This is the most wonderful time of the year for basketball obsessives, but it’s also the quickest. Life comes at you fast, and the postseason is the league’s ultimate testing ground. The regular season is a question; the playoffs are the answer. Let’s look at the most important revelations from the postseason so far and map out the biggest trends in the game right now.
Tyrese Haliburton is more underrated than overrated.
Three days after the playoffs began, The Athletic published its annual anonymous NBA player poll, in which a sample of 90 players declared Haliburton the most overrated player in the NBA. Great take, fellas.
Today, I’m exclusively releasing the results of The Ringer’s first Goldsberry poll (according to a sample of one old dude in Austin): At 25, Haliburton might be the most underrated player in the NBA.
Haliburton has been terrific this postseason, and Indiana currently owns the league’s best playoff record after dispatching the Bucks in five games and taking a 2-0 series lead over the top-seeded Cavs. With Haliburton at the wheel, the Pacers have the second-ranked offense and the fourth-best net rating in the playoffs. Not many players have isolated Giannis Antetokounmpo in a huge late-game situation and burned him for a series-clinching layup, but Haliburton did just that to send Milwaukee home.
Sidenote: I wrote this section on Tuesday afternoon, BEFORE Haliburton went full Reggie Miller in Cleveland with a game-winning stepback 3. Holy shit. As if the “overrated” thing weren’t absurd enough already! Also, the deployment of the Cassell dance was perfectly executed. I’m not here to take a victory lap … well, maybe I am. Either way, this 25-year-old point guard is making his doubters look foolish right now.
Haliburton is now two wins away from leading his team to the dang semifinals of the NBA playoffs for the second straight year, and he’s playing some of the best ball of his life. Consider these absurd passing stats: Haliburton leads all playoff performers by averaging 10.7 assists per game (compared to just 1.7 turnovers!), and his teammates are averaging a ridiculous 1.50 points per shot on his potential assists. (For context, an average shot in these playoffs yields 1.07 points.)
Dudes like Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith, and Myles Turner are shooting the lights out, and Haliburton’s endless dimes are giving them the ammunition to do it. He’s like John Stockton with a 2025 firmware update.
The “most overrated player in the NBA” is generating 28.0 hyperefficient points per game on assists alone—that’s the most in the postseason, easily outpacing Nikola Jokic’s 24.4. To paraphrase the great Bryan Colangelo, the players who insist that Indiana’s point guard is overrated need to find a new slant.
The Denver Nuggets don't have a lot of guys, but they still have the right guys.
I’ll never forget watching Zach LaVine and Aaron Gordon duel it out in the epic 2016 dunk contest in Toronto. In the end, LaVine took the crown, and it seemed as if Gordon might have missed his best shot at NBA glory. But nine years later, Gordon has completely rearranged his own career narrative, first becoming a world champion and now blossoming into the NBA’s new Robert Horry character. Big Shot Gordo?
How many canonical face-melting buckets is Gordon gonna make this postseason? The answer is at least two. He won Game 4 against the Clippers with one of the most iconic putbacks in NBA history, and he just helped Denver steal Game 1 in OKC with a game-winning catch-and-shoot 3 from the left wing. By the way, shout-out to Russell Westbrook for delivering one of the biggest dimes of his career in that key moment.
The Nuggets might be the shallowest team left in these playoffs, but when Gordon and the rest of Denver’s starters are playing, they are much better than a typical 4-seed. Denver’s starting group has an eye-popping net rating of plus-12.9 so far this postseason, and like Gordon, they seem to be at their best in big moments. In their five “clutch” games this postseason, Denver’s net rating has been plus-20.1.
This Nuggets team is the perfect embodiment of the classic “Play seven, trust six” cliché of postseason coaching. Interim coach David Adelman’s rotation might be shallow, but Denver’s core five won’t go home easily. Jamal Murray’s annual rise to the playoff occasion is underway. Christian Braun is emerging as a steady hand that the Nuggets can depend on. Even Westbrook has harnessed some of his chaotic energy to give the Nuggets a spark. Also, I just wrote 300 words about the Nuggets without mentioning the big Serbian guy, which is a good sign that he’s getting a lot of help so far this postseason.
Should the Thunder be worried? I say “Yes,” at least until Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren start outplaying dudes like Gordon and Murray.
Home-court advantage might be washed.
