This weekend features five high-stakes NBA showdowns on ESPN and ABC.
The Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers faced off in a huge Eastern Conference tilt Saturday night in a game that came down to a last-second 3-pointer by Jayson Tatum -- and a three-quarters-court Hail Mary by Joel Embiid that would have sent the game to overtime if it was made just a tenth of a second earlier.
On Sunday, the Milwaukee Bucks topped the (still Kevin Durant-less) Phoenix Suns to extend their winning streak to 14 games -- even with Giannis Antetokounmpo sidelined with a quad injury.
The Los Angeles Lakers successfully mounted a 27-point comeback against the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday afternoon on the back of a monster 30/15 game from Anthony Davis, continuing their late-season push into the playoff picture.
The Minnesota Timberwolves and Golden State Warriors will fight to stay relevant in the playoff picture at 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN, as both teams have been headed in the wrong direction.
The Denver Nuggets and LA Clippers will finish off the weekend Sunday night at 10 ET on ESPN. In this year's wide-open Western Conference, this matchup could be a potential playoff preview.
ESPN NBA insiders are breaking down the top storylines from a stacked weekend.
It shouldn't be so hard for a team with two of basketball's best creators to get a shot off at the most critical moment of a game. But it's been a big problem for the Dallas Mavericks in the infancy stages of the partnership between Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving.
There is a long list of reasons why the Mavs blew a 27-point lead Sunday afternoon against the Los Angeles Lakers, who pulled off the biggest comeback of the season on Dallas' home court. But it came down to clutch execution, or lack thereof, and the All-Star duo failed to finish for the third time in four games together.
This instance was especially egregious. Coming out of a timeout trailing by three points with 18.1 seconds remaining, Doncic committed a turnover because he forgot that he could go into the backcourt to catch an inbounds pass.
"It's my bad," Doncic said postgame.
Doncic also took the blame after a Feb. 11 loss to the Sacramento Kings, saying he should have passed the ball back to a sizzling Irving instead of firing up a tough stepback down three points with seconds remaining in overtime. They shared the blame after a Feb. 13 home loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves, when they passed the ball back and forth a few times before committing a turnover with the game on the line, showing too much mutual respect.
"It's just a process," Irving said on Sunday. "I think as much as I would love for it to work and for us to be on the winning side -- I think he would like to be on the winning side as well -- we have only a few games together. Obviously, in the second half of this season, everything is going to be a little more heightened pressure-wise. We welcome that, but again, our mistakes and things that we're learning are going to be in game.
"Hard lessons that we're going to take, but the process itself is something that I can't be mad at or be angry at or be confused about who's fault it is or anything like that."
-- Tim MacMahon
Despite Giannis Antetokounmpo's recent injury woes, the Milwaukee Bucks keep on rolling. They secured their 14th consecutive victory Sunday afternoon, a 104-101 victory over the Phoenix Suns to extend the longest winning streak in the NBA this season.
Antetokounmpo was sidelined Sunday after leaving each of the previous two games in the first quarter with an injury, but Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said before the game the team was confident Antetokounmpo's quad injury would keep him out only for a few days.
But the Bucks have been more than capable lately of extending their winning streak without the two-time MVP, thanks to a combination of lockdown defense and a roster that is suddenly as deep as any contender in the league.
Jrue Holiday led the way with 33 points, 5 assists and 4 rebounds while providing relentless defense down the stretch on Suns guard Devin Booker. The combination of Holiday's efforts, Brook Lopez as a defensive force in the paint and Khris Middleton's offensive execution down the stretch allowed the Bucks to respond every time the Suns made a run.
Milwaukee outscored Phoenix 13-6 in clutch time to secure the win, including six points from Holiday, a pair of timely assists from Middleton and timely rim protection from Lopez -- the Suns shot 5-for-16 all afternoon when contested by Lopez.
During clutch time, Phoenix went 2-for-7 from the field for seven points while the Bucks converted 4 of 5 shots.
But it wasn't just the Bucks stars that showed up to lead the team to victory Sunday.
They also got a meaningful contribution from trade deadline acquisition Jae Crowder, who hit a pair of corner 3s in the fourth quarter against his former team. Veteran forward Joe Ingles, who did not make his season debut until December while recovering from a torn ACL, was figured into Milwaukee's closing lineup plans Sunday.
