Well, that was fun.

Weekend one of the 2020-21 NBA Playoffs certainly didn’t underwhelm in any aspect of its expectation and as certain stars rose to the occasion at the beginning of their postseason’s, others had a bit of a slower start. Now, of course, there’s no reason to grow anxious if you’re one of the teams that stumbled out of the blocks since the first game of each series went down in a matter of two days. But, after each game, all teams have notes on how some defensive coverages could be tweaked to make future game plans more malleable, and they all have some bulletin board material to fire up their teams heading into games 2 and 3 of their respective series.

For the Eastern Conference playoffs, top-seeded Philadelphia handled business against visiting Washington to move up to 1-0 in the series, as Tobias Harris and Joel Embiid made quick work of the 20th-ranked defense in basketball. The Brooklyn Nets shut rising star Jayson Tatum down and their big three let it rain from the heavens against shorthanded Boston, Milwaukee held serve at home and Trae Young silenced 15,000 raucous Knicks fans with one fellow floater to win game 1 in one of the more satisfying starts to the postseason that we’ve seen in a while.

And on the Western side of the league’s hemisphere, the league-best Utah Jazz shot 12/47 from three in a three-point upset loss to the eighth-seeded Memphis Grizzlies, Chris Paul’s Phoenix Suns handled business against a slow-starting Anthony Davis-LeBron James frontcourt duo of the Los Angeles Lakers for a 99-90 home win, the Portland Trail Blazers trounced the Denver Nuggets with a 123-109 road win, and Luka Doncic’s Dallas Mavericks kept the duo of Paul George and Kawhi Leonard practically scoreless in the final two minutes in the fourth quarter of a 113-103 and allowed Doncic to rack up 31-point Triple Double in his second-ever playoff series.

A lot transpired in a matter of a weekend, and we’ll get to that during a Power Rankings after all teams’ first sightings of the 2020-21 playoffs.

*Disclaimer*- for the sake of brevity, we won’t be writing about every team, but rather showcase the leaders of all eight playoff series, how those teams are leading their individual series and what the teams that are losing must/will do to get back in the runnings to advance to the next round — and take one of the spots on this list, too.

So let’s get to it.

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1. No. 1 Philadelphia 76ers (49-23, 1-0 vs. No. 8 Washington Wizards in First Round)

Philly left no stone unturned during their 125-118 home defense against a struggling Washington Wizards offense that was only kept alive by the efforts of Bradley Beal, who caught fire in the third quarter and finished with 33 points, 6 assists, and 10 rebounds off 13-for-23 shooting during their 125-118 loss. Meanwhile, when Joel Embiid was successfully denied the ball for a majority of the actions that Philly ran on the elbow (especially late in the fourth), it seemed like Philadelphia went to the well and got increasingly good looks while Washington’s youthful-but-limited frontcourt led by Rui Hachimura failed to cover Tobias Harris, who is off to an efficient start to his 2020-21 postseason campaign.

It’s no secret that Harris saw his best career numbers under Doc Rivers this year and in years past — at one point, he was the most efficient Power Forward in the league as a Clipper before he was dealt to the 76ers in 2019 — and that showed itself during a game-high 37-point outing in which the 10-year veteran amassed 29 shot attempts.

And while Ben Simmons wasn’t actively looking at the rim with a multitude of mismatches during runs where Russell Westbrook and Ish Smith shared floor time as he only had nine shot attempts and was four points away from a Triple-Double, he surely stopped opposing defenders from doing so in the second half. The likely Defensive Player of the Year kept a struggling Russell Westbrook frustrated for the entire game, and as his jumper wasn’t falling off of empty-side isolation looks, Simmons (with the help of Philly’s starter-bench lineup combinations with defenders like Matisse Thybulle off of the bench) kept him from frequently driving to the rack.

He helped Philly secure a 115.3 defensive rating through four quarters of game one, and Joel Embiid helped with the rest after every open look. Embiid finished game one of his playoff start with 30 points off 9-for-16 shooting and got to the line a lot with 13 free throw attempts. There were a bunch of times that Alex Len and Robin Lopez looked like rag dolls trying to fight on the glass against Embiid on the low block, so for the rest of this series, Scott Brooks has to find a way to make Embiid uncomfortable.

Should they fail to do so, this series will be short-lived.

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2. No. 2 Brooklyn Nets (48-24, 1-0 vs. No. 7 Boston Celtics in First Round)

Make no mistake: forget your feelings on how certain actions and adjacent actions that should be run for each guy on the floor and the organizational purity of your offense, this game will always be about a bucket, and your defender-breaking stars making guys miss to break coverages down and find even better looks to wide-open scorers on the corners or at the top of the key.

That’s just the law of hoop.