Is home-court advantage an old wives’ tale at this point? I’m not ready to go there just yet, but it’s fair to say that home court is less important than ever. Home teams are 25-23 in these playoffs and a mind-blowing 0-5 so far in the second round. Just this week, we’ve seen Houston lose a Game 7 in its home gym, top-seeded Cleveland lose twice at Rocket Arena, and both conference favorites, Boston and OKC, blow late-game leads in front of their own fans to open Round 2.
More on the NBA Playoffs
Historically, home playoff teams win about 60 percent of the time. Last season, home teams went 48-34, and in 2023 they went 50-34. Those records approximate the win rate of a decent playoff team; this year’s playoff home winning percentage resembles that of a play-in team, and the Round 2 home-team record is like the Wizards’, man.
If you want to beat the Knicks, blow them out. They are elite in the clutch.
This Knicks-Celtics matchup is hoops heaven, but it’s also the exact series New York’s front office envisioned when it shipped out Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo for Karl-Anthony Towns and sent five first-round picks to Brooklyn for Mikal Bridges.
Game 1 was the kind of win that made those blockbuster deals look good. Bridges made brilliant plays down the stretch as the Knicks stole Game 1, and Jalen Brunson remains the best closer in the NBA. Not only did he win the league’s “Clutch Player of the Year” award for his late-game brilliance in the regular season, but he’s also continued to be marvelous in these high-leverage moments in the playoffs.
The Knicks outscored the defending champs 19-8 in clutch time in Game 1, and Brunson’s 35 points in the clutch this postseason are by far the most in that category. Oh, and two more things: The Knicks have played the most “clutch” minutes in these playoffs, and their net rating in these situations is plus-15.4.
Make no mistake, the Celtics are still the favorites here, but if the Knicks can keep these games close deep into the fourth quarter, that Bing Bong clutch gene will be a factor (especially if Boston’s late-game execution looks like it did in Game 1).
Experience matters.
Is it fair to question OKC’s status as the Western Conference favorite? Not quite yet, but it is fair to point out some potential déjà vu hearkening back to last year’s run. Last season, OKC entered the playoffs as the 1-seed, then swept a weakened first-round opponent (the Zion-less Pels) with ease before getting upset in Round 2 by an unusually strong 5-seed in the Mavs, who had just beaten the Clippers in a competitive first-round series. Well, here we are again. Now, the young fellas from OKC find themselves down 0-1 against Jokic. All they have to do is beat him four times in six tries.
Let’s not overreact to one game, but let’s also not ignore that the Thunder’s Game 1 loss was brought to you by a young coach making some tactical errors down the stretch and some young players laying eggs in big moments. As a stats nerd, I’m a big advocate for fouling up three, but the devil is in the details, and the Thunder didn’t execute the strategy correctly, instead fouling too early and too far away from the basket.
Mark Daigneault took the blame for that, but this series will also require better play from both Williams and Holmgren. Williams shot 5-of-20 in Game 1, while Holmgren missed the biggest free throws of his season thus far. The Thunder are commonly described as the deepest team in the league; Game 1 was a reminder that they’re still learning on the fly.
OKC is not the only inexperienced 1-seed that has failed to make big plays down the stretch in the second round. Cleveland is banged up, but it still should have closed out a must-win Game 2 against Indiana. The Cavs blew a seven-point lead in the final minute with offensive fouls, missed rebounds, and costly turnovers. Long story short: Experience matters this time of year.
If you ask aging superstars to do too much, it might come back to haunt you.
In a harrowing series against the Houston Rockets, Stephen Curry became the oldest player in league history to lead his team in points, rebounds, and assists for an entire series. That’s an amazing feat for the greatest shooter ever, but folks, it’s also an indictment. Hear me out: Curry should not be your team’s leading rebounder! Points? Sure. Assists? Cool. Rebounds? Heck no!
Curry put the Dubs on his back to escape Round 1, but that took a toll on the 37-year-old, who—coincidentally or not—sustained a hamstring injury in Game 1 of the Warriors’ second-round series against the Wolves.
Credit to Curry for doing the dirty work, but Golden State arrived in Round 2 with the worst rebounding percentage of the postseason—even worse than the Heat. Some of that has to do with Steven Adams and Alperen Sengun, but some of it also owes to the small-ball reality of using Draymond Green as your center.
