Their long, strange season could mercifully end tonight.
Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. New York’s NBA teams just can’t catch a break, huh?
In today’s SI:AM:
A characteristically terrible night for Ángel Hernández
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It’s about to be the end for these Nets
The Nets’ long, strange season could mercifully end tonight, and Steve Nash’s fate may have already been sealed.
After losing Game 3, 109–103, on Saturday, Brooklyn is in a 3–0 hole against Boston. No team in NBA history has ever overcome a three-game deficit in a seven-game series. Only three have managed to force a Game 7 after dropping the first three, so elimination is basically a foregone conclusion.
This was supposed to be one of the most closely matched first-round series, and the Game 1 thriller portended a back-and-forth showdown, not a potential sweep. But the Celtics have asserted themselves as the superior team—and, crucially, have proven to have the better coach.
As Chris Mannix wrote after Game 3, Ime Udoka has coached circles around Nash all series.
“The biggest mismatch of this series is in the coaching box. Ime Udoka is dominating. This is Phil Jackson vs. John Calipari. Joe Torre vs. Grady Little. Bill Parcells vs. Rich Kotite. It’s become embarrassing. Brooklyn’s offense is a steady diet of isolations. Movement is minimal. They set screens to create switches, but in those situations Boston’s defense doesn’t miss a beat. Injuries to Ben Simmons and Joe Harris have crippled Brooklyn’s depth, but five minutes of Cam Thomas in the second quarter can’t be worse than watching a visibly exhausted [Kevin] Durant fumble through the final minutes.
“Nash’s job security wasn’t in question coming into this series. Now it would be a miracle if he survived it.”
Brooklyn was expected to get some help for Game 4 in the form of Simmons, who was reportedly aiming to make his season debut tonight. But yesterday the Nets announced that his injured back will keep him sidelined. To be honest, the idea of Simmons’s first game in 10 months being a critical postseason matchup seemed absurd from the moment the NBA’s scoop hounds first started floating it. The negatives far outweighed the positives for Simmons. Imagine the hate that would have been hurled his way if he struggled in a Nets loss.
Instead, Simmons will likely make his Brooklyn debut next season for a Nets team that could look much different. Not only is Nash’s future in serious doubt, Kyrie Irving can also opt out of his contract and become a free agent. It’s not farfetched to think that the Nets’ superteam project could be toast with just one playoff series win to show for it.
A quick appreciation for Miguel Cabrera
I’ll have a bit more to say about Cabrera below in the SIQ section, but I did want to take a moment to reflect on his career after he picked up his 3,000th career hit on Saturday.
Because he’s spent most of the past decade playing for some pretty lousy Tigers teams (no playoff appearances since 2014), it’s easy to overlook just how great his career has been. He has won four batting titles, including a triple crown in ’12 and an incredible season in ’13 in which he led the majors in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging.
His production has slowed in recent years, but he’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer. It was heartwarming to see Detroit fans turn out to support him as he chased the milestone hit this weekend. I’m glad he got to pick it up at home. He has two MVP awards and finished in the top 10 of MVP voting seven other times between 2005 and ’16. That’s an impressive stretch of dominance.
The best of Sports Illustrated
In today’s Daily Cover, Jon Wertheim has the story of two former NBA (and USSR national team) players who have been working to help young players escape Kyiv during Russia’s attacks there.
Albert Breer’s MMQB features a team-by-team primer for this week’s NFL draft. … Georgia’s well-respected and highly paid offensive line coach Matt Luke shocked the college football world by stepping down in February. As he told Ross Dellenger, he was just tired of the grind of coaching. … Pat Forde spoke with Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick about the future of college sports as the industry undergoes a sea change.
Around the Sports World
Joel Embiid has a torn ligament in his right thumb but will put off surgery until after the playoffs. … Alexander Ovechkin left last night’s game with an upper body injury after crashing into the boards shoulder first. The playoffs start in one week. …Rōki Sasaki’s streak of 17 perfect innings ended yesterday on his first pitch of the game. … Byron Buxton hit the longest walk-off home run of the Statcast era. … Michael Conforto, the top MLB free agent still available, underwent shoulder surgery and won’t play until next year.
