Ranking the Biggest Disappointments of the 2023 NBA Playoffs So Far
These 2023 NBA playoffs have been an unqualified hoot.
Just not for everyone.
Expectations will be our guiding light throughout this process. Players and teams are only disappointments because we expected much more than we've seen.
This space is reserved only for the largest letdowns. Anything eminently predictable or only marginally disappointing gets a pass. If you're rattled by a short-handed, eighth-place Minnesota Timberwolves squad falling in five games to the first-place Denver Nuggets, then I don't know what to tell you. Ditto if you're still taken aback by the human roller coaster that is Jordan Poole (who's also playing through an ankle injury).
Ranking the biggest bummers will factor in severity and time. Role players and teams who are missing the mark but still have time to rectify their shortcomings will not be judged as critically as contending squads and stars who are actively struggling or have already seen their postseason and bigger-picture outlooks get thrown for a whirl.
7. Memphis Grizzlies' Shooting
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Expectations for the Memphis Grizzlies offense are always tempered. Transition and second-chance frenzies don't necessarily fly without enough half-court counters or spacing.
But the Grizzlies earned more consideration after the trade deadline. Facing injuries to Steven Adams and Brandon Clarke, as well as Ja Morant's suspension, they spit out the 11th-best half-court offense. It was an uptick owed in huge part to better outside shooting following the acquisition of Luke Kennard, and it suggested Memphis might be more playoff-proof than portrayed.
Well, so much for that.
Half-court sets have been atrocious for both the Grizzlies and Los Angeles Lakers in the first round. Of the 20 teams to crack the play-in threshold, they rank 18th and 19th in half-court efficiency.
Memphis' placement is more dire relative to its personnel. It shouldn't rank 19th out of 20 in postseason effective field-goal percentage. And while struggles at the rim (58.7 percent shooting) can be attributed to the Lakers defense, perimeter brick-laying is harder to reconcile.
Desmond Bane is at 31.8 percent from downtown. Jaren Jackson Jr. is at 31.6 percent. Tyus Jones is at...11.8 percent. Dillon Brooks isn't a good shooter by any measure, but his 21.6 percent clip on 7.4 attempts per game is damaging even by his standards. Kennard and Morant are the only players jacking at least three triples a night and hitting more than 32 percent of them.
The coup de grâce: No team is posting a lower effective field-goal percentage on wide-open jumpers (47.3).
6. Kevin Huerter's Shooting
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Singling out Kevin Huerter's shooting feels a tad icky. The Sacramento Kings at large are bonking their three-pointers. But it's Huerter's—checks notes—16 percent clip from deep that stands out the most, because it's the least explainable.
De'Aaron Fox (33.3 percent) has never been a caps-lock SHOOTER. Malik Monk (32 percent) has navigated perimeter peaks and valleys all year. Davion Mitchell (30.4 percent) is outperforming expectations relative to his volume. Keegan Murray is a rookie—and has downed seven of nine treys over the past two games.
Harrison Barnes' 22.7 percent clip rivals Huerter's adverse shock and awe. He nailed 37.4 percent of his triples during the regular season on nearly identical volume. But he drilled three of seven from long range in Game 3. Huerter hasn't enjoyed even one quality shooting display.
Unlike everyone else on the roster, Huerter was also one of the—if not the single—most valuable non-star shooter during the regular season. It wasn't just that he hit 40.2 percent of his threes on nearly seven attempts per game. It's that he scored in motion and drained 41.6 percent of his off-the-dribble treys.
That mark has plunged to 14.3 percent in the postseason. It comes amid smaller volume (5.0 3PA/G), but it's also accompanied by 17.6 percent accuracy on catch-and-shoots (3-of-17) and a disastrously, brain-bendingly low 7.7 percent clip (1-of-13) on wide-open threes.
Credit the Golden State Warriors defense...to some extent. For the most part, this feels like an epically ill-timed rut—one the Kings can only hope he gets out of in Game 6.
5. Malik Beasley
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Congratulations to Dennis Schröder, D'Angelo Russell and Troy Brown Jr. on graduating from the larger Lakers discussion surrounding postseason disappointments.
To be clear, none of them are suddenly going gangbusters. Russell's efficiency is in the gutter. Schröder isn't providing nearly as much interior pressure against the Memphis defense. Brown is an offensive zero.
All of them, though, have turned in redeeming moments during the first round. Russell has settled down from deep over the past two games and kept the ball moving at a higher clip. Schröder is playing within himself on offense, mostly, while sponging up point-of-attack defensive reps. In addition to time spent on Desmond Bane, Luke Kennard and Ja Morant, Brown has shouldered one of the two or three heaviest workloads among Lakers.
Malik Beasley, meanwhile, has reached his functional nadir. He's 1-of-3 on twos (33.3 percent) and 4-of-15 from deep (26.7 percent) while delivering invisible defense.
Head coach Darvin Ham has slashed his minutes relative to the regular season, and it still doesn't feel like enough. Beasley is making Lakers Twitter yearn, deeply and openly, for Lonnie Walker IV floor time.
Maybe your confidence in Beasley was modest to low entering the playoffs. His performance misses even that mark. His accuracy from deep was always overstated, but it's supposed to be valuable enough in tandem with his volume to juice the Lakers' half-court offense.
So far, mission not accomplished.
4. Injuries
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Marquee absences have not technically derailed anything. Ja Morant (right hand) missed one game against the Lakers. The Grizzlies won. The Timberwolves would've probably still lost to the Nuggets if Jaden McDaniels (right hand) and Naz Reid (left wrist) were available and even if Kyle Anderson (left eye) didn't miss Game 5.
That doesn't mean this postseason is inoculated against giant what-ifs. It's not.
