Good news: we’re over halfway to the second round. Every series has completed exactly four games, with three series already ending in sweeps just like that. Wave goodbye to Brooklyn, Indiana, and Philadelphia, as temporarily, we’re down to 13 teams. We’ve still got to delete five more from the field, but we’ll get there soon enough. For now, let’s discuss these series one-by-one.

Eastern Conference

(1) Milwaukee Bucks vs. (8) Orlando Magic; Milwaukee leads, 3-1

Milwaukee: Four games in and Milwaukee still doesn’t look quite like the Bucks we watched all season long. Offensively, they’ve started to look pretty solid; the efficiency numbers are just fine, but the level of shots they’re getting is tied for #1 across all playoff teams. 77.27% of their shots have either been at the rim or from three, and they’ve shot better from three (39.13%) than you probably would’ve expected. And yet: they’re committing more turnovers per 100 possessions than any other team in the playoffs. It’s not like they’re playing the Lakers defense already; this is the Magic, a team that did force the tenth-highest turnover rate but ranks third amongst the remaining East teams in defensive turnover rate.

An alarming amount of Milwaukee mistakes have come as unforced errors; their live-ball turnover rate is just fourth-worst in the playoffs, but they’ve committed way more dead-ball turnovers than any other team. Lots of ill-advised travels, several bad passes, and more have made this series closer than it should be. All that said, they’re up 3-1 against a team that doesn’t have the roster to hang with them. Game 5 is of moderate interest, as Milwaukee should be able to close Orlando out easily if they begin to limit silly mistakes.

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Orlando: Oddly enough, if you looked just at the shot distribution stats, you’d think Milwaukee would easily be demolishing the Magic. Orlando has taken just 16.3% of their shots at the rim, an alarmingly low rate for a team with Nikola Vucevic on it. They have taken – and hit – a ton of long mid-range twos, which is not really a way to beat Milwaukee. Instead, they’re taking what the Bucks give them from the three-point line, to the tune of 45.4% of all field goal attempts coming from beyond the arc. Sometimes it works out (19-for-39 in Game 3, 18-for-45 in Game 4) and keeps them in games; sometimes, it simply does not (7-for-33 in Game 2).

They’ve shown that, if you have shooters, you can force this Milwaukee defense to look worse than it is. That said, look at those Game 3 and 4 numbers. Combined, Orlando shot 44% from three across two games and only lost the turnover battle by four. They lost both games by a combined 29 points. What more are they able to do?

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(2) Toronto Raptors vs. (7) Brooklyn Nets; Toronto wins, 4-0

Toronto: Outside of Game 2 and some spare moments in the other three games, very rarely a series where the Raptors had to exert much energy or felt in much danger. They could’ve ran through this series on 80% effort and still likely swept their opponent, given how undermanned Brooklyn was. And yet: isn’t it at least a little impressive that in three of the four games, Toronto thoroughly dispensed with their opponent well above what was expected of them? I initially dismissed Game 1 as a small outlier dependent on three-point shooting, but Toronto went out and scored 150 points in the sweep-clinching Game 4 victory. The Shot Quality metric from pbpstats.com suggests that Toronto was pretty lucky on the whole – an expected eFG% of 51% versus an actual eFG% of 59.2% – but at this point, who are we to distrust anything this team does?

They’ve already overcome the loss of Kawhi Leonard to be the second-best team in the Eastern Conference. They have the NBA’s Coach of the Year. They’ve got a deep roster that rarely, if ever, takes a minute off from playing their hardest. Maybe they got a little lucky to win by as much as they did in this series, but I’m not sure it really matters; as I said, even an 80% effort probably produces the same result. Two special notes: firstly, the main lineup of Siakam/FVV/Anunoby/Lowry/Gasol went for 1.251 points per possession in this series; secondly, they really need Kyle Lowry’s injury he sustained in Game 4 to heal ASAP.

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Brooklyn: Well, what else could you have really expected? They ran out a team that was essentially half of a G-League roster, fought for a full 48 minutes in one game, and didn’t have the firepower to hang in the other three. It was what it was. The good news is that Brooklyn got some good performances from various players throughout the series, and I’d say they have a lot more to look forward to next season with a full-strength roster. Barring alterations, FiveThirtyEight ranks the full-strength Nets as roughly the sixth-best roster in the East, and given that the Sixers and Heat both rank ahead of them, it’s fair to consider them a top-half East team next year. For now, they get a lot of time to rest up and watch some of the more fun Caris LeVert highlights as a passer.