The top five...
… things I saw this weekend:
5. Orioles prospect Dylan Harris’s throw to nail a runner at home
4. Pirates prospect Francisco Acuña’s impressive double play
3. Nikola Jokić predicting the Warriors’ offensive play with 33 seconds left and the Nuggets up by two, leading to a Golden State turnover
2. Kyle Schwarber’s tirade and ejection after a blown call by Ángel Hernández
1. The Canadiens’ tribute to Guy Lafleur, featuring a standing ovation that lasted more than 10 minutes
SIQ
True or false: On this day in 1974, the NFL moved the goalposts from the front of the end zone to the back for the first time.
Friday’s SIQ: Who did Cabrera join in the 3,000-hit, 500-homer club?
Answer: Henry Aaron, Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Willie Mays, Rafael Palmeiro and Eddie Murray.
The club gets even more exclusive when you look at players who also had 600 doubles. Only Aaron, Pujols and Cabrera have totaled 3,000 hits, 500 homers and 600 doubles.
Some prolific power hitters like Barry Bonds (2,935 hits) and Babe Ruth (2,873) fell short of the vaunted 3,000-hit total in their careers. Mark McGwire, who hit 583 homers in his career, managed only 1,626 hits.
Cabrera is well past his prime, but he’s off to a good start this season, batting .319 with two doubles through 14 games after a well-deserved day off yesterday. He just turned 39 last week and is under contract for only one more season (he has vesting options for 2024 and ’25 that are picked up only if he finishes in the top 10 in MVP voting, which is farfetched). He’s just putting the finishing touches on a Hall of Fame career.
From the Vault: April 25, 2011
Todd Rosenberg/Sports Illustrated
In some ways, the 2011 NFL draft was like this year’s. Heisman winner Cam Newton was the presumptive No. 1 pick (and did indeed go first to the Panthers), but the list of quarterbacks available dropped off quickly from there. That’s why Newton was flanked by Blaine Gabbert and Jake Locker on the cover of SI’s NFL draft preview issue.
But when the cover said that choosing between the three was “the toughest call in football”, the magazine wasn’t asserting that Locker or Gabbert were worth being considered at No. 1. It was referring to the task of selecting a franchise quarterback, which was the topic of Peter King’s story inside.
This year’s draft has several quarterbacks who will likely go in the first two rounds (Kenny Pickett, Malik Willis and Matt Corral among them) but no must-have passer that every team is hoping to land. The challenge King wrote about is evaluating quarterbacks with perceived flaws and choosing the one that could blossom into a reliable starter. Here’s how King summarized the knocks on all the top QBs that year:
“Auburn’s Cam Newton has just one year as a Division I starter; Missouri’s Blaine Gabbert is a virtual run-and-shoot passer who’ll need a major adjustment to the pro game; Washington’s Jake Locker was inaccurate in college; Arkansas’s Ryan Mallett is a plodder who might have some off-field concerns; [Andy] Dalton and Florida State’s Christian Ponder are short (6'2") and struggle on some deep throws; Nevada’s Colin Kaepernick will be making the move from the oddball Pistol offense to a pro-style scheme. (Iowa’s Ricky Stanzi also could sneak into the second round.)”
Many of those concerns were valid. Newton proved that a lack of college experience was a non-issue, but only he, Dalton and Kaepernick developed into reliable NFL starters. Leading up to this week’s draft, teams have been weighing the perceived weaknesses of the quarterbacks available. Are Pickett’s hands really too small? Does it matter that Willis didn’t play at a Power 5 school? Has Corral left his interception issues behind in Oxford? It’s unlikely that all of them will pan out, and that’s what makes drafting a quarterback the biggest gamble in sports.
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