No matter what happens in Game 7 of the NBA playoffs series between the Cavaliers and Celtics, the loser will have a real case that an injury is to blame.
Injuries happen in the NBA Playoffs. Winners still deserve credit.
Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving, and probably Chris Paul are going to miss Game 7s. That shouldn’t produce asterisks for the teams that win.
Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images
Cleveland lost Kevin Love to a particularly ill-timed concussion suffered on Friday. He’ll miss Game 7 on Sunday, depriving LeBron James of his top co-star and Cleveland’s clear second-best player. Meanwhile, Boston lost Kyrie Irving months ago and Gordon Hayward months before that, removing two All-Star caliber players from the roster.
Meanwhile in the West, the Warriors were pointing to the loss of Andre Iguodala before Game 4 as a major factor in the rival Rockets’ change of fortune. Now Houston has it worse with Chris Paul missing the Game 6 loss and likely out for Monday’s elimination game.
These situations are sad, of course. CP3 is deeper into the playoffs than he’s ever been, the Rockets had the Warriors on the ropes, and he strained his hamstring in the closing seconds of a game he helped Houston win. Love has a history of head injuries, which makes his concussion particularly frightening. Irving has been dealing with a knee issue for a year or more and it cropped up at a bad time. We’ll all remember watching Hayward’s season end early. Iguodala was having a huge impact against the team he flirted with joining last summer.
They are also grist for critics and doubters of the winners.
Already some people are pointing out that the Warriors have won a bunch of series in their four-year run where the opponent was missing a top contributor, as if that should make those championships intrinsically worth less. If the Cavaliers win, some will say it was only because Boston was short-handed (neglecting that Boston has been short-handed for a long time now and is here, a game away from the NBA Finals). If the Celtics win, some will say it was only because Love went down, stripping LeBron too naked of support.
That old canard about asterisks will come out.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about how complaints about asterisks and context with respect to LeBron’s Finals streak neglects that the perception of the East’s weakness is shaped by LeBron’s dominance. Likewise, victors’ achievements in 2018 may be diminished because their opponent will be perceived as weakened due to injury. This neglects that every team still alive this year is dealing with an injury!
Now of course, the impact of these injuries sits on a spectrum. Houston losing CP3 is objectively a bigger problem than Golden State losing Iguodala. The Boston-Cleveland situation is less cut-and-dry: one could argue that the Celtics have had much more time to adjust to their losses, and that they never really had Hayward integrated in the first place. One could also argue that losing two All-Stars is worse than one. It’s complicated.
This is all important context to consider when franchises consider next steps and when we consider historic achievements. It weaves into all of the other context available.
Consider LeBron’s streak. Would beating a weakened Celtics team without Irving or Hayward be less impressive than beating those tough Pacers, old Celtics, or Bulls teams? Yes, probably. But then you consider the state of LeBron’s supporting cast — the worst since 2010 even before losing Love — and the scales shift. All of the context matters here.
So it also goes should Boston win. Yes, they will have been the beneficiary of a crucial injury, but putting themselves in a position to capitalize on fortunate circumstances is worth celebrating itself. No one has ever made the NBA Finals on dumb luck, and an Eastern crown for the Celtics will say many, many things about this team and season. Love’s absence in Game 7 is just one of those factors.
Perhaps all of this — the CP3, Love, Iguodala, Irving, and Hayward injuries — is the best defense of the Warriors’ Kevin Durant free agency chase two years ago, if that chase even requires defending. (I believe it does not. You should never apologize for trying to improve your team.) In a league run by stars, redundancy is of huge importance. Having players who can step up into roles vacated by poor fortune is a major factor in survival of that inevitable poor fortune.
Houston saw the painful repercussions of being top-heavy during Game 6 on Saturday. Eric Gordon was forced to handle the ball, which went as well as can be expected. But that also meant a larger role for Gerald Green, and that led to some critical turnovers as Golden State took over the game. At the same time, the bigger load for James Harden appeared to wear him down especially fast. After a brilliant first half, Harden faded late, providing shades of the Rockets-Spurs series in 2017. That, of course, was the impetus for Houston’s chase of Chris Paul in the summer.
And consider that Golden State was on the ropes against Houston despite missing none of its four stars — not Curry, not Durant, not even Klay Thompson or Draymond Green. The Warriors were down only their fifth-best player in Games 4 and 5, and faced elimination. The margins at this level are so slight that every injury, every mitigating factor matters, yet they still were down just a role player.
Of course, all this context matters in the narrative denouements of history. Victory without Love will bolster LeBron’s legend. A Celtics victory over LeBron will be as beloved as any conference title in Boston. A Rockets win will bring a rightful bright spotlight upon James Harden, Mike D’Antoni, Daryl Morey, and whichever Houston supplement leaps into the void. A fourth straight conference title for the Warriors ... well, the fact that it will have taken seven games will justify the expense of keeping all these stars around.
The teams that win won’t care about asterisks — they don’t print those on banners, no matter how many people yell about it. Plus, injuries aren’t the only context that matters. Teams will understand that in reacting to their wins or losses, injuries opponents faced as just one factor that will inform free agent, trade, and draft decisions.
It’s useless to strip down all the context and focus on injuries when assessing achievements. Why do it?
