Steph Curry, Playoff Jimmy, and the NBA players who willed their teams to Round 2

The first round of the NBA playoffs is over, and it was quite the show. From coast to coast, great players across the league made their presence felt in the least important round of the playoffs. Normally, the first round results in chalk, but many of the best teams of the 2022-23 NBA season have been eliminated from the postseason.

Maybe the NBA has finally achieved the parity that it has been seeking for decades, or injuries resulted in certain teams winning series that they wouldn’t have against a healthy opponent.

My thoughts are that some of the best players in the NBA showed their best stuff on national television for two weeks. Those performances resulted in some surprise results, but every team that has advanced to the second round deserves to be there.

With the second round underway, just like last season, I am going to give credit to the players who played best in the recently-completed playoff series.

A reminder from last season, I am not beholden to positions or victorious teams.

A magnificent Game 7 against the Sacramento Kings was simply another bullet point on Curry’s all-time great resume. He scored the most points in a Game 7 in NBA history with 50 against the Kings. Even that historical achievement does not do justice to how great he was.

At 35 years old, Curry might be playing the best basketball of his career. He has put on so much muscle that he is a real obstacle on defense. In his 15th NBA season, Curry is not only better on defense, but he is also a force in the paint. His work there was just as important as what he did behind the 3-point line.

Magic, Michael, The Logo, Kobe — that is the club in which Curry belongs.

He beat the No. 1 seed Milwaukee Bucks. Of course basketball is a team game, but the Miami Heat were down double digits in the fourth quarter of both Game 4 and Game 5. Butler scored 21 points in the fourth quarter of Game 4. In Game 6 poured in 14, including a suspended-in-air alley-oop play that sent that game to overtime.

Butler can play down his playoff performances all that he likes, but he rises to the occasion like arguably no other player in NBA history. The people who perform like he does in the playoffs are Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Shaquille O’Neal, etc. Butler plays at an all-star level when healthy in the regular season, but in no way does he perform like an all-time great. His play in the playoffs is what will get him to the Hall of Fame.

I thought that the New York Knicks made at best an average move to sign Brunson in the offseason. In the 2021 playoffs the Dallas Mavericks went to Trey Burke before they went to him in a Game 7. He was great in the 2022 playoffs for the Mavericks, but that could easily be written off as one of the many dynamic contract-year performances that litter professional sports. Survival is always the most powerful human instinct.

Then the Knicks signed Brunson to a lucrative contract that made him nowhere within earshot of the highest-paid guard in the NBA. In fact, the most money that he will make in a single season on that deal is in the 2022-23 season. With by far the highest usage rate of his career he still shot 49.1 percent from the field and averaged a career-high 24 points per game.

Brunson’s efficiency dropped against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round, but he made a plethora of humongous plays to lead the Knicks to a five-game victory without home-court advantage. In Game 4 he recorded eight points and two assists in the final quarter. The Cavs never figured out an answer for Brunson and it left them off balance for much of the series.

I was wrong.

He took on a herculean task. It was bad enough that t he Los Angeles Clippers were without Paul George for their first-round series against the Phoenix Suns. Then the Clippers only got two games out of Kawhi Leonard before a knee injury would keep him out of the rest of the series — while his status update was revealed game by game.

The Clippers lacked all of the star power that they spent young talent and draft capital to acquire and possibly make a run at an NBA Championship. Still, Westbrook did not operate with any lack of confidence with the Clippers’ best players in street clothes.

When Kawhi Leonard was healthy in Game 1, it was Westbrook’s offensive rebounds and heady plays that salted away the Clippers’ only victory in that series. In Games 3 and 4, Westbrook was a force. He scored 30-plus points in both games and a player who shot 43.6 from the field for the season was better than 47 percent twice. In Game 5 he scored 37 points on 58.6 percent from the field and 50 percent from the 3-point line.

With no Leonard or George, the Clippers were destined to lose, but Westbrook was spectacular.

For those curious about how a poor shooting team like the New York Knicks defeated a team with two all-star caliber players like Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland, the answer is rebounding.

The Knicks destroyed the Cleveland Cavaliers on the glass. In the Pacific Time Zone, the Golden State Warriors did the same to the Sacramento Kings. For the Knicks, rebounding was a team effort led by Mitchell Robinson. The Warriors did rebound as a team, but it was Looney who owned the glass for most of their seven-game victory against the Kings.

The Warriors had a tough go in their first two games against the Kings on the road. They played well, but still came up empty twice in a row. In Game 3 in San Francisco, Looney grabbed 20 rebounds — nine offensive — in a 114-97 victory. From then on the glass belonged to Looney. He hauled in 22 rebounds in Game 5 and 21 in Game 7. The last three games of the series he grabbed no less than six offensive rebounds.

Last season, I had no idea just how many awards the NBA was adding. So, at the completion of the first round, I had no reason to name the award for best player in the first round. With the NBA now flicking out crystal trophies the way Las Vegas blackjack dealer does cards, the MVP of this round needs a name.

Chris Paul is perfect for this award. He is an NBA legend, whose first-round performances — in best-of-seven series that many of his elders did not have to endure — are some of the best games played in NBA history. Regardless of how his current Phoenix Suns team which has maybe six playoff-level players on the roster will finish this season, Paul can always hold claim to being quite possibly the best first-round performer in league history.

The inaugural winner of this award is Butler. Of course, the Bucks choked, but the Heat were most certainly attacking their throat. Butler scored 56 points in Game 5, 21 of which came in a fourth quarter in which the Bucks were up by 13 points with less than 10 minutes remaining.

In Game 6, the Heat quickly erased a 16-point fourth-quarter lead without Butler on the floor, but without his 14 points in that quarter, they would not have been able to finish off the 2021 NBA Champions.