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(3) Boston Celtics vs. (6) Philadelphia 76ers; Boston wins, 4-0

Boston: What a series. Objectively, this was always going to be theirs to lose, and given how greatly Philadelphia struggled in the regular season just to do anything interesting at all, a Boston in five games outcome would’ve been a fair guess. But for the Celtics to sweep the Sixers – even this particularly frustrating Sixers squad – is notable indeed. If this was something where Boston simply had four straight games of good luck and won all four in a series where it should’ve been 3-1 or even 2-2, it would be different. In all honesty, that wasn’t the case.

When the Sixers’ main five were on the floor (Richardson, Milton, Horford, Harris, Embiid), the Celtics scored 126 points in 103 possessions. No team had a lower Shot Quality in the first round than Philly, because Boston couldn’t stop forcing them into all kinds of bad mid-range twos and ugly attempts from all over. Now, the Celtics themselves rarely got great shots, as they were the second-worst Shot Quality offense in the first round. However, it may not matter much if they’re going to play the defense they’ve been playing thus far.

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Philadelphia: What more can be said about this expensive failure? Generally, people get fired for failing this miserably, and as is the norm in basketball, it will probably be blamed on the head coach as opposed to the front office. However, think about this: Philly’s offense possesses two legitimately good three-point shooters in Furkan Korkmaz and Shake Milton. Both rank out as C-grade perimeter defenders, per BBallIndex.com – not exactly what you’d like from three-and-D guys. Now, look at the rest of the roster. The next-best starter-level player from downtown is Tobias Harris, a 78th-percentile shooter. He’s a D-plus perimeter defender. The best perimeter defenders – Ben Simmons and Matisse Thybulle – are bad shooters, with Thybulle being a large negative on offense. Can you see where this went wrong, even before you get to Al Horford’s contract?

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(4) Indiana Pacers vs. (5) Miami Heat; Miami wins, 4-0

Indiana: Sadness. This year began with, in theory, a full-strength roster heading into the playoffs that could win a series or two and force people to treat the Pacers as a more serious franchise going forward. Their six(!) best players are all 28 or younger, and all six are under contract through at least the 2020-21 season. This was to be the beginning of a potentially monumental two-season Pacer run, and the oddsmakers showed them some quality respect in the offseason, giving them the fourth-highest title odds in the East. They ended up the 4 seed as expected, but without Domantas Sabonis, they’re leaving this postseason without a single win and ending it in undeniably disappointing fashion.

It’s sad to see it happen like this for Indiana, a team that plays hard nightly and did so for most of the season even without Victor Oladipo, but the fact of the matter is pretty simple: their offense was never good enough to justify a playoff run. Only Philadelphia and Boston possessed worse shot quality during their four-game playoff runs, and only three teams were less efficient offensively. Obviously, it doesn’t help that Indiana gave up about 115 points per 100 possessions to Miami, but the Heat have Duncan Robinson and the Pacers don’t. Until Indiana finds better, more consistent shooters, their offensive ceiling is heavily limited.

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Miami: Joy! Let’s revisit those preseason odds. When the season started approximately 25 years ago, the Heat had the seventh-highest title odds in the East and were considered on par with the Brooklyn Nets in terms of win totals. (Congrats to the analytics nerds – all of us – for correctly saying the Nets would be a sub-.500 team. We did it.) Now, they just swept the 4 seed in their conference and are heading into a matchup with the Bucks where it feels like they’ve got the momentum. Momentum is a fleeting thing, obviously, and I don’t know that it really exists.

That being said, this Miami team feels more trustworthy by the game. We all expected Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo to look good, of course, but who would’ve guessed that the story would be Goran Dragic? He averaged nearly 23 points a game against Indiana, shot 41.4% from three, and generated more offense than any other player on the roster. I think we all could’ve seen this coming if it were still 2014, but it’s 2020 and he’s long past his prime…or so we thought. I’m loving the Dragon’s renaissance, and he could be a major key in Miami potentially dumping Milwaukee out of the playoffs early.

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Western Conference

(1) Los Angeles Lakers vs. (8) Portland Trail Blazers; Los Angeles leads, 3-1

Lakers: Throughout the seeding games and Game 1 of this series, the issue of Can the Lakers Hit Open Shots was becoming a serious topic. When you go 5-for-32 from downtown in any game, many are going to react to it in a certain way. Los Angeles was pretty consistently at the league average, sometimes above, in hitting wide-open shot attempts this season. They went 2-for-16 on wide-open threes in the first game, something that was very unlikely to repeat. Guess what? Since then, on the bevy of wide-open attempts Portland’s Swiss cheese defense allows every game, the Lakers are 22-for-55 on three-point attempts where there’s no defender within six feet. Even funnier, to my eyes, is the fact they’ve gotten 17 two-point attempts that were wide-open, the second-most by any team in the playoffs. (In first, surprisingly: the Orlando Magic, with 21.)

