[BessLineberger]

Danny Ainge working hard to make something from nothing "I was out in the yard raking leaves when I found out that Gordon Hayward was leaving the Celtics. I saw the news and let out a audible yelp/gasp. Turns out Gordon is the one raking - to the tune of $120M.

Two quick points on this before I move on. First, that’s absolutely a gut-punch for the Celtics. They lose a core piece of their rotation and a very valuable asset for nothing*. (More on that asterisk later) Second, I don’t know if you can blame this on Danny Ainge. If some random team was going to be willing to give Hayward that much money, he’s right to take that money and Danny is right to wish him happy trails. Maybe we all should have seen this coming based on the “it only takes one” rule.

That’s not to say that Ainge is perfect and never makes mistakes (I really wish he had addressed the bench more last season, I don’t know how he hasn’t consolidated picks in the last few years, his recent record of mid-to-late draft picks has been suspect). I mean, if Hayward was willing to take $20M less to go home to Indy and the deal fell through because Ainge got greedy, that’s certainly an “L” (as they say). That’s a big “if” though and I kind of doubt it played out that way. Charlotte came with the big bags of cash late in the game and that was the end. Good for Gordon and his agent.

Once the Gordon Hayward shoe dropped, it seemed like all was lost. The Hornets weren’t even willing to play ball on a sign-and-trade. Instead electing to waive and stretch Batum (which would have resulted in $9M in dead money over the course of the next 3 seasons). It was the worst case scenario for the Celtics because their options for adding talent dwindled down to using the full MLE and the bi-annual exception.

On that front, the Celtics moved rather quickly. After flirting with Paul Millsap (who eventually signed in Denver again) Boston signed longtime nemesis Tristan Thompson with the MLE. Then they were able to sign Jeff Teague to be the veteran guard we’ve needed for years.

Finally, (and here’s where that asterisk comes in) it seems that the Hornets had a change of heart. They will consider working out a sign-and-trade deal with the Celtics. Which only makes sense because the right kind of deal would benefit both sides. How that deal actually goes down is anyone’s guess at this point. It could be as simple as creating a big trade exception or it could be some complicated 3 team deal with lots of moving parts. Frankly that part makes my head hurt but the cap guys are all excited about it and that’s good enough for me.

So stay tuned for more rollercoaster rides today and in the coming days. This shortened offseason has been a wild ride already but it feels like there’s more drama left to play out."Indiana Pacers Face Masks

"Almost one calendar year after the 2019-20 NBA season began, the NBA Finals are about to begin between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat. It’s been a long, grinding, tumultuous season with the deaths of Kobe Bryant and former commissioner David Stern, and an all-time footnote in the form of a four-and-a-half month hiatus brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.

The NBA had to get creative to even consider resuming its season, and it did indeed think outside the box in order to do so. As we know now, the league created a bubble environment in Walt Disney World’s Wide World of Sports, and thanks to vigorous testing and quarantining had a perfect record with no positive tests on campus.

The league pulled off something that seemed impossible back in the middle of March when they suspended the season, and along the way provided some incredible basketball. The Phoenix Suns were the seeding game champions with a perfect 8-0 record but were eliminated from playoff contention in the final game of the round.

Performances by Jamal Murray and Donovan Mitchell in a seven-game first-round battle between the Denver Nuggets and the Utah Jazz were nothing short of spectacular, and the Miami Heat’s stifling zone defense clamped down on the Milwaukee Bucks and the Boston Celtics en route to the Finals, while Anthony Davis had a fantastic scoring run for the Lakers.

Not to be left unmentioned, LeBron James had a vintage Game 5 against the Denver Nuggets to clinch things, reminding us that there’s still nobody like LeBron when he has a team on the ropes in the NBA playoffs.

The Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat are not the matchup we expected when the season began, or even when the seeding games or the playoffs began. The Lakers were never worse than the second-most likely team from the Western Conference to get here, but the Heat astonished everybody to get to the Finals."NBA Face Masks & NBA Face Covers

Five biggest losers of the 2020 bubble’s NBA playoffs
"The NBA playoffs were a positive experience for some. Plenty of others left earlier than they’d hoped with a dejected spirit weighing them down.
Having previously broken down the winners of the most unique undertaking in NBA history, it’s now time to move to the loser’s bracket of the 2020 NBA playoffs.

Only one true winner exists in any NBA season. That’s the team left with the Larry O’Brien trophy. While silver linings do still exist in the form of breakout performances or unexpected runs, they come in short supply. By season’s end, more are disappointed in their efforts than not.

The premise certainly applies to the results of these playoffs, maybe more so this season than ever before. The bubble’s neutral setting closed the advantage gap between matchups, creating even greater opportunities for upsets, of which we saw several, including the fall of two of the four best records in the NBA.

The disappointments that appear in the following slides come in varying forms. Championship expectations fell short. Bright futures became a touch darker.

Given the sacrifices these players, coaches and teams made by leaving their families to sequester on Disney’s campus, it’d be nice if they could all leave on a higher note than what many did. That didn’t happen and the future ramifications could be costly."

"The Miami Heat swept the Indiana Pacers 4-0 in the first round of the NBA playoffs, leaving the Pacers searching for answers.
Before the playoffs began, all the NBA playoffs matchups were laid out and the Indiana Pacers vs Miami Heat series seemed to be on the top of the list as the evenest matchup along with the Jazz-Nuggets series. It turns out that Pacers vs Heat wasn’t anything like the series between Denver and Utah who went to a crunching Game 7 and ultimately Denver came out on top. In four games, the Miami Heat had swept their competition and it was a shock.

The shock wasn’t so much at Miami’s success as it was at Indiana’s failure. The Heat looked to be serious contenders in the East when they almost beat the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA bubble seeding games until Milwaukee climbed back from their 20-point deficit. Likewise, we watched the Pacers all season and were impressed with how they played.

They even finished ahead of the Heat in the regular season in the fourth and the Heat being the fifth. The Pacers finished the season at 45-28 and the Heat 44-29. So, they were pretty even – very even – at least during the regular season, but this wasn’t the case in the playoffs.

The entire series was cringe-worthy. As we take a look at each game one-by-one, the Heat managed to come out the winner and the Pacers sat dazed and confused on how to approach their competition. It is not easy to see how this happened, but it is worth taking an analytical look at the series now that it is over. The expectations for the Pacers, to say the least, had dropped drastically by the end of it all."

"Monday night saw the No.1 seed Milwaukee Bucks open their Eastern Conference semi-final matchup in the NBA playoffs with the Miami Heat. For anybody who has watched the Heat play this season, especially in Orlando, you’ll know that we were going to be in for an exhilarating series here. And Game 1 was just that.

There was plenty going on in this one, and if this game was a benchmark for the rest of this series then it’s going to be a special one. The Bucks haven’t looked themselves through their time in Orlando and that’s pretty worrying. But, when you have Giannis Antetokounmpo on your team, surrounded by the depth that he is, then all form goes out the window. The Heat, however, had different ideas, and the area of the game that effectively gave them the basis to go on and clinch this opening game was a surprising one.

The Milwaukee Bucks have the best interior defense in the entire NBA this season, allowing just 38.7 points in the paint per game, while the Heat rank 28th in scoring in the paint, with 43.9 points per game coming in that area. So you’ve got the best defense inside against one of the worst offenses inside. That doesn’t seem like a great thing considering the task that the Heat was coming up against in Giannis and the Bucks. But, that narrative didn’t seem to matter to head coach Erik Spoelstra and his team." Los Angeles Lakers Face Masks