Index – Sport – One of the world’s best basketball players was banned from the Empire State Building

On Thursday night, three teams in the NBA playoffs tried to improve at home after two losses suffered on the road; two of them (Orlando Magic, Philadelphia 76ers) succeeded, but the Los Angeles Lakers easily lost to the defending champion Denver Nuggets at the Crypto.com Arena and fell into a deficit that no other team in the history of the league since 1946 has been able to overcome. So far, 152 teams have been 0-3 in the past 78 years, four of them managed to tie the game 3-3, but all four lost the seventh game.

Let’s start our review in Orlando, at the Kia Center. This was no fairy tale, the Magic recalled the good old days when Shaquille O’Neal and Anfernee Hardaway blew the trade winds in Central Florida 30 years ago. The Magic handed the Cavaliers the heaviest loss in playoff history, 121–83, which was also the third-largest margin of victory in Magic history in the playoffs. Italian-American dual-citizen Paolo Banchero had 31 points and 14 rebounds with zero turnovers after throwing a combined 15 in Cleveland’s first two games.

In Philadelphia, the atmosphere heated up in the Wells Fargo Center after Joel Embiid, the home team’s ace, last year’s regular season MVP, grabbed the leg of his opponent Mitchell Robinson while lying on the ground and knocked the basketball player down. The double penalty came: the judges called Embiid an unsportsmanlike foul, and the social media manager of the iconic New York skyscraper, the Empire State Building, immediately posted the following text on the tower’s website:

The ominous foul looked like this:

Regardless, Embiid played a huge game: he scored 50 points, and in the decisive third quarter, when he scored 18 points, all four of his triple attempts were successful. Embiid is not kidding, back in New York, after the second loss, he declared that they will win this series. By the way, Embiid’s career high is 70 points, which he also achieved in this year’s championship.

In the West, the Denver Nuggets can now feel in the saddle against the Los Angeles Lakers. He beat LeBron James’ team eleven times in a row, the last time the Californians managed to beat Nikola Jokic and his gang was on December 16, 2022. This third game at the Crypto.com Arena was even smoother than the first two in Denver, the visitors were led by Aaron Gordon, who played brilliantly and scored a career-high 29 points in the second half. They already had an advantage of 14 points, by the end they could also afford the luxury of letting them out.

The host’s two superstars, Anthony Davis and LeBron James, excelled this time as well, but since D’Angelo Russell, who hit seven triples in the previous game, now scored zero points by fouling all seven of his field goal attempts, the result could not be other than a simple defeat. However, in the first half, the Lakers led again this time, now with only 12 points compared to Monday’s squandered 20-point advantage.

The 3-0 lead is reassuring, no one has ever been able to turn it around from here. However, the sample is quite large, in 152 cases a team was 3-0 down in the NBA.

NBA Playoffs Round 1

East

• Orlando Magic-Cleveland Cavaliers 121-83. Best pitchers: Banchero 31 (14 rebounds), Suggs 24, F. Wagner 16, Fultz 11, Anthony 10, or Allen and LeVert 15 each, Mitchell 13, Mobley 10.

The score: 2-1 in favor of the Cavaliers.

• Philadelphia 76ers-New York Knicks 125-114. See: Embiid 50, Maxey 25, Oubre 15, Payne 11, or Brunson 39 (13 assists), Hart 20, Anunoby 17, Hartenstein 14.

The score: 2-1 in favor of the Knicks.

West

• Los Angeles Lakers–Denver Nuggets 105– 112. See: Davis 33 (15 rebounds), James 26, Reeves 22, respectively. A. Gordon 29 (15 rebounds), Jokics 24 (15 rebounds, 9 assists), Murray 22, M. Porter Jr. 20 (10 rebounds).

The score is 3-0 in favor of the Nuggets.

(Cover photo: Joel Embiid (Philadelphia 76ers) and Miles McBride (New York Knicks) at the Wells Fargo Center on April 25, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images/AFP)