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NBA Announces Updated Playoff Schedule

August 28th, 2020 at 3:47pm CST by Luke Adams

After postseason contests on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were postponed due to player protests, the NBA has announced its new playoff schedule for the weekend. That schedule is as follows:

Saturday, August 29

Bucks vs. Magic, Game 5 — 3:30pm ET
Rockets vs. Thunder, Game 5 — 6:30pm ET
Lakers vs. Trail Blazers, Game 5 — 9:00pm ET

Sunday, August 30

Raptors vs. Celtics, Game 1 (round two) — 1:00pm ET
Clippers vs. Mavericks, Game 6 — 3:30pm ET
Jazz vs. Nuggets, Game 6 — 8:30pm ET

While no games have been scheduled beyond Sunday, it’s probably safe to assume the NBA will resume its every-other-day format for each series. As such, the Rockets and Thunder would presumably play Game 6 on Monday. The Lakers/Trail Blazers and Bucks/Magic would do so as well if those series continue — L.A. and Milwaukee currently hold 3-1 leads.

For more details on the resumption of the season and the initiatives that the NBA and NBPA agreed upon as part of the restart, be sure to check out our earlier story.

NBA, NBPA Confirm Agreement To Resume Playoffs

August 28th, 2020 at 11:42am CST by Luke Adams

The NBA and National Basketball Players Association have issued a joint statement confirming that the postseason will resume on Saturday, August 29 and outlining the social justice and voting initiatives that have been agreed upon as part of the restart.

The full slate of games for Saturday and Sunday can be found right here.

As part of the agreement to resume the playoffs, the NBA and its players will immediately establish a “social justice coalition,” which will focus on issues such as “increasing access to voting, promoting civic engagement, and advocating for meaningful police and criminal justice reform.” Players, coaches, and team owners will all be part of that coalition.

Additionally, in each city where the NBA team owns its arena, owners will work with local officials to convert those buildings into voting locations for the 2020 election. A number of clubs have started doing this already, with the Rockets and Jazz among the latest to confirm their plans.

The Heat pushed for this initiative, according to Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press, who tweets that the club has been “trying for months” to get local officials to make AmericanAirlines Arena a voting center.

The NBA also plans to work with players and the league’s broadcast partners to create more advertisements that promote “greater civic engagement in national and local elections” and raise awareness about voter access — they’ll be aired during the remaining 2020 playoff games.

Following the players’ decision not to play Wednesday’s games as scheduled, they met multiple times on Wednesday and Thursday and ultimately decided they wanted to complete the season. They held a call with team owners on Thursday evening to discuss next steps and came away satisfied with how their concerns were addressed — presumably, the initiatives detailed above were all discussed during that call.

NBA Postseason Expected To Resume On Saturday

August 28th, 2020 at 6:41am CST by Luke Adams

AUGUST 28, 6:41am: Reports from Jonathan Feigen of The Houston Chronicle and Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press, among others, continue to point to Saturday as the day when the NBA’s postseason is on track to resume. We’re still waiting for official word from the league and the NBPA, but it appears increasingly unlikely that Friday’s games will be played as scheduled.

AUGUST 27, 1:28pm: NBA spokesperson Mike Bass has issued a statement confirming that Thursday’s games have been postponed and indicating that the league is hopeful to resume play either Friday or Saturday.

As reported by Vincent Goodwill of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link) and confirmed by Bass, a meeting will take place today at 5:00pm eastern time to discuss the resumption.

Two players from each remaining playoff team, the owners of those 13 teams, commissioner Adam Silver, NBPA executive director Michele Roberts, and Hornets owner Michael Jordan (chair of the labor relations committee) will take part in that meeting, per Goodwill.

AUGUST 27, 1:07pm: The NBA playoffs are expected to resume on Saturday, according to Keith Pompey of The Philadelphia Inquirer (Twitter link).

Following Wednesday’s boycotts, NBA players decided today that they would resume the season. However, Thursday’s games are being postponed and it sounds like Friday’s will be as well.

According to Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe (Twitter link), the Celtics/Raptors second-round series that had been scheduled to begin on Thursday is now expected to tip off on Sunday. Tania Ganguli of The Los Angeles Times notes (via Twitter) that nothing is official yet, but says it sounds like the Lakers and Trail Blazers will play Game 5 of their first-round series on Saturday.