Would the Milwaukee Bucks' season have ended any differently if a back injury didn't limit Giannis Antetokounmpo in Game 1 and cost him Games 2 and 3? (Milwaukee won Game 2.) Will the Miami Heat's better-than-expected playoff stock hit a ceiling without Tyler Herro (right hand) and Victor Oladipo (left knee)?
The Phoenix Suns didn't exactly cruise to victory over the Los Angeles Clippers, despite dispatching them in five games. What if Paul George (right knee) played at all? Or Kawhi Leonard (right knee) didn't miss the final three contests?
And, uh, should we worry about the Philadelphia 76ers? They bagged the first round's only sweep, but James Harden is playing through a left Achilles injury while Joel Embiid (right knee) missed Game 4's win over the Brooklyn Nets and doesn't have a definitive timeline to return.
Figuring out where injuries rank in this exercise is difficult. Absences are part of the playoffs. We can't put an asterisk on everything. But we needn't pretend that injuries don't suck. Because they do suck. They will always suck. And they have absolutely impacted these playoffs.
3. Los Angeles Clippers
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Injuries to Paul George and Kawhi Leonard make up a lion's share of the Clippers' disappointment. No one should've expected any more from a squad that had even one of them for only two games. The Clippers showed some fight and creativity and delivered a Russell Westbrook renaissance over their final (star-less) three matchups against the Suns. That's admirable.
Playing the injury card(s) works in this 2023 postseason vacuum. It doesn't carry the same weight when applied to the bigger picture.
Untimely and high-volume absences from Kawhi and PG are the standard, not the exception. This superstar wing experiment is now four years old. The Clippers cannot continue to assemble their roster in the image of "We'll be title contenders if both Kawhi and PG are healthy when it matters most" and expect to yield dramatically different results.
This is not to say they should blow it up. Going nuclear offers little incentive. George and Leonard have just one more guaranteed season on their deals (2024-25 player options), complicating their already complicated markets, and the Clippers don't control their own first-rounder until 2027.
Staying the course would be similarly unpalatable. It also might be the only option. With the new collective bargaining agreement, the Clippers are prohibited from using the mini mid-level exception or adding salary via trades. Making upgrades will be next to impossible without first cutting costs. So, while it's disappointing that yet another postseason run has been marred by critical injuries, the lack of an undeniable path forward is even more so.
2. Cleveland Cavaliers
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Perspective is important when discussing the Cleveland Cavaliers' first-round exit, in just five games, at the hands of the New York Knicks. The regular-season vitals on this team screamed "contender." So did the price it paid to acquire Donovan Mitchell over the summer.
Still, as good as the Cavs were, as much as they gave up for Mitchell, their trajectory was never about this season alone. Their second- and third-best players, Darius Garland and Evan Mobley, are 23 and going on 22. Jarrett Allen just turned 25. Mitchell himself will only be 27 at the start of next season.
This team not only has time, but it also often takes time to flesh out rosters after seismic shakeups. The information Cleveland gleaned from this series is valuable. It now has a firm grasp on its biggest holes ahead of an offseason in which it can spend the non-taxpayer's mid-level exception ($12.2 million) or even carve out cap space. This is a teaching moment rather than full-tilt failure.
And yet slotting the Cavs any lower or entirely excluding them from this conversation does a disservice to what they are right now.
We should be concerned about their spacing. We should question decisions made by head coach JB Bickerstaff—like the sparing use of the regular season's most-played and highly effective five-man lineup. We should wonder what it says about Isaac Okoro's offensive viability that the aforementioned five-man combination saw so little daylight.
We should spotlight Mobley's 20 percent shooting outside the restricted area. We should worry about how the Knicks rebounded 38.7 percent of their own misses during Mobley-Allen minutes and about how that figure spiked during solo stints for both Mobley and Allen. The list goes on.
Urgency is also ingrained in the Cavs' course. This core won't be young and relatively cheap forever, Mitchell will hit free agency in two years' time (2025-26 player option), and the franchise already expended its best trade chip(s). Cleveland is galaxies from a lost cause, but that speaks to why its first-round bow-out is such a bummer.
1. Milwaukee Bucks
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Giannis Antetokounmpo was asked by The Athletic's Eric Nehm whether he viewed this season as a failure after the Bucks were eliminated in five games by the Heat. His response was uncharacteristically not-so-warm:
Giannis' stance is not necessarily unfair. But he is, with all due respect, wrong.
The Bucks may have overachieved during the regular season relative to their point differential. They still finished with the league's best record. They entered the playoffs as title favorites. And they just lost in the first round, to a No. 8 seed that needed to survive the play-in tournament, while belching out multiple fourth-quarter collapses—including a blown four-point lead in Game 5 with 14 seconds remaining.
Context softens the blow a little bit. Giannis missed a chunk of Game 1 and both Games 2 and 3 with a back contusion. He wasn't anywhere near 100 percent when he returned. But the Bucks' ability to navigate minutes without him was part of their title case. They won their only game of the series when he didn't play.
It's also not like the Heat were at full strength themselves. They lost both Tyler Herro and Victor Oladipo as the series progressed and found themselves relying on midseason signings Kevin Love and Cody Zeller as well as a freshly dusted off Duncan Robinson.
Milwaukee's first-round exit warrants a deeper dive on what went wrong and what comes next—particularly with Brook Lopez and Khris Middleton (player option) up for new deals. Immediately, though, there's no denying what should be obvious: The Bucks are, and they will probably remain, the biggest letdown of the 2023 NBA playoffs.
Unless otherwise noted, stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference, Stathead or Cleaning the Glass. Salary information via Spotrac.
Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@danfavale), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes.