As soon as Los Angeles began to take advantage of all of the opportunities Portland was going to give them, the series was going to end. Had they hit their threes in Game 1, this would’ve thankfully ended last night with Portland getting wrecked by 20 points in a game that wasn’t that close. If there’s any benefit to all of this, it’s that we do get to enjoy seeing Carmelo Anthony and Gary Trent, Jr. attempt to guard LeBron James one more time.

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Portland: Well, it was probably always going to end this way. Portland made a lot of bad roster construction decisions last offseason, essentially trading their two best defenders for Hassan Whiteside, Carmelo Anthony, and several mediocre wings. (When Gary Trent, Jr. is the best available wing defender you have, you have a bad roster.) Dame Time dragged them into this series in the first place, but the clock has been broken for several games now. @Tim_NBA on Twitter has been doing a fantastic job of exploring how Los Angeles has completely changed their pick-and-roll coverage from the regular season, running almost no soft hedge/drop coverage at all and instead forcing Lillard to be guarded by 1.5 defenders at all times.

From both a Lillard perspective and a Portland perspective, it’s worked almost flawlessly. Lillard has just (I know, just) 97 points through four games, a far cry from when he scored 154 in the final three regular season games. He’s shot just 13-for-31 on twos, has committed 14 turnovers, and no one on the remainder of the Blazers roster has helped pick up the slack. With Lillard unfortunately picking up what looked like a scary injury in Game 4, Portland could be embarking on their final game with almost no consistent scoring option to speak of. Yes, I know C.J. McCollum would still be out there; so what?

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(2) Los Angeles Clippers vs. (7) Dallas Mavericks; series tied, 2-2

Clippers: Well, here we are: the Clippers are embroiled in what’s looking like a seven-game battle with a Dallas team that had the third-highest net rating in the West but had issues closing out games late. Los Angeles probably feels confident that they can win two of three, but they’ve had some serious defensive issues thus far. We all expected the Clippers to turn it on defensively, and in some aspects, they have. Per PBPStats.com’s Shot Quality metric, Dallas has been held to the fifth-worst expected value on their shot attempts. That’s good, and to be sure, the Clippers have been a tad unlucky in this series: no Patrick Beverley for games 2-4 has hurt, and Dallas outshooting their expected eFG% by a full 8% is unsustainable. (Over the course of their regular season, no team overshot or undershot their expected eFG% by more than 4%. Regression comes for everyone.)

That said, the Clippers simply aren’t making it easy on themselves. Everyone knew the ball would be going to Luka for the final shot of Game 4. So why in the world would you guard him with Reggie Freaking Jackson of all players? Didn’t you just spend the last 13 months telling everyone about how Kawhi Leonard and Paul George were the defensive keys to a title? Where were they when the game was on the line? Luka went a perfect 5-for-5 against Jackson when he was in the game, and though that wouldn’t be sustainable over multiple games, it was important then and important now. When Kawhi matched up on Luka, he held him to 2-for-6 from the field and forced two turnovers. Kawhi switched off of Luka for the final possession, which is pretty strange in its own right and also can’t happen again.

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Dallas: LUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUKA!!!!! I mean, what more is there to say? On a day without Porzingis, and two days after he sustained a rough-looking injury, Luka merely came out and dropped his second-consecutive triple double, closing it with the signature moment of the 2020 Playoffs thus far. You can call him a superstar now. This is not the time for those of us who correctly said Doncic was easily the best player in the 2018 Draft to take a victory lap; we have 15 more years to do that. For now, focus on how wonderful and fun his game is. Everything about him brings joy, and honestly, everything about the structure of this Mavs offense brings joy. I still don’t think they’re going to win this series, but I think the West should be terrified of Dallas in another year or two.

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(3) Denver Nuggets vs. (6) Utah Jazz; Utah leads, 3-1

Denver: Season’s probably over, which is a shame. Denver was never as good as they should’ve been this year, as it took Nikola Jokic a month or two to play into basketball shape and the rest of the team a while to figure it out. But they kept finding ways to win, they were fun, and they still remain an unusual and fascinating roster. I don’t know if they could’ve controlled two of their starters being out for the entirety of the playoffs, but at the same time, Utah’s missed Bojan Bogdanovic, their #2 scorer, and has been perfectly fine.