For Brooklyn, their iffy start against a Boston team that jumped in front of them by double-digits in game one turned into a non-factor once James Harden and Kevin Durant got their feet under them, let alone Kyrie Irving’s fiery 29 points.

Boston was already up against a seismic challenge missing Jaylen Brown as it is, but with Brooklyn playing at the pace in which they perform, Boston just doesn’t have the talent to A) control the tempo of the floor, B) offensively, afford to trade buckets with the likes of three of the greatest floor spacers in the history of the sport during Nash’s placement of his close-out five on the court, and C) stay in front of those three to get timely stops when their two scorers in Kemba Walker and Jayson Tatum (who were inefficient and out of sorts in the second half — including during a nine-period in which they, and the rest of the Celtics, couldn’t even score a point) couldn’t maintain a puncher’s chance at victory.

Irving, Durant, and Harden accounted for 82 of Brooklyn’s 104 points, as opposed to Boston’s 93 points as a team. They looked spry and loose, and the only other Net to score in double-digits was Joe Harris, who scored 10 points off 4-11 shooting. Though the Nets only shot 41.7 percent from the field as a team, Boston’s insufficiency of talent overrode that, as the Celtics only scored 40 points in the second half, compared to Brooklyn’s combined 57 points in the third and fourth quarters.

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3. No. 2 Phoenix Suns (51-21, 1-0 vs. No. 7 Los Angeles Lakers in First Round)

Devin Booker — have a day, sir.

How’s that for a first-ever playoff performance? With layers of adversity piled onto his 24-year-old self before tip-off, he delivered in only a way the two-time All-Star could, giving the No. 1 most defensively efficient team in basketball the work while Chris Paul couldn’t go with a shoulder contusion that kept him out of action for a majority of Phoenix’s Game one victory over the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers — and first franchise playoff win in over a decade.

After seven long years of carrying a franchise through unimaginable hardship, Booker might want to keep the game ball his first playoff appearance and store it somewhere safe. And for one of the most-heralded and respected hoopers in all of the league, he made his first playoff minutes pretty memorable. Booker put up the most-ever points in a playoff debut — 34 of them off 13-for-26 shooting to be exact — and propelled the Suns past the slow-starting Lakers during a team-wide defensive masterclass while undermanned. When it seemed like the offense stalled off in the sudden wake of Paul’s scary shoulder injury in the second quarter, Booker filled in for the guy who largely contributed to getting them there in the first place.

He had to leave the game twice, the second after testing the shoulder while the Suns were up by 15 in the third quarter. But, as soon as he left, the Lakers exploded for an 8-0 run. The Suns ended the quarter with a comfortable 13-point lead, yes, but Paul’s injury is undoubtedly a make-or-break variable in a series that both LeBron James (18 points off 6-for-13 shooting in G1) and Anthony Davis (13 points off 5-for-16 shooting) won’t go down quietly in. Davis “took full responsibility” for the no-show he had against Phoenix since the last time he played them, he scored a season-high 42 points without LeBron James on the floor.

2018 first-overall pick DeAndre Ayton showed no fear in stopping arguably the best power forward in basketball while matched up with him all afternoon, but that’ll have to continue for an entire series if the Suns are to keep the Lakers out of games for what could be a franchise-altering upset.

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4. No. 3 Milwaukee Bucks (46-26, 1-0 vs. No. 6 Miami Heat in First Round)

So while it seems like Miami has their eggs in a basket on how to contain Giannis Antetokounmpo and eliminate him from Milwaukee’s game plan in the halfcourt, so can the Bucks in their neutralization of Jimmy Butler, if game one showed us anything.

The kickoff game to the 2020-21 playoffs certainly did not disappoint, capped off with an Overtime period and game-winner by Milwaukee’s go-home halfcourt shot creator and pure scorer in Khris Middleton with only 0.7 seconds on the clock left after heaving up a Kobe Bryant-esque fade away, as the ball splashed through the nylon and over the reach of leading-scorer Duncan Robinson.

When things broke down during Mike Budenholzer’s running of halfcourt sets, it was Middleton who came through, scoring a game-high 27 points off of a fairly efficient 10-for-22 shooting. While Antetokounmpo showed why he’s been an MVP favorite for nearly four-straight years with a 26-point outing by mainly scoring in transition, he still showed difficulty scoring on Bam Adebayo, who Giannis didn’t attempt a shot against when matched up against him for 53 minutes in Game one of the series.

Conversely, for the Bucks, they’ll like what they saw on film in their attempts to limit Jimmy Butler’s offensive output, as they forced him to shoot a grotesque 4-for-22 from the field. Antetokounmpo was his primary defender, and his length proved problematic for the small forward as he went 2-for-6 against Butler in the halfcourt guarding Butler for 31.8 partial possessions. PJ Tucker was the additional switching help for when Giannis was placed onto another defender, and on Tucker he saw even less success, going 0-for-6 against Milwaukee’s new Trade Deadline acquisition.

