Daily Dime: The latest on the Finals, LeBron James, the coaching carousel and more

Photo by Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images

Free throw shooting has never been better on the NBA’s biggest stage, and that’s not the only thing to know from our latest notes from around the league.

Editor’s Note: This column originally appeared on Marc Stein’s Substack and is syndicated with permission by SB Nation. To subscribe to Marc’s Substack, sign up here:

1. Free for all

LONDON — No matter what happens from here in these NBA Finals, we can safely issue a rather bold declaration before Wednesday night’s Game 3 in Miami:

Free-throw shooting in the world’s greatest basketball league has never been better.

This was quietly the case during the regular season, when the NBA’s 30 teams shot a composite 78.2% from the line. It was the first time in NBA history that the league average crossed the 78% threshold for an entire season, moving me to write about it twice (including as recently as April 7 here) because I believed that the milestone deserved more spotlight.

Then after all the talk about free throws in the first two games of this series — from Miami making a record-low two trips to the line for the whole of Game 1 and rebounding to sink a clutch 18-of-20 shots at the stripe as part of its scorching Game 2 shooting performance — it hit me that I was overdue to check in on leaguewide free-throwing in the playoffs.

Surely there would be a decline in conversion rate in the playoffs when the stakes and corresponding pressure are much, much higher. Right?

Wrong.

Photo by Megan Briggs/Getty Images
Jimmy Butler’s consistent ability to earn trips to the free throw line and knock his FTs down are significant reasons that the Heat are potentially days away from taking the title back to South Beach as a No. 8 seed.

As the Finals shift from the Rocky Mountains to South Beach, NBA teams are shooting a best-in-history 79.5% from the line during the 2022-23 playoffs.

Eighty percent, people … if you’re cool with us rounding up from 79.538%.

Throw that gem at the sports curmudgeon in your life who bleats on and on about how the fundamentals are a lost art in today’s game.

A few more things I learned in researching this topic through SportRadar … with an assist to my Bally Sports Southwest colleague Mark Followill:

This will be the fifth consecutive season that NBA free-throwers convert at least 78.4% of their attempts in the playoffs, which is better than any regular-season mark in league history. I realize that the playoffs feature only the league’s best teams, which theoretically eliminates some of the league’s worst shooters, but I genuinely didn’t expect the figures to look so good given that so much more is riding on playoff free throws.

The specific conversion rates in recent seasons that fell right below this postseason’s .795: 2019-20 (.788 with no fan distractions in the Walt Disney World bubble in Orlando), 2020-21 (.786), 2021-22 (.785) and 2018-19 (.784).

Good find by Followill: Teams leaguewide are averaging 21.7 free throws per game in the playoffs. That’s down from 22.6 per game last season and close to the all-time record low: 21.4 free throws per playoff game in 1973-74.

2. Surprise, surprise

When it appeared that both the Western and Eastern Conference finals were going to end quickly, I wasn’t really dreading the prospect of a seemingly needless extended wait until the start of the NBA Finals.

I was dreading days and days and days of seemingly endless commentary about how bad the Finals TV ratings would be without a Lakers vs. Celtics showdown.

In the end, of course, Miami ended up going seven games with Boston, which mercifully delayed that discussion about how badly the legacy franchises from big markets would be missed by network executives and league officials for a good week. Then another significant surprise emerged Monday, when it was announced that Game 1 of Miami-at-Denver actually drew a rather healthy average of 11.58 million viewers on the ABC and ESPN2 broadcasts.

The average audience for the Nuggets’ series-opening triumph was thus just down 3% from last year’s Game 1 pitting Boston against Golden State. The Warriors, as you’ve surely heard, have the very popular and watchable Stephen Curry on their team and hold considerable nationwide appeal after winning three championships in five consecutive trips to the Finals from 2015 to 2019.

The NBA then announced Tuesday that the Game 2 audience rose slightly to 11.91 million, according to Nielsen’s figures, as Miami’s scalding-hot fourth quarter Sunday night ultimately dealt Denver its first loss in 28 days and evened the series.

3. LeBron and the Mavericks

What can be bankably confirmed about any LeBron connection to the Mavericks: Dallas is certainly a team, league sources say, that would intrigue the 38-year-old as a potential landing spot if James ever reached the point of searching for a new place to play.

If …

James is a well-known admirer of Dončić — and vice versa — and maintains close relationships with Mavericks coach Jason Kidd and assistant coach Jared Dudley after their championship run together in the Walt Disney World bubble in Orlando to cap the 2019-20 season.