If Gary Harris and Will Barton were available, I think it’s undeniable that they wouldn’t look as lost defensively. I don’t think Donovan Mitchell would have dropped two 50-point games within the same series, though I do think it’s been nice watching Jamal Murray play the way a lot of people have wanted him to play for some time. I also think that the Jazz are well overdue for shooting regression, as they’re beating their expected shot value by a Playoffs-high 10.6%. They’ll have a stinker of a game at some point. Will it be too late for Denver?

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Utah: Donovan Mitchell, the Series. What a rise it’s been for Mitchell, who’s been fairly inconsistent ever since his amazing rookie year. Think of it this way: Mitchell has six single-digit scoring outings over the last two seasons while also having five 40+ point games. He takes a lot of shots you wouldn’t want most players to take, but he’s hitting pretty much all of them in this series. Denver doesn’t have an active player that can guard Mitchell, and any time he’s been matched up on Torrey Craig or Michael Porter, Jr., it’s been a disaster for the Nuggets. Surprisingly, this Jazz roster is just a game away from the second round, which is where they hoped to be all along. Funny how things work out, even if the shooting is due to regress hard pretty soon.

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(4) Houston Rockets vs. (5) Oklahoma City Thunder; series tied, 2-2

Houston: Suddenly, the narrative of this series has shifted away from Houston in a fashion I’m sure they didn’t hope for. Russell Westbrook has now missed all four games, and after two games of looking fine without him, Oklahoma City’s offense has started to take advantage of the pockets of Houston’s defense that can’t hang with them. Without Westbrook this season, the Rockets were far worse at forcing turnovers, and Houston’s lost the two games where they haven’t won the turnover battle in this series. They even had a stretch in Game 4 where they hit seven threes in a row and Oklahoma City still won.

After all of this, the pressure is now back on the Houston supporting cast. Harden was fantastic again in Game 4, going for 32 points on 25 shots and grabbing 15 assists…but he also didn’t get to the foul line nearly as often as usual, and no one around him was able to get a stop when the game was on the line. The last time I wrote one of these, I said that you should pretty much never lose a game where you make 20+ threes, and Houston went on to lose a game where they made 23 of them. That’s bad. Either Houston’s got to find a way to slow down Chris Paul and…Dennis Schroder, or an early exit is back on the menu.

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Oklahoma City: Look who’s back! Not only was Chris Paul excellent over the last two games, they’ve gotten a pair of shockingly great performances from one Dennis Schroder. Schroder has never been an analytics-friendly player, as they’ve correctly pegged him as a mediocre defender and moderately-efficient scorer. However, Oklahoma City finally found a way to make the most of him this season: he serves as a pretty solid sixth man for the Thunder, and by asking him to take more shots from the outside, they’ve turned him into a surprisingly effective shooter. (It also helps that in his seventh season, he’s finally turned into an above-average finisher at the rim.)

The key to the rest of this series is probably Schroder. You know what you’re getting from Paul every night, and for the most part, you know what you’re going to get from Steven Adams, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Lu Dort. You don’t always know which Schroder is going to show up. Is it the Schroder who shot 8-for-24 over the first two games and scored just 19 points against six turnovers, or is it the Schroder that went for 59 points in Games 3 and 4? The outcome of the series may well depend on it.

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No intro needed here; it’s the NBA Playoffs. Instead of a normal game-a-day review, I decided to take a broad look at all eight series currently going, with a GIF representing each team. Let’s begin.

Eastern Conference

(1) Milwaukee Bucks vs. (8) Orlando Magic; series tied, 1-1

Milwaukee: No one thought they would get rocked in Game 1, but pretty much everyone expected them to respond appropriately in Game 2. The Bucks finally looked like the Bucks everyone watched from October to February…in some fashions. For reasons unknown, Khris Middleton – AKA, one of the most efficient shooters in the NBA – has had an absolute disaster of a series. He’s 5-for-20 from the field, 2-for-10 from three, and has turned it over way more than he did at any point pre-pandemic. You’d imagine he’ll find his way out of this, but the Bucks need him to do so as quickly as possible.

Giannis has gone for 59 points and 37 rebounds through two games, and often it feels like it’s just Giannis on the court. Part of this is because the Bucks are happy to run HB Dive and HB Slam with Basketball Jerome Bettis on their side, but part of it is also that no one is helping Giannis consistently. Through two games, the second-best Buck has been Eric Bledsoe, and not exactly by way of standing out. He’s averaging 14 & 6, which is fine, but not at all what you’d want the second banana of a title contender to be posting. Milwaukee looked way more attentive on defense in Game 2; now, we have to monitor how long it’ll take for them to figure out the offensive details clearly plaguing them. It’s probably not a good thing for them to have the same main problem as their 8-seed opponent, though they should be fine in this series.

