his first game back. “I try never to take my time on the court for granted, whether it’s practice, shootaround or a game.”He smiled brightly when asked about being back.“I missed it so much,” Lopez said.Miami Heat guard Victor Oladipo knows well the pangs of being away for so long. He had support from friends and family after injuries, but the road back still wasn’t easy.“It can get lonely at times,” Oladipo said. “You’ve got to be your own biggest fan. You’ve got to be your own motivation. You’ve got to self-motivate, you’ve got to talk to yourself, you’ve got to be your best friend.”Oladipo was an All-Star with the Indiana Pacers in 2017-18 and 2018-19. He ruptured his quadriceps tendon in January 2019 and had surgery shortly thereafter. A year later he returned to play but still didn’t feel right.“It feels like it’s you hindering you from being where you need to be,” Oladipo said. “Or that this is your norm and you can never get back to playing freely.”He said he realized soon after his surgery that it had been done incorrectly. He needed a second surgery in May of last year; he did not make his debut this season until last month.Oladipo spent about a month and a half in a cast after the second surgery before restarting the process of learning how to use his legs properly.When he could not be with the team for games, he would sometimes rent out a movie theater at the Brickell City Centre in Miami to watch games by himself, or with his assistant or manager.“The screen is so big, it makes you feel like you’re actually in the game,” Oladipo said.He watched critically, while sitting in the front row, trying to guess how the action would unfold. Sometimes he thought through what decisions he might make if he were the coach.“You want to help the team,” Oladipo said. “If the team is doing well, you want to be part of that. You’ve got to just focus on you and focus on doing the things that you can do in order to get healthy and get right so that you can affect winning and help them the best you can.”Unlike for Lopez and George, Oladipo’s role with the Heat going forward has not been fully established. He has played in only eight games since returning on March 7. On April 3 in Toronto, he scored 21 points.“These are things we have seen daily, behind the scenes,” Chris Quinn, an assistant coach for the Heat, told reporters after the game, while filling in for Coach Erik Spoelstra, who was out because of coronavirus protocols. “It’s the hard work, it’s the grit, it’s the grind. Coming off what he came off injury wise, and for him to get to this point, it’s still part of the process of him becoming what he can be.”The Heat did not play Oladipo in their next two games, but he scored 40 points in the team’s regular-season finale on Sunday.“I’m still capable of doing a lot of good things out there, a lot of great things out there,” Oladipo said in an interview in late March. “Right now, I think my purpose for this team is to do whatever needs to be done in order for us to win.”Bucks center Brook Lopez said he tries not to take basketball for granted after enduring multiple injuries in his career.David Banks/Associated PressThe need for patience doesn’t end once a player returns from injury. Minutes restrictions and nights off are common after a long layoff.For George, that meant that during his second game back — an overtime loss to the Chicago Bulls — he couldn’t play at all in the overtime period.“He tries to lobby, but it’s not up to him,” Clippers Coach Tyronn Lue said of George’s minutes restriction. “Our medical staff is the best in the league, so we give them full responsibility, and allow the player to protect him from himself because he wants to play. All players want to play when they’re on the floor.”As George looks back on the months he spent without being able to play basketball, he acknowledges it was challenging to be forced to stay off the court. But overall he is comfortable with how it went.“I think that’s what made the process so good and that’s what made me feel mentally so great about it,” George said. “There was no low points. I listened to my body; my body was hurt. I knew I needed some time off.”There was a silver lining as well.“I think the positives I took away from it was extended time being with my family,” George said. “Being with my kids. My girl. It was just a lot of time that I got to spend that I don’t usually spend because I’m playing on the road.”The Clippers exceeded expectations without him. While across town the Lakers could not overcome losing LeBron James and Anthony Davis to injury for long stretches, the Clippers qualified for the play-in tournament without having George for most of the season and without having Leonard at all.While Oladipo and the Heat are locked into the top seed of the Eastern Conference playoffs, the Clippers, at No. 8 in the West, will have to fight through the play-in tournament to get either the seventh or eighth seed. They won four of the first five games after George returned. He will get to do a lot more than watch as their postseason begins. More

