Play-in Tourney Preview: Big Names and Big Questions

Heat/Sixers, Lakers/Pelicans, Warriors/Kings, and Bulls/Hawks

An epic regular season ended with a bang on Sunday, finally settling the postseason picture.

The playoffs are less than a week away, but before we get to that, we have some play-in games to discuss. Here’s a reminder of what the bracket looks like:

Man, I love the play-in. So much of the drama of the season’s final weeks came from teams jockeying for position, and it was a joy to watch competitive basketball up and down the league.

The top 12 teams get a rest, but the hard work is just beginning for the eight teams battling for the last four seeds. Let’s dive in.

7 Philadelphia 76ers vs. 8 Miami Heat

Season series (2-2 tie)

Game 1: Heat 119, 76ers 113

Game 2: Heat 109, 76ers 104

Game 3: 76ers 98, Heat 91

Game 4: 76ers 109, Heat 105

Ooooh boy. This might be the most exciting play-in game of the season. While the Heat haven’t impressed in this regular season, they revel in their underdog status. And the 76ers have been on a hellacious run of late, winning eight in a row to close the season.

There’s little to glean from the team’s four meetings; Embiid and Jimmy Butler both missed the first three, and Philly’s Tobias Harris and Miami’s Tyler Herro missed the fourth. Other players also missed time.

But that shouldn’t be the case on Wednesday. Joel Embiid has played in five of the last seven games and looked about as good as could be expected after a two-month layoff. He did seem to tweak something in his most recent game, a victory over Orlando, but supposedly, he’ll be good to go (although you can never really trust any injury reporting around Embiid).

Key Question: Can anyone stop Tyrese Maxey?

The Heat, led by Bam Adebayo, have often given superstar Joel Embiid a hard time, particularly in the playoffs. They have no answer for Tyrese Maxey, who consistently torches Miami’s slower backcourt players. After a stinker in their first meeting, Maxey was incendiary against the Heat, scoring 30+ points in the last three contests.

Maxey made the Heat defenders look like they were playing in mud-caked Timberlands. Sometimes, he runs so fast that he turns help defenders into inadvertent screeners on their own teammates, like here:

Or here:

I hate when analysts write about a problem without offering at least a token attempt to solve it, but I don’t know what Miami can do to stop Maxey from dominating. Even after rewatching his 4-for-20 mess in their first meeting, I can’t find anything Miami did right; it was more about Maxey missing a bunch of shots he usually makes.

The stats say that Terry Rozier had the most success against Maxey, holding him to 7-for-19 shooting, but many of those attempts came when Rozier was with the Hornets. And Rozier’s neck is “jacked up,” so it’s uncertain whether he’ll be available on Wednesday. We’ll have to see if Erik Spoelstra tweaks his starting lineup to put Caleb Martin or Haywood Highsmith (my pick as Miami’s best defensive answer) in to match Maxey’s minutes, because I don’t think Jimmy Butler, Tyler Herro, or Duncan Robinson will have much of a chance. Butler could, perhaps, maybe, kind of do it at the end of the game, but the Heat need him to conserve his energy for offense.

Miami fans aren’t scared of Joel Embiid, although he certainly will be a driving factor in the outcome of this game. But they are rightfully terrified of Maxey.

X-Factor: Tyler Herro

Herro watched Miami’s run to the Finals last year without him. He knows the national narrative: that Herro is inessential to — and maybe hindering — Miami’s success. He’ll have the first chance to re-write his story Wednesday night.

Like Embiid, Herro missed a huge stretch of games before returning late in the regular season. He looked pretty much how he’s always looked, knocking down threes, rebounding the ball, and throwing some assists while struggling to get to the hoop or defend.

But for all his warts, the Heat desperately need Herro’s strengths as a perimeter shot creator and maker. He scuffled against the 76ers this season as the Heat’s primary scorer in the absence of Jimmy Butler, averaging 23 points in two games but shooting just 38% from the field and 26% from deep. However, the Heat won both of those games while losing the two he missed; that’s no coincidence.

The Sixers spent a surprising amount of time in the season series giving Miami a taste of their own medicine and running zone. However, zones can be exploited by players who can shoot off the dribble like Herro, and the 76ers were laser-focused on not letting him get loose. That opened up seams for the Heat’s clever cutters, and Herro consistently delivered:

Miami will need Herro to hit some shots, too. The 76ers prefer to run a drop coverage with Joel Embiid, which opens up some shooting opportunities for ballhandlers in the pick-and-roll. But if the 76ers sell out to stop Herro on the perimeter, he has proven he can make them pay in other ways.