Sources say that the Mavericks, however, have long understood that any chance of actually pursuing a Dončić-and-James pairing would likely require James to take the lead in actively forcing his way to Dallas. The concept predates Dallas’ acquisition of Irving from Brooklyn, going back to when the Lakers were struggling and it appeared James might be getting restless.

Yet no such trade push, with James and his family so settled in Southern California, has ever appeared close to materializing. The last we heard from James, remember, he was dropping hints that he wasn’t even sure about playing beyond this season.

To read the full piece on LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Kyrie’s reported attempt to lure his former Cleveland Cavaliers teammate to Dallas, click here.

4. Welcome to history

My Substack turns 2 years old later this month and today we are celebrating another historic achievement.

Syndication!

Through a special collaboration with SB Nation, today and a week from now, my usual Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza will run on their website as well as mine.

Which also means that the Daily Dime format we’ve resurrected for these Finals will be in both places on two consecutive Tuesdays.

The Daily Dime and especially The Weekend Dime, many years ago, used to be staples of my NBA writing. I wanted to do something distinctive and special (and preferably nostalgic) with my NBA Finals coverage from afar — since I won’t actually be attending Finals games — and my trusty editor Royce Webb suggested we reach back for an old school concept to try it out and see how people like it.

So …

My modern spins on the old Daily Dimes that Royce and I used to team up to work on early in the 21st century — 10 separate items of NBA writing stuffed into one file for peak reader convenience — are running every weekday until these Finals end. Game 7 is scheduled for June 18.

They will also include sprinkles of around-the-league news away from the Finals, like the LeBron item above, so there’s something for everyone.

I get that the planned cadence makes it more of a Weekday Dime than a Daily Dime but … baby steps. This is a mere two-man operation at the moment. Easing back into the grind thus seemed wise.

As for syndicated columnist?

Can’t deny that this old newspaper nerd loves the sound of that.

The Stein Line is a reader-supported newsletter, with both Free and Paid subscriptions available, and those who opt for the Paid edition are taking an active role in the reporting by providing vital assistance to bolster my independent coverage of the league. Feel free to forward this post to family and friends interested in the NBA and please consider becoming a Paid subscriber to have full access to all of my posts.

As a reminder: Tuesday editions, on this and every Newsletter Tuesday, go out free to anyone who signs up, just as my Tuesday pieces did in their New York Times incarnation.

5. Kubatko Special

Some statistical gems from our pal Justin Kubatko and his Substack Statitudes:

In Game 2, Miami became just the fourth team in Finals history to shoot at least 45% from 3-point range (17-for-35) and 90% from the free throw line (18-for-20) in a Finals game. The Lakers did it in the 2008 Finals against Boston, followed by Golden State against Cleveland in 2017 and Phoenix against Milwaukee in 2021.
The Nuggets dropped to 0-3 this postseason when Nikola Jokić scores at least 40 points, tying an NBA record co-held by four other players: Jerry West in 1965, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1977, LeBron James in 2009 and Luka Dončić in 2022.
Denver’s Jamal Murray joined Magic Johnson (1980) and Michael Jordan (1991) on an impressive short list of players to each record at least 10 assists in the first two games of their Finals careers.

6. One opening left

I reported Saturday that Golden State Warriors assistant coach Kenny Atkinson was recently summoned to Toronto for an in-person interview.

It’s believed that this establishes Atkinson as a candidate that the Raptors are still considering along with Sacramento Kings associate head coach Jordi Fernández, Memphis Grizzlies assistant coach Darko Rajaković and Virtus Bologna and Spanish national team head coach Sergio Scariolo.

League sources say that Scariolo was originally scheduled to visit Toronto as early as Monday for his second summit with Raptors officials. Monday morning update after this post was published: Scariolo is now not coming to Toronto this week, according to one league source, with his Bologna team due to begin its Italian League best-of-seven championship series Friday against Ettore Messina-coached Olimpia Milano. It should be noted, though, that Masai Ujiri and top aide Bobby Webster already visited Scariolo in Italy early in their search on top of the three seasons that the trio has already worked together when Scariolo was an assistant on Nick Nurse’s staff.

The level of interest Toronto has shown to date in Scariolo has led some to conclude that he is the favorite, but it remains a struggle to find much consensus.

To read more from my latest on Toronto’s search to fill the league’s final coaching vacancy, as well as fresh interest in trying to lure ESPN/ABC Finals commentator Jeff Van Gundy back to the bench, please click here.