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      Playoff Makeovers May Upend the N.B.A. Championship Chase

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      Injured stars could return for the postseason, creating an undercurrent of unpredictability for their opponents.Stephen Curry appeared at a recent practice for the Golden State Warriors without a walking boot on his sprained left foot. In Los Angeles, the Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard, who has not played all season, was spotted by local reporters participating in shooting drills. And the Denver Nuggets’ Jamal Murray, also sidelined since last season, is again soaring for dunks, according to some impeccable sources: his own teammates.“Just a matter of time, I guess,” Nuggets guard Monte Morris told reporters recently, “so hopefully we can get him back and make that push.”Ahead of the start of the N.B.A. playoffs on Saturday, a slew of teams, many of them contenders, could be primed for makeovers. Golden State could stage an on-court reunion of its Big Three — Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green — for the first time in the playoffs since 2019. The Nuggets have left the door ajar for Murray’s long-awaited return from knee surgery. The Clippers only recently reintroduced Paul George to their starting lineup after he had been absent since December with a torn ligament in his elbow, and is it possible that Leonard, who injured his right knee last June, could make a surprise appearance in the coming weeks?The list goes on. Ja Morant, the All-Star point guard of the Memphis Grizzlies, just returned from injury over the weekend. And there are teams like the Nets, who now have the luxury of playing Kyrie Irving in home games, and the Milwaukee Bucks, the defending champions, who have been building Brook Lopez’s minutes after he missed 67 games with a bad back. Chris Paul of the Phoenix Suns is getting back into rhythm after missing a month with a thumb injury.What does it all mean? Potential headaches for opponents, and an undercurrent of unpredictability that will run through the early rounds of the postseason.Suns guard Chris Paul missed a month down the stretch because of a thumb injury. He averaged 12.7 points and 11.2 assists per game in his first six games back.Joe Rondone/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“I think it’s unusual that we’re waiting to hear about that from so many teams,” Stan Van Gundy, the former N.B.A. coach, said in a telephone interview, “and that guys could come back in the playoffs who either haven’t played all year or for a good part of the year.”Facing teams with stars who may or may not play creates a unique set of challenges for opposing coaches, said Eric Musselman, a former coach of the Warriors and the Sacramento Kings who now coaches the men’s basketball team at Arkansas. On the one hand, he said, you want to relay to your team that the injured player will be a threat if he actually appears in uniform.“I’ll never say, ‘This guy might be out of sync,’ or, ‘He’s going to be rusty,’” Musselman said. “It’s always: ‘This guy is an All-Star, he’s been working out, and he’s in playoff shape.’ You need to be ready for anything.”On the other hand, Musselman said, you need to guard against a letdown in focus and intensity if that player winds up sitting out. Uncertainty, in its own way, can create a competitive advantage.So even if the Nuggets decide not to play Murray in the playoffs, or the Nets officially pull the plug on Ben Simmons and his balky back, it might behoove those teams to keep that information to themselves, Van Gundy said. There is no harm, he said, in leaving opponents guessing. Force them to concoct multiple game plans. Make them plan for something that will never happen.“I’m going to want to add to your preparation time,” said Van Gundy, now an analyst for TNT and Turner Sports.Van Gundy cited the Orlando Magic’s 2009 playoff run when they faced the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference semifinals. Kevin Garnett, the Celtics’ star center, had been sidelined for several weeks with an injured knee, and Van Gundy, who was the Magic’s coach at the time, said he knew there was “virtually no chance” that Garnett would make an appearance in the series. But Garnett was still a presence on Orlando’s scouting report, and the team still studied film of him.Jamal Murray has yet to play this season after injuring his knee last year, but he could be a difference-maker for the Nuggets in the playoffs.Ethan Mito/Clarkson Creative/Getty Images“If he came back, we didn’t want to lose a game in a seven-game series because we got caught by surprise,” Van Gundy said.Over the coming days and weeks, opposing coaches will overprepare for the possibility that long-injured stars could return, said Brendan Suhr, a former longtime N.B.A. assistant. And if one does?