While no other dates have been confirmed so far, it seems safe to assume that the games originally scheduled for Wednesday would take place on Saturday, with Thursday’s contests being rescheduled to Sunday.

That would mean that Game 5 in two other playoff series – Bucks/Magic and Rockets/Thunder – would take place on Saturday, with the Jazz/Nuggets and Clippers/Mavericks playing Game 6 of their respective series on Sunday.

With meetings between players and team owners scheduled to take place later today, we’ll have to wait for official word from the NBA before locking anything in.

George Struggled With Depression During Shooting Slump

August 27th, 2020 at 7:13pm CST by Alex Kirschenbaum

Star Clippers forward Paul George dealt with a rough four-game offensive showing during Los Angeles’ first-round series against the Mavericks. He bounced back with an incredibly efficient 35-point performance in Game 5 across just 25 minutes on Tuesday. George cites struggles with depression and anxiety living within the NBA’s Orlando restart campus as factors in his difficulty during the series, as Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN reports.

As we previously detailed, the Lakers and Clippers voted last night to strike for the rest of the 2019/20 NBA playoffs in response to the Sunday shooting of Jacob Blake by police officers in Kenosha, but the 11 other remaining NBA playoff teams voted to keep playing. In a follow-up meeting today, players ultimately decided to resume playoff participation tomorrow or Saturday.

Players Decide To Resume Playoffs; Thursday’s Games To Be Postponed

August 27th, 2020 at 11:01am CST by Luke Adams

The three NBA playoff games scheduled to take place on Thursday will be postponed, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (Twitter links). However, players have decided to resume the postseason and discussions are underway about when that will happen, Wojnarowski reports.

Games appear likely to resume as soon as Friday, per Shams Charania of The Athletic and Jeff Goodman of Stadium (Twitter links).

[UPDATE: NBA Hopes To Resume Postseason By Saturday]

According to Charania (Twitter link), NBA players who met today want to find “new and improved ways” to make social justice statements as they prepare to restart play.

Another meeting will take place today on the Orlando campus at 4:00 pm eastern time, with two players from each team participating, per Goodman and Tim MacMahon of ESPN (Twitter links). The goal of that meeting will be to formulate a specific action plan to address racial injustice issues and to work out the logistics of restarting play, a source tells MacMahon (Twitter link).

A meeting of NBA owners and players is also set up for later today, Wojnarowski and Marc Spears of ESPN report (via Twitter). It sounds like that will be a separate meeting, though it figures to focus on similar issues.

“The bubble is about more than just crowning a champion,” one veteran player told Spears (Twitter link). “More so now than ever. It felt like the message was fading. Hopeful this can create a new level of activism and commitment from our owners, (the) league, (and) teams towards real change.”

After the Bucks decided not to play Game 5 of their first-round series against the Magic on Wednesday to protest social and racial injustices, the Rockets, Thunder, Lakers, and Trail Blazers followed suit, and the NBA postponed those games.

Today’s contests between the Nuggets and Jazz, Celtics and Raptors, and Mavericks and Clippers will also need to be rescheduled. Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press (Twitter link) hears that one “common-sense” scenario being considered is to simply push each game back by two days, from Wednesday to Friday and Thursday to Saturday.

Following Wednesday’s boycott, players gathered last night to discuss next steps and that meeting reportedly got “emotional.” Players from the Lakers and Clippers voted in favor of ending the season, while other teams voted to continue playing and some players – including CJ McCollum – cautioned against giving up the platform afforded by the NBA’s bubble.

After further discussions both last night and this morning, LeBron James and other prominent players changed their positions, agreeing that it’s in players’ best interest to finish the season, tweets Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports.

Sources tell Charania that players today discussed the sacrifices they’ve made to reach this point of the 2019/20 season, as well as the sense of normalcy that will be gained when family members are allowed to enter the Orlando campus next week (Twitter link). Everyone was ultimately in agreement on restarting the season, one player told Goodman (Twitter link).