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Orlando: Two totally different games: looked unbeatable in Game 1, looked sweep-able in Game 2. Game 1 was strange for both teams, in that Orlando looked like the much more excited and focused roster, not at all how it went in the regular season. They keep saying that the Bubble will produce strange results that maybe otherwise wouldn’t have come about. Game 1 was an easy one to chalk up to that. In a normal world, you’d imagine that a Milwaukee slow start gets turned around at some point simply because it’s a true road game. Fans don’t affect the game nearly as much as some sportswriters want them to, but they do have an effect, and it would’ve helped the Bucks.

For Orlando, the series essentially has boiled down to this through two games: how far can Nikola Vucevic drag this roster, and will anyone step up to help him? In both games, Vucevic has been fabulous, posting 35 & 14 in Game 1 followed by 32 & 10 in Game 2. Those are Giannis-like numbers, and he’s having a heck of a series so far. That said, he needs help. In Game 1, Orlando got five double-digit point efforts from non-Vooch players, including some serious surprises in James Ennis and Gary Clark. The Magic also had an unusually great day from downtown while Milwaukee had an unusually bad one. Game 2 flipped the script: Vooch was great, as mentioned, but no one else scored more than 12 points. Also, the Magic were an awful 7-for-33 from three and took an absurd amount of bad mid-range twos. The only reason the game was within 15 points was Orlando benefitting from several questionable foul calls on the Bucks throughout the game. Until Orlando can replicate the Game 1 effort again, they’re in trouble.

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(2) Toronto Raptors vs. (7) Brooklyn Nets; Raptors lead, 2-0

Toronto: All the nice things about Brooklyn that were said do ignore that the Raptors probably should’ve won Game 2 by double digits. The Raptors had back-to-back outlier shooting performances, but Game 1’s was the positive side (22-for-44 from three) while Game 2’s was a negative (9-for-35). Odds are that, as always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle for Toronto. Fred VanVleet isn’t going to shoot 8-for-10 every night from three, just like he won’t always shoot 3-for-11. The Raps can thank Norman Powell completely taking over the paint for getting them over the top in Game 2; he went a perfect 8-for-8 in the paint while going 3-for-9 from everywhere else. On the whole, the Raps figured out fairly early they weren’t going to be making a lot of threes and still did a good job of getting to the rim. This is a very adaptive team that knows how to win games, and even if they aren’t always pretty, that has to count for something in a league where both 1 seeds lost their first game.

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Brooklyn: As hard as they’re trying and as admirable a mission as they’re undergoing, they simply don’t have the firepower. In Game 1, they couldn’t buy a three for large stretches of the game, and Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot was the only player that seemed to be able to score consistently. The issue lies with the fact they’ve got a bunch of role players in roles they aren’t meant to be in. Jarrett Allen is a good player, but he’s just a roll & cut big that protects the rim well defensively; the team can’t run through him. Caris LeVert would be a perfect sixth man on a better team. Joe Harris is best as a catch-and-shoot option. And so on! It’s far from a perfect roster…and yet, had they not pushed out a horrendous seven-minute offensive stretch to open the fourth quarter in Game 2, this series very well could be tied at 1.

The Nets keep throwing everything they have available at Toronto, forcing one of the worst Raptors offensive games of the year in Game 2. Their defense allowed a lot of attempts at the rim, but they also demanded Toronto shoot over them to very little success. Toronto won that game in spite of their awful three-point shooting, which included a 3-for-14 run in the second half. Where it was TLC that kept Brooklyn in it offensively in Game 1, it was a good performance by Garrett Temple in Game 2 that almost got them there: 21 points, 5-11 on 3s. They continue to play ultra hard every night, even if it doesn’t look pretty. If they could find a way to combine TLC’s Game 1 with Temple’s Game 2, they’d steal a game before this series ends.

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(3) Boston Celtics vs. (6) Philadelphia 76ers; Celtics lead, 2-0

Boston: They’ve offered no real surprises, maybe beyond how little they’ve let Philadelphia get into the series. All three of Tatum/Brown/Walker have been pretty fantastic, though the Gordon Hayward injury news is very unfortunate. The most impressive thing, clearly, should be how strong they’ve been in forcing Philly to take a ton of bad mid-range shots. In particular, an astounding 41 Philadelphia shot attempts in Game 2 came from the mid-range, and even if they hit 17 of them, it proved that Boston’s defensive structure is not allowing Philly to get to the rim or get the shots they really need to be getting. If they play this well the rest of the way, they should be properly recognized as a championship contender.