“I’m immediately going to trap him,” Suhr said. “I’m going to try to do stuff he’s not used to seeing. I would make it very difficult for him. Because his workouts, especially his noncontact workouts, were very soft — coming off pick-and-rolls, getting into rhythm, making shots. And now I’m going to force him to make very tough, under-pressure decisions.”At the other end of the court, make that player defend. “Especially if he’s coming back from a leg injury,” Suhr said.With all that in mind, teams with stars on the mend must weigh the delicate calculus about whether to bring them back at all — and if so, when. Will they be ineffective? Susceptible to further harm? Van Gundy recalled a conversation he had with Tyronn Lue, the coach of the Clippers, last month, before George returned to the team’s lineup on March 29.“He was talking about how there would be a cutoff point in terms of bringing Paul George back,” Van Gundy said. “If he couldn’t get in X amount of regular-season games, he wouldn’t want to play him in the playoffs.”There are, of course, cautionary tales from playoffs past. Consider Golden State’s tortured postseason experience in 2019, when Kevin Durant, who was then one of the team’s stars, strained his right calf in the Western Conference semifinals. After missing nine straight games, he returned for Game 5 of the N.B.A. finals against the Toronto Raptors and ruptured his right Achilles’ tendon. The Warriors lost the series, and Durant missed the entire 2019-20 season after signing with the Nets.Michael Malone, the coach of the Nuggets, told reporters this month that Murray “wants to be back” and that the team was “keeping hope alive.” Nikola Jokic, the Nuggets’ do-everything center and a favorite to repeat as the league’s most valuable player, sounded more cautious about the situation.The Grizzlies have been fearsome with and without Ja Morant, center, who is expected to return for the playoffs.Petre Thomas/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“I told him, ‘If you’re not 100 percent ready to go, don’t come back,’” Jokic said. “It’s stupid. You’re going to get injured. I mean, if you’re not 100 percent ready to go, especially for the playoffs …”His voice trailed off.After getting past the Garnett-less Celtics in 2009, the Magic advanced to the N.B.A. finals that year against the Los Angeles Lakers. Ahead of Game 1, Van Gundy decided to activate Jameer Nelson, his starting point guard. Nelson had missed the previous four months with a torn labrum in his right shoulder. Van Gundy opted to bring him off the bench against the Lakers.“He was our leader, and he was having an All-Star year until he got hurt,” Van Gundy recalled.And because Nelson was returning from a shoulder injury, that meant that he had been able to run and stay in relatively decent shape during his long layoff.“That’s a little different than if you’ve got a knee injury and you’re limited in what you can do,” Van Gundy said.Still, even with Nelson back in the rotation, the Magic lost the series in five games. Van Gundy has never regretted the move.“You want to go into the biggest games with your best people,” he said. More

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      Phoenix Suns Headed to First N.B.A. Finals in Almost 30 Years

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      This will be the first trip to the finals for the Suns’ veteran leader, Chris Paul, who scored 41 points in the series-clinching Game 6 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers.The Phoenix Suns, after missing the playoffs for 10 consecutive seasons, are headed to the N.B.A. finals for the first time since 1993. More

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      The N.B.A. Champion May Literally Be the Last Team Standing

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      Injuries to stars have dominated and reshaped the playoffs, raising questions about the legitimacy of winning it all this year in a weakened field.The Milwaukee Bucks were in the midst of a comeback on Tuesday against the Atlanta Hawks, who were without their best player, Trae Young. With the Bucks up two games to one in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference finals series, a win would have put the franchise on the brink of making its first N.B.A. finals since 1974. More