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5. No. 6 Portland Trail Blazers (42-30, 1-0 vs. No. 3 Denver Nuggets in First Round)

Portland handed the Nuggets one of their most convincing losses of the weekend, beating the No. 3 seeded Nuggets by a score of 123-109 in a winning effort a few prognosticators could see coming a mile away.

In the playoffs, halfcourt isolation scorers that draw attention and space the floor for your offense come at a premium, and if you lack that, preferably at the guard spot, those places of anemia show themselves more often than not. That wasn’t the case for Portland, who were led by a dominant Damian Lillard with a decisive 34 points in 40 minutes, which led all scorers. Backcourt cohort CJ McCollum didn’t trail his teammate by too much either, as with the introduction of halfcourt adjustments that worked to take away Lillard from his usual touches came the downpour of McCollum’s 21 points off 8-for-20 shooting in 36 minutes.

While a pesky-but-mismatched and smaller defender like Facundo Campazzo was on Lillard and limited his shot attempts (was guarded by him for a total of 7:32 and 26.7 partial possessions, and Lillard scored 16 points against him off of 4-for-10 shooting) it was even worse for Monte Morris and Nikola Jokic, who allowed Lillard to score a combined 14 points off of a 54.8 percent shooting performance through four quarters. Guard productivity is what wins NBA titles, and with Jamal Murray out for the season and, other than Nikola Jokic, in the mid-post, no other real shot-creator in the starting five that can give the Blazers anything to worry about. However, MVP favorite Jokic won’t lie down after one suboptimal outing, so it’ll be interesting to see what he can do for the rest of the series.

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6. No. 5 Dallas Mavericks (42-30, 1-0 vs. No. 4 Los Angeles Clippers  in First Round)

Luka Doncic was just one of the many young superstars that showed he’s next up to take the throne and title of the game’s best player with a run-of-the-mill 31-point Triple-Double against the league’s No. 8 defense, showing flashes of just what he can bring to Dallas and how good he really is going to be once the 22-year-old guard/forward hybrid reaches his prime.

And that’s a scary sight. As we mentioned that the Mavericks are one of the most pick and roll-reliant teams in the NBA (No. 2 in the league in total PnR sets per game when Doncic has the ball in his hands, he’s always looking to attack defenses when they’re showing heavy drop coverage (or in other words, when guards and bigs are at the top of the key, and the big takes the roll man out of the play by backpedaling and protecting the rim, instead of defending the much-shiftier guard off the switch).

And remember, Los Angeles leads the league in giving up buckets to PnR scorers, so Doncic’s 31-10-11 off of their inability to contain him in game one is, by all means, concerning. Giving the Clippers credit though; They found a way to slow Doncic down in the fourth, but by that time, the damage was done at the expense of a 10-point deficit the Clippers allowed even when Kawhi Leonard and Paul George combined for 49 points in their home loss.

Tyronn Lue’s Clippers did little to stop Doncic’s run and bring extra attention to get the ball out of his hands early on, opting for a bunch of screen-to-single coverage looks in which Doncic collapsed their defensive looks on routine.

One thing about Dallas in the regular season was that they disallowed teams to get into the game once they won the first quarter, and they brought that same sentiment into game one of the series with a 33-30 first-quarter lead. The Clippers will probably have something for Doncic so they can get out to a quick stop while limiting his opportunities to punish them further, but they have a solid game plan to keep them at bay and, possibly, take this series the distance.

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7. No. 8 Memphis Grizzlies (38-34, 1-0 vs. No. 1 Utah Jazz in First Round)

Listen…if the new era of Grit n’ Grind isn’t here yet…I don’t know when it’ll get here.

World, meet Dillon Brooks – a gritty, relentless, two-way player and world-beater who would probably be the type to embrace the challenge of being in a Fatal four-Way Steel Cage match against Genghis Khan, Atilla The Han, and Joan of Arc just to get the competitive juices flowing.

But the thing is, the 25-year old two-guard by way of Mississauga, Canada is too busy putting the world on notice about how fearless he is, as well as his young teammates. He’s knocked off the likes of San Antonio’s DeMar DeRozan and the greatest shooter ever in Steph Curry in back-to-back contests during the 2020-21 Play-In Tournament, and with Memphis’ shocking 112-109 road victory over league-best Utah in game one of their first-round series, proceeding to lock up Utah’s combination of scoring guards while dropping a game-high 31 points off 13-26 shooting.

