I find Paul to be not only an all-time great player but a pretty damn clutch player, too. But I just don't know which way to go on this one. I'm not usually one to abstain from giving an opinion. Passivity? The defense he was facing? It almost always comes out as a little of both, but Harden didn't get that benefit of the doubt, and for the people bent on taking this position, Paul isn't going to either. The Suns, of course, lost four of those games, and not once did Paul attempt more than nine shots. There was an error processing your subscription.Īfter Phoenix went up 2-0 against Dallas, Paul averaged, 9.4 points, 5.8 assists and 3.6 turnovers over the final five games of the series. Dallas, this now becomes the fifth time in Paul's career that his team has blown a 2-0 postseason lead. After the Suns won the opening two games of this series vs. Still, the results are hard to turn away from, or perhaps more accurately, they're easy to latch onto. Paul's late-career surge has been a masterful chapter in a Hall of Fame career, and many of the playoff collapses to which he's been connected have been, at least to a degree, a product of some of the cruelest injury luck imaginable. He was one of the five best point guards to ever play before this game tipped, and no, one game didn't change that. The Suns didn't lose because of Paul, though he surely didn't do anything to help them win. I don't want to make this about Paul's legacy. Finished with a completely useless 10 and a minus-39 for the game, the worst single-game point differential of his career. Chris Paul didn't make his first basket until the Suns were down by 40 at the 7:26 mark of the third quarter. He averaged 19.3 points and 6.4 rebounds, while shooting 60.2 percent from the field and 48.9 percent from 3-point land - those shooting percentages are not typos - and capped things off with a 26-point, 10-rebound effort in Game 7.The Phoenix Suns were gutted by Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks in Game 7 on Sunday, trailing by as many as 46 points in a 123-90 beating that somehow wasn't even as close as a 33-point margin would indicate. The Heat simply don't win this series if he doesn't play the best basketball of his life. When Martin was on the floor, the Heat had a plus-9.6 net rating when he sat, they were at minus-4.2. While Martin grew into a solid role player with the Heat this season, no one could have predicted his star turn against the Celtics, where he was arguably the best player on the floor for large stretches of the matchup and time and again kept the Heat afloat when Butler was on the bench. None did so better than Caleb Martin, who after this series may just deserve to be grouped into a new big three in Miami alongside Butler and Bam Adebayo instead. Overall this series was about the Heat's supporting cast stepping up in spectacular fashion, rather than a one-man show from Butler. He had forgettable outings in Games 3 through 5, was a disastrous 5-of-21 from the field in Game 6 and shot 42 percent from the field in the seven games. He averaged 24.7 points, 7.6 rebounds, 6.1 assists and 2.6 steals per game, and had a signature moment in Game 2 when he helped drag them back from a large fourth-quarter deficit after his dust-up with Grant Williams.īut while his numbers look strong and he had a few big performances, this was not a mythical "Playoff Jimmy" series like we saw in the first round against the Milwaukee Bucks. So it goes when you're the star player you shoulder the blame when the team loses and you get the accolades when the team wins, even if you don't always fully deserve either.īutler was the Heat's statistical leader in this series in every major category besides rebounding. A fascinating Eastern Conference finals ended in shocking fashion on Monday, as the Miami Heat crushed the Boston Celtics on the road in Game 7, 103-84 to earn a trip to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2020 and avoid being the first team to blow a 3-0 series lead.Īfter the game, as the Heat celebrated inside a rapidly-emptying TD Garden, Jimmy Butler was awarded the Eastern Conference finals MVP trophy, which he won by a narrow margin over Caleb Martin, five votes to four.
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