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      It’s Good to Be Reggie Jackson, in the N.B.A. and in Baseball

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      One Reggie Jackson, of the Yankees, made his mark in the World Series. Another, of the Los Angeles Clippers, is doing so in the N.B.A. playoffs.When insight was needed on the proverbial batting practice buzz generated by Stephen Curry’s pregame shooting routines or LeBron James’s unfamiliar pursuit of a championship in October, Reggie Jackson, the former Yankee, was a natural expert to seek out for an interview. More

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      Clippers Beat Suns in Game 3, Continuing a Playoff Trend

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      For the third straight playoff series, Los Angeles spotted an opponent two wins and then roared back in Game 3. In each previous series, they kept winning and advanced.The Los Angeles Clippers are the first team in N.B.A. history to erase multiple 2-0 series deficits in the same postseason. Their players, so impressed by the adjustments that their coach, Tyronn Lue, has been making to facilitate those comebacks, have started calling him Bill Belichick.“Yeah, right,” Lue said late Thursday, laughing at the comparisons to Belichick, who has coached the New England Patriots to six Super Bowl titles.Lue knows the Clippers remain seven wins from the first N.B.A. championship in franchise history, but on Thursday they managed to add another entry to their improbable run of Game 3 recoveries — and this time they did it without their best player. With Kawhi Leonard reduced to spectator status, watching from a Staples Center suite as he nursed a worrisome right knee sprain, Los Angeles ground out a 106-92 victory over the Phoenix Suns to slice the Suns’ lead in the best-of-seven Western Conference finals to 2-1.While none of the Clippers got too carried away with one win, given the specter of Leonard’s uncertain availability for the rest of the series, the performance provided the feel of an actual trend that began with the Clippers’ momentous Game 3 win in Dallas and continued with a similar escape against the Utah Jazz in the next round.Paul George scored 27 points in Game 3.Robert Hanashiro/USA Today Sports, via ReutersIn the first round, Dallas had won the first two games as the road team and opened a 30-11 lead in Game 3 before the Clippers rallied for a win that probably saved their season.This week, after the Clippers dropped the first two games in Phoenix while the Suns’ Chris Paul was isolated from his team in the league’s health and safety protocols, Los Angeles needed a similar turning point. With Paul making his return Thursday night, the Suns, with Paul in and Leonard out, seemed set up perfectly to bring a halt to the Clippers’ Game 3 joy.Then Lue intervened, as he had in the Dallas series (when he made the 6-foot-8 Nicolas Batum his starting center) and then the Utah series (when he unleashed the reserve guard Terance Mann, with Leonard out, and Mann responded by scoring a career-high 39 points in a closeout victory in Game 6).On Thursday, Lue again started the 6-foot-5 Mann to send some size at the rusty Paul, but he also handed key roles to Patrick Beverley and Ivica Zubac (15 points and 16 rebounds) after pulling both from the starting lineup in the Dallas series. Assigning Mann to Paul and directing Beverley to hound the Suns’ Devin Booker helped a weary Paul George stay just fresh enough to register 27 points, 15 rebounds and 8 assists. It was an encouraging rebound for George, whose two late missed free throws in Game 2 in Phoenix created the opening for the Suns to steal a 104-103 victory on Deandre Ayton’s dunk in the final second. In Game 3, George’s half-court bank shot at the third-quarter buzzer freshened up his 9-for-26 shooting line considerably and crucially nudged the Clippers’ lead to 80-69, giving them the fourth-quarter edge that led to the Suns’ first loss since May 27.“I thought we did a great job of moving on,” George said. “I moved on. I know I have to be better.”That was a safe assumption with Paul returning from his 10-day isolation from the Suns. Before his sudden exile, Paul, 36, had played the best series of his career in a second-round sweep over the Denver Nuggets — clinching only the second trip to the conference finals in Paul’s 16-season career. He also surely wanted to make a showy return to Los Angeles, where he had spent six fruitless seasons with the Clippers before departing in 2017.Paul and the Suns still have an opportunity to lead their franchise into the N.B.A. finals for the first time since 1993. Leonard’s injury makes this the third straight round in which the Suns have faced a compromised opponent, after the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers (Anthony Davis) and then the Nuggets (Jamal Murray) were weakened by the loss of key players.Yet Paul and Booker combined to shoot 10 for 40 from the field in Game 3, with Booker forced to wear a plastic face shield after a Game 2 clash with Beverley left him with a broken nose. The Suns also lost Cameron Payne, who starred in Game 2 (29 points, 9 assists, 0 turnovers) while filling in for Paul, when he injured his left ankle in the first half. For once in a postseason marked by serious injury issues in both conferences, Phoenix looked a bit banged up heading into Saturday’s Game 4.Booker insisted that his nose was “fine, honestly” after doctors deemed it broken in three places, and he dismissed suggestions that the mask had affected his shooting. I checked in with one of Booker’s former Suns teammates, Jamal Crawford, after Crawford took to Twitter during Booker’s 5-for-21 shooting struggles to describe his own experience with a face shield as “the best defense” he had ever seen.Devin Booker wore a mask to protect his broken nose but refused to blame it for his 5-for-21 shooting performance.Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press“The mask challenge is real,” Crawford said. “First off, you can only see straight ahead, nothing on the sides. And even shooting, your depth perception is not quite right. A shot you shoot long may be short, and vice versa. It’s tough to get in a rhythm.”Crawford recalled ditching the mask after a quarter and taking his chances with an exposed nose because “the frustration of wearing it was too much.” The Suns coach, Monty Williams, not surprisingly, implored his players to blame the defeat on nothing apart from their failure to match what he termed the Clippers’ “desperation.”To hear Lue’s players tell it, that pluck stemmed as much from him as despair. Whether the Clippers can win Game 4 and give their third successive comeback attempt from a 2-0 deficit a significant jolt most likely depends on how well Paul and Booker can bounce back from their shaky reunion. But the Clippers said they were convinced Lue would have a plan for that.“I think it’s special, just the relationship I have with T-Lue, and the relationship T-Lue has with every individual on this team in general,” George said. He credited a late-night phone call with Lue shortly after the team landed in Los Angeles after the painful Game 2 defeat with helping him bounce back.But does that make him the next Belichick?“I’m nowhere near him,” Lue said.Was he bold enough to believe that the Clippers, after going 0-6 in Game 1s and Game 2s, can make it back to 2-2 again even without Leonard?“I don’t like it, I’ll tell you that,” Lue said of his team’s habit of digging early holes. “But we’ve been a resilient team all season long.” More

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      N.B.A. All-Stars Set a Painful Record for Missing Playoff Games

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      Injury woes are not new, but they have been acute during the playoffs. Never before have eight All-Stars missed at least one postseason game in the same year.Sprained knees. Strained hamstrings. Twisted ankles. Shattered hopes.The N.B.A. playoffs have turned into a battle of attrition as the league grapples with a growing list of injuries to many of its biggest stars. No less an eminence than LeBron James, whose Los Angeles Lakers made a hasty first-round exit after his All-Star teammate Anthony Davis injured his knee (and then his groin), weighed in on Wednesday, blaming the league’s compressed schedule. Regular-season games began in December after an abridged off-season.“They all didn’t wanna listen to me about the start of the season,” James wrote on Twitter. “I knew exactly what would happen.”It is worth noting that the league and its players’ union agreed on the schedule.But injuries were a problem for many N.B.A. teams even before the start of the playoffs — the Denver Nuggets, for example, were left without Jamal Murray, their starting point guard, when he sustained a season-ending knee injury in April — and a fresh batch of injuries in the postseason has only amplified the issue. In fact, with two-plus playoff rounds remaining, the N.B.A. has already set an ignominious record: eight All-Stars (and counting, perhaps) have missed at least one postseason game.Here is a look at those players, and how their injuries and absences have affected their teams:Kawhi Leonard, Los Angeles ClippersKawhi Leonard sat during the end of Game 4 against the Utah Jazz on Monday with knee soreness.Kevork Djansezian/Getty ImagesInjury: Leonard was huge for the Clippers on Monday in Game 4 of their Western Conference semifinal series against the Utah Jazz, finishing with 31 points and 7 rebounds