Why Thursday's elimination games felt so different
Thursday night saw two elimination games, two teams eliminated at home and both Conference Finals set, but the storylines could not have been farther apart in Washington and L.A.
Out West, the 57-win Clippers bowed out of a thrilling series that kept us interested in the second round - a six-game series chalk full of superstars, crazy comebacks and two teams with realistic championship aspirations. Everyone outside of Oklahoma City wanted a seventh game.
The Clippers have two top-10 (and maybe even top-five) players in Chris Paul and Blake Griffin, a Defensive Player of the Year candidate in DeAndre Jordan, the Sixth Man of the Year award winner in Jamal Crawford, and Doc Rivers at the helm.
And yet they're going home in the second round after a six-game loss to Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and the Thunder, with both Paul and the Clippers franchise as a whole still without a minute of Conference Finals experience.
Such is the meat grinder of the Western Conference.
In the early matchup of the night, the Pacers eliminated the Wizards to mercifully end a series chalk full of bad basketball and little drama. No one outside of D.C. wanted a seventh game.
The Wizards won 44 games, have one All-Star in John Wall, a promising two-guard in Bradley Beal, solid yet unspectacular veterans in Nene, Marcin Gortat and Trevor Ariza, and Randy Wittman at the helm.
And yet they made it to the second round - winning more second round games this season than in the previous 34 seasons combined - and have fans in D.C. buzzing about next year if they can re-sign Ariza and Gortat.
Such is the comfort of the Eastern Conference.
For the Pacers, their inconsistent play continued versus the Wizards. But just as in the second half of the regular season, a mediocre Pacers team was just good enough in comparison to weak East competition to get to their destination. In the regular season it was the No. 1 seed. In the playoffs it was a Conference Finals matchup with the Heat.
If the same unconvincing Pacers take the court for Game 1 on Sunday afternoon and the same Heat who have strolled to an 8-1 playoff record so far show up, the East Final will lack much of the drama we envisioned when these two teams buried the rest of the Conference in the early stages of the season.
Of course, Pacers fans and general NBA observers looking for excitement will hang on to the fact that the teams have split their last 14 meetings - regular season and postseason - and that the Pacers are 6-1 against the Heat in Indiana over the last two seasons, with home court advantage now on their side. In addition, Roy Hibbert, for as lost as he has looked at times this postseason, has had his share of well documented success against the champs and started to come on against Washington.
The Pacers barely survived the steaming pile of you know what that the East presented as a challenge to set up the matchup they asked for all along - an East Final rematch with the Heat, with Indiana hosting a potential Game 7. We'll see if they can make anything of it.
As for the Thunder, there were no East-like road bumps, but rather real obstacles. They overcame another long term Russell Westbrook absence that saw the All-Star point guard miss 36 regular season games. They overcame a 3-2 deficit and elimination game in Memphis (not Atlanta) in the first round. They overcame a 13-point deficit in the final four minutes of Game 5 against the Clippers and a seven-point deficit in the final 49 seconds. They've overcome questionable coaching through it all and on Thursday even had to overcome the absence of Serge Ibaka (calf injury) while trying to close out the aforementioned 57-win Clippers on the road.
Durant's 39 points, 16 rebounds, five assists and two blocks - not to mention Westbrook's 19 points and 12 assists - took care of that, reminding us once again that perhaps those two are simply good enough on their own to overcome any obstacles that may come OKC's way.
The next obstacle happens to be the Spurs, who the Thunder beat four out of four times during the regular season while the rest of the NBA managed to beat them just 16 of 78 times.
Nothing about a West Final with San Antonio will actually be that easy (although Tony Parker is day-to-day with a hamstring strain), but still, you can see why the Thunder might be riding a higher wave than the Pacers right now. Just as you can see why the Clippers' demise has been met with much more sorrow than the Wizards'.