The 2026 NBA playoffs are officially underway as all 16 of our participants have now played Game 1 of their first-round series. Most of the time, that tells us very little. We’ve seen nine NBA champions, most recently the 2019 Raptors and 2020 Lakers, lose their playoff openers. If those teams panicked after a single loss, well, we’d probably have nine different hoisters of the Larry O’Brien Trophy. It’s a single-game sample size. We shouldn’t go too crazy.
At the same time, in most cases, this is the most important game these teams have played all season. As Bob Myers once argued, “the playoffs are nothing like the regular season. They are two completely different sports.” From that perspective, this weekend gave us our first real glimpse into how these teams are responding to the version of their sport that actually matters. We’re learning, in real time, who has 82-game players and who has 16-game players.
So let’s dig into those first eight games we just watched over the weekend. What is the most extreme possible takeaway from each of them? Ultimately, most of these overreactions will indeed wind up being overreactions. But a few will contain grains of truth that ultimately prove meaningful as we progress through the postseason and beyond.
The Raptors can’t stop the Cavs
The Raptors faced quite a bit of doubt throughout their strong regular season over how translatable their success would be to the postseason. Their defense’s raw regular-season rank was No. 5, but that was buoyed by how good they were at both defending transition and forcing teams to play half-court offense. Their actual half-court defense, however, was mediocre. They ranked No. 11 in half-court points per play allowed, but only No. 15 against top-10 offenses.
Winning in the playoffs means winning in the half-court and beating good teams. The last person this sort of team wants to see is James Harden, who makes such a sport out of bullying weaker defenders off the floor that an opposing coach, Billy Donovan, was once caught on camera seemingly telling an assistant that he couldn’t use one of his better players (Enes Kanter) against him.
So what happened in Game 1? The Cavaliers scored an utterly preposterous 118.5 points per 100 possessions in the half-court. Harden “can’t play Kanter’ed” both Jakob Poeltl and Sando Mamukelashvili, who were simply too slow-footed to hold up in drop-coverage against him in pick-and-roll. Jamal Shead was tasked with the Donovan Mitchell assignment starting in Immanuel Quickley’s place, but he’s simply too small for that. The Raptors could go smaller with Collin Murray-Boyles at center in an attempt to switch more pick-and-rolls, but he didn’t look quite ready for the postseason. Cleveland torched Toronto for 150 points per 100 possessions during his minutes. Brandon Ingram and RJ Barrett got picked on plenty.
If Game 1 was any indication, skepticism towards the playoff Raptors was entirely justified. They cannot stop the Cavaliers.
The Nuggets don’t need to worry about the Wolves
Everyone knows the lore by now. The Timberwolves stole former Nuggets general manager Tim Connelly to run their team. He proceeds to build a gigantic roster seemingly tailor-made to beat Denver. Minnesota does just that in the 2024 postseason. At best, the Nuggets didn’t try to win their last two regular-season games, and at worst, they actively tried and failed to tank their way out of a first-round matchup with the Timberwolves. Put it all together, and you get the “Minnesota is Denver’s kryptonite” narrative.
That narrative no longer seems to be holding up. The Nuggets are 4-1 against the Timberwolves this year between the regular season and playoffs, and it’s not hard to see why. There are several subtle differences in both rosters that make Minnesota far less imposing to Denver.
- Karl-Anthony Towns was the primary defender on Nikola Jokić in the 2024 series, and Towns now plays for the Knicks. Having Towns defend Jokić allowed Rudy Gobert to function primarily as a rim-protector rather than a post-defender, which is where he’s best. Now Julius Randle is in Towns’ place, and he isn’t big enough for Jokić. That forces Gobert to guard Jokić, who shot 52.3% against him in 2024 and 5 of 9 against him in Game 1.
- Even if Towns was still on the team, Minnesota’s strategy was based on Gobert nominally guarding Aaron Gordon, but mostly hanging around the basket. Well, Gordon has grown into a reliable 3-point shooter since then. Christian Braun is theoretically a similarly shaky shooter, but he’s historically at least been good on the wide-open looks he’s actually willing to take. He made two of his three triples in Saturday’s Game 1 win. Denver’s offense is just more imposing now than it used to be.
- Jamal Murray was held below 16 points per game in the first six games of the 2024 series, but Nickeil Alexander-Walker defended him on the ball quite a bit in that series. He’s gone, and replacement Ayo Dosunmu just isn’t as tenacious defensively. Murray scored 30 in Game 1, getting to the line at will.
- Minnesota’s offense was great when Mike Conley played in the 2024 series (117.1 points per 100 possessions) and miserable when he sat (100.7). Well, Conley was still a high-level starter at this point. He’s aged into a different phase of his career. He played only 11 minutes in Game 1. The Timberwolves have found no suitable replacement as an offensive organizer.
