2019 NBA Playoff Rivalries That Will Stick in 2020
The NBA playoffs tend to settle most disputes convincingly. Elimination has a finality to it; if you lose, you go home while your rival plays on.
Sometimes, though, resolution is tougher to come by. Hard feelings persist, trends endure and personal quarrels fester. That's how you get a real rivalry—one that lives on, seasoning future matchups and adding layers of flavor you just can't get any other way.
Here, we'll highlight a few playoff rivalries, conventional and otherwise, that could resurface next year.
Golden State Warriors vs. Los Angeles Clippers
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It won't matter if Patrick Beverley and Kevin Durant, both free agents this summer, wind up on different teams. The Los Angeles Clippers and Golden State Warriors won't need them to prolong a rivalry that has now spanned more than half a decade.
Recall, the Clips were the last team to prevent the Warriors from reaching the Finals. That was back in 2013-14 when L.A. bounced Golden State in a chippy seven-game first-round series that ultimately got Mark Jackson fired and begat all the dynastic greatness that followed. Back then, Lob City owned the Dubs, and the Chris Paul-Blake Griffin-DeAndre Jordan triumvirate gloried in smacking around its California foe to the north.
Even as the Warriors ascended with head coach Steve Kerr's installment and Stephen Curry's awakening, the Clippers were always a bitter rival. Curry delighted in dropping Paul and subjecting him to some of his peak highlights, making those confrontations as much about settling the league-wide point guard hierarchy as the final score. Draymond Green and Blake Griffin were perfect foils: a defensive savant with physical tools deemed underwhelming enough to consign him to the second round against a top overall pick with incomprehensible athletic gifts.
Every Warriors-Clippers meeting was a can't-miss affair, and the animosity didn't dissipate as the Warriors' obvious superiority eventually turned the rivalry into one of the hammer-and-nail variety. Green, as you'd expect, kept things heated with taunts both seen and heard.
Although Paul, Griffin and Jordan were gone when the Warriors and Clippers met in this year's first round, the bad blood persisted. Beverley was largely to thank for that, but maybe there's just something about sharing a state and the weight of recent history that means there'll always be prickliness between these two teams.
The stakes could elevate soon. With former Warriors consultant Jerry West now helping to build a superpower in L.A., the Clippers are primed for contention. Two max salary slots, heaps of young assets and valuable incoming picks have them in position for a major talent infusion. Adding Kawhi Leonard, who'll face the Warriors in the Finals, would lend further spice to upcoming meetings.
And if Durant signs with the Clippers, this rivalry will go nuclear.
We haven't seen the end of bitterness between these two teams. In fact, the last few years might only represent the beginning.
Bud and the Bucks vs. Flexibility
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When the Cleveland Cavaliers swept Mike Budenholzer's 60-win Atlanta Hawks out of the 2015 Eastern Conference Finals, it felt fair to attribute the result more to LeBron James' greatness than anything else. But now that we've seen yet another 60-win, Budenholzer-led, system-based regular-season juggernaut dismissed at the same stage of the playoffs, we may have to reapportion blame.
A million factors contributed to the Milwaukee Bucks' elimination this time around, several of which were flukey: Fred VanVleet caught fire for two games and may well have swung the series in favor of the Toronto Raptors, Nikola Mirotic and Eric Bledsoe both lost their strokes, and Giannis Antetokounmpo forgot how to make free throws.
But at the same time, we saw Budenholzer again fail to make adjustments to a regular-season approach that quit working.
Many focused on his refusal to deviate from an established rest pattern for Antetokounmpo, who played 39 minutes in Game 5 and 41 in Game 6—high totals to be sure, but certainly lower than you'd expect in a do-or-die scenario. The larger issue, though, was Budenholzer's inability to tweak an offensive system the Raptors had clearly solved.
All season, Milwaukee dominated by spreading the floor for Antetokounmpo's downhill drives. Its offense depended on Giannis' ability to get to the rim and finish or find open shooters on the perimeter, and it worked brilliantly for 82 games. Ninety-three, if you count the Bucks' run through the playoffs before Toronto tightened the screws in Game 3.
But once the Raptors emphasized keeping the Bucks out of transition and built a wall in the lane, Milwaukee simply couldn't score. Its halfcourt offense—stagnant and predictable—stalled. That it worked so well in the playoffs to that point was remarkable. For the postseason, the Bucks' play-type frequency indicated alarming simplicity: They ranked 14th (among 16 playoff teams) in handoff frequency, 13th off screens, last in plays used by the pick-and-roll ball-handler and 13th in plays finished by the roll man.
It's understandable that the Bucks would adhere to what got them to the conference finals. But when their system failed, Budenholzer didn't appear to have a backup plan.
This narrative that Bud and the Bucks can't adjust isn't going away. Until he proves capable of pivoting on the big stage, Budenholzer will be at war with his reputation as an ace regular-season tactician who comes up short when it matters.
He'll get a chance to fight that rep again next year. For the Bucks' sake, here's hoping he comes prepared with fresh plans.
Russell Westbrook vs. Damian Lillard
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There's really no historic rivalry here, as the Oklahoma City Thunder had never faced the Portland Trail Blazers in a playoff series until this season (unless you count three meetings between the two franchises when OKC was still playing in Seattle, the last of which came in 1991).
But do you really think Russell Westbrook will forget the wave?
Before Damian Lillard dismissed Russ' Thunder with an iconic walk-off series-ender, the point guards exchanged shots, shoves, cradle-rocks and several harsh words. It was a true man-to-man test between a pair of point guards unfamiliar with backing down and overloaded with confidence.
This is an individual rivalry with some roots. Back in 2016-17, Westbrook kicked the ball away from Lillard and issued the Blazers guard a nudge and a dismissive wave. This past January, Russ politely informed Dame, "I've been busting that ass for years."
Though it'd be impossible to know for sure, it felt like Westbrook might have been a little extra ornery in the playoffs due to Lillard's move ahead of him in the league's lead-guard hierarchy. The ass-busting shoe was on the other foot.
At any rate, these guys seem fated to meet again. Both the Thunder and Blazers figure to return largely the same rosters next season, which should result in another pair of mid-tier playoff seeds. It's easy to imagine them finishing somewhere between third and sixth in the West, which would make for pretty good odds of another first-round tussle.
Let's hope it happens.
Stats courtesy of Basketball Reference, NBA.com and Cleaning the Glass unless otherwise indicated.