9 Sacramento Kings vs. 10 Golden State Warriors

Season series (2-2 tie)

Game 1: Warriors 122, Kings 114

Game 2: Warriors 102, Kings 101

Game 3: Kings 124, Warriors 123

Game 4: Kings 134, Warriors 133

Man, this game should be a blast. Look at those scores! Three games were decided by one point. And don’t forget that last year’s first-round series went seven games before the Warriors eventually triumphed over a Kings squad whose two best players, De’Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis, were playing through fractured fingers.

Kings fans are understandably down; Sacramento has been one of the most frustrating teams all season, dominating top-tier foes one night before blowing a 20-point lead to a bottom-feeder the next. To end in ninth is a disappointment. To make matters worse, Sixth Man of the Year candidate Malik Monk and starter Kevin Huerter are injured.

The Kings are also heavily invested in the outcome of the Lakers/Pelicans game. The Kings are 4-0 against the Lakers this season (and have had a prolonged stretch of success dating back several seasons); they’re 0-4 against the Pelicans. And those games, by and large, were hideous blowouts.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The Warriors have a very strong chance to render that conversation moot. The old lions are 10-2 in their last 12, and they seem to have finally settled on a lineup they like.

Key Question: Can Keon Ellis slow down Steph Curry?

The peculiar thing about this season series is that every game occurred before February started; three occurred before December. Both teams have settled on different rotations than they began the year with, so in a sense, this will be a brand-new matchup.

A consistent thread from all four games was Steph Curry’s dominance: 31 points per game on 53% from the field and 46% from deep. Yikes.

The Kings’ salvation may lie in the form of two-toned Keon Ellis, who played five combined minutes in those four games. Ellis is a defensive stopper whose playing time yo-yoed through the season until he firmly entered the starting lineup in early March.

I just wrote a book about why you have to be careful extrapolating too much data from March and April stats in the NBA, so take this with a grain of sea salt. But here’s a wild number for you: since Ellis entered the starting lineup on March 1st, the Kings have had the sixth-best defense in the league. The sixth-best defense! The Kings! They were 21st in the league through February. That’s no accident.

(I did a recent podcast with Basketball Intelligence’s Ray LeBov and No Ceilings’ Nick Agar-Johnson, two Sacramento-based analysts who went long on Keon Ellis and other emerging role players here. Check it out!)

Ellis is a big body with extremely active hands (top-10 in deflections per minute for players with at least 900 minutes played). He gets an absurd number of blocks for a guard, and they’re not all of the Fred VanVleet swipe-as-they-gather variety. He’ll meet you at the rim:

He is strong for his size, but more importantly for this matchup, he’s an adept screen navigator who can challenge shots he has no business getting to. Watch as he chases Max Strus around one screen, nimbly switches onto Donovan Mitchell, dodges another screen, and gets a fingertip on a Mitchell three:

Curry, of course, is an offensive force nonpareil. He’s used to being guarded by some of the best defenders the world has ever seen. But he’s lost a quarter step this season (although you wouldn’t know it by how he’s played against Sacramento). If Ellis can hold him to a good game instead of a great one, the Kings may yet salvage their season.

X-Factor: Trayce Jackson-Davis

The Warriors have been on a tear lately, winning 10 of their last 12. That stretch has coincided with the rise of the rookie Jackson-Davis, whom the Warriors began starting at center 11 games ago. The big man has been productive, racking up blocks, doling out some nice assists, and rebounding well. He was a bit player in the four games against the Kings this season, however, and I’ll be curious to see how much burn he gets for coach Steve Kerr.

In the past, centers Kevon Looney and Dario Saric have traditionally taken on bruising Kings center Domantas Sabonis, with Draymond Green lurking as the help defender to confuse and stymie the Kings’ big man. Sabonis has had trouble scoring effectively against Golden State, but the Kings will need him to provide firepower with Monk and Huerter out. Jackson-Davis isn’t built as solidly as Looney or Saric, and Sabonis might be able to find some cracks in his defense. If that happens, it’s on Kerr to make a quick adjustment.

7 New Orleans Pelicans vs. 8 Los Angeles Lakers

Season series (3-1 Lakers)

Game 1: Lakers 133, Pelicans 89

Game 2: Pelicans 129, Lakers 109

Game 3: Lakers 139, Pelicans 122

Game 4: Lakers 124, Pelicans 108

The Lakers completed their late-season surge by pulling themselves into the top half of the play-in tournament. They might consider themselves fortunate to face the New Orleans Pelicans, against whom they’ve gone 3-1 this season (including a drubbing on Sunday).

Of course, it’s not as fortunate as it seems.