Their opponents have used all of that time to game-plan against everything they’ve shown in the regular season.
Until Saturday, only two or three games will be played per night, and it will quickly become apparent which teams will retain that spirit of competition and which ones will be overcome by capitulation.
The best player on the court when the Lakers defeated the Grizzlies, 128-112, was Anthony Davis.
Both the Lakers and Grizzlies have a star defensive big man, and both of them preferred to use that player to guard the weakest opposing scorer.
Rather than play Wenyen Gabriel or Mo Bamba at center when Davis went to the bench, they decided to go small and have James and Hachimura share center duties.
If Morant is back for Game 2, the Lakers might need to bite the bullet and let Davis defend Jackson himself.
Their 11-8 record without him this season actually gave them a better winning percentage than their first-round opponent, the Miami Heat, had across the entire regular season.
Well — and this is shocking — it turns out the Bucks probably need their two-time MVP if they plan to make any noise in this postseason.
His mixed postseason history has always been held against him, and many of the things that have gone wrong for him in the past did go wrong on Sunday.
He’s not always going to shoot 3 of 19, but if he defends and rebounds as hard as he did in Game 1, the Clippers have a real chance to maximize him this postseason.
They went 8-10 down the stretch, possibly losing Nikola Jokic the MVP award and definitely losing some respect from prognosticators around the league.
They had the biggest margin of victory of the weekend in 29-point win over the Timberwolves Sunday, and the held Minnesota to just 80 points, the lowest total of the weekend.
He not only won the scoring title at 33.1 points per game, but he became the first seven-footer to win two consecutive scoring titles since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar more than 40 years ago.
So the 76ers shrug, moved the ball around and ultimately made 21 of their 43 3-point shots.
Boston is obviously a NBA Finals contender, but the Hawks at least got three days off after last week’s play-in win.
In the process, he made a bit of history — if you include previous seasons, he has now shot 8 of 49 from 3-point range in his past seven playoff games.
Playing without Brunson would be a death sentence to most teams. Having Sixth Man of the Year finalist Immanuel Quickley available to sub in for softens that blow significantly.
The actively complement New York’s starting lineup and give them flexibility to attack whatever matchups they want.
Those players combined to score 77 of their 97 points and take 64 of their 83 field goals.
If you only trust four of them, you’re in serious trouble against a team as deep as the Knicks.
In fact, the starting centers on the two teams to beat them since Steve Kerr took over as coach were Tristan Thompson and Marc Gasol.
It’s a tiny sample, but the Kings posted a strong 121.7 offensive rating in the 20 minutes Gary Payton II played.
If the Warriors are going to win this thing, it’s going to have to come by way of shootouts.