Lakers, Clippers Vote To Boycott Season; Others Vote To Continue

August 26th, 2020 at 9:44pm CST by Luke Adams

The Lakers and Clippers voted tonight to boycott the remainder of the 2019/20 NBA season, reports Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter links). According to Charania, the rest of the teams in the NBA’s Orlando bubble voted to continue playing. The meeting has now concluded, tweets Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports.

The Lakers and Clippers were the first two teams to exit the meeting after registering their votes, per Haynes (Twitter link). According to David Aldridge of The Athletic (Twitter link), the meeting ended “ugly” and there’s uncertainty about what will happen on Thursday.

The NBPA will be present on the league’s Board of Governors call on Thursday morning, Aldridge adds. That call will take place at 11:00 am eastern time, tweets Vincent Goodwill of Yahoo Sports.

Sources tell Charania (Twitter link) that Heat veteran Udonis Haslem spoke during tonight’s meeting and essentially said that it would be impossible for the season to continue without the top two teams in the West. However, tonight’s vote was considered “more of a polling” than a final decision, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, who tweets that the resumption of the postseason remains up in the air.

Wojnarowski adds (via Twitter) that the discussion about whether to continue the season will extend into tomorrow, but for now it seems unlikely that that Thursday’s three postseason games will be played as scheduled.

“Everyone is still too emotional,” a high-ranking source told Woj. “There needs to be more time to come together on this.”

According to both Charania and Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe (Twitter links), LeBron James was vocal in calling out the league’s team owners, indicating that he wants them to be more involved and take action on the social justice issues being highlighted by the players. Washburn adds that James wants commissioner Adam Silver to do more as well, with some players expressing annoyance that Silver has been “noticeably absent” for the majority of the summer restart.

While the East’s top two teams apparently didn’t vote to boycott the rest of the season, the Bucks and Raptors provided “some of the strongest voices” on the idea of shutting down the bubble, according to Chris Mannix of SI.com (Twitter link).

The Raptors were the first team to publicly talk about a boycott earlier this week, while the Bucks were the first team to do so earlier today. Charania reports (via Twitter) that there was some frustration expressed in the meeting tonight by those who felt blindsided by Milwaukee’s walk-out plan.

If the 2019/20 season isn’t completed, it would have a serious impact on the NBA’s revenues and salary cap and would potentially blow up the league’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. According to Keith Pompey of The Philadelphia Inquirer (Twitter link), Trail Blazers guard CJ McCollum asked for a financial breakdown of the potential effect on the CBA. Players have been told that lost revenue would be between 15-35% if they stop playing and go home tomorrow, a source tells Pompey.

Besides the financial impact of ending the season, some of the other themes of the meeting were Chris Paul expressed a desire for player unity, McCollum expressing a need for a plan of action, and Clippers head coach Doc Rivers talking about using the NBA’s platform to push voting and police accountability (Twitter link via Wojnarowski).

Mavericks Rule Out Kristaps Porzingis For Game 5

August 25th, 2020 at 11:13am CST by Luke Adams

The Mavericks have ruled out big man Kristaps Porzingis for Game 5 of their series against the Clippers due to Porzingis’ lingering right knee injury, tweets Marc Stein of The New York Times.

It’s a tough turn of events for the Mavs, who are currently tied with the Clippers at two games apiece and could badly use their top frontcourt scorer in Tuesday night’s contest. Porzingis also missed Game 4 and Dallas pulled out a win, but it took a superhuman effort from Luka Doncic — he scored 43 points to go along with 17 rebounds and 13 assists, and hit a buzzer-beating 28-footer in overtime to secure the victory.

Porzingis underwent an MRI on his injured right knee this week and there’s no indication it showed any structural damage, though head coach Rick Carlisle didn’t offer many specifics on the results.

Assuming the Mavs use the same lineup as they did in Game 4, it’ll be Trey Burke taking Porzingis’ spot in the starting five. Since Dwight Powell is also on the shelf, Maxi Kleber, Dorian Finney-Smith, and Tim Hardaway Jr. figure to play major frontcourt minutes, with Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Boban Marjanovic getting some playing time off the bench.

Dallas would be further short-handed if Finney-Smith is unable to play — he’s currently listed as questionable due to a left hip strain and right hip soreness.

