Every team in the NBA wishes it were currently playing in the NBA Finals, but only two teams, the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks have the honor of playing for the title, leaving 28 other sad franchises. Let's explore the biggest reason why each playoff team fell short of their goal of playing into June, and next week we'll explore the reasons for every non-playoff team's failure.
Minnesota Timberwolves: Rudy Gobert
Rudy Gobert continues to become absolutely unplayable when he gets past the first round of the playoffs. In the Nuggets series he was awful, and Anthony Edwards was forced to put the team sorely on his back. Ant Man didn’t end up having the endurance to perform as well as he did in Denver in Dallas and nobody (besides Game 2 Naz Reid) came to help him out. It would be nice to be able to ever rely on their third star for playoff production, but Gobert contributes nothing offensively, cannot rebound in traffic, and is a liability as a one-on-one defender both on the perimeter and in the low post. Gobert being horrible means KAT and Ant-Man have to be perfect, and they were far from it in the Dallas series.
Indiana Pacers: Lack of Star Power
Even before Tyrese Haliburton’s hamstring injury it was clear the Pacers did not have enough talent to match up with the Boston Celtics. Pascal Siakam and Tyrese Haliburton are a fun core, and they have great role players beside them, but neither player in this duo is at the level to carry a team to a championship.
Denver Nuggets: Inconsistent secondary stars
The Nuggets need players other than Nikola Jokic to have back-to-back good games. Their two other highest paid players, Jamal Murray, and Michael Porter Jr, both making 33M per year, need to perform closer to all-star level in the playoffs. Aaron Gordon was the second-best Nugget for much of the Timberwolves series, and for them to win another championship he needs to be the fourth best player. Murray and Porter shot 40.3% and 37.1% from the field in that series, and the Nuggets don’t have a chance with them playing that poorly.
Oklahoma City Thunder: Youth
The Thunder have one of the most promising futures ahead of them, but it was obvious that they didn’t have the experience necessary to hang with Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving this year. If they face OKC again next year with the same exact rosters, I have a hard time believing the Thunder wouldn’t make it a much closer series. The average age on their roster was just 24 years old in April, so let’s just give this group some more time before we count them out.
New York Knicks: Tom Thibodeau
How many times does Tom Thibodeau have to lead a team straight into the ground before the Knicks find a new coach? He plays his starters far too many minutes and it always leads to key injuries. Sure, he’s a great defensive coach and helped the Knicks get to this point, but he’s not capable of resting his starters enough to make it to the finals, and the Knicks will be stuck at this same position as long as he is their head coach.
Cleveland Cavaliers: Garland and Mitchell Core
The Darius Garland and Donavan Mitchell team , while electric at times, isn’t capable of carrying Cleveland to a championship. I believe they’ll have to trade one of the two before they can truly compete with the Boston Celtics. The Cavs did win their first playoff series without LeBron James since 1993, so even though I don’t believe this core has what it takes, I wouldn’t fault them for bringing them back for another year or two.
Miami Heat: Over Reliance on Playoff Jimmy
Every year, the Heat sneak into the playoffs and then have Playoff Jimmy take over and through seemingly determination alone carry them far into the playoffs. This year Jimmy Butler suffered an MCL sprain in the play-in, so their plan was ruined. Jimmy can’t carry a bad roster when he’s not on the court, so they need to either make sure the 34-year-old Jimmy Butler can stay healthy or build a roster that has a chance without him.
Orlando Magic: Too Young
Paolo Banchero seems to have shown NBA fans just how special a player he can be in their series against the Cavs, but turnovers and inconsistency from him and his teammates held them from winning game 7 and advancing to the second round. They’re just too young. Banchero is 21, Franz Wagner is 22, Wendell Carter is 25, and Jalen Suggs is 23. This team has the potential to be one of the best teams in the East, but it's just not their time yet.
Milwaukee Bucks: Giannis injury
I’d like to say the reason the Bucks aren’t in the Finals is because Doc Rivers blew it again, or that Dame didn’t gel well with this team, but the Bucks had no chance the minute Giannis went down. The Bucks will only go as far as he can take them. As a 2x MVP and 1x Finals MVP, he deserves every move to be solely focused on helping him. Would they have made it to the Finals with a healthy Giannis? I doubt it, but without him it’s unfair to place much blame on Doc or Dame.
Philadelphia 76ers: Tobias Harris
Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey needed any kind of help in their series vs the Knicks. They averaged 33.0 and 29.8 PPG in the series, respectively, and the next highest scorer was Kelly Oubre with just 13.2 PPG. If only they had another max player on their roster!! Oh yeah, they do! His name is Tobias Harris, but Tobias averaged just 9 PPG, 7.2 RPG, 1.5 APG, 0.2 SPG, and 0.5 BPG, shooting 43% from the field and 33% from 3. He is a bad defender, can’t score in isolation (even though he will often try), and can't take advantage of smaller defenders on him. If the 76ers had just about any non-Tobias Harris max player, they could have had a chance against the Knicks and possibly the Boston Celtics. Luckily it looks like this offseason they’ll sign a new max player, as Tobias’ contract is up.
New Orleans Pelicans: Zion’s health
It was demoralizing to see Zion Williamson playing the best basketball of his career during the play-in just for him to injure his hamstring again. He had lost the weight people had been criticizing him for, and was dominating the Lakers before the injury, but once again he couldn’t stay healthy. If he can stay healthy, they have a chance because he truly can be one of the most dominant players in the league. It’s just sad we haven’t seen him be able to stay healthy yet.
Los Angeles Clippers: Kawhi Leonard Led Team
With Kawhi as the Clippers best player, they need to be prepared for some seasons to be ended by injuries. Kawhi was dealing with inflammation in his surgically repaired right knee and missed the entire series against the Dallas Mavericks. A fully healthy Clippers team played like one of the better teams in the league, and Kawhi’s defense could have helped slow down Luka Doncic, but without him they had no chance. With Kawhi, you’re always risking a season ending like this, and this was just one of those seasons.
Phoenix Suns: Leadership
What a disappointing season this was for the Suns, and it all comes back to them not having a real leader on the team and nobody being held accountable. Kevin Durant has never proved he has the ability to lead a championship team and needed Draymond and Steph to lead him to his titles. Devin Booker is definitely a talented scorer, but it also doesn’t look like he’s cut out to orchestrate a team as the point guard. Bradley Beal also was never leader in Washington and might be the second worst max contract player in the league. I’m just not sure where the leadership was supposed to come from, and without it they won’t come close to winning it all.
Los Angeles Lakers: 3-point shooting
Maybe this is recency bias, but this is the worst three-point shooting playoff team I can remember. In their 5-game series loss vs the Denver Nuggets, their best shooters were LeBron James at 38.5%, Rui Hachimura at 35.7%, and D’Angelo Russell at 31.8%. No other player was above 30%, and a friendly reminder, the league average is 39%. They didn't have a single above average shooter on the roster, and in today's NBA you can't win with this poor a shooting performance.
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