The Bucks returned their top nine rotation players from last year's squad and were able to add both Crowder and Ingles without making any subtractions to that rotation. Antetokounmpo was playing at a level worthy of MVP consideration during the first half before the injury, and once he's back in the mix at full strength, this Bucks roster looks deep enough to support their star for another extended playoff run.
"One of the deepest teams I've ever been a part of," Crowder said after Sunday's game. "We're all aware of it and we're all being selfless in our roles and sacrificing for one another ... So I just catch myself looking like, 'goodness gracious this is a deep team.' We got a lot of different combinations that we can throw out."
-- Jamal Collier
For so much of this season, the Celtics have had a rotating cast of characters going on and off the injury report on a nightly basis. Because of that, there haven't been too many occasions when newly promoted coach Joe Mazzulla has had to decide how to dole out minutes across the NBA's deepest roster.
Coming out of the All-Star break, though, Boston is finally whole. And as a result, it's led to some hard choices. If Saturday night's 110-107 win over the Philadelphia 76ers proved anything, however, it's that Mazzulla doesn't have a choice about one thing: Derrick White has to remain an integral part of what Boston is doing.
White finished Saturday night's win with a nearly flawless line: 18 points on 7-for-9 shooting with a rebound, two assists, a block and no turnovers in 25 minutes. Even more telling: Boston was plus-25 in those 25 minutes White was on the court.
In many ways, White is emblematic of everything this Celtics team is about.
White isn't a flashy player. He doesn't throw down highlight dunks or make show-stopping passes. But what he does do -- and do consistently -- is stack one winning play on top of another. He's done that over and over again in recent weeks, allowing Boston to keep churning out victories even while Marcus Smart and Jaylen Brown both missed significant time with ankle and facial injuries, respectively.
And yet, over the final few minutes of Thursday's overtime win against Indiana and for all but the final few seconds of Saturday night's win in Philly, White was watching from the bench. Again, there are hard choices to make across the board -- one of the obvious benefits of having a roster like the one Mazzulla has at his disposal.
But with the way White has played, he's more than making a case that he should be one of the five guys out there in the game's biggest moments and that, no matter what happens with Mazzulla's rotation, he needs to be a massive part of it.
-- Tim Bontemps
When people think about Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinal series between the 76ers and Toronto Raptors in 2019, they think of Kawhi Leonard's miraculous game-winning shot.
What they don't think of is that, in a game Philadelphia lost by two points, Greg Monroe was minus-9 in two minutes played.
Similarly, when people will think back on Saturday night's instant classic between the Boston Celtics and 76ers at Wells Fargo Center, they'll think about Jayson Tatum's tremendous stepback 3-pointer with 1.3 seconds to go ... and Joel Embiid's 70-foot heave that went in, only to not count because he let it go a moment after the buzzer sounded.
What they won't think of is that, in a game Philadelphia lost by three points, Paul Reed was minus-14 in five minutes.
When it comes to the 76ers and the backup-center minutes behind Embiid, time is a flat circle. No matter how many different ways Philadelphia has tried to solve the problem -- and, boy, have the 76ers tried to solve it. They are no closer to it today than they were when Embiid first stepped on the court seven years ago.
The irony of Saturday night's loss for Philadelphia is that two big reasons the 76ers blew what once was a 15-point lead were the 76ers falling apart when Reed was on the floor in place of Embiid, and Al Horford -- once given over $100 million to ensure Philadelphia would always have a good center on the court, and who is playing in the final year of that contract the 76ers gave him -- hitting five second-half 3-pointers.
Embiid was dominant throughout Saturday's game. He finished with 41 points, 12 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 blocked shots in 39 minutes, 49 seconds. He was the best player on the court, and he was unstoppable whenever he got the ball.
And yet, like so many times before, Philadelphia couldn't manage to hold on in the few minutes he wasn't on the court. If the 76ers want to write a different ending than having a fifth second-round exit in six seasons, they'll have to finally find a solution to their eternal dilemma: surviving the handful of minutes Embiid needs to sit.
-- Bontemps
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