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Philadelphia: Looks like garbage, thanks. The only standout player for this overpaid, infuriating squad is Joel Embiid; everyone else looks various shades of uninterested, overwhelmed, or both. While Embiid has taken his fair share of possessions off out of frustration, he’s done his part in attempting to force Philadelphia into this series: 60 points, 26 rebounds, and, when he’s wanted to go there, some great paint work. Embiid is 7-for-10 at the rim, and to be fair, he’s shot 11-for-20 on mid-range attempts. Unfortunately for Embiid, Philadelphia is required to place four other players on the floor, and none of them have seriously attempted to provide him with the help he needs. Josh Richardson is Philly’s second leading scorer at 18 a game, but look at the other guys: Tobias Harris is 10-for-30 from the field. Shake Milton is 10-for-15, but is getting roasted on defense with ease. Alec Burks is 7-for-23. Al Horford has taken ten – TEN – shot attempts. No one else is worth mentioning.

When Embiid forces his way out of Philadelphia in one of the next two offseasons, no one should be surprised or upset with him. He has earned a shot somewhere else, and he deserves a team with either a competent owner, a competent general manager, or preferably both. Any player talented enough to average 30/13 against this legitimately excellent Boston team deserves better. The Sixers will not be winning this series; the only question remaining is if they get swept or if they have enough dignity to pull it together and get one win.

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(4) Indiana Pacers vs. (5) Miami Heat; Heat lead, 2-0

Indiana: Unfortunately, a pretty short discussion to have: they simply don’t have enough firepower. Had the Pacers had Sabonis available, I really do think this would be a much different series. They probably would’ve split these first two games, and they would’ve had a much easier time scoring offensively. With Sabonis on the court this season (2,159 minutes), the Pacers scored about 112.4 points per 100 possessions. Not beautiful, obviously, but enough to push them into a top ten offensive rating. In the 1,365 minutes they played without Sabonis, they were much worse: 107.9 points per 100, or the 25th-best offense in the league.

So far in this series, they’re posting just 106.4 per 100, and a large part of it stems from their inability to get good shots against this Miami defense. Only 30.6% of the Pacers field goal attempts have come at the rim, while they’ve shot 20-for-51 from a midrange game that’s starting to abandon them. They have five players averaging double figures through two games, but it doesn’t mean much when the opponent has a player that can easily go 7-for-8 from three as well as a better player than your best player. Indiana might have something for the Heat next year, but it’s not going to happen in 2020.

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Miami: I really didn’t expect this roster to turn out as well as it has, but they’re pretty vicious when they want to be. Obviously, you knew Jimmy Butler was going to continue to be a fantastic player, and he’s been so, scoring 46 points through two games. However, did you expect Goran Dragic to be out here scoring 44 points? Or Duncan Robinson and Tyler Herro to be the team’s third and fourth-best scoring options? Or for the Heat to overcome a relatively quiet series from Bam Adebayo by way of nearly everyone else playing above their means?

This is a fun roster that’s beating the Pacers for several reasons, but a simple, easy one is that they simply get better shots. Miami is no stranger to the mid-range shot, but they’ve gotten a lot of great looks from three in this series because Indiana’s roster can’t cover lineups that have five shooting options. In particular, the two main lineups that feature Adebayo/Dragic/Butler (plus two of Herro, Robinson, Iguodala, or Crowder) are a shocking +28 in 39 minutes of play. When any one of those three is off the court, Indiana’s been able to hang around, beating the Heat by seven points in the other 49 minutes. Until they find a way to deal with those main three, though, this series is done.

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Western Conference

(1) Los Angeles Lakers vs. (8) Portland Trail Blazers; series tied, 1-1

Los Angeles: Pretty simple equation to break down, actually: they missed a bunch of shots they normally make in Game 1, then went out and made all of them in Game 2. We call those adjustments! In all seriousness, outside of the first quarter of Game 1, the Lakers have almost entirely shut down the Blazers. In that first quarter, which essentially decided the outcome of the game once the Lakers couldn’t hit threes, the Blazers dumped 36 points on 27 possessions (1.333 PPP); over the following seven quarters, Portland’s sitting at 152 points on 171 possessions (0.889 PPP), maybe their worst two-game stretch of offense of the entire season.

