Jim Alexander: Watching last night’s first game of the NBA Finals in Boston, my mind kept drifting back to the “Memorial Day Massacre.” Remember? Game 1 of the 1985 Finals, with the Lakers so desperate to avenge the previous June’s loss to the Celtics but getting, well, massacred at the start of the next year’s series. The final was 148-114, and I remember journeyman Scott Wedman being made to look like a Hall of Famer in waiting that afternoon, going 11 for 11 from the field.
I also remember who won that series in six games. Mavericks fans – and Lakers fans hoping Dallas keeps the Celtics from hoisting banner No. 18 – can look to that as inspiration, I suppose. Surely the Mavs are better and more competitive than they looked for the greater part of Thursday’s game, aren’t they? Or are they?
The Celtics might not have been challenged sufficiently in their run through the East, but they’ve got loads of talent, and the return of Kristaps Porzingis added a huge dimension to their game Thursday night. If he has that kind of impact on the rest of the series, it goes no more than five.
And if Kyrie Irving is as ineffective an X-factor as he was Thursday night, it could be a sweep. I know the Boston fans were vicious, vindictive, cruel … pretty much what you’d expect from Boston fans, right? But Kyrie’s got to shake it off to give Dallas a chance.
Or is all of this just part of Overreaction Friday?
Mirjam Swanson: Much more recent history: The Clippers made the Mavericks look pretty bad in Game 1 of their first-round series (109-97 and it wasn’t that close). And … the Mavericks are in the NBA Finals and the Clippers went quietly into the offseason after six mostly uninspired games.
One thing I’ve learned covering the NBA playoffs: Every game is its own story. Last game is last game, even when it feels like one team so obviously has the upper hand; your own eyes will deceive you.
Because, look, Dallas got its butt kicked by Oklahoma City in Game 1 of the second-round series too (117-95) and that series played out much like the one against the Clippers did. Dallas even trailed for much of its Game 1 victory over Minnesota in a series the Mavericks otherwise dominated. So … let’s see what head coach Jason Kidd comes up with.
He’s been making all the right adjustments so far this postseason, whether it was getting more physical with Clippers center Ivica Zubac or getting into their offensive sets significantly more early against OKC, so I expect he and his staff will have some ideas about how to contend with Porzingis in Game 2. They’ll probably, again, strive to be more physical – though they’ll have to balance that, because they need Dereck Lively – who is more important to the Mavs than people realize – to avoid getting in foul trouble so quickly. They’ll have to defend the 3-point line better, too, of course, and they’ll devise some sort of plan to try to do that.
And I, for one, wouldn’t count out Luka Doncic yet, Lakers fans.
Jim: The eyes can deceive, trust me. It seemed to me Thursday night that for much of the game – or maybe it was just that period of the game when Dallas mounted its comeback – the Celtics couldn’t get an offensive rebound to save their lives. But the box score shows that offensive rebounds were 10-10 and Boston had a 47-43 edge on the glass overall.
But that’s part of the fascination of a playoff series: Which team adjusts the most successfully from game to game. There’s a reason Kidd got an extension from the Mavs … well, more than one, actually.
Which brings us to the Lakers’ sudden infatuation with Dan Hurley. (You like that segue?)
One heretofore underplayed aspect of the team’s seemingly sudden pivot from JJ Redick – and I’m not totally buying the concept, as reported by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, that Hurley was their No. 1 guy all along – is that Hurley’s women’s basketball counterpart at UConn, Geno Auriemma, just signed his own contract extension, five years at $18.7 million.
And if Geno’s worth that much, even though the Huskies haven’t won a women’s NCAA championship since 2016, what would the guy who won the last two men’s national titles be worth to the school? Could it be that the Lakers – whose mere presence as a team without a coach led the Clippers to extend Ty Lue and the Mavs to extend Kidd – are about to make another coach richer from his current employer?
Who knows? Maybe JJ Redick gets a contract sweetener from ESPN to stay put. How far might the Lakers’ search ultimately go? Monty Williams? The return of Frank Vogel?.Mirjam: What’s funny is that Geno told Dan Patrick he took “the old AARP discount because I thought ‘they’re going to have to pay a lot of money to keep Hurley,’” in a conversation that’s been widely proliferated online.
“Well, if he leaves, I’m going to be pissed,” Geno cracked. “I’m going to rip up my contract and I want a new one.”
