NBA playoff scores 2017: Dennis Schroder has been sensational, even in losing efforts

Dennis Schroder might be an even more polarizing player than the point guard (Jeff Teague) he replaced this season. His shot selection can at times be questionable, his attitude is worn on his sleeve, and there are other general questions about how good he really is during the regular season despite great counting stats.

If you only watched him against the Wizards in this first round, you might think he was the best point guard in the entire damn conference.

He’s not, and Schroder isn’t actually even the best point guard in this series thanks to John Wall, but you’re able to briefly forget about that entirely when watching him carve up Washington’s defense. Through those five matchups, Schroder is averaging 24.4 points on 46-percent shooting with more than seven assists per game. His constant flaw, shooting, has been an enormous positive with nearly three makes from distance per game, and he’s not even turning the ball over; Schroder only has eight for the entire series.

Game 5 was his best outing yet, hitting five threes in six attempts on his way to 29 points and 11 assists. Schroder has been playing professionally for a long time, spending four years in the German leagues before being drafted by Atlanta in 2013. Still just 23, Schroder is showing another level that Atlanta must be praying he reaches consistently.

Atlanta can’t ask for much more from their young floor general. If they want to push this series to a Game 7, it’s the rest of the team who must step up.

In short: the Celtics were a team again, all contributing and working off each other, not just isolated instances of individuals playing well. It’s a bit cliched, but Boston itself is a cliche, led by a head coach from a state where most basketball cliches come from. Thomas is their star, and everybody else in Boston falls in line by playing consistent, smart basketball. Brad Stevens has convinced them it will work, and it certainly has.

Without Rajon Rondo’s injury, you have to wonder if the Celtics would have recovered as convincingly as they did. Their last two wins, though by a combined 20 points, were closer than the score might indicate, and Rondo was enormous for Chicago when Boston dropped the first two matchups of this series. Again, those moments are still cause for concern — you can’t lose twice at home to a team that was as dysfunctional as the Bulls for most the year and shrug it off. They can’t prove anything in this series, and winning Game 6 won’t erase the way this series began. That can only come later on.

But given the choice of recovering, or slouching into yet another first round exit, the option was clear. Boston did that by turning back into the team we came to see all regular season. Regardless of what the future holds, it was a welcomed return.

Winning Game 5 (and potentially this series on Friday) doesn’t tell us anything. No. 1 seeds, no matter how “fake” they are, are supposed to win in the first round. But winning is damn sure better than the alternative.

I’ve heard it’s hard rooting for D.C. and every time things go right, it’s basically only a matter of time before the heel turns.

This is the most promising Wizards season in, well ... for the sake of Wizards fans, we don’t have to count. What we do know is they haven’t been to a conference finals since 1979. They hadn’t won their division since that season, either, and that finally happened this year. Maybe the conference finals come next.

That’s easy to say for me as an outsider. For a Wizards fan — a fan of any D.C. sports team, if you want to expand the perspective — they’re just waiting for something bad to happen. Can you blame them? Over the past 38 years (sorry) only bad things have happened.

But when the Hawks did roar back within two points and only a minute left, Washington answered back with a Wall jumper and iced the game defensively. That’s exactly what you want to see from a team that appears more mature and talented than most that have come before it.

Canaan basically didn’t play from the All-Star break on, but the Rajon Rondo injury and general desperation forced him into the rotation for Chicago. In back-to-back games, he played 34 and 36 minutes. (He hadn’t played double digit minutes before that since Feb. 12.) Combined in the two games, Canaan has 26 points on 10-of-21 shooting.

Even his defense has been solid, as Blog a Bull can explain:

Although Boston missed a ton of open looks (as evidenced by their 6-25 shooting from long range in the first half), a huge reason why they struggled so much on offense in the first half was because of Isaiah Canaan’s defense on Isaiah Thomas. Though he did get caught cheating the wrong way a few times, Canaan did a great job of staying in front of Thomas on drives while also avoiding cheap shooting fouls that would have led to free points for IT. Thomas scored only seven points and did not register a field goal until there were less than 45 seconds remaining in the second quarter. Unfortunately, a sputtering Bulls offense that at one point had to rely solely on Anthony Morrow for production at one point couldn’t definitively recapture the lead, and the Bulls went into the locker room down 52-50.

Unfortunately for Chicago, they go down three games to two anyway.

WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS, MY GOODNESS.

LITERALLY on his face.

Wizards 103, Hawks 99 (Bullets Forever recap | Peachtree Hoops recap)

Celtics 108, Bulls 97 (Celtics Blog recap | Blog a Bull recap)