What the Lakers are doing is actually pretty fascinating: they’re generally fine with letting Portland get to the rim, but in Game 2 in particular, they closed hard on potential threes and forced the Blazers into tougher twos, which they hit almost none of. Basically, two games in, Los Angeles has completely neutralized the strongest thing the Blazers have going for them. On the offensive side, they’re getting absurdly good shot quality. Through three quarters in Game 2 – i.e., before garbage time – the Lakers’ Shot Quality metric on PBPStats tied the highest they’d had in any game this year. As @Tim_NBA said on Twitter, a lot of the Lakers’ attempts looked like practice shots at the gym. If they’re going to get those looks, this series is over.

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Portland: Here are some basic truths we all knew about Portland heading into this series: they have one of the two best scorers on the planet. They have a strange collection of talent that makes sense together offensively. They play a brand of defense that matadors would be offended by. So far, the first and the third have come true in separate games; the second has yet to make a serious appearance. Dame was not very good in Game 2, but neither was anyone else; his 34 points lifted a Portland offense having a bad night in Game 1 over the top. Portland gave up an absurd amount of wide-open threes in Game 1 that didn’t go in, along with getting lucky on several Laker misses at the rim.

The second issue is a clear one that has no easy resolution. The second-best Blazer through two games is probably Jusuf Nurkic, who has provided just 25 points on the offensive end and is 3-for-12 from the field when not at the rim. Carmelo Anthony, who plays 47 minutes of bad basketball only to show up for the final minute of some games, is 4-for-17 and has five turnovers. Hassan Whiteside barely looks interested on defense. Gary Trent’s gone cold from the field. C.J. McCollum: 14-for-36, 4-for-13, six turnovers. Unless Dame gets some help, the Blazers do not have enough to make this a real series, barring another Laker disaster from downtown.

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(2) Los Angeles Clippers vs. (7) Dallas Mavericks; series tied, 1-1

Los Angeles: In some ways, this has been a perfectly fine defensive series for them. Dallas has been forced into a lot of mid-range looks they don’t normally want, the Clippers are winning the battle on both the boards and on turnovers, and fouls have been fairly even. But when you’re playing a team that has the ability to shoot way over what’s expected, you’ve got to match it on your own end, and the Clippers largely haven’t thus far. Kawhi has been as awesome as anyone would’ve hoped: 64 points, 22 rebounds. Lou Williams has 37 off the bench, Marcus Morris, 33. Everyone else has been varying shades of disappointing. Paul George is an embarrassing 14-for-39 this series, including a brutal 6-for-21 from three. Reggie Jackson, God only knows why, has played 43 minutes and is shooting 1-for-8 on twos. Ivica Zubac needs more minutes, but he hasn’t been the defensive stopper Los Angeles normally gets and has needed.

On the whole, the Clippers have a few kinks they’ve got to work out, but I imagine that they still feel fairly confident they can get out of this series and onto the second round. Kawhi looks like Playoff Kawhi, and when Patrick Beverley is back, they’ll be able to have the perimeter defense they need to slow Dallas down from downtown. Offensively, they need to find a way to up the quality of shots they’re getting. Dallas doesn’t have a very good defense, but the Clippers have settled for a lot of less-optimal shorter mid-range looks and haven’t gotten to the rim at the level I personally would’ve expected. Just 27.9% of Clipper shots have come at the rim so far, 3.5% below their regular season rate. On the flip side, they’ve taken considerably more threes than usual and haven’t hit them as well as you’d expect, going 17-for-56 on non-corner threes. Kawhi and PG are a combined 8-for-30 on these looks, and I know they’re better than that.

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Dallas: The argument that Dallas could be up 2-0 in this series right now does hold some merit. Obviously, they were up by five points in Game 1 before Porzingis was unfairly ejected, and they dominated all of Game 2 when he was in. That being said, a 1-1 series is probably fair. The Clippers forced a lot of Dallas misses in the second half of Game 1 that likely wouldn’t have changed much had Porzingis been in; no ejection would’ve changed the outcome of Game 2. The funny thing about this series thus far is that Dallas really hasn’t gotten a ton of great shots. Per PBPStats, their Shot Quality measurement has been right at 50% in both games, and they actually got considerably more combined rim/three-point attempts in Game 1.

In Game 2, though, they lit it up on longer mid-range shots (8-for-13 on 14+ foot attempts) and took way more advantage of the threes they got, going 13-for-29 after a 15-for-43 performance in Game 1. Luka continues to be at the wheel of this series. He’s hitting more threes than expected, and I think that’ll fall, but more important is that he’s using the gravity he draws to find tons of open shooters. Obviously, the Game 2 bench performances were awesome, but Dallas can’t expect that every night. What they can expect is for Luka to force his way to the rim and, if he demands a double team, pass out of it for an open shot. It’s a simple gravity game, and time will tell how well it works. Perhaps we all shouldn’t have collectively underrated the team with the third-best margin of victory in the West this season?