And while it was a night that Jazz fans will likely put behind them since they were not at full capacity in the health department with Donovan Mitchell set to make his return to the court during game two, these young and hungry Grizzlies aren’t just living up to the hype — they’re rising to the moment, playing like they’ve got zero to lose and everything to prove. It takes a lot of moxy to run the table as a ninth seed and qualify for the NBA Playoffs, a first for Memphis since ex-Grizzly and current Jazz guard Mike Conley Jr. did it with a completely different team back in 2017, but steal the spotlight on the biggest center stage of their young career — against the best team in the NBA!

It goes to show that the league is in good hands for the next few years (and that goes for a variety of different franchises across the league), as the youth-veteran combination of Ja Morant – Desmond Bane – Dillon Brooks – Kyle Anderson – Jonas Valanciunas has produced the highest net rating (109.5) and second-highest offensive rating (166.7) on the team in their first playoff game together.

It’s more of a secondary lineup when Jaren Jackson Jr. sits, but this small lineup, in particular, is a problem to deal with in the open court. Switching aside, it allowed for shot creators like Brooks and Morant to find their spots in the midrange as well as get to the rim with preferable ease, and with that speedy lineup, put pressure on the gaps of the passing lanes so that outside scorers like rookie Desmond Bane can get his looks and can them with space and confidence.

As it goes for Utah in stopping these Grizzlies, who feel like they can swing with the best of ’em, they need to get healthy, and relatively soon. With Mitchell’s return to the lineup, that’ll likely re-create the dynamic of offense they won 52 games with, as Mitchell, who is a blaze with the ball in his hands, is perhaps the best player to get a shot off of the dribble, and more importantly, an effective guard who can run both point and score off-ball as a natural two-guard.

That 12-for-47 night from deep may be a thing of the past if they generate clean looks out of their actions, now that they’ll have their speedy ballhandler that’ll manipulate defenses with his decisions in the middle of the floor.

But these Grizzlies aren’t afraid of a challenge that goes up in difficulty if this past week told fans anything they need to know.

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8. No. 5 Atlanta Hawks (41-31, 1-0 vs. No. 4 New York Knicks in First Round)

And this is why we love the NBA!

15,000 chants of F*** Trae Young inside of Madison Square Garden from screaming, ravenous Knicks fans (for the largest gathering in New York City since the beginning of the pandemic) during a 107-107 stalemate, suddenly silenced by a nasty dribble counter and blowby on the confusingly subbed-in Frank Ntilikina and floater against drop coverage with 0.9 on the clock remaining to give the Hawks their first postseason win since the 2015 season, where they advanced all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals.

“It’s quiet as f*** in here!” exclaimed Young, the former Oklahoma standout, 2018 National Player of the Year and Fifth-Overall Pick crushed the dreams and aspirations of a Knicks playoff win inside MSG for the first time in eight years by exploiting the switch and chink in the armor of Tom Thibodeau’s No. 1-ranked defense in the NBA when the first-year Knicks Head Coach put in Ntilikina in for Derrick Rose, who quite literally seconds ago made a game-tying floater to tie it up and make the Hawks burn their final Timeout.

And then Trae Young — who prior (and obviously after that), became the new Public Enemy Numero Uno in New York City by leaving whatever matchup he had in the dust, scoring 32 points, dishing 10 assists while grabbing 7 rebounds in his first-ever playoff appearance inside the World’s Most Famous Arena, in front of the largest and loudest crowd he’s played in front of all season — does THAT. Hawks win 109-107 in a tight duel that barely hits the cover if you’re a betting man/woman.

Atlanta had to have been swiping their brow over the fact that probable All-NBA First or Second-Team staple Julius Randle put up arguably one of his worst stat-lines ever, only scoring 15 points off of 6-for-23 shooting from the field and 2-for-6 shooting from deep, but Knicks fans probably feel a little bit of optimism knowing that they may have taken the best blow the Hawks had to offer from the likes of Young, Bogdan Bogdanovic (18 points off 7-for-15 shooting), and three-time Sixth Man of the Year Lou Williams (13 points off the bench off of 6-for-9 shooting and 1-for-1 shooting from deep) while their bench outscored Atlanta’s 64 to 31.

Oh yeah, and that they only lost by two when their lone All-Star shot under 27 percent.

Atlanta escaped this one, opting to go to the well of continuous Spain PnR looks with the offense running through Trae Young’s ballhandling and Clint Capela’s hard diving to the rack at the end of the game. But unlike game one (or, so they hope) these Knicks aim to take those away in crunch time and get their starters going more quickly in future games this series. So adjustments and counter-adjustments will come like pawns, kings, and queens moving across a Chessboard.

But this WILL be a good series, and one to keep an eye on as the ninth-best offense in basketball and top defense in the game collide for what could be a battle that goes seven games.

Source: pngkey.com