in a win that evened the best-of-seven series at two games apiece. But the Clippers’ victory proved costly: Leonard sprained his right knee.Impact: Leonard was expected to miss Game 5 on Wednesday night, and the Clippers did not offer a timetable for his return. One of the top two-way players in the league, Leonard is vital to the Clippers’ championship hopes. There is also a sense of urgency for the franchise, which has never made a conference final and had been banking on the star-studded pairing of Leonard and Paul George to help deliver its first title: Leonard can opt for free agency after the season. Another playoff disappointment could figure in his decision. The Clippers would prefer that they not have to find out.Anthony Davis, Los Angeles LakersAnthony Davis’s injuries hurt the Lakers’ quest to defend their championship this season.Harry How/Getty ImagesInjury: After helping the Lakers win it all last season, Davis stumbled through the 2020-21 regular season, missing about two months with a calf strain. It only got worse for him in the Lakers’ first-round series with the Phoenix Suns, as he injured his knee and his groin.Impact: Despite spraining his left knee in Game 3 against the Suns, Davis played through pain to deliver a win. But he strained his groin in Game 4, then missed Game 5. He limped through the early stages of Game 6 before heading to the locker room in pain, and the Lakers lost the game and the series without him. The Lakers had hoped to mount a stronger title defense. Davis blamed himself. “We just couldn’t stay healthy,” he said. “A lot of that is on me.James Harden, Brooklyn NetsHarden played with a strained hamstring in Game 5 against the Bucks. He scored just 5 points.Adam Hunger/Associated PressInjury: It took less than a minute for Harden, holding his hamstring, to leave Game 1 of the Nets’ second-round series against the Milwaukee Bucks. Harden missed the next three games before making a last-second decision to play in Game 5 Tuesday night. Strain to the same hamstring caused Harden to miss most of the last month of the regular season.Impact: The Nets’ top three stars — Harden, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving — played only eight games together during the regular season. Harden is one of the most productive scorers in N.B.A. history, and he was largely ineffective in his return on Tuesday night in Brooklyn, with just 5 points and one made field goal. Without Harden’s shooting and playmaking ability, and combined with the loss of Irving, the Nets’ path to a championship becomes much more difficult. Harden is, however, expected to play in Game 6 on Thursday in Milwaukee.Kyrie Irving, Brooklyn NetsKyrie Irving landed on another player’s foot and sprained his ankle.Stacy Revere/Getty ImagesInjury: During the second quarter of Game 4 against the Bucks, Irving sprained his right ankle when he landed on Giannis Antetokounmpo’s right foot after a layup. He is out indefinitely.Impact: Losing just Irving, given the Nets’ depth, probably would be a storm the team could weather. But his loss combined with Harden’s problematic hamstring, makes the Nets much more vulnerable. It puts pressure on Durant to produce historic numbers like he did in Game 5 against the Bucks (49 points, 17 rebounds, 10 assists). But even without Irving, the Nets, as they showed Tuesday night, may be deep enough to get by without him if role players like Jeff Green continue to show up.Joel Embiid, Philadelphia 76ersEmbiid has missed just one game with a small lateral meniscus tear, but the injury has also negatively affected him when he’s played.Tim Nwachukwu/Getty ImagesInjury: Sidelined with a left knee bone bruise for a couple of weeks during the regular season, Embiid sustained a small lateral meniscus tear in his right knee in the 76ers’ first-round series with the Washington Wizards.Impact: Despite the apparent severity of his injury, Embiid has been out only once — Game 5 against the Wizards, which the 76ers won to close the series. He was terrific at the start of their conference semifinal series with the Atlanta Hawks, averaging 35.3 points and 10.3 rebounds per game as the 76ers took a 2-1 series lead.He struggled, though, in a Game 4 loss, shooting 4 of 20 from the field, including 0 for 12 in the second half. He acknowledged afterward that his knee was bothering him. “As far as being 100 percent, I don’t think that’s going to happen until the year is actually over,” Embiid told reporters. “I just got to go out and manage it.”Donovan Mitchell, Utah JazzUtah Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell (45) is helped off the court after injuring his ankle.Russell Isabella/USA Today Sports, via ReutersInjury: Mitchell missed the last 16 regular-season games and Utah’s playoff opener