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(3) Denver Nuggets vs. (6) Utah Jazz; series tied, 1-1

Denver: The Nuggets possess the second-best offense so far, with three players dropping 20+ points per game and the team as a whole shooting over 50% from downtown. (35-for-68, to be exact.) This has been a wild series that’s suddenly turned into the most entertaining series in the bubble. Nikola Jokic is doing his normal stuff, going for 57 points and 21 rebounds, but it’s been Jamal Murray’s emergence that has lifted Denver. Murray’s 34 points in Game 1 and complete dominance of the fourth quarter and overtime got Denver over the top on a night where they had no one to stop Donovan Mitchell.

If the Nuggets had Will Barton or especially Gary Harris available, their defense would look far less hopeless than it has so far. Harris is the team’s best perimeter defender and almost certainly the guy they’d choose to stick on Mitchell. The Nuggets still haven’t picked a firm return date for him, but they seem to think he’ll be back before the end of this series. Whether it’s for the best for his personal development may have to be tossed aside; if he can’t come back by Game 4, it may already be too late.

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Utah: Feels like they have to be pretty happy with the way things are, no? You got an all-timer of a performance from Donovan Mitchell in the Game 1 overtime loss followed by a team-wide demolition of Denver in Game 2. Amazingly, through two games, Utah is the best-shooting team in the field of 16…followed by the Nuggets in second place by a hair. I think both teams will regress, of course. Utah’s shot quality is about the same as it was in the regular season, but the difference is pretty easy to spot: the Jazz are taking and making a ton of non-corner threes.

Through just two games, Utah is 26-for-67 on these three-point attempts, with Mitchell and Joe Ingles combining to go an absurd 18-for-39. (The rest of the Jazz, just for clarity, are 8-for-28.) Mitchell’s 87 points through two games almost undersells just how insanely good he’s been in the bubble; it might very well be the best two-game stretch of his entire career. Couple that with an unusually efficient Jordan Clarkson and Rudy Gobert scoring more than usual and you’ve got the best offense in the playoffs thus far.

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(4) Houston Rockets vs. (5) Oklahoma City Thunder; Rockets lead, 2-0

Houston: How about that? A team with no Westbrook, largely underrated in terms of their potential, comes out and beats the trendy Thunder by double-digits in both games. Most remarkably to me, the Rockets survived a 42-minute dud from James Harden in Game 2 by having several really good performances surrounding him. The key to this team all along has been its supporting cast: when Harden creates open shots for them, will they hit them? Two games in, the answer is starting to look pretty positive. The non-Harden Rockets are 31-for-84 from three (36.9%), about 2.7% ahead of where they were in the regular season. Couple that with Houston playing really tough, consistent defense and forcing several bad Thunder turnovers.

Suddenly, you’ve got a team that has one of the five best players in basketball, a supporting cast capable of hitting 15+ threes in one game, and a defense willing to do what it takes to be one of the ten best in the sport. Sounds fairly dangerous, no?

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Oklahoma City: What was supposed to be a coming-out party for this overachieving roster has turned into a two-game disaster, and it might get even worse with Russell Westbrook’s impending return. The shorthanded and, well, short Rockets have thoroughly owned Oklahoma City through two games, leaving the Thunder no room to breathe on either side of the court. While we knew Oklahoma City likes to take a bunch of analytically-unfriendly shots, they also hit a lot of them and make them worth their time. Obviously, any roster with Chris Paul is going to be that way. So it comes as more than a bit of a surprise that the best mid-range shooting team in the regular season has been one of the worst in these playoffs. Oklahoma City is 9-for-25 on short mid-range attempts, third-worst in the field of 16. On Paul’s beloved longer mid-range attempts, the Thunder have only gotten off 20 through two games, below what I would’ve expected. Couple this with a sudden emphasis on taking more threes – aside from Gallinari and Schroder, not this roster’s strong suit – and it looks like a roster that’s lost sight of what it’s supposed to be.

On the other end of the court, most thought that Houston would get more than their fair share of open threes, but Oklahoma City would own the boards. This really hasn’t been the case. The Thunder own a small edge in OREB% thus far, but in Game 2, Houston got an astounding ten offensive rebounds off of missed threes. On their OREBs in total, Houston got 14 extra points in a game decided by 13. Unless OKC shoots more efficiently from mid-range or takes a greater ownership of the boards, their lights are dimming quickly.

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