Welcome to the GQ Sports Cheat Sheet: your just-deep-enough guide to the biggest sports events on the planet.
The particulars
It’s the NBA playoffs, the annual tournament that decides who will be crowned champion. It takes 16 wins between now and mid-June to secure the Larry O’Brien trophy, but I feel like you already knew that…
How to watch
ESPN and TNT will do the heavy lifting, as usual. Both networks have apps if you’re trying to watch on the go, but they require a sign-in with a cable provider. If you don’t have cable, both are available on YouTube TV, which also streams ABC. You’ll need ABC for the Finals as well as a few primetime games, like Game 1 of Warriors-Kings on Saturday night.
Should I try to go to this in-person at some point?
Of course! For some of the more in-demand locales (New York, LA, San Francisco) tickets will be quite pricey. Same with Sacramento, where you’re paying the “we haven’t been here since Daniel Powter was at the top of the charts” tax. But if you’re trying to catch a game in, say, Memphis or Cleveland, you can get in the door for under $150, which is pretty reasonable for an NBA playoff game. Also, as most Brooklynites already know, tickets for a Nets game are both pretty easy to get and not nearly as expensive as one might think. The official Nets’ website is advertising tickets for Game 3 starting at $59.
The favorite
It’s hard not to like the Milwaukee Bucks. They have a championship pedigree and all the major pieces remaining from that title-winning squad in 2021. They’re the betting favorite in large part because of that cohesion. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jrue Holiday and Khris Middleton still don’t totally feel like they get the respect they deserve for being one of the fiercest trios in the league, and all three are top-flight wing defenders, too. If ballhandlers are able to get past them, human eraser Brook Lopez is waiting at the rim.
The Western Conference is honestly anyone’s guess. The Phoenix Suns’ star power makes them the favorite, technically, but these dudes just haven’t played much basketball together. Kevin Durant is still essentially learning how to play with Devin Booker, as a freakish early-March injury during warmups held Durant to just eight games with Phoenix after his mid-season trade. The Suns also won all of those games, so…
The Golden State Warriors are the proven commodity here, but they haven’t looked like themselves in a while. The Denver Nuggets could very well win the West, but it wouldn’t feel totally shocking to watch them get tripped up by one of the teams with recent Finals experience either. The Nuggets also had a losing record on the road…but so did the Suns, Warriors, and Memphis Grizzlies! Not being able to consistently win outside of your own gym seems like it’d be an issue in the playoffs, but if the other top dogs have the same problem, you might be okay? Again, this conference is bananas.
The underdog
Look, it’s historically never been a good idea to put any faith at all in the Los Angeles Clippers. But hear me out for a second. They have one of the best playoff performers of all time in Kawhi Leonard. They have a head coach in Tyronn Lue who’s already won a championship, and did so as one of the biggest underdogs ever, with his Cavs taking down the 73-win Warriors in 2016. The only concern is Paul George, who will reportedly miss the first round series against Phoenix with a knee injury. George is unquestionably a top 20 player in the world when he’s healthy, so if the Clippers can make it out of the desert alive, his presence would be a huge boost in the later rounds.
Matthew Roberson
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