“It’s 10 guys playing on court with 20,000 people cheering in the stands. “This is what basketball is all about,” Clippers forward Nicolas Batum said. 1 seeds, the Jazz and Philadelphia, failed to make the conference finals in the same season for only the second time since 1984.
#TRAE YOUNG SHUSH FULL#
It was the start of an unprecedented, difficult postseason path to the franchise’s first conference finals in five decades, as they became the first team to win consecutive best-of-seven series after falling behind 2-0.īy mid-June, after health and safety regulations lifted across California, a full Staples Center watched as they clinched a second-round victory over Utah. The Clippers began the postseason by losing their first two games at home in front of two-dimensional cutouts of fans. Within weeks of Young’s shush, the Hawks guard hurt himself by stepping on a referee’s foot and reignited a conversation - with the Lakers’ LeBron James among the loudest voices - about how the compressed, 72-game schedule adopted by the league and players’ association might have affected player health, after 10 All-Stars missed at least one playoff game because of injury. It wasn’t the only high-profile playoff absence.
To reach its first NBA Finals appearance since 1993, Phoenix had to endure two games without Chris Paul during the conference finals because the point guard reportedly tested positive for COVID-19. Coaches, players, executives and agents described learning to live with a feeling of near-constant worry about the next virus-related disruption, waiting for Damocles’ sneaker to drop. In 2021, the future meant considering not only the next big trade or free-agency move but COVID. In recent years, the league stoked its popularity by keeping two conversations raging simultaneously - analysis of the present together with speculation about the future.
There was a reason why Clippers coach Tyronn Lue’s buzzword for his team all season was “adapt.” Travel restrictions at the U.S.-Canada border forced the Raptors to trade Toronto for Tampa. At least the Wizards, and 28 other teams, were able to return home. Seven Washington Wizards players tested positive during a four-day stretch in January, leading to a nearly two-week pause. Finally, a feeling approaching normal.ĭuring the NBA’s 2020-21 season that ended Tuesday with Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo raising the Bucks’ first championship trophy in 50 years, such moments could be fleeting, vanishing quicker than De’Aaron Fox on a dead sprint, as the league grappled with the logistics of playing, traveling and living amid a pandemic. It was why one league executive watching the Hawks-Knicks postseason opener play out against the boisterous backdrop considered it something of a full-circle moment. New York was no outlier: Across the league, 440 games this season were played without fans in attendance. Young’s brash call for silence came inside an arena accustomed to it during the season’s first two months: Local COVID-19 restrictions barred fans from attending until the Knicks’ 15th home game. When Trae Young placed a finger to his lips in May after his game-winning shot inside New York’s Madison Square Garden temporarily quieted the raucous playoff crowd that had spent several hours cursing and booing the Atlanta guard, the moment took on meaning only a season played amid a pandemic could provide.
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