ARGOMENTO: NBA Face Coverings Online Shop - NFL Face Covering

Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra’s smart game-planning has been a huge advantage in its series against the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA playoffs. "The Miami Heat are up 2-0 in against the first seeded Milwaukee Bucks. They need to win twice more to earn an Eastern Conference Finals berth, a height that no one saw them reaching when they retooled their roster last offseason.

Several of the Heat’s newcomers have been impactful in Miami’s two victories against the Eastern Conference’s best team but one of the longest-tenured people in the Heat organization deserves credit as well: head coach Erik Spoelstra.

Miami’s two-time championship-winning coach has proven to be a cut above the rest yet again. The culture he fosters in the Heat organization pays dividends, attracting stars like Jimmy Butler and developing guys with few, if any, expectations to be big-time contributors at the NBA level into key starters (see: Bam Adebayo and Duncan Robinson).

While the play on the court is always the most important aspect of the game, coaching makes a tremendous difference, and it’s showing in this series. Spoelstra has run circles around Milwaukee’s Mike Budenholzer. Spo’s decisions have put the Miami Heat in a prime position to take the series while Bud’s have cost his team momentum and possibly the outcome of games.

For one, Spoelstra has managed his rotations better than Budenholzer, who still has a reluctance to play his best players through the entirety of crunch time.

Spoelstra has made minimal substitutions near the end of the fourth quarter. By roughly half-way through the final period, Spo has his key players in for the remainder of the game. Budenholzer has struggled with this.

With 5:06 left in Game 2, Middleton picked up his 5th foul. He was subbed out for Wes Matthews and subbed back in with 3:32 left. In that time, Matthews committed a turnover and two fouls, one of which was a shooting foul on Jimmy Butler, who made both free throws, extending the Heat’s lead to eight.

The absence of Eric Bledsoe in Game 1 doesn’t excuse some of Budenholzer’s rotation decisions. Pat Connaughton receiving 25 minutes in Game 1 and Marvin Williams receiving 21 minutes in Game 2 are huge lapses in judgment by last season’s Coach of the Year."

Danny Ainge working hard to make something from nothing "I was out in the yard raking leaves when I found out that Gordon Hayward was leaving the Celtics. I saw the news and let out a audible yelp/gasp. Turns out Gordon is the one raking - to the tune of $120M.

Two quick points on this before I move on. First, that’s absolutely a gut-punch for the Celtics. They lose a core piece of their rotation and a very valuable asset for nothing*. (More on that asterisk later) Second, I don’t know if you can blame this on Danny Ainge. If some random team was going to be willing to give Hayward that much money, he’s right to take that money and Danny is right to wish him happy trails. Maybe we all should have seen this coming based on the “it only takes one” rule.

That’s not to say that Ainge is perfect and never makes mistakes (I really wish he had addressed the bench more last season, I don’t know how he hasn’t consolidated picks in the last few years, his recent record of mid-to-late draft picks has been suspect). I mean, if Hayward was willing to take $20M less to go home to Indy and the deal fell through because Ainge got greedy, that’s certainly an “L” (as they say). That’s a big “if” though and I kind of doubt it played out that way. Charlotte came with the big bags of cash late in the game and that was the end. Good for Gordon and his agent.

Once the Gordon Hayward shoe dropped, it seemed like all was lost. The Hornets weren’t even willing to play ball on a sign-and-trade. Instead electing to waive and stretch Batum (which would have resulted in $9M in dead money over the course of the next 3 seasons). It was the worst case scenario for the Celtics because their options for adding talent dwindled down to using the full MLE and the bi-annual exception.

On that front, the Celtics moved rather quickly. After flirting with Paul Millsap (who eventually signed in Denver again) Boston signed longtime nemesis Tristan Thompson with the MLE. Then they were able to sign Jeff Teague to be the veteran guard we’ve needed for years.

Finally, (and here’s where that asterisk comes in) it seems that the Hornets had a change of heart. They will consider working out a sign-and-trade deal with the Celtics. Which only makes sense because the right kind of deal would benefit both sides. How that deal actually goes down is anyone’s guess at this point. It could be as simple as creating a big trade exception or it could be some complicated 3 team deal with lots of moving parts. Frankly that part makes my head hurt but the cap guys are all excited about it and that’s good enough for me.

