These NBA Playoffs Have Been Fantastic

Now that we are one game away from the halfway point (by one metric) of the NBA Playoffs, it is time to review them as a whole, on both aesthetic and competitive grounds. I think this is a useful exercise at this point, as the process of considering the eventual champion's worthiness or luck is a matter of confirmation bias that both overemphasizes the Finals and elides what is actually great about this postseason—the process. For example, last year's Finals were great, masking a middling-to-bad playoffs. We have not had what this reviewer would term a great playoffs since before the pandemic, with some notable stinkers (2021, when everyone got hurt, and 2024, which had precisely one good series) in the intervening years.

Not anymore. This year's playoffs have been fantastic. We've had close games, wild series, and game-winners. Both legends and frauds have been forged. Here is the evidence, in three parts.

Case Study 1: Cavaliers-Pistons, And What Follows

Here is a two-play summary of Friday's Game 6. With a bit more than 6:30 remaining in the fourth quarter of a tight one, James Harden missed a three-pointer. Dean Wade recovered a bouncing rebound and kicked it back out to Harden, who missed again, this time falling on his butt in an irksome attempt to cheat his way into a foul. The Cavs once again recovered the board and, once again, missed the followup, a sequence Harden spent entirely sitting on the hardwood in search of much-needed rest. Jarrett Allen tipped that miss out to a suddenly upright Harden, who ran into a perfectly stationary Cade Cunningham and fell down, finally having secured the one thing he'd been looking for since getting tired earlier in the quarter.

On the inbounds play, Wade ran up to receive the pass in from Harden, only to slip on the puddle left for him by his teammate and prove the validity of the concept of karma in the process.

In Game 6, Cleveland had a chance to close out Detroit on their home court, where they have not lost since March 25, only to get comprehensively outplayed. Like most series that go seven, this second-rounder has been fairly even, and whoever loses Game 7 will head into the offseason riddled with sadness and regret. Unlike most seven-game series, this one has been quite the slog, made all the more remarkable by the fact that both teams had to trudge through brutal seven-game first-round series.

In other words, it's a mutually fraudmaking Game 7. This series will have a long echo. Something great about the playoffs is how different they are from the regular season, forcing every team into some sort of reckoning. The Raptors, for example, lost to Cleveland, but left knowing that Scottie Barnes can be The Guy, while the Celtics lost to Philly and might soon be forced to accept that Jaylen Brown cannot. The Cavs and Pistons have both had to endure such reckonings. Cleveland has seen the limits of what the Donovan Mitchell-Harden pairing can deliver, and it has not been good enough. Detroit has been straight up better than them, and aside from one incendiary half, Mitchell has been effectively neutralized by Ausar Thompson. Harden is incapable of two straight good games, and while the Harden-Evan Mobley pick-and-roll was great in Game 5, failing to meaningfully distance a young Pistons team with a deeply compromised roster is alarming.

Detroit, meanwhile, faces a staggering offseason choice with Jalen Duren, who is about to make All-NBA and was turbo-benched in Game 5. Do they really want to max out a guy who couldn't play in the biggest moment of their season? Is Duren a regular-season demon, incapable of scoring against good defenses that are trying hard? Game 6 was redemptive for Duren, who posted an efficient 15 and 11 with three blocks and was finally decisive on both sides of the ball. No more aimlessly dribbling around waiting for something to happen. He was pounding it right at Jarrett Allen.

The beautiful thing is that these narratives are mutually exclusive. Someone will find validation in Game 7. The winner will face the whirring buzzsaw that is the New York Knicks, who will be heavy favorites even with uncertainty about OG Anunoby's hamstring. Juggernauts though they are, the Knicks have had to work through their own playoff anxieties, and they are stronger for it. It only took them 85 games, but they have been playing the long-prophesied beautiful game. The Knicks making it out of this particular East would be a fantastic outcome, especially if they can get through fresh. That's because...

Case Study 2: We Finally Get What We've Wanted All Season

The two best teams in the NBA will contend the Western Conference Finals. The two best players in the NBA will fight it out for the fake but meaningful title of best player in the league. It's beautiful.

When the Spurs closed out the Wolves by 30 on Friday, what I felt most was relief. Think of how often the chaos of the playoffs has conspired to keep us from seeing the most tantalizing matchups. The 2012 Heat-Thunder Finals was supposed to be the first of many, but the Thunder never climbed that high again. A few years earlier, LeBron James and Kobe Bryant circled each other as the top two players in the league, but they never met in the Finals. The Kobe and Shaq Lakers almost played Michael Jordan in 1998, only to get crushed en route by the Jazz.

The single most important narrative plank of the season was the Spurs-Thunder rivalry, and the entire Western Conference playoffs have been validated for delivering it to us in the playoffs. (Not that they have been bad; every series not involving OKC has been riveting!) OKC rolled through the regular season and their first eight games of the playoffs without any problems other than those posed by San Antonio. That was expected, and while many projected the Spurs to make it this far as well, a hypothetical series against the Nuggets loomed as quite the potential obstacle. No matter. Minnesota got rid of Denver in dominant fashion, only to get crushed by Victor Wembanyama.

This is going to be an incredible series. Their first meeting on Dec. 14 was like a warning from the future. I remember a pall settling over the Thunder as the game was slowly and undeniably taken out of their control by Wemby's pressure. It was uncanny. OKC imposes their style, their tempo, their game on every single opponent in the league. Even if you beat them, you are forced to play Thunderball. Not with Wemby on the court. What I saw was malaise. The Thunder were physically overmatched, but more than that, they were clearly overwhelmed with the psychic burden of having to deal with someone like Wemby. They didn't really know what to do. This time around, they will be ready, and they have way more size, skill, and shooting than previous Spurs opponents, let alone the best defense in the NBA. Wemby and Chet Holmgren hate each other. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is going to have to squirm for his space against the best defender I've ever seen. It's going to be amazing.

Case Study 3: Wemby

I want to emphasize something: Victor Wembanyama clearly has been the best player in these playoffs, which are his first. Can you remember a playoff debut like this? We are seeing new frontiers charted before our eyes, territories we didn't even know existed brought to detailed life. It is cool when a young player steps up and seizes control of the league. It is cooler still when he does so on a team otherwise populated with young, feisty players. It is staggering that Wemby is dominating the theoretically hyper-optimized, predictable game of basketball in ways that nobody knows how to deal with.

The Wemby era is coming. Perhaps what shocks me the most is how clearly unfinished Wemby is. He will float around and take threes for a few minutes, he'll leap out too aggressively and get passed around, he'll try to split a gap that's not there and commit a wild turnover. He's still figuring out his game, and destroying the league in the process. There will come a time when he's a finished product, and he probably he will be the best player in the league for a considerable stretch. That time is coming, and it might be happening right now. But no matter what—even if he somehow pieces up the Thunder and leads his team to a championship—this is still the ascent. You have to enjoy it while it lasts.