Mutual Interest Between Tyronn Lue, Sixers

August 24th, 2020 at 4:50pm CST by Luke Adams

Having dismissed Brett Brown, the Sixers are set to embark on a search for a new head coach, and Tyronn Lue is expected to be a focal point of that search, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.

Lue’s ability to challenge and command the respect of star players appeals to the Sixers, as does his championship experience, Wojnarowski writes. Chris Mannix of SI.com reports (via Twitter) that there’s mutual interest between Lue and the 76ers, a point reiterated by Woj (via Twitter).

According to Mannix, Philadelphia could have the inside track to hire the current Clippers assistant, who is expected to be a popular target for teams seeking a head coach. Lue, who won a title in Cleveland in 2016, has been linked to the Nets’ and Pelicans’ openings, and may also receive consideration from the Rockets if they decide to make a change.

While Lue may be the top candidate on the Sixers’ wish list, the team is expected to conduct a more expansive search, according to Wojnarowski, who cites Villanova coach Jay Wright as another potential target. Philadelphia is expected to gauge Wright’s interest in leaving the Wildcats for the NBA, sources tell ESPN.

Both Lue and Wright were identified earlier today by Shams Charania of The Athletic as likely candidates for the Sixers once they moved on from Brown. Charania also named former Grizzlies and Kings coach Dave Joerger and current 76ers assistant Ime Udoka as names to watch as Philadelphia begins its search for Brown’s replacement.

Wojnarowski reported earlier this afternoon that the Sixers are poised to make some changes to their front office personnel and structure. General manager Elton Brand is expected to retain control of the team’s basketball operations during that process, so presumably the coaching search could begin before those front office changes are completed.

Injury Updates: Doncic, Beverley, Westbrook, Harris, Green

August 22nd, 2020 at 5:22pm CST by Arthur Hill

The Mavericks are listing star guard Luka Doncic as questionable for Game 4 against the Clippers, tweets Brad Townsend of The Dallas Morning News. In today’s session with reporters, coach Rick Carlisle said Doncic, who left Friday night’s contest with a sprained left ankle, might be a “game-time decision” for Sunday.

“I wish I knew right now, but I don’t,” Carlisle said. “We have good depth to play without him, but he’s one of the best players in the world, so if we have to play without him, it’s a big loss.”

Doncic was scheduled to have an MRI on the ankle today, but the test was delayed because of an issue with the machine. He briefly returned to Game 3 after suffering the injury in the third quarter, but was removed again after about three minutes.

“I could run,” he told reporters, “but I couldn’t push off my left leg.”

There’s more injury news to pass along:

Clippers guard Patrick Beverley is listed as doubtful for Sunday, according to a tweet from the team. If he can’t play, it would mark the eighth game in the past nine that Beverley has missed with a strained left calf.
Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni continues to cite improvement from Russell Westbrook as he recovers from a strained quadriceps muscle, but hasn’t speculated on when he might return, tweets Jonathan Feigen of The Houston Chronicle. Westbrook’s running has been limited to an alter-G device that restricts how much of a player’s weight is placed on the treadmill. D’Antoni said Westbrook is “doing better, as expected. Every day he does a little bit more.”
Nuggets shooting guard Gary Harris has been upgraded to doubtful for Game 4, raising hopes that he might soon be ready to play for the first time in five months, writes Mike Singer of The Denver Post. A right hip strain has kept Harris out of action since the team arrived in Orlando.
The Celtics announced that small forward Javonte Green will miss his second straight game Sunday with a sprained right knee (Twitter link). Green’s court time in the playoffs has been limited to a brief appearance in Game 2.

Beverley Remains Out Tonight

August 21st, 2020 at 8:05pm CST by Alex Kirschenbaum

Clippers head coach Doc Rivers has confirmed that starting point guard Patrick Beverley will remain unavailable for tonight’s third game in L.A.’s playoff quarterfinals series against the Mavericks, according to Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN (Twitter link).

Beverley’s calf injury has now restricted him from playing in seven of the team’s last eight games. He appeared for just 20 minutes in the Clippers’ playoff opener, a 118-110 win over Dallas. Though Reggie Jackson started in Beverley’s stead for the team’s 127-114 game two loss to the Mavericks, Landry Shamet will replace Jackson as the team’s starting point guard, per Jovan Buha of The Athletic (Twitter link).