Back in 2017, after the Golden State Warriors swept the Utah Jazz in the second round of the NBA playoffs, Charles Barkley went on a diatribe about how boring the postseason had become. “Thank God for the NHL playoffs,” he said during one TNT broadcast. “That’s what I would be watching in the back, instead of some of these blowouts.”
Chuck had a point. It wasn’t just that that season’s Warriors team was in the midst of cruising to a 16-1 playoff record and a second title in three seasons. It was that the whole league was caught in a holding pattern of back-to-back-to-back-to-back Warriors vs. Cavaliers NBA Finals. The NHL, meanwhile, was providing an alternative that the New York Daily News described as “filled with late-period scoring, overtime thrills and on-ice brawls.” In the playoffs that year, 27 different games were decided in overtime, and an eighth-seeded team came just two wins away from the Stanley Cup.
How things have changed. While Barkley has yet to break his habit of keeping an eye on the NHL—during one recent broadcast, he piped up that the Colorado Avalanche’s Nathan MacKinnon had just scored—this NBA postseason has given him, and the rest of us, a lot of reasons to stay tuned in to basketball. One being that playoff hoops has recently felt a lot like … hockey.
You want “late-period scoring, overtime thrills, and on-ice brawls”? Check, check, and … well, I declare “Giannis Antetokounmpo gets into heated confrontation with Tyrese Haliburton’s dad after Pacers eliminate Bucks” close enough. You want anyone-can-win-this parity, visible regression to the mean, and constant discourse about botched calls? All of these perennial hallmarks of playoff hockey can now also be found on the basketball court.
Once upon a time, the main thing that the NBA borrowed from the NHL was the term “hockey assist.” But this year, the basketball postseason has featured greybeards, twin brothers, an interim head coach, a sweet hockey jersey, multiple series-redefining injuries, a guy named Bennedict getting suspended for a punch, noticeable physicality, and an emerging star with a hyphenated last name who grew up in Hamilton, Ontario.
I should stress that this isn’t meant to be a comparison between NBA and NHL postseasons, nor any sort of value judgment on one or the other. (Hockey fans have been providing more than enough of that since forever.) Rather, it’s a celebration of all the ways that these NBA playoffs have reminded me, always fondly and only sometimes with a dramatic eye roll, of the NHL.
For example: puck-knowers will tell you that “the most dangerous lead in hockey” is when you’re up by two goals. Case in point: The St. Louis Blues had a 3-1 lead on the Winnipeg Jets with less than two minutes to play in Game 7 of this year’s first round, only to lose 4-3 in double-overtime! (Winnipeg’s game-tying goal was a left-side redirect with 1.6 seconds on the clock; if that sounds familiar, perhaps you’re remembering Aaron Gordon’s buzzer-beating dunk in Game 4 of Nuggets-Clippers.)
Not to be outdone, in this spring’s NBA playoffs, the most dangerous lead in basketball has, on more than one occasion, been 20 points.
And in both leagues, no series lead feels particularly safe. This spring, NHL and NBA teams playing for the chance to take a commanding 3-0 series lead are a combined 0-4 in Game 3. One of those teams is an iconically futile big-city franchise with a proud ancient history and a more recent history of maybe-next-years. Another of those teams is your! New! York! Knicks!! (I sometimes go back and forth on whether I think the Knicks are more the NBA’s equivalent of the Toronto Maple Leafs or the Edmonton Oilers, a thought exercise that is kind of like watching Dr. Pimple Popper videos.) The L.A. Kings squandered a 2-0 series lead to lose to the Oilers for the fourth postseason in a row—a streak of disappointment the L.A. Clippers have been doing their best to live down to.
The similarities don’t end there. Draymond Green makes Brad Marchand look like a model citizen—and makes me wish the NBA had designated face-punchers (or at least a penalty box). Nuggets coach David Adelman is trying to win a title as an “interim coach,” a feat that’s been accomplished twice in the NHL and just once previously in the NBA. There have been enough “how did that go in?” or “where’s the whistle?!” moments to turn even the most sophisticated fan into a conspiracy theorist. (And that was before the bananas NBA draft lottery on Monday night, which had top notes of NHL lotteries past and present.)
