The past few days have shown us, again, that the playoffs are fickle.
Or maybe it’s just that we are.
Before last Friday we were convinced the Clippers were toast. They’d lost the first two at home to the Dallas Mavericks, and layered on top of previous playoff misadventures was the sobering realization that only four of 31 teams in NBA history had ever lost the first two at home in a best-of-seven and come back to win a series. That was out of 305 occasions where one team led 2-0 … and specifically 25 series since 1947 in which the home team went down 2-0.
(For what it’s worth, Miami pulled it off in three series and Boston once in the bubble last year, but that’s likely because those were “home” games in name only. For the purposes of this stat, those don’t count.)
So going into Game 3 the Clippers had … let’s see … yep, a 16 percent chance of shocking the world. That’s if you were an optimist and divided four into 25. If you took the longer odds, 4 out of 304, it came to 0.0131 percent. But maybe even that was the smart bet.
With Luka Doncic at full strength in Games 1 and 2 at Staples Center, the Clippers defensively looked like second graders at recess. (The sight of Doncic repeatedly abusing Patrick Beverley off of pick-and-roll switches was the stuff of which nightmares are made.) But they figured some things out before they got to Dallas – and after Doncic strained his neck, first noticeable at halftime of Game 3, the Clippers’ defensive schemes looked even better.
But maybe we should go back to the first quarter of Game 3, when the Mavericks led 30-11 with 4:38 left and then didn’t score for three full minutes. In that time, maybe the yoke of pressure – worn by Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Ty Lue and a Clippers team that was staring down the barrel of not only another playoff flameout but the possibility of sweeping changes after the season – changed hands.
Jerry West, a Clippers consultant, could have reminded his players that it’s not over until one team wins four, and who knows? Maybe he did. West was part of the first comeback from two home losses in NBA history, when the 1969 Lakers lost the first two games of their best-of-seven Western Division semifinal to the then-San Francisco Warriors at the Forum and then stormed back to win the next four.
(Out of deference to The Logo, we won’t discuss how that postseason ended for his team, but those with long memories surely remember. Let’s just say Bill Russell was involved. Also balloons.)
The other such comebacks? The Houston Rockets dropped two at home to Phoenix in 1994 in the conference semifinals, won that series and went on to win the first of back-to-back titles. The Mavericks themselves fell behind 0-2 at home to Houston in 2005, in a 4-vs.-5-seed matchup similar to this one, and won the series in seven. And in 2017 the Celtics lost two at home to the Bulls and then swept the next four in the first round.
Do we overreact at playoff time? Our friends in the desert certainly do. The Clippers were favorites going into the series. Then they were heavy underdogs going into Game 3. Now, according to a press release issued by oddschecker.com, the Clippers are “massive favorites” to win the series, as well as co-favorites with the Lakers to win the Western Conference. (Those are the same Lakers, incidentally, that those books listed as underdogs going into their own Game 5 against Phoenix on Tuesday night.)
But what will the board look like before Game 6?
Maybe it depends on the Clippers’ mood. To hear Reggie Jackson describe it Wednesday, they fed off of going into enemy territory with the public underestimating them while armed with the belief that what they did would work.
“It was a great experience for us,” he said Tuesday. “I think we definitely enjoyed it, just going out there and trying to have a villain’s mentality, showing up trying to be a spoiler, showing up not having a – not probably earning much trust from our fan base, probably not being as deserving of it, but we definitely felt like we had watched some film and figured out some things that we can go out there and attack. And we just couldn’t wait to get to the next game, Game 3, and go out there and test it, figure out if it was going to work or not and then put it on display.”It’s often more fun when you secretly have the cheat code. But now the other guys have had two days to figure things out, their bandwagon is emptier than it was before Game 3, and now they can reassume the villain’s role. Oh, and indications from the Dallas side were that Doncic’s condition is improving. “I’m not sure how much better, but he’s definitely better,” coach Rick Carlisle said.
Does it actually benefit a team when the hype all switches to the other side?
“All that external noise is just that,” Carlisle said. “This time of year, I try not to look too much at the papers and the Internet, stuff like that. You can get distracted. Playoffs are difficult. A seven-game series is a seven-game series. And I’ve been through so many wild playoff series that had all kinds of ups and downs and wacky stuff with road teams winning and teams struggling at home and all that kind of stuff. You got to treat every day as a one-game day.”
And hope that you have the cheat code and they don’t.
@Jim_Alexander on Twitter
