Western semifinals preview

NO. 1 THUNDER VS. NO. 4 NUGGETS

The two teams split the season series, strong co-parenting.

OKLAHOMA CITY

C: Isaiah Hartenstein – big and burly and smart and left-handed so he jumps directly into Nikola Jokic's shooting motion, right into the right hand. None of this will matter one bit to Nikola Jokic.
PF/C: Chet Holmgren – 18 a game and leads the postseason in blocks per outing (2.8) in five contests. One-eighth of Chet's 32 regular season contests were against Denver: 15 and nine boards averages, totals of 11 blocks and 11 fouls. Denver and Oklahoma City's regular season pairings were rather representative and for this, we thank them.
F: Jalen Williams – freed from deleterious defensive designations (how hard is it, really, to guard Michael Porter Jr., even when MPJ has two arms?), Williams will be asked to look for his own attempts, repeatedly.
SG: Luguentz Dort – hit 13-26 threes against Denver in the regular season, nobody really stopped anyone in the regular season series. Will he relish the Murray assignment, or lose his wits? Also, Oklahoma City is losing interest in delivering a nice, baritone, "LUUUUUUUU" every time he hits a three. Let's get back into that.
PG: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander – league's next MVP will have his troubles among Denver's trees, and "troubles" for this guy mean about 31-6-5 in a five-game gentleman's sweep.

Cason Wallace doesn't need to outplay Russell Westbrook, nothing can outplay Russell Westbrook, even when Russell Westbrook misses 11-12 attempts from the field. What Wallace can do is create hockey assists, clear the break in transition before peeling around to protect the ball if, somehow, OKC failed to score on the break against Denver.

The Nuggets just spent seven games in a museum, everything was cold and quiet and nobody was allowed to run quickly because the sneakers would make too much noise, not even squeaking, just peeling off the floor. Couldn't upset the dinosaur bones.

The Clippers weren't morose and sullen, that series went seven games, and the Thunder aren't especially audacious, but they are quick and confident, somewhat restless watching everyone else play twice as many playoff games as them.

Alex Caruso finds himself more and more comfortable floating within OKC's offense as the season moves along, if Caruso can hit half his layups in this series, the Nuggets are in trouble ... I would pay money to watch Aaron Gordon and Jaylin Williams play basketball against each other so I hope it happens during this series, Jaylin is absolutely the sort of mid-sized mover to give the Nugget offense pause.

All the Thunder ask for is that lost beat, then they can load up on wherever the ball heads next, and steal it.

Aaron Wiggins is a significant luxury for the NBA's best team, a two-way swingman absent severe weakness that they can toss out for as many or as few minutes as needed ... Isaiah Joe popped 8-19 threes in the first round, it only felt like he made 19 in eight attempts.

DENVER

C: Nikola Jokic – does this, from time to time:

PF: Aaron Gordon – the highest flyer in the NBA right now who can't get off the ground. Gordon is tired, banged-up, he's also an exceptional two-way basketball player. We as fans were very lucky he paired with Jokic a few years back, very lucky Tim Connelly identified Gordon above all to be the player to help put the MVP over the top.
F: Michael Porter Jr. – regular season output against OKC averaged 20 and nine rebounds per game and an hearty -6.6 plus/minus in 120 minutes, four contests.

For younger readers, in the olden days '120 Minutes' was a television show late on Sunday evenings on MTV that we couldn't watch during the school year but tried to watch in summer. Though we would be underwhelmed because '120 Minutes' the same Primus and Red Hot Chili Peppers videos that MTV already played all day, like, we appreciate 'Sister Havana' being tossed in there, Carla Bozulich here and there, but come on.

SG: Christian Braun – was the kid among all the adults, with the Clippers around, now he's around other kids. Kids who can jump nearly as high as he can. Hit those threes, CB. (Braun was 9-21 from deep in four games against OKC in 2024-25).
PG: Jamal Murray – plays off timing and touch and I've already talked myself into the quick turnaround for Murray.

Russell Westbrook is one of one and he might be terribly destructive for the Nuggets against Oklahoma City, the tensest of his former teams. Westbrook wants to be Mr. Thunder in a bottle and I don't know if I'm brave enough to watch.

In a wonderful world, coach David Adelman will harness it. He'll create some Carrill/Adelman Family amalgam and Russ will have lanes toward the rim all May. He'll miss a lot of layups, but that's what Aaron Gordon is for. The Nuggets' new coach now has double-figure NBA games under his head-coaching elastic snapwaist, he's only getting started.

Yes, I wish NBA coaches still wore belts. I spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about it during the playoffs, just thinkin' about slacks.

Peyton Watson can do a lot of fun things in this series, Denver can match up very well with OKC if the Nuggets can simply stay in their shoes ... DeAndre Jordan moved his feet all season, he isn't quite the sieve he was a few years ago, he is an interesting option for a Nuggets team which may require an inordinate order of bulk to pound through the second round.

Jalen Pickett, come on, come off the bench and hit a three-pointer just before halftime.

The Nuggets improved throughout the Clipper series, a mark of coaching confidence, the sign of one relaxed player working with another relaxed player. Possibly a sign of the aging Clippers plateauing.

Denver's defense in Game 7, sublime, plus the team turned it over three times total in the decisive second and third periods. The Nuggets made it so the Clippers didn't want to bend over or sweat to dig out basketballs that some other teammate (French) could go and grab.

I cannot imagine what this guy is going through.

