NBA Weekly Game Thread: Week of May 24th, 2021

Every Monday at 5:00 PM Central this all-purpose thread goes up, and the comments section is where it’s going down. This is your place to discuss all the NBA’s action happening during the week when the Bucks are off-duty.

You know the playoffs are here when the final score disparities have shrunk considerably (even with a small sample size). Only three out of the weekend’s eight Game 1s ended with a final score differential of 10 or more points, and none of those games got to the 15+ point territory. So, what did we learn from this first go-arounds in the 2021 postseason?

Well, first, it’s going to probably be a bumpy ride for a lot of the higher seeds in both conferences. The Jazz are the obvious candidates here with a burst of disturbance around the team’s decision to hold Donovan Mitchell out of a Game 1 that they lost to the upstart Grizzlies. The Knicks, bless them, got Knickstaped in their first home playoff game in what feels like centuries, and the Nuggets are finding out that the Trail Blazers can be a handful even if they are going through their umpteenth iteration of the Lillard/McCollum/Stotts Show. Heck, if we’re being fair you can argue that the Bucks didn’t exactly impress in the first step on their post-season journey.

Which isn’t to say we should draw all that much. History is still on the side of the team with the better regular season record, but with mixed in-arena attendance and a short season, there may be more result variance in store than usual.

But hey, we’ll find out if any of the above holds even a grain of relevance this week.