There is still plenty more the NBA can borrow from hockey, like, say, putting a new franchise in Vegas and/or Seattle. (Expansion draft, please!) But playoff-wise, I’d most like to see: (a) the NBA version of Mikko Rantanen’s Game 7 third-period spite-trick against the team that traded him away. Luka Doncic can get another shot at this next year; current contenders are Jimmy Butler, Julius Randle, and Karl-Anthony Towns. (b) A marked uptick in trophy appreciation culture. True, you can’t drink milk/beer/champagne out of the Larry O’Brien Trophy, but who among us wouldn’t enjoy seeing Joe Mazzulla bring the hardware into a CCD class to teach the children about false idolatry, or watching Chet Holmgren purify the trophy in the waters of Lake Minnetonka? And (c) since I didn’t say men’s hockey, I’m also interested in the NBA (and, hey, the NHL while we’re at it) adopting the trollish protocol of the PWHL, where the top team in the league gets to select its playoff opponent. Already, this has resulted in a terrific situation in which said top team is now on the brink of elimination—and is being mocked by opposing fans with “you picked us!” chants! Ottawa … thank you.
May this cross-cultural exchange of ideas continue to flourish in both directions! I want Ref VampCam technology in hockey, and NHL fans chanting “de-fense!” Already, the NHL has benefitted from copying (dare I say, improving upon?) the sunsetting NBA on TNT show for its own studio product. (Liam McHugh is a terrific Ernie Johnson heir apparent, like the Rangers going straight from Henrik Lundqvist to Igor Shesterkin, or the Spurs having David Robinson and Tim Duncan.) Going forward, I’m confident that Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith will one day start a podcast that rivals Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart’s. And now that basketball has “Roundball Rock” back, maybe there’s hope that we’ll hear hockey again in the voice of Gary Thorne. As a Knicks and Rangers fan, I’ve gotten good at dreaming.
Speaking of dreaming, who can even imagine how all of this will end up? Once upon a time, a Warriors-Cavaliers Finals felt like business as usual, an outcome so predictable that it drove Chuck to the Tampa Bay Lightning. But not this time. The 64-win Cavaliers were snuffed out of the playoffs by the Pacers on Tuesday. And the Warriors are down 3-1 and look rudderless without Steph Curry, who has been sidelined with a hamstring injury. The Nuggets-Thunder series, on the other hand, has all the makings of a seven-game classic. (I’m going to regret putting this out into the universe, but … could Russell Westbrook be … Ray Bourque?! Don’t answer that.)
On Wednesday night, the Knicks will attempt to finish off a shellshocked Celtics team that’s fighting for its season after losing Jayson Tatum to a ruptured Achilles. (Are Brunson and Payton Pritchard two of the hockeyest players in basketball? It feels like either of them could strap on a helmet and pretty seamlessly integrate into the Leafs-Panthers series.) And either Anthony Edwards will continue his unc-slaying ways, or he’ll find out the hard way that oldball(s) don’t lie.
Whatever happens, this year’s NBA playoffs has already shown that hockey doesn’t have to have a monopoly on those good old cocaine-motorcycle-helicopter vibes.
In both basketball and hockey, the playoffs can be described as running a marathon on top of a tightrope. Not only does it take an endurance that’s hard to grasp until you’re already gasping for rare air, but the difference between lasting glory and landing splat is often just a couple of centimeters in either direction. One hot goalie can single-handedly save a hockey team in the same way that a basketball franchise lives and dies by its hot hand. One shot is all it ever takes. Lace ’em up—sneakers, skates, it’s all the same—and strap in for the rest of the wild ride. This is the NBA on NHL, and it’s fannnn-tastic.
