Nets’ loss does not mean Texas fans should abandon NBA playoffs

The greatest basketball player alive is on vacation … but there is no reason for Texas fans to turn away from the NBA playoffs.

Fans of LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Steph Curry, Devin Booker, Bradley Beal or the winner of this year’s Most Valuable Player award, Nikola Jokić, might argue, but their protest is all bark and no bite. Kevin Durant is the best player on the planet … and when he plays the way he played against the Milwaukee Bucks, there is little room for debate.

Nobody in the NBA office will ever admit it, of course, but the league is disappointed that the Nets lost to Milwaukee. Commissioner Adam Silver and his minions will trumpet the fact that the series between two of the league’s best teams was everything fans should want, and that the league is thrilled that it went to a seventh game — a slugfest that needed overtime to resolve.

Disappointed fans will bemoan the tip of Durant’s shoe turning a potential game-winning three-pointer with a second left in the fourth quarter into a game-tying deuce that sent the game into overtime. Others will suggest that Durant simply was asked to do too much to carry his team and had nothing left when his last three-point attempt — his 36^th shot of the evening — floated harmlessly out of bounds without touching the rim; a pair of Brook Lopez free throws with less than a second left accounted for the final margin in the Bucks’ 115-111 victory.

The NBA didn’t want the Bucks in the Eastern Conference final. Publicly, the league will tout the emergence of Antetokounmpo as a spectacular player, which he is. But with Nets’ loss, a significant portion of the country’s largest television market, and the best pure scorer in the game — maybe the best of all time — is in recovery mode, rather than lighting up TV screens across the country and around the world.

Make no mistake: Antetokounmpo, twice the league’s MVP, is hardly a consolation prize. But at least since James and the Lakers were bounced in the first round of the playoffs, Durant is the face of the league. The game’s best player in the country’s biggest city is blueprint for a wave of publicity and visibility every league wants.

Durant was nothing short of superhuman against Milwaukee [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level3)], including in Game 7, when he played all 53 minutes — the second game in the series in which he played every minute. He scored a game-high 48 points, canned 17 of 36 field goals and shot 4-of-11 from three-point range. With point guard Kyrie Irving watching from the sideline with an injured ankle, and guard James Harden lumbering around on only one good hamstring, Durant was basically the Nets’ only offensive weapon. (Harden scored 22 points, but was hardly effective: he got 10 points from the free-throw line while going just 5-for-17 — that’s a not-so-sizzling 29.4 percent — from the floor.) Everyone on both teams, everyone in Barclays Center, every viewer watching from the couch knew that when Brooklyn needed a bucket, the ball was going to Durant. Time after time, he delivered.

Now, UT fans, imagine Durant’s stat line if the Bucks didn’t have fellow Longhorn P.J. Tucker. The burly 6 foot, 5-inch forward never gets mentioned among the league’s elite players — nor should he. But it seems like every year, his is among the first names mentioned as a trade target for teams harboring dreams of a deep playoff run. 

Tucker’s career has taken him across the NBA and around the world. His NBA résumé includes stops in Toronto (twice), Phoenix (also twice) and Houston before he was shipped to Milwaukee during the 2020-21 season; he also played professionally in Israel, Ukraine, Greece, Italy and Germany. But make no mistake: Tucker is no useless end-of-the-bench vagabond. Like the rest of the human race, he can’t shut down Durant. But the host on KD’s recruiting visit to Austin before his only college season in 2006-07, perhaps more than any other player in the league, embraced the challenge of facing his fellow Longhorn. Tucker repeatedly called Durant “the best scorer in the league” and acknowledged that his goal was to make Durant work for every shot, contest every rebound, and theoretically wear Durant out. 

Tucker plays Durant about as well as anyone realistically can hope to play him. He chased, scrapped and battled KD throughout the series. He leaned on him, clawed at him, and even decked his friend in an inadvertent collision as they pursued a rebound, hard enough that he drew what hopefully was a playful scolding from Durant’s mother, who sat courtside and berated Tucker while her son shot the free throws.

To the casual fan, UT’s presence in the NBA stops at Durant, with no acknowledgement of Myles Turner, Jarrett Allen or Jaxson Hayes. But Tucker is the kind of player who deserves a chance at a victory parade. He was drafted in 2006 and has not won a championship, but he’s a player every team needs: a willing defender and rebounder, a solid three-point shooter and a teammate willing to do all of the dirty work for his teammates. Tucker never gets much credit, and doesn’t come across as someone who wants it.

But he is every bit a guy who deserves it. If the Bucks finish the job and win the NBA championship, it would be a just reward for a Longhorn who has more than paid his dues. [/s2If] [s2If !current_user_can(access_s2member_level3)] [horns3] [/s2If]