against the Memphis Grizzlies because of a sprained right ankle.Impact: The Jazz lost their first playoff game against Memphis without Mitchell. After Mitchell returned for Game 2, the Jazz dominated the series. Mitchell averaged 28.5 points and 5.8 assists in four games on 45 percent shooting. In Utah’s second-round match up against the Clippers, Mitchell has been even more dominant, with 37.3 points a game on 46.8 percent shooting through the first four games.Mike Conley, Utah JazzMike Conley’s absence leaves the Jazz without one of their key scorers beyond Donovan Mitchell.Rick Bowmer/Associated PressInjury: Conley has not played in Utah’s semifinal series against the Clippers because of a right hamstring strain. He also missed 20 games during the regular season because of injuries or rest related to that hamstring.Impact: Conley, when healthy, is the starting point guard for the Jazz. On a team that sometimes is too reliant on Mitchell to make plays, Conley is another player who can help break down defenses to take the pressure off Mitchell. During the regular season, Conley made his first All-Star appearance and averaged 16.2 points and 6 assists per game on 44.4 percent shooting, placing him firmly in the upper tier of N.B.A. guards.Jaylen Brown, Boston CelticsBrown had season-ending wrist surgery in May.Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty ImagesInjury: The Celtics announced on May 10 that Brown would miss the end of the regular season and the entire postseason because of a torn ligament in his left wrist.Impact: Brown established himself as a star this season, with averages of 24.7 points and 6 rebounds per game. He also made his first All-Star team. But his presence likely would not have made much of a difference in the playoffs, where the Celtics lost to the heavily favored Nets in the first round in five games. More

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      Lost Lead Reminds Mavericks Fans of 2006 Collapse

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      Fifteen years ago, the Mavericks lost the N.B.A. finals after winning the first two games of the series. Now they have blown a 2-0 lead over the Clippers.DALLAS — The Dallas Mavericks are one of only four teams to win the first two games in the N.B.A. finals and still lose the series. It was always assumed thereafter that, for this franchise and its fans, no playoff collapse could inflict as much pain as Dallas’s disintegration against the Miami Heat in 2006.Chances are the sentiment still applies, since a first-round series will never be confused with a championship series, but the Luka Doncic-led Mavericks are suddenly careening toward a doozy of an unraveling that might wind up in the same conversation.After seizing a 2-0 lead over the Los Angeles Clippers, with back-to-back road victories that had the league buzzing, Dallas welcomed crowds of nearly 18,000 fans on Friday night and Sunday night at American Airlines Center — and promptly disappointed them both.The series now resting at 2-2 is even worse than it sounds for the Mavericks, because they amassed a 30-11 lead in the first quarter of Game 3 that could have easily caused the Clippers, on the brink of a full-blown franchise crisis, to capsize. Two defeats later, and with Doncic clearly compromised by a neck strain he sustained during Game 3, Dallas has been forced to confront the painful reality that it actually squandered more than a 2-0 lead.“We’ve got to hope in the next couple of days that he can be better — hopefully substantially better,” Mavericks Coach Rick Carlisle said of Doncic’s health. “There’s a two-day break between games, which is a positive in this case.”An extra day off before Wednesday’s Game 5 back at Staples Center in Los Angeles was the lone positive Carlisle could realistically pinpoint.Fueled by Coach Tyronn Lue’s small-ball lineups, stout team defense in Sunday’s 106-81 rout in Game 4 and, most of all, relentless paint attacks from Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, the Clippers have mustered a show of unity and resolve that maybe no one in the N.B.A. outside of Lue expected.Leonard, in particular, has been as dominant as ever offensively in response to last week’s chatter about Doncic’s emergence as the best player in the series, averaging 33.0 points per game on ridiculous 62.7 percent shooting from the field.Mocking the Clippers’ moxie had evolved into a sport within the sport since their collapse against the Denver Nuggets in last summer’s bubble playoffs at Walt Disney World in Florida.On the brink of a Western Conference finals showdown with the Los Angeles Lakers, their storied Staples Center co-tenants, the Clippers went from a 3-1 cushion to a second-round exit by losing three consecutive games to