The Opening Tip

• Last night’s buzzer-beater hurt more for Denver than it helped the Lakers
• A list of all the groupies LeBron has made famous
• If Steph and Klay are Splash Bros, then what are Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson?

Upcoming playoff games

1. The Lead: The shot that maybe, finally killed the Nuggets

Anthony Davis hit a miracle game-winner last night, which gave the Lakers a 2-0 lead over the Nuggets in the Western Conference Finals.

It was a great shot and a nice pass by Rajon Rondo, but the outcome was more about Denver’s pain than the Lakers’ excitement, for two reasons:

1. The Nuggets were down eight points with three minutes left before pulling off another ridiculous comeback highlighted by seven straight points from Nikola Jokic in the final minute. (He finished with a 30-6-9 game.) They were 2.1 seconds away from pulling even in another series they have no business winning. 
2. WHAT THE HELL WAS MASON PLUMLEE DOING? Seriously -- watch the GIF a few times and try to understand his movement. (He’s No. 7 on Denver.) Rather than trail Davis and not allow him a clean catch-and-shoot, Plumlee, like a bug to light, ambled toward a phantom screen and left the whole defense thing up to Jokic, who did an admirable recovery job but wasn’t able to disrupt Davis’s release. 

2. A complete list of middling players LeBron has dragged into the spotlight

Alex Caruso dunked last night, which made news because he’s white and bald, but also because he’s playing in the Western Conference Finals, which is happening because he plays on the same team as LeBron. Caruso is one of many average-to-below-average NBA players who have burst at various points into America’s basketball conscience simply because of the gravity of LeBron. Think of all the players (Mario Chalmers, for example) who hold a place in the NBA zeitgeist because of the happenstance of being drafted by the Heat, the Cavs or the Lakers.

Here’s our list of such players. Let us know if we forgot one. 

• Boobie Gibson
• Sasha Pavlović
• Anderson Varejão
• Mo Williams
• Jamario Moon
• James Jones
• Mario Chalmers
• Norris Cole
• Matthew Dellavedova
• Channing Frye
• Dahntay Jones
• Tristan Thompson, though he was for a time above average
• Cedi Osman
• Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who has made $37 million since 2017 by virtue of sharing LeBron’s agent
• Alex Caruso
• Kyrie Irving (joking)
• Ray Allen (joking)

And, now, for the first time ever, the middling-players-LeBron-has-dragged-into-the-spotlight starting five: 

• PG: Mario Chalmers
• SG: Mo Williams 
• SF: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope
• PF: Tristian Thompson
• C: Anderson Varejão

3. Get a load of this guy’s NBA awards ballot

The NBA released its list of NBA awards ballots over the weekend. Almost all of the 101 voters fell in line with conventional, rational thinking. There was one guy, Newsday's Greg Logan, who turned in a ballot so nonsensical it makes you wonder what league he’s watching.

His Defensive Player of the Year ballot: 

1. Andre Drummond 
2. Hassan Whiteside
3. Giannis 

K.  

Other votes by Greg: 

• Drummond for second-team All-NBA
• Brandon Ingram for second-team All-NBA
• Zach LaVine for third-team All-NBA
• Russell Westbrook for second-team All-Defense
• Luka Doncic for first-team All-Defense
• Kristaps Porzingis for second-team All-Defense

If Greg can honestly say he crunched film of Dallas and Detroit games all season to come to the conclusion that Drummond and Porzingis are worthy of All-Defense spots, then fine, but it’s far more likely he’s making uninformed decisions based on … a man-crush on Andre Drummond?

That’s OK when you’re running a blog (hello), but less so when you’re one of 101 people making important decisions about the league.

4. You know the Splash Bros. Now meet the Finance Bros.

The Miami Heat are an exceptional basketball team. There’s no running from it anymore. They’re still favored over the Celtics and could reasonably give the Lakers a run for their money should they reach the NBA Finals.

In general, this is a more palatable team than LeBron’s Heat, but there are two players who make their ascendance dreadful: Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson. 

• Herro is the Instagram generation personified; he’s as if an Overtime mixtape had a baby with a TikTok video. 
• Duncan Robinson, who we chronicled in earnest in December, is a former Division III player from Maine and New Hampshire who looks like Colin Jost but shoots like Ray Allen.

And the worst part is, they’re actually both so damn good. In the playoffs, they’ve combined for 25.8 points and 5.4 made 3s per game. Robinson scored 18 points on six made 3s in Game 2 (88 of his 96 shots have been from 3 this postseason) and Herro hit about 75 clutch shots in Game 1.

There has been a small movement to anoint them the new Splash Bros, after Steph Curry and Klay Thompson. Instead, we’ll call them what they would have been had they not played basketball: The Finance Bros. 

5. By the Numbers

19-2

16-of-101

3 players

10.3 rebounds

Jayson Tatum is averaging 10.3 rebounds per game this postseason. In general, his points, rebounds and assists have all gone up in the playoffs compared to his regular season stats.

6.  Quick hits

• The NBA Draft will be held on Nov. 18. Still no word on when the 2020-21 season will start. 
• Here are the 2019-20 All-NBA teams. 
• According to The Athletic, Paul George went full ra-ra after the Clippers’ Game 7 loss, which was not well-received by his team.
• More evidence that Rajon Rondo is a psycho.
• Charles Barkley on Nikola Jokić: “I just gotta take my hat off to that Joker, man. I hope America's getting a chance to see how great a player this kid is.”

7.  Off the press

• The Van Gundy brothers walk, talk and bond in the NBA bubble [The New York Times]
• Jaylen Brown is a player for this moment [ESPN]