Three stars from Sunday’s NBA playoffs
On Mother’s Day, the Indiana Pacers made the New York Knicks call them daddy, while the Denver Nuggets and Minnesota Timberwolves continued to refuse to win a home game. Here are three stars from Sunday’s NBA playoffs.
Indiana Pacers center Myles Turner | three blocks
Turner occasionally has games where he looks like one of the best centers in the league. His combination of shot-blocking and three-point shooting is extremely rare outside of any court with Victor Wembanyama on it. Sunday’s Game 4 blowout of the Knicks was one of those Turner moments.
His biggest play was an impossible-looking shot to beat the buzzer. Once that went in, Pacers fans might have correctly guessed everything was going their way in Game 4, as they cruised to a 121-89 win over the Knicks. Turner delivered three blocks and made all five of his shots, going 3-for-3 from behind the arc.
Turner’s numbers would have been more impressive had Indiana needed him for more than 25 minutes. He got his work done efficiently and emphatically in Game 4, and what more can you ask for?
Denver Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon | 27 points, six assists
Aaron Gordon scored 27 points as his Nuggets evened their second-round series with a 115-07 victory over the Timberwolves, but he did it on only 12 shots. He was 11-for-12, making both his threes and all three of his free throws. Gordon blocked more shots (two) than he missed (one).
Gordon was everywhere Sunday, helping to confound the league’s top-ranked defense. The Nikola Jokic-Jamal Murray two-man game has been huge for the Nuggets, but so has Gordon’s chemistry with Jokic in the post. Rudy Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns have to decide between staying back and risking a Jokic floater, or coming up on the three-time MVP and giving Gordon a path to the rim.
And when Gordon is hitting turnaround jumpers over Gobert, the Wolves defense doesn’t have a chance.
Gordon has sublimated his game to help the team, and after the game credited Jokic for helping him play selflessly. The Nuggets rode that selflessness to a 2-2 tie in a series where no home team has won a game yet.
Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards | 44 points, five assists
In a game where his teammates had trouble scoring, Anthony Edwards delivered a 44-point game. It wasn’t enough for the Timberwolves to defend their home court and take a 3-1 series lead, but the difference in the game was what happened in the short time he rested.
If Tom Thibodeau was still coaching the Timberwolves, we might not see Edwards spend another second on the bench in this series. He didn’t look gassed as he drove on the Nuggets over and over late, but the Wolves couldn’t get enough stops for Edwards’ heroics to matter.
But facing a Denver team that’s regularly getting big scoring performances from three players — Sunday it was Jokic, Gordon and Jamal Murray combining for 81 points — Edwards needs more than 13 points on 5-for-18 scoring from teammate Karl-Anthony Towns. Or better than the 5-for-9 Gobert shot from the foul line, or Nickeil Alexander-Walker’s 0-for-4 from three-point range (1-for-7 overall).
Or he could play all 48 minutes. That might be what Minnesota needs to win again.
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