The stars of the first week of the NBA Play-offs.
Hi welcome back everybody! Like most of you know I posted about the regular season of the NBA weekly but I am super happy the play-offs arrived and there were so many great games already! Super happy to with this time a year and am very excited to see what will happen and who will be champions this year.
During the play-offs I will post once a week about the top performers like I did during the regular season and I will post about my predictions per round.
So are you ready for the top performers of the first week?!
Rajon Rondo
Let’s start with a big shout out of appreciation for the New Orleans Pelicans! I remember months ago when Cousins went down I was feeling sorry for them. At that point they were playing great basketball and I was afraid they would miss the talent to make up for it and make it to the play-offs. Fast-forward to the end of the season in which they ended with a 21-13 record without Boogie, securing the 6th spot in the touch West.
So what more can you expect? Steeling two games in Portland and pushing it to 3-0 in the series? NO! or wait YES!! They did! Very impressive, therefore I decided to pick two players of the Pelicans as the top performers of the first play-offs week.
You hate or love him but we all know he can play! Rajon Rondo is showing his play-offs effort and talent in this series. Remember the Bulls series last year when they won the first two games as a 8th seed against the Celtics? It was mostly Rondo who stole the show, and this year he decided to do the same!
The first game of the series Rondo dished out 17 assists! Making sure the right people got the ball in the right spots, dictating the pace in the meantime as well. The second game Rondo flirted with triple double (only one assist away) and again the Blazers had no answer to the floor general. By now the Pelicans are up 3-0 and I expect them to finish it off in a 5 game series! Let’s see if they can surprise the Wariors in the next round?
Did I mention Rondo had a double- double in game three? Just saying. Well done Rajon.
Jrue Holiday
We all know the team depends on Anthony Davis and he is showing his potential, some might vote for him for regular season MVP, he won’t win it but he is in the conversation.
Davis will never win a play-off series by himself, like basically no player can. Maybe LeBron is trying but even his team is trailing in the series!
Besides the support Davis gets from Rondo, the great two- way player Jrue Holiday is really helping them win this series.
His defense on one of the best backcourt in the league is great and even on the offensive side he is really chipping in.
Every team would love the have player like that on their team. In this series he is averaging 23 points a game and also helping out with assisting and rebounding.
Victor Oladipo
Nobody wants to play Lebron James in the play-offs because he is the king for a reason! All credits go to the Pacers in this series so far. I was pleasantly surprised with them being a 5th seed. They were a 7th seed last year with Paul George. I know the Cavs are not as strong as last year and I am expecting a other team to make it to the finals (Raptors? Celtics?) but I did not expect the Pacers to hold to Cavs to 80 points in the first game and did not expect them to be up 2-1 in the series.
Victor Oladipo just plays with a chip on his shoulders and admitted that the Cavs owner gave him even more motivation to play great (Gilbert said the Pacers did not got good value in the George trade).
Oladipo scored 32 points in game one, 22 in game two when king James made sure the Cavs would not lose the game. In game three he scored 18 points and got great help of Bogdanovic.
Very interesting to see where this series is going! Can’t see Lebron get stranded in the first round, but they have to be really careful now.
Donovan Mitchell
I can be to the point on this one, when you are able to leave Oklahoma with the series split and your rookie is not showing any signs of slowing down you can be in for an interesting series. Will Utah win the series? I still believe OKC will win this series because of their talent level. But the player of the week of this series just has to be Donovan Mitchell, scoring 27 and 28 points! The only thing he has to improve on is his ability to assist. because they will load up on him heavier so he needs to find more ways to be a danger.
Jaylen Brown
Who else to pick, I expected the Warriors and Rockets to do great and they do not really surprising. You know what I will honor Jaylen Brown! He is playing great for the Celtics, who really needed to find different ways to win this whole season. the Celtics are up 2-1 and things are looking okay for them.
Forget about Middleton’s crazy shot to send it to overtime and Rozier’s great play. To me Brown is really impressive.
Really looking forward to the rest of this series!
What do you think? Who would you love to see in this week’s list? Thanks for stopping by! Back next week with more and second round predictions!
Go Raptors!