Round one of the 2024 NBA Playoffs is officially in the books.
We got one lone Game 7 in the first round, a forgettable Sunday affair between the Cavs and Magic. Orlando led early but ran out of gas and shot-making, and the home team won every game in the series.
Corey Brewer once said, after taking a pass, shaking two defenders with a 360, then bricking a shot at the rim, "Coach, I did my thing — but then I got to the rim and just ran out of talent."
The Magic have little to hang their heads about here. Orlando did its thing, got to the rim, but simply ran out of talent. Paolo Banchero is 21. Franz Wagner and Jalen Suggs are 22. These guys balled out, defended hard, won 50 games this season, protected home court in the playoffs and got to Game 7.
And then, they simply ran out of talent.
That young trio combined to shoot 13-of-54 (24%), the Magic shot 19-of-56 on 2s for the game (35%) and Orlando simply couldn't find enough points on the road. Cleveland didn't score particularly well either, but Donovan Mitchell followed up his 50 in Game 6 with another 39 in Game 7, and that was that.
The Cavs would never have won this series without Mitchell's heroics — so where does Spida rank on the NBA Playoff MVP ladder after one round?
There's no such award of course, but there should be! And it's even more subjective and goofy than the regular-season award, given that guys have played a different number of games against wildly varying levels of competition, and that "value" is more subjective than ever given those discrepancies.
Oh well! Here's your playoff MVP ladder top 10, plus a few honorable mentions along the way.
10. Josh Hart, Knicks
Look, it's tough to fill out a ballot of 10. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was terrific, but how valuable can you be in a sweep over a bad No. 8 seed? Ditto Derrick White, but without the sweep.
Damian Lillard was deserving through two games but played only two more. Luka Dončić nearly averaged a 30-point triple-double but really hasn't been that great or that efficient, playing through a knee injury — something to keep an eye on? — and James Harden was a more efficient version but lost head-to-head. Franz Wagner was good, right up until Game 7. Paolo Banchero made shots.
Screw it, Josh Hart.
How does a 6-foot-4 dude average 12.3 rebounds in a grueling, physical Knicks-Sixers series to remember? Hart is quite literally the heart of this New York team, and his 43% on 3s was pivotal, including what was effectively the series-clinching shot. He played 278 of a possible 293 minutes for the round and hit four 3s each of the first there games of the series after not having done so in even one game all season.
Welcome to the playoff MVP Ladder, Josh Hart.
9. Donovan Mitchell, Cavaliers
Mitchell's shooting numbers and advanced metrics for the series leave more than a little to be desired, but it's hard to argue with the production.
Mitchell dropped 50 in Game 6, basically a one-man show in the fourth quarter, then scored 39 in a Game 7 win in which he got basically no help on offense, outside of a brief Caris LeVert spurt that probably saved Cleveland's season.
Believe it or not, Mitchell ranks eighth all-time in playoff PPG for players with at least 25 postseason games. Michael Jordan, Luka Dončić, Allen Iverson, Kevin Durant, Jerry West, LeBron James, Devin Booker and then Donovan Mitchell. Hero ball or not, that's a heck of a list to get yourself on.
Does Mitchell have anything left for Boston? That remains to be seen. He had some real clunkers this round too, and that knee is clearly bothering him. Sunday felt like it was effectively the end of Cleveland's season as well as Orlando's.
8. LeBron James, Lakers
What's left to say about an effortless 28/7/9 at age 39 against the defending champs?
You never know how many more of these LeBron playoff moments we'll get.
Love him or hate him, enjoy watching LeBron James play basketball while you still can.
7. Kyrie Irving, Mavericks
Irving, not Dončić, was lowkey the most valuable Mavs player in their round one win over the Clippers. He scored 26.5 points per game on 51/45/85 shooting, with three games of at least 30 points and one at 40.
Kyrie was the guy hitting a barrage of shots to change the flow several times against LA. His barrage of 3s nearly sparked the best comeback in playoff history, and his efficient shot-making helped get Dallas over the line while Dončić finished an ugly 52% on True Shooting.
It will be interesting to see how Oklahoma City defends Dallas next round. Should the Thunder focus their defensive efforts on Irving first, make sure Chet Holmgren protects the rim and dare Luka to beat them?
6. Tyrese Maxey, 76ers
A star is born.
If you don't know, now you know. Maxey scored a whirlwind seven points in 25 seconds in an epic Philadelphia comeback win that will live on in lore forever, and he was repeatedly the closer for the Sixers with late-game heroics throughout the series.
Maxey averaged 30 PPG for the series and added seven assists, though his playmaking still needs some work, and he very nearly shot 50/40/90 while doing all of that.
When Philadelphia chose to move on from James Harden and crown Maxey the second star next to Embiid, they couldn't have really asked for a better outcome than this.
5. Anthony Davis, Lakers
We've reached the top five, which means this is now the First-Team All-First-Round guys, and yes, the Lakers get two guys in the top 10 even though they lost in five.
Now that we're wrapped, can we admit that while all the Lakers slander was fun, the Lakers actually gave us the only genuinely competitive and fun first-round series out West?
Anthony Davis is the leader in the Lakers' clubhouse for slander, but he was genuinely fantastic against Denver. He showed up night in and night out, with a monster stat line of 27.8 points, 15.6 rebounds and four assists per game.
And yes, he also got outplayed by Jokić for stretches, and yes he had some second-half letdowns, but the Lakers are never even in those games late if not for how great Davis was early. I thought he was the best and most valuable Laker in the series, and he also had his best game in the one Lakers win.
Is Davis finally ready to be The Guy in Los Angeles?
4. Anthony Edwards, Timberwolves
Edwards is clearly The Guy in Minnesota, and he's going to be there for a long time to come, too.
I already wrote an entire article gushing with Edwards superlatives after he slammed the door shut on Phoenix in a sweep, playing outstanding two-way ball and making every play on offense for a team without any other go-to options — and that was before Ant Man and Minnesota went on the road and took down Denver in Game 1 of the second round, which technically isn't even included here for fairness.
Ant Man rising.
3. Jalen Brunson, Knicks
2. Joel Embiid, 76ers
It only feels right to put these guys together after the epic series they gave us, and go ahead and flip the order if you want, I don't really care.
Brunson had four straight games of 39 or more points to close out the series, finishing the first round at 35.5 PPG and nine assists per game to boot. It wasn't always efficient or pretty — honestly, it rarely was, other than the free throws — but Brunson was a one-man offense and made every bucket his team needed in a series in which they needed every single one.
Embiid's season ends in disappointment again, but this time the disappointment feels different.
Fighting through a knee injury he probably returned too soon from, then Bell's Palsy on top of it, Embiid averaged 33 points, 10.8 rebounds and 5.7 assists per game in easily the best and most meaningful playoff series of his career thus far.
He scored 50 in one Philly win and had a 19-point triple-double in the other, and the Sixers finished plus-46 in Embiid's 249 minutes for the series and minus-47 in the other 44.
Did Embiid repeatedly disappear in the second half, absolutely gassed from health and conditioning and literal face paralysis? He absolutely did. But if his team could play even one minute without literally puking all over themselves, maybe he could've saved a little extra energy for those closing moments.
This year's the disappointment isn't in Embiid. He was awesome. This year's disappointment is in Tobias Harris and the rest of the supporting cast failing to support Embiid so we could've watched him play at an MVP level in the playoffs for another couple rounds.
1. Nikola Jokić, Nuggets
Expecting anything different?
Jokić led all players in the first round in both rebounds and assists, despite only needing to play five games. He finished one assist away from averaging a 26/16/10 triple-double, and he carried a Nuggets offense that quietly didn't have much juice outside of him and Michael Porter Jr., with Jamal Murray struggling to find his rhythm really for the entire series outside of the two game winners.
Jokić wasn't even that great in the closeout Game 5. He turned it over seven times, needed 21 shots to score 25 points and really didn't look himself.
Honestly, this wasn't even an A-plus Jokić series, not by any stretch. It was probably a B-plus at best, with too many turnovers, some struggles in defense, a few uncharacteristic mental lapses and even some strange conditioning issues late in games.
All the crazier, then, that Jokić's B-plus series was still better than the best from anyone else thus far.
The question now is whether that's a good thing or a bad thing for the defending champs going forward.
Is it good or bad to have the MVP? Basketball is a team game, and at some point, it takes more than one man — even Jokić — to win four games in seven.
Will Jokić meet his match in the upstart Minnesota Timberwolves? Guess we'll find out in round two.