He's thought about the day and week and month he'd take over his first NBA team for decades. Maybe he would be an interim in November or February or March, maybe he'd get the team before the draft, maybe he'd be the cheap hire in August? You know, like the Clippers used to do. Instead, he makes his NBA debut three games before he was expected to make his NBA playoff debut.

He is one of the few people on earth who owned credible reason to anticipate the moment he'd become an NBA head coach. David Adelman has been after this title his entire adult life, he likely considered every possibility because he had to, he watched his father's contemporaries go through every conceivable way of being hired, fired.

Not this way! These are the days and week he got, this has been his month.

MON, WED, FRI, SUN, TUE, THU, SUN

Denver's best effort could still result in a Thunder sweep, two kinda close games plus a normal loss plus the game where nothing goes right for the visitors. Many times we call this, "Game 2."

We've seen that one before. We also saw the Nuggets make the Thunder look normal in the 2024-25 regular season, in ways only the other contenders (Timberwolves, Cavaliers for a game) and ex-contenders (Luka and Kyrie's Mavericks) managed. Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets worked against Chet Holmgren and his Thunder four times this season, a rare, embodiment of an NBA sample size. In a league filled with season-ending injuries and season-altering trades, this is rare, little is unfamiliar in this series.

Outside of OKC's rhythm.

The Thunder's main lineup played four games from April 8 until Monday's Game 1, and the Thunder seemed to battle it a little in Game 4 against Memphis. Out of nowhere, OKC will play Monday and then Wednesday at home, fine, then a game in Denver on Friday, bit of a hike but OK, then another game in Denver on Sunday.

See if this hotel sells Celsius.

We saw how the Denver air took apart the Clippers in Game 7. What will Denver do to a team that's barely played for a month, then has to play four games in seven nights, twice in Denver? Greatness, let me tell ya, it is a struggle.

Admittedly there is just a strong chance Denver breaks down in all of this, the emotional crumble mixing with the buttery legs. But maybe that's what Westbrook is here for.

Oklahoma's love for its NBA team is organic and real and watching a game in that arena is one of the NBA's great, loud, pleasures. However, the Thunder still feel like a video game team. Like something we added and then had to add a bunch of other team's new players to. We've watched these Thunder grow but they've lost us recently, playing only three-quarters of a game because they're creating blowouts, then sitting through all these playoff nights because they're too good.

I cannot wait to watch long, dramatic stretches of intense Thunder basketball. Something to remind me of the franchise's permanence, that this isn't a novelty, but five people stretching at a time.

We've waited all our lives for Thundernuggets, lets hope it goes seven.

Game 1 on Monday in Oklahoma City at 9:30 PM Eastern

Thunder in six, in Denver. Not because Denver is bad but because Oklahoma City is good

CLIPPERS

One game and out. The Clippers let Denver twirl them around defensively, failed to maintain concentration on offense. The Nuggets worked up marvelous defense in Game 7 and the Clippers were only too comfortable flowing with that stream, dribbling into spots Denver wanted.

It should have been James Harden and his string plus Kawhi Leonard's unstoppable stretch of Jordan-esque line-drive doubles. Instead, the Clipper coaching staff cut Kris Dunn from the starting lineup for whatever reason, lost the string and the stretch and eventually the bit. Game, season. Latest and perhaps greatest chance at doing something with Kawhi Leonard's Clippers, now finishing a sixth season.

That's also, the West? Game 7 was a disappointment to be sure – James, Harden – but I don't know if the Clippers underachieved. Whether or not they let anyone down is up for their backers to decide.

Next season will be Leonard's Pt. 7 in L.A., he also spent seven seasons in San Antonio, it has been this long. Only three playoff series wins for the Clippers in that stretch. Myriad caveats over that run, to be sure, but that's life when we employ superstars aged 28-through-33. They're likely to have some miles on them, established well before age 28. These are the guys with a season's worth of playoff games on the resume before the plane lands for the free agent visit.

This experiment didn't fall flat on its face, no, that would be the Suns. History should be kinder to these Clippers in retrospect. History will respect the 21st Century West, impossibly deep in every postseason, far more than us frogs, slowly boiling our way through the left-side of the NBA's quarter-century long stretch of dominance. The Clippers wanted to be part of that, but it is really hard to buy your way in.

The lone NBA prospect the Clippers gave up in the search for relevance is the odds-on MVP favorite, the best player on a historically-great regular season team. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was only barely necessary to that 2019 trade, Paul George wanted out of OKC and the Thunder had to hit before the rest of the league grew wise, but the Clips were over a barrel while negotiating with two superstars at once. The irony is overwhelming, another in the long list of lame and easy answers we only find in sports and some instances of downstate Illinois government.

The Clippers have over $174 million committed in 2025-26 to a dozen players, a few of them (Kobe Brown, Jordan Miller, Cam Christie) probably aren't helping much more than the odd regular season effort. The team has the No. 30 pick in June's draft. It will be up to the same crew again in 2025-26.

What can I say, the Clippers sold out. They didn't want to do it the tough way, where you take chances on the players you've developed, so they tried to purchase a sure thing. No pick next year, no pick in 2028 because of James Harden, swaps to OKC in 2025 and 2027, with Philadelphia in 2029.

Philadelphia, eh? These guys gonna get together in summer?

SOUL SERENADE

How does he get a soprano to sound like that?

This isn't a saxophone joke, I genuinely want to know. There isn't a punchline, I wasn't going to type "because he left his sax on the dashboard overnight."

Thanks for reading!