Couple all of this with the runner’s knee that is seemingly hampering Anthony Edwards and these are just two completely different teams. The Timberwolves just aren’t Denver’s kryptonite anymore, and with the Nuggets peaking at the right time, this series will end relatively quickly.
The Hawks can’t score enough to hang with the Knicks
The Hawks had some of the same profile issues that the Raptors did: incredible transition team, relatively weak half-court team by playoff standards. They were roughly league-average as a half-court offense in the regular season, trended up toward the end of the season, but did so mostly against weaker competition.
So how did Game 1 go? As expected, the Hawks struggled to generate half-court offense. All-Star forward Jalen Johnson shot well from 3, but failed to get downhill effectively, scoring just twice on 10 drives. That probably has something to do with how New York configured its defensive matchups. The undersized Josh Hart took the matchup rather than OG Anunoby so that Anunoby could nominally guard center Onyeka Okongwu but function much more as an off-ball rim-protector. Hart is strong and has a very low center of gravity. He’s not going to get pushed around. But Game 1 was a reminder that Johnson has a long way to go before his offensive game is versatile enough to take advantage of such a mismatch.
Meanwhile, the Hawks weren’t nearly aggressive enough in forcing Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, New York’s weakest defenders, into actions. The tricky part there is that Towns is guarding Dyson Daniels, a complete non-shooter who functions mostly as Atlanta’s screener in pick-and-roll. In a perfect world, you’d run pick-and-rolls between CJ McCollum and Daniels to try to get both into the play, but Daniels is such a non-shooting threat that Towns can comfortably drop into the paint off of that screen. A McCollum pull-up 3 isn’t exactly a bad shot, but it’s not, say, a Damian Lillard 3 either. The Hawks just don’t have ball-handlers that are going to consistently draw help and create advantages.
Now, Okongwu is questionable for Game 2 with a knee inflammation. His shooting at center is vital for Atlanta offensively as a cover for Dyson’s limitations. If he’s out, it’s just hard to imagine the Hawks keeping up with the Knicks offensively.
The Rockets’ offense is so broken that it requires a substantial change
Yes, I know. Kevin Durant, Steven Adams and Fred VanVleet all missed the Rockets’ Game 1 loss vs. the Lakers. And yes, I know, for a variety of reasons, this Rockets roster was built with all three specifically in mind. But Adams and VanVleet are 32 with serious health concerns, and Durant is 37. They’re important here and now, but there’s a whole young core here that’s supposed to be leading this team into the future and a coaching staff that’s supposed to be scheming to their strengths. They tanked three whole years to put themselves in this position. What does it say about them that even after all of that, they couldn’t reach triple digits against the lowly Laker defense?
Some of this is on the players. Some of it is on the coaches. Alperen Sengun‘s finishing has been a persistent issue for two years now. The Rockets barely used him in pick-and-roll with Reed Sheppard in Game 1, instead forcing him to create ugly hook after ugly hook. Amen Thompson does a number of things well, but he’s still a non-shooter. Why can’t the Rockets find better ways to create downhill runways for him? Why is there seemingly so little movement in Ime Udoka’s system?
Durant will hopefully be back in this series. Adams and VanVleet, next season. But they’re already playing on borrowed time here. Houston’s future, its real, long-term future, rests on players who aren’t developing quickly enough and a coach who isn’t finding effective ways to use them. The flags here are as red as the Rockets logo. Whether it’s a coaching change or the addition or subtraction of a young, core player, this Houston group is never going to score enough to win it all.
The Celtics have the NBA’s best duo again
Jaylen Brown was in the MVP race early in the season, but his shooting fell off as the year progressed. Jayson Tatum made his miraculous return from a torn Achilles in less than 10 months, but his shooting was up-and-down as well, and he hadn’t been stress-tested against playoff intensity yet. The supporting structure is so strong. Joe Mazzulla is headed for Coach of the Year. If you were looking for reasons to lean on, say, Nikola Jokić and Jamal Murray, or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or Victor Wembanyama with either of their sidekicks, you could’ve found one.
Then you actually watch a playoff game and are reminded just how obscenely powerful having two wings like this can really be. Brown’s scoring growth was on full display as he made mincemeat of Paul George in Boston’s Game 1 blowout over the 76ers. Tatum is getting more comfortable attacking the basket, and he’s so big and strong that very few defenders can bother his midrange jumper. Brown’s on-ball defense is ferocious. Tatum’s versatility is as strong as ever, and his rebounding and playmaking have exceeded any reasonable expectation since his return.
There might be better purely offensive duos. There might be deeper groups of stars. But Tatum and Brown at their best, doing this on both ends at the scarcest position in basketball, are able to affect games in ways no other duo can.