7. Altitude WITH an attitude

Leave it to the eternally stubborn Heat to give me an opening to use the slogan from the greatest video game of all-time — NBA JAM! — in actual NBA Finals copy.

Altitude WITH an attitude.

That’s a handy way to describe the sight of Heat reserve Duncan Robinson, scoreless through three quarters, sneering at the home team in the midst of scoring a crucial 10 points in a span of just 2:16 in the fourth quarter of Sunday night’s Game 2 at Ball Arena in which the Heat ultimately rang up a decisive 36 points on just 19 possessions.

Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post

How unlikely was Robinson’s surge? This nugget gives it some context: Before Game 2, Miami hadn’t won a game in Denver since Nov. 30, 2016. The drought featured seven consecutive losses for the Heat — five by double digits.

And yet eighth-seeded Miami has still managed, in the wake of its first Game 1 loss in these playoffs, to wrest homecourt advantage away from a 50-win opponent for the third time.

Milwaukee ✅

Boston ✅

Denver ✅

8. Predictive text

Before these Finals began, I invited everyone in our Substack community to make their series predictions in permanent ink in a file that was locked shortly before Game 1 tipped off.

Several respondents to the invitation, as a bonus, added some detailed explanations to their predictions.

You can click here to see the entire file, but we’ve also provided a sampling of some of the prognosticators whose forecasts are still looking smart after the first two games of the series were split.

(The comments have been lightly edited for clarity.)

Matt

“Denver in 6. Miami makes me nervous, but am thrilled I get to watch my Nuggets actually play in the Finals. Never really thought I’d see the day.”

Johnny Burke

“Nuggets in 6. I would say 5 but I do think the Heat are a leg up in the coaching department. Injuries and size advantages lean towards Denver — plus the elevation story if you buy into that — so it’s just too much. Then again, we’ve all been wrong before this year, so we’ll see!”

John Steppling

“I hate to go against Miami at this point But everyone still STILL underestimates Jokić. This is one of the great players of this generation. And he’s huge. He takes up space. If it were a mortal at the 5 for Denver, I’d take Miami. But it’s a not mere mortal.”

Eddy Alvarez

“The Heat beat the top two teams in the East … 58- and 57-win teams. The Nuggets had 53 wins. No matter how good Jokić is, one person cannot beat an evenly [balanced] team. Heat in 6.”

Tom Krish

“I give Miami the edge in playoff experience and crunch-time scoring. And I’m not counting out Jimmy Butler and Spo for a fifth time this spring.”

Andrew Abraham

“Nuggets in 6 or Heat in 6 — I will be happy regardless of who wins their first ring.”

Paul Field

“Heat in 7. With the spread-out schedule, time to recover and adjust … Heat experience will make the difference.”

9. The NBA in London

I will be back on U.S. soil in time for Wednesday night’s Game 3 after a quickie escape to England to watch the FA Cup final.

The trip was shorter and more sleep-deprived than usual thanks to the hours I had to keep to watch Games 1 and 2, but I did manage to keep alive my usual tradition of snapping pictures of NBA-related merchandise displayed more prominently than I was expecting in a soccer-obsessed country.

The reason: I am always moved by any hint of spotlight for #thisleague and our game over here given the NBA’s general struggle for coverage and attention in the land of the Premier League.

In Monday morning’s Daily Dime, I included pictures of a store rack at Sports Direct adorned with numerous Zach LaVine jerseys from the 40-42 Chicago Bulls. Today’s offering: A pair of Air Shaqs amid fancier brands even though Shaquille O’Neal last played in 2011.

10. Our theme song

You mean you didn’t know that the Daily Dime actually has a theme song?

It really does, friends.

Sort of.

The Dime was created by my aforementioned former ESPN.com NBA editor Royce Webb, who (nearly two decades later) happens to edit my pieces on this very Substack. He kindly tells people that we co-created the Daily Dime, which is only how it seemed because the ESPN.com NBA roster back in those days didn’t have a whole lot of people on Dime duty besides Royce and me.

At the height of the Dime’s popularity, I was making frequent radio appearances on Dallas’ 103.3 FM, which was ESPN’s audio home in the DFW area for much of the 21st century. Ben Rogers, co-host of The Ben and Skin Show alongside Jeff “Skin” Wade, made a habit of creating home-cooked intro songs for the show’s various regular guests.

And mine featured a wonderful lyric about punching people in the face with Dime goodness.

Please listen to the sample and enjoy: