Defending champion Boston vs. title-starved New York. High-scoring Cleveland vs. high-scoring Indiana. The 2023 champion Denver vs. this year’s favorite in Oklahoma City. And Golden State vs. Minnesota, pitting a current face of the NBA in Stephen Curry against an heir apparent in Anthony Edwards.
It’s already in progress, actually: Indiana went on the road and grabbed Game 1 of its Eastern Conference semifinal series against Cleveland on Sunday. The Boston-New York and Denver-Oklahoma City matchups open on Monday; the Golden State-Minnesota series starts Tuesday.
“These are the most important times of the year,” Celtics forward and reigning NBA Finals MVP Jaylen Brown said. “We’ve just got to come out and perform.
The star power has been whittled down from what it was at the start of the playoffs: LeBron James and Luka Doncic were ousted when the Los Angeles Lakers fell to Minnesota, James Harden and Kawhi Leonard saw their seasons end when the Los Angeles Clippers lost to Denver, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Milwaukee were eliminated by Indiana.
But there’s still plenty of big names — Curry, Edwards, the Celtics’ duo of Brown and Jayson Tatum, the likely MVP in Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a three-time MVP in Denver’s Nikola Jokic, a scoring machine in Cleveland’s Donovan Mitchell, an Olympic gold medalist in Indiana’s Tyrese Haliburton and the league’s best clutch player this season in New York’s Jalen Brunson.
The favorites, according to BetMGM Sportsbook, to win the NBA title, in order: Oklahoma City, then Boston, then Cleveland, then Minnesota. Indiana showed how much that mattered when it won Game 1 of an East semifinal matchup on the Cavs’ home floor.
“I haven’t heard many people that have gave us a chance in this series,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “So, we’ve got to use that as some level of motivation. But we know what we’re capable of.
Curry and the Warriors making it to Round 2 will certainly help ratings, which the NBA and its broadcast partners raved about in Round 1. The Knicks, the Warriors and the Celtics still being in means the NBA has a team still playing in three of the nation’s top seven television markets; losing both Los Angeles teams in Round 1 probably won’t help on that front, however.
“The numbers are fantastic,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said after the first weekend of the playoffs. None of the numbers that came out since would suggest his opinion has had to change on that front.
Still, there is much for even the casual fan to like: A traditional rivalry in Knicks-Celtics, a matchup of Olympic backcourt teammates Curry and Edwards in the Golden State-Minnesota series, a Cavs-Pacers series that already has a No. 1 seed forced to dig out of a deficit, and a Thunder-Nuggets series with the 2024 MVP in Jokic vs. the probable 2025 MVP in Gilgeous-Alexander.
The NBA hasn’t said when it will announce the MVP voting results — ballots were cast last month by a global panel of 100 writers and broadcasters who cover the league — but it’s reasonable to think that news could come during this series.
“Those guys are pros,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “Neither one of them — I know Shai a lot better than I know Jokic, but I think I know enough about him to know neither one of them are going to get distracted by that. Both of them are going to be fully invested in this series. It’s a supplement to the series, but it’s really not part of the series at all.
And a little extra intrigue for that Warriors-Timberwolves matchup: Golden State’s Jimmy Butler is heading back to Minnesota, a place that he didn’t leave exactly on the best of terms after his brief stint as a player there.
Butler said he’s more worried about how to get his coffee machine and his kids to Minnesota for Game 1 than he is about any he’s-going-back-there storyline. The Warriors earned their trip there by going into Houston and winning a Game 7 on Sunday night.
“We never wavered. The confidence never went anywhere,” Butler said. “Really good group of hoopers. Really good group of people. That’s what I’m going to take into this next round. We’ve got some guys who can play at an extremely high level.
That seems to be the sentiment of all eight teams that are left in the playoffs.