Curry ranked eighth on his team in rebounds per game during the regular season, and as the Dubs try to beat a much larger, and much younger, Timberwolves squad in Round 2, some of his teammates will have to be better in this department. They’ll have their hands full. One of the big reasons Minnesota just wiped the floor with the Lakers was because they cleaned the glass at elite levels. Rudy Gobert, Naz Reid, Julius Randle, and Jaden McDaniels are all strong rebounders. But Minnesota’s rotation also features great perimeter defenders, and they will be able to replicate some of the physical tactics that Houston employed against Curry in the first round. In Game 1, Golden State outrebounded Minnesota 51-41, aided by the Wolves’ historically poor shooting from downtown.
Ultimately, the Warriors’ fate now rests on Curry’s availability. If he’s unable to play, they’re in big trouble against the Wolves.
Boston’s 3 party is alive and unwell.
Speaking of the interior, the Celtics’ path back to the Finals must at least occasionally pass through the paint. In Round 1, they beat Orlando, one of the best teams at defending the 3-point line, because they found ways to thrive in the old-fashioned spaces inside the arc. But in Monday’s Game 1 collapse, Boston forgot how to do that and launched enough bricks to build a nice addition to Faneuil Hall.
Joe Mazzulla’s team set a new NBA postseason record for missed 3s in a single game: 45. That’s more than just trivia—when the going got tough, the guys in green seemed too content to loiter downtown and watch the Knicks steal the game. Here’s a telling postgame quote from Jaylen Brown.
“In those moments when other teams have momentum, we can’t just fire up 3s,” Brown said. “To break up momentum, you got to get to the free throw line, get to the paint, get to the basket. … We just settled in the second half a lot.”
That’s an understatement.
After halftime in Game 1, Boston shot a woeful 14-of-49 from the field. A stunning 76 percent of those 49 attempts were beyond the arc. As their halftime lead slowly turned into a gut-wrenching OT loss, the Celtics shot only 12 2-point shots. That’s unacceptable. The absence of Kristaps Porzingis was noteworthy, but Jayson Tatum and Brown must be more aggressive in the 2-point area, especially against the mediocre rim protection of Towns.
Julius Randle can be a 16-game player.
Will the real Julius Randle please stand up? The answer, of course, is no. Randle refuses any form of stable characterization. He’s an analytical enigma wrapped inside the most confusing basketball reference page on the internet. Coming into this season, he was a woeful playoff performer and his dismal numbers in the 2023 playoffs were one big reason New York was ready to move on from him by last summer. In 10 games in the 2023 postseason, Randle made just 37 percent of his 15 shots per game, and turned it over 3.5 times per contest. Yuck.
Well, now what? This time around, Randle’s shooting numbers are up both inside and outside of the arc, and the turnovers are down. Since March 1, the Wolves are 21-6 with Randle in the lineup. In Round 1, he averaged 23 points on 48 percent shooting, five rebounds, and four assists, as it seemed like he came up with timely buckets every time the Wolves needed them. He’s been great as a scorer and a playmaker, and those bleak Knicks performances are fading from memory. If he keeps this up, Minnesota will be a real contender for the Western Conference crown.
The Clippers can’t escape being the Clippers.
Numbers are one thing. Vibes are another. As the regular season was winding down, NBA analysts faced a conundrum. The Clippers were on fire. Their statistical markers were immaculate over the final month of the season. But here’s the thing, a quick look at the roster revealed player names like James Harden, Ben Simmons, and Kawhi Leonard—not exactly portraits of postseason stability.
It was stats versus vibes, and ladies and gentlemen, the vibes won out. Playoff basketball is more than a math problem, and the legacy of this latest Clippers failure has nothing to do with numbers and everything to do with on-court leadership.
The ship has no captain.
While the Nuggets got fiery moments from Jokic, Murray, Gordon, Braun, and yes, even Westbrook, the Clippers had no such fire. In the intensity of the series, the Clips’ statistical résumé felt like a fraudulent LinkedIn profile, and the team’s lack of a leader felt paramount. Harden shrunk again in a big game, and on-court leadership is simply not in Leonard’s bag. None of this is new, and it has to be addressed moving forward. The question now is, what are the Clippers going to do about it?
James Harden is at a late-career crossroads. He will turn 36 this summer. He has to either pick up his player option or become an unrestricted free agent. Harden is never going to escape his litany of postseason flops, and any team that employs him in the second half of the 2020s should know what it’s getting.
