I’m not sure I believe that. They won the series but had the worst point differential of any series winner since 1984 (-40 points), and basically the only thing that carried them across the threshold was LeBron’s individual brilliance. From a 538 piece after the series ended:

uncanny match of username and post

very clever of the nba to conspire to force the cavs to lose 3 games to the pacers by an average margin of about a million points

It isn’t bad, it’s very good! In this scheme, Capela is about as good for the Rockets as he can be.

Not nearly as good, I think. It’s not a knock on Capela to say that he’s very much a system guy, where the system works because it doesn’t rely on him to manufacture shots. He’s perfect at what he does but he needs set-up men like Harden and Paul to put him in position to score. If he develops an effective jumper,…

punished by the gods for their cosmic hubris

rude to just murder an entire city like that on live tv

al horford is,,, extremely good

i can’t skate you jerk >:(

Yeah, but at that point they’re down 3 and even if he fouls out, it’s not like it’s going to matter much. I think he was trying to chase down Horford but couldn’t keep up.

He was exhausted. On that last bucket, Horford just beats him clean off the dribble, and Al is not a fast dude.

or... should they be forced to play basketball for the rest of their lives

both tatum and redick went to duke, if that helps

I would argue that the Pacers pushed them harder this year! In fact, the Pacers had the largest point differential for a losing team in a 7-game series ever.

I would say that what they’ve done is turn their young players, who were mostly supposed to be backups, into stars. Tatum and Rozier have been excellent throughout the whole playoffs.

When he hit that 3 from the top of the key, I was thinking, oh, if Embiid is hitting those, it could be over. But if he only thinks he can hit them, then it could go poorly for Philly. I think he took 3 more 3s after that and missed every one of them pretty badly.

i love it when the discourse turns good

the sixers are currently down 2-0 in the series to a team missing its two best players

update:

the raptors are a clownfraud team that should be contracted immediately so as to spare them the further humiliation of a gigantic ass-kicking