There are reports, though, that Hurley (who signed a six-year $32.1 million deal to stay at UConn after the 2023 title) could receive a larger offer yet from UConn: “… leadership at the university and the State Capitol have been working toward finalizing a new contract that would take Hurley, already by far the highest-paid state employee in history, from one level of profound wealth to the next.” That’s according to CT Insider.
I think the Lakers are getting Hurley. And I do think he’s been a focus of theirs for most of this search if not all of it. Because this whole time, Wojnarowski has been careful to mention Redick as one of many candidates, never as a frontrunner. And if Hurley was, indeed, the actual frontrunner, it would make sense to keep that quiet, considering his situation at UConn. Plus, as you mentioned in your astute column Thursday, this also offered the desired impact, timing-wise, of leaking that news the same day as the Celtics’ first game of the NBA Finals.
And consider this too: If any NBA news breaker knows what’s going on with the Hurleys, I fathom it’s Woj, who wrote the book: “The Miracle of St. Anthony: A Season with Coach Bob Hurley and Basketball’s Most Improbable Dynasty.”
And the way Woj has been presenting it, it feels like we’re dotting i’s and crossing t’s at this point – which will be fascinating and possibly great for the Lakers, if they can find it within themselves to stick with a head coach for more than a few years. I’ll have to see that to believe it, though.
Jim: It’s the question I’ve had for a while now: To what extent, or at what point, does the vice president of basketball operations, one Rob Pelinka, accept responsibility for the revolving door of coaches?
Meanwhile … the FX miniseries “Clipped” debuted on Hulu this week, the dramatization of the sordid events of 10 years ago that resulted in Donald T. Sterling being ousted as the owner of the Clippers, leading to the sale of the club to Steve Ballmer and its transition to a truly professional organization rather than a vanity project for one man’s ego and eccentricities.
I’ve seen the first two episodes, and that was after going back and re-listening to the ESPN “30 for 30” podcast from our friend Ramona Shelburne, “The Sterling Affairs.” That background reinforced the memories of what transpired – the racist comments of Sterling, secretly taped by his mistress, V. Stiviano, and released to TMZ; the furor that erupted; the possibility that both the Clippers and Golden State Warriors might boycott a playoff game in reaction to Sterling’s words (and, to be honest, actions over the years); and then-new NBA commissioner Adam Silver bringing the hammer down and barring Sterling from the league for life, forcing the sale to Ballmer and making Shelly Sterling an outrageously rich woman. (As opposed to merely extravagantly wealthy.)
With the knowledge of that background, the first two episodes weren’t bad. They were far more realistic, and truer to the subject matter, than HBO’s “Winning Time” miniseries about the “Showtime” Lakers last year – though that’s a low bar. My understanding is that the series gets better as it continues … and I’m not even upset that Bill Plaschke got the press conference cameo in the first episode and not me. (Ramona, who is a former Daily News columnist, got brief camera time in that episode as well, as she should. She’s listed as an executive producer.)
You said you haven’t seen it yet, so let’s approach it from this angle: What do you remember about that week and those events, and as a former Clippers beat writer, how do you think that all shaped the organization that currently exists?
Mirjam: Where do you start?
I wasn’t on the beat yet, but like the rest of the world – the world well beyond sports fandom – I was glued to Clippers news the week the Sterling tapes surfaced. And I’ve had lots of conversations since with folks who were on the ground during that time, and what an uncomfortable, ugly ordeal. They appreciate the way Doc Rivers handled it, from what I’ve been told. But otherwise, they’d love to forget it, though they never will. (And now, a reminder on Hulu! Which we don’t get at my house at the moment …)
But! It all led to Steve Ballmer buying the team, which of course has changed the way the Clippers operate wholesale. They’re moving into a brand-new state-of-the-art arena next season in Inglewood. They’re managed wisely, with a large staff of experts in just about every department – and even if they haven’t gotten over the hump, and even if they haven’t had luck on their side, injury-wise, and even if they haven’t won over the hearts and minds of Angelenos en masse yet, the Clippers are in no way an embarrassment now. They’re not a franchise of ill repute. They’re not a laughing stock. And to be honest, they’re probably due to win a championship. It’s going to happen … someday.
That would’ve seemed like a distant and inconceivable destination during that messy and offensive week in the team’s history.
