East Playoffs Suddenly Wide Open with Kevin Love Out, Bulls, Hawks Struggling
Nobody could have expected that Kelly Olynyk would swing the entire Eastern Conference playoff race, but here we are. Now that Kevin Love is out for the rest of the playoffs with a dislocated shoulder, the Cleveland Cavaliers’ status as the overwhelming favorites to win the conference has been thrown into question.
But as vulnerable as the Cavs are now, there’s no clear favorite to overtake them.
The Chicago Bulls are struggling to put away the Milwaukee Bucks after jumping out to a 3-0 series lead. The 60-win Atlanta Hawks, meanwhile, have shown plenty of cause for concern in what should have been an easy series win against the thoroughly mediocre Brooklyn Nets.
The Hawks are up 3-2 after Wednesday’s 107-97 win, but nothing about the way they’ve played through the first five games has been encouraging with regard to their chances at making a Finals run.
Speaking of things nobody would have seen coming even two weeks ago, the Eastern Conference team with the fewest outstanding questions going into the second round is the Washington Wizards. We’ll soon find out whether their dominant performance in the first round is a testament to an unexpected leap on their end or just the Toronto Raptors’ lifelessness.
But it throws a new wrinkle into what—until Olynyk ripped Love’s arm out of its socket—had been shaping up to be three rounds of teams hoping they could just slow down Cleveland on the way to what felt like an inevitable Finals appearance.
Make no mistake, the Cavs still have to be considered the favorites in the East, even without Love. But for as hit-and-miss as his first season in Cleveland was, it’s going to be a difficult loss to mitigate for two more rounds against better teams than the happy-to-be-there Celtics, much less any team in the West, should the Cavs make it to the Finals.
As much as Love struggled at times to fit in the Cavs’ offense, he was crucial to their spacing. The Bulls, in particular, have had trouble guarding the stretch 4 this season. In 33 games since the midseason trades that turned their season around, the Cavs’ optimal starting lineup of Kyrie Irving, J.R. Smith, LeBron James, Love and Timofey Mozgov put up 116.1 points per 100 possessions, per NBA.com.
It’s not just what the Cavs are losing with Love that’s troublesome—in a vacuum, Tristan Thompson is a fine replacement, if a more traditional (read: predictable) big man than Love. But even with Love, the Cavs weren’t exactly deep in the frontcourt, and now that depth is further decimated. Brendan Haywood may have to be involved in the Cavs’ second-round series, and that’s a problem.
And that’s to say nothing of the fact that Cleveland will be without Smith for the first two games of the series, following his suspension for punching Jae Crowder in the face in the Cavs’ series-clinching win over the Celtics. Without Smith, there isn’t much perimeter shooting on the roster outside of Irving, unless they get lucky and find out that James Jones or Mike Miller has something left.
Against a team as deep and talented as a healthy Bulls or Hawks, none of this is ideal.
Not that either team has looked like a world-beater in the first round. The Bulls have plenty of issues of their own.
Yes, Derrick Rose (mostly) looks like Derrick Rose again, and Jimmy Butler is proving without a doubt that he is the max player he thought he’d be when he turned down a contract extension at the beginning of the season.
But Joakim Noah, who has been hobbled all year by limited minutes stemming from offseason knee surgery, doesn’t have his usual lift. His frontcourt pairing with Pau Gasol is still proving problematic, with the two bigs clogging the paint and making it harder for Rose to get to the rim, where he’s most effective.
If the Cavs opt to play James at power forward, which they should, he’ll match up favorably with either one of the starting bigs. Tom Thibodeau’s best counter would be to make him chase Nikola Mirotic around the perimeter, but Thibodeau has so far shown a reluctance to play Mirotic and Noah together.
Maybe he’s saving it for this matchup, like Wizards coach Randy Wittman did with his highly effective playoff lineups that featured Paul Pierce at power forward.
When the Wizards face (probably) the Hawks in the second round, they’ll have a week of rest against a team that hasn’t looked at all like the group that ran away with the Eastern Conference in the regular season. Paul Millsap’s shoulder and Al Horford’s finger haven’t looked right, and Mike Budenholzer’s ball movement-heavy offense has fallen apart with some of the core pieces out of place.
Washington could be in a good position to take advantage, especially against Atlanta’s banged-up frontcourt. Its offensive explosion in the first round is at least partly attributable to Toronto’s atrocious defense, but the adjustment of playing Pierce at power forward has been a game-changer.
It’s not hard to picture a scenario in which the Wizards are in the conference finals, which would have been insane a month ago. A renewal of the pre-Decision Wizards-Cavs rivalry would be entertaining (especially if Soulja Boy were involved), and the Wizards are a notoriously awful matchup for the Bulls.
This was all a lot more straightforward when the Cavs had a healthy Big Three. They still have the best player on the planet, so by default, they’re still the favorites. But that margin has closed drastically, and there are now three teams with a legitimate shot at beating them.
A lot has to break right for the Wizards, Bulls or Hawks to make the Finals, too. Whichever team’s problems come back to bite it the least wins. But that’s at least a race.
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