Denver. Coach Doc Rivers was fired and the rigors stemming from the isolation of bubble life were blamed.But then the Clippers appeared to go out of their way to lose their final two games this season to lowly Houston and Oklahoma City, locking in the first-round matchup they preferred with Dallas and ensuring that they would avoid the Lakers until the conference finals.When Doncic and the Mavericks shredded the Clippers twice in Los Angeles to open the series, Lue and his players were lampooned for messing with basketball karma and, worse, reinforcing perceived frailties as a group that could potentially convince Leonard to leave the club in free agency this summer.Reggie Jackson, in the Clippers’s starting lineup for his ball-handling and shooting, scored 15 points in Game 4.Kevin Jairaj/USA Today Sports, via ReutersLue responded with his best work since his coaching contributions to the Cleveland Cavaliers’ historic comeback from a 3-1 deficit in the 2016 N.B.A. finals to Golden State.He made the 6-foot-8 Nicolas Batum his primary center in hopes of keeping more mobile players on the floor to cope with the brilliant Doncic, who averaged 38.0 points through the first games before his 9-for-24 shooting struggles and quiet 19 points on Sunday.Lue also made Reggie Jackson a starter in the backcourt for a boost in shooting and ball-handling and expanded roles for Rajon Rondo and Terance Mann, even though that meant relegating the boisterous Patrick Beverley, his original starter at point guard, out of the rotation.Lue admitted that the Clippers want to “try to wear Luka down” and “let him play one on one” by switching defenders on him constantly, and living with the results as long as they can “keep his assists down.”The smaller, quicker lineups likewise exacerbated the mobility issues that have plagued Dallas’ Kristaps Porzingis defensively since Porzingis, who tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee as a Knick in 2018, sustained a meniscus tear in his right knee in last season’s first-round series against the Clippers.“We still haven’t done anything yet,” Lue said.A reserved approach is wise in a series in which the home team has yet to win a game, and when Dallas is 3-0 on the Clippers’ floor this season. But there is a strong case to be made that the Mavericks won the first two games thanks as much to their unsustainable success from 3-point range as to the damage Doncic caused at full strength.The Mavericks shot 35-for-70 from deep in those two games, then cratered to 5-for-30 on 3-pointers in Game 4, with Doncic’s supporting cast fading badly, after wasting a 20-for-39 showing in Game 3.Carlisle said that, from his vantage point, Doncic’s injury left him unable to “turn his neck to the left.” That would help explain the lack of zip in his game and Doncic’s joyless expression from the start, with strips of black protective tape from the back of his neck and across his left shoulder protruding from his uniform.Doncic is shooting 40.6 percent from the free-throw line.Jerome Miron/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThere is another growing worry for the Mavericks on top of their star guard’s uncertain health: Doncic’s free-throw shooting. He shot 0-for-5 from the line in Sunday’s loss, taking the All-Star guard down to an indefensible 40.6 percent (13 for 32) for the series.“I don’t think that matters right now,” Doncic said of his injury. “I played terrible.”The Mavericks of 2005-6, who orbited around Dirk Nowitzki, avenged their finals collapse by beating Miami in the 2011 N.B.A. finals after the Heat had signed LeBron James and Chris Bosh to flank Dwyane Wade. Dallas, though, has not won a single playoff series since. These Mavericks came home after stunning the host Clippers twice, believing they had a shot at a sweep to end that drought, given the Clippers’ recent history of folding, and lost all the momentum.N.B.A. teams that lose the first two games at home in a best-of-seven series have rallied to win only four times in 31 tries.The Mavericks know how unlikely the feat is because they pulled it off it in the Nowitzki era in 2005, falling into a 2-0 hole before completing the comeback with a 40-point humiliation of the Houston Rockets in Game 7. Alas, in that series, Dallas had the luxury of playing the deciding game on its own floor after its dreadful start. The Clippers have reclaimed home-court advantage in this series and, more worryingly for Dallas, seem to be enjoying themselves for the first time in a long time after so much doomsday talk.George said he and Leonard did “an incredible job complementing each other” in Dallas and described the victories as two prime examples of “ultimately what we wanted to get to” as a partnership.“And, you know, it’s fun,” George said. More