LOS ANGELES -- The Eastern Conference was a punchline all season, regarded as a distraction while the West teams beat each other up to determine which team would face LeBron James and the Cavs in the NBA Finals.
But wait ... the Hawks won 60 games, the voices of reason said. The Bulls have Pau Gasol and, quite possibly, a healthy Derrick Rose, they said. This is going to be exciting, they said.
Then, the Cavs swept the Celtics and the Wizards swept the Raptors while the Hawks and Bulls built commanding 2-0 and 3-0 leads, respectively. The people who said this was going to be fun were wrong, everyone else said.
Well ... now what? The Cavs have lost Kevin Love, likely for the entire playoffs, according to GM David Griffin, who described the damage to Love's dislocated shoulder as "extensive." The Bulls have looked lost in back-to-back defeats to the plucky Bucks, who have pulled to within 3-2 in their improbable bid to become the first team in NBA history to come back from a 3-0 deficit in a best-of-7 series. The Hawks? They've looked like every other Hawks team besides the one that won 60 games this season in consecutive losses to the Nets, who tied their series 2-2 heading to Atlanta for Game 5 on Wednesday.
With rare exceptions -- like the eighth-seeded Warriors over the top-seeded, 67-win Mavericks in 2007 -- the first round of the NBA playoffs has more chalk than a gymnastics school. For years, it's mostly been an exercise in futility and an excuse for people to watch more TV as we wait for the team that everyone knows is superior to emerge from the mind-numbing boredom.
And for a week, that's exactly what it looked like this year. Until now. Until Monday night, really.
Suddenly, the first round of the NBA playoffs looks like the NCAA Tournament on Red Bull.
While the favorites muddle through, Paul Pierce is enjoying some time off, making "Game of Thrones" Instagram posts and enjoying some Stanley Cup playoff hockey. And if this keeps up, contemplate the possibility of a WNBA Finals -- Wizards vs. Warriors. All those who predicted that, please come forward with your claim tickets ready to claim your fake prizes.
That'll be a short line. In the meantime, enjoy the rest of what has become the most unpredictable first round in recent memory -- as well as the news items that are moving the needle:
- With rioting and chaos in Baltimore, Knicks star Carmelo Anthony took to Instagram Tuesday to call for calmer heads to prevail. "To see my city in a State of Emergency is just shocking," said Anthony, who was born in New York but moved to Baltimore when he was 8. "We need to protect our city, not destroy it."
- Addressing reporters after the Raptors' stunning 4-0 series loss to the Wizards, GM Masai Ujiri was noncommittal on the future of coach Dwane Casey, to whom he gave a three-year extension last spring. "We're going to evaluate everything," Ujiri said. "Everyone's going to be held accountable. Everyone is going to be evaluated." Translation: Not good for Casey. Isn't this what the Thunder said about Scott Brooks?
- While Monty Williams is under scrutiny in New Orleans, at least he has a contract for next season. His assistants, including the highly regarded Bryan Gates, do not. Assistant coaches are often forgotten when teams contemplate head coaching changes, and they're especially at risk when -- like Denver's Melvin Hunt -- they are elevated to interim head coach when an in-season change is made. Depending on what the Nuggets do with their coaching search, Hunt could wind up back with George Karl as an assistant in Sacramento, league sources said.
- With a week gone by and no word from Billy Donovan or the University of Florida on whether he'll consider the Oklahoma City Thunder opening vacated when Brooks was fired, a coaching industry source made this excellent point: Could one issue be the simple fact that, as the King of Gainesville with essentially a lifetime contract, Donovan might just be a little unnerved that the Thunder job was vacated when a coach who made three Western Conference Finals in four years was fired? College job security > NBA job security.