The Thunder are sweeping the first two rounds
We’ve greatly underestimated the Thunder. They didn’t chase the wins record like we thought they might early on. That’s mostly because they didn’t have their full team for most of the year. Only three players on the whole team played 60 games this season, and not coincidentally, more than half of their losses came in the run from New Year’s Day through the All-Star break when they were at their most medically vulnerable.
Well, the Thunder are healthy now, and they are absolutely terrifying. The Suns didn’t stress them for a single second of their playoff opener on Sunday. Phoenix players not named Devin Booker or Jalen Green shot 30% from the floor as OKC dominated. Their possible second-round opponents are a Lakers team they swept by an average of 29.5 points in the regular season and a Rockets team that lost to those banged-up Lakers in Game 1 of their own series. San Antonio and Denver are the only Western Conference teams worthy of sharing the floor with the Thunder right now. The Suns, Lakers and Rockets are little more than cannon fodder. The Thunder won’t take their first playoff loss until the conference finals.
The Pistons blew their title shot at the trade deadline
Detroit’s half-court offensive issues are basically the only knock against its Finals hopes. The Pistons are great at everything else: defense, rebounding, transition, the turnover battle, they just have a hard time scoring when the game slows down. They ranked 16th in half-court points per play this season. Only four teams have made the Finals with such a ranking since we started tracking that stat. Two of them had LeBron James, the other two benefited from a fair amount of opponent luck. If they could just add a meaningful shooter and secondary creator, with Michael Porter Jr. as the most prominent name out there, they’d be complete and ready for a Finals push.
The Pistons took a cheap flier on Kevin Huerter and called it a deadline. It was a defensible decision harkening back to Sam Presti’s “we have to finish our breakfast” slow-play on Oklahoma City’s rebuild. The Pistons wanted to evaluate their mostly self-developed core in the playoffs before considering major, external splashes. The Thunder did that, and it worked out pretty well for them.
So how’d Game 1 go? The Pistons scored a miserable 81.2 points per 100 plays in the half-court in a loss to the Magic, a roughly 10th percentile game in terms of efficiency, according to Cleaning the Glass. They shot poorly on everything except long 2s. Pistons not named Cade Cunningham scored 62 points. Cunningham sat eight minutes, and the Pistons lost those minutes by 10 points, showcasing their lack of secondary creation. The paint was so cramped Jalen Duren only took four shots. They needed more space. That’s part of why Ausar Thompson only played nine-and-a-half second-half minutes.
There was no great urgency for Oklahoma City a few years ago. They were so asset-rich and so versatile in the talent they’d accumulated that they could afford to be patient. That’s just not the case for the Pistons. Their deficiency is so glaring and was so fixable that they shouldn’t have needed a postseason to tell them to go get another scorer. They’ll probably still make it past Orlando, but these offensive issues are only going to get louder against the better teams waiting in the rounds to come.
It’s easy to assume that a team this young has an infinite runway. The Pistons will probably be good for a long time. But Jayson Tatum is probably going to be better next postseason than he is now, just based on his distance from that injury. The Pacers will be back in the mix. Young teams like the Hawks and Hornets will grow. We don’t know where Giannis Antetokounmpo will be, but it may well be on an Eastern Conference rival. The point here is that 60-win seasons and No. 1 seeds aren’t givens. You never know how many chances you’ll get, and the field is about to get harder. The Pistons had a real opportunity to set themselves up for a Finals trip this season and they chose not to seize it.
Victor Wembanyama will be the best player in the NBA by the end of the playoffs
What on Earth is a defense supposed to do against this?
I’m at a loss after Victor Wembanyama’s playoff debut — a 13-point Spurs win over the Blazers. What is the answer for the tallest player in the NBA making five 3s? How do you protect the rim from someone who can dunk standing still? One game into his postseason career, Wembanyama is still breaking the game in as many ways as he did in the regular season. Maybe it’ll be more if the Spurs eventually start dialing his playing time up.
There was no need to do so against Portland, as 33 minutes were plenty to decimate the Blazers. Things will probably get harder against Denver and Oklahoma City. Those teams will find ways to challenge him that Portland simply can’t, and it is by no means inevitable that he and the Spurs win the championship this season.
But be honest with yourself for a moment. Imagine it’s late June. The postseason is over. Wembanyama has his first few rounds of experience under his belt. Your life is on the line, and you need one player to save you with a win. It’s getting harder and harder to deny that he’s the pick. There may be a few stumbles in the rounds to come, but once he’s taken a few punches and adjusted to whatever the postseason throws at him, there are simply things on a basketball court he is capable of doing that normal human basketball players are not. It’ll be his league soon, and if Game 1 is any indication, “soon” is coming a whole lot sooner than most of us figured.