So stay tuned for more rollercoaster rides today and in the coming days. This shortened offseason has been a wild ride already but it feels like there’s more drama left to play out."Boston Celtics Face Masks

"Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler went off for 40 points in 36 minutes of play on Monday against the Milwaukee Bucks, securing his team a Game 1 victory in the second round of the NBA playoffs.

He became only the third-ever member of the Heat to drop 40 in a playoff game, putting him in excellent company amidst former Heatles LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, and made headlines after disclosing he didn’t invite any family to the NBA bubble, calling it strictly a “business trip.”

(Virgos will Virgo.)

But despite Butler’s dominating offense and strong work ethic both being a thing of beauty, they aren’t the sole reason that Miami came out on top.

New best friend Goran Dragic scored 27 flashy points of his own, shooting a whopping 60 percent from the field (including 40 percent from downtown) and knocking down all seven of his free throws. He also grabbed six rebounds and dished out five assists, hitting everyone with a friendly reminder of what it truly means to be a well-rounded point guard.

Bam Adebayo also carried his weight (all 250-plus lbs of it and then some), collecting an impressive 17 rebounds, alongside 12 points, six assists and two steals. And perhaps even more importantly, he held Giannis Antetokounmpo to 18 points and 10 rebounds – a modest statline for the former MVP."

Five biggest losers of the 2020 bubble’s NBA playoffs
"The NBA playoffs were a positive experience for some. Plenty of others left earlier than they’d hoped with a dejected spirit weighing them down.
Having previously broken down the winners of the most unique undertaking in NBA history, it’s now time to move to the loser’s bracket of the 2020 NBA playoffs.

Only one true winner exists in any NBA season. That’s the team left with the Larry O’Brien trophy. While silver linings do still exist in the form of breakout performances or unexpected runs, they come in short supply. By season’s end, more are disappointed in their efforts than not.

The premise certainly applies to the results of these playoffs, maybe more so this season than ever before. The bubble’s neutral setting closed the advantage gap between matchups, creating even greater opportunities for upsets, of which we saw several, including the fall of two of the four best records in the NBA.

The disappointments that appear in the following slides come in varying forms. Championship expectations fell short. Bright futures became a touch darker.

Given the sacrifices these players, coaches and teams made by leaving their families to sequester on Disney’s campus, it’d be nice if they could all leave on a higher note than what many did. That didn’t happen and the future ramifications could be costly."NFL Face Coverings

"Almost one calendar year after the 2019-20 NBA season began, the NBA Finals are about to begin between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat. It’s been a long, grinding, tumultuous season with the deaths of Kobe Bryant and former commissioner David Stern, and an all-time footnote in the form of a four-and-a-half month hiatus brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.

The NBA had to get creative to even consider resuming its season, and it did indeed think outside the box in order to do so. As we know now, the league created a bubble environment in Walt Disney World’s Wide World of Sports, and thanks to vigorous testing and quarantining had a perfect record with no positive tests on campus.

The league pulled off something that seemed impossible back in the middle of March when they suspended the season, and along the way provided some incredible basketball. The Phoenix Suns were the seeding game champions with a perfect 8-0 record but were eliminated from playoff contention in the final game of the round.

Performances by Jamal Murray and Donovan Mitchell in a seven-game first-round battle between the Denver Nuggets and the Utah Jazz were nothing short of spectacular, and the Miami Heat’s stifling zone defense clamped down on the Milwaukee Bucks and the Boston Celtics en route to the Finals, while Anthony Davis had a fantastic scoring run for the Lakers.

Not to be left unmentioned, LeBron James had a vintage Game 5 against the Denver Nuggets to clinch things, reminding us that there’s still nobody like LeBron when he has a team on the ropes in the NBA playoffs.

The Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat are not the matchup we expected when the season began, or even when the seeding games or the playoffs began. The Lakers were never worse than the second-most likely team from the Western Conference to get here, but the Heat astonished everybody to get to the Finals."Golden State Warriors Face Masks