How one playoff series ruined their NBA careers forever

How one playoff series ruined their NBA careers forever

The NBA playoffs are when the stakes are at its absolute highest some players embrace the pressure they ramp up their games to a whole new level that we rarely see from them in the regular season that’s not always the case however in fact the vast majority of players regress in the playoffs it

Happens to even the greatest of stars in other cases maybe it’s not the performance itself that altered their careers but the aftermath sometimes a single performance can haunt their careers forever how’s it going folks my name’s Andy and today let’s take a look at three NBA players whose careers got

Severely impacted from a single playoff series Without further Ado let’s begin Joe Harris the 2021 playoff series between the Bucks and Nets was the most exciting the most anticipated series of that entire postseason it matched up a loaded Nets team against Giannis and the Bucks coming off of back-to-back MVP

Awards but still seeking his first championship it was such a fantastic series and most people joke hey if Durant’s feet were just a tad bit smaller the Nets would have won that series and probably the championship however lost in all the noise was the abysmal performance of Joe

Harris now why exactly should we put the blame on a role player well that season Harris recorded the best season he’s ever had he was the best three-point shooter in the entire NBA the dude hit 47.5% of his threes on over six attempts per game outside of their big three he

Was the team’s fourth most important player and usually the third most important cuz Harden was injured unfortunately against the bucks when his team needed him the most he floundered in games 35 and seven Harris shot 1 for 11 2 for 11 and 3 for 10 game three three was incredibly important the Nets

Had a very high chance to go up three games to zero if they won game three the series would have basically been over then this happened pulls back uses the screen back out to Harris four on the 24 Harris has it open two-pointer one go rebound goes to

Holiday in the last minutes of that game the Nets were up 83 to 82 with possession of the ball Durant gets double teamed and he finds a wide openen Joe Harris and a wide open is underselling it there’s nobody within 10 ft of him when he catches the ball Brook

Lopez is not even making an effort to run out to contest him while Drew holiday literally has his back turned as he’s focused on making sure Kyrie doesn’t get the ball Harris pulls up for a jumper and brick to make it worse he stands around for a little bit while Drew holiday runs

Up the court Harris doesn’t even make it back in time and he’s trailing the entire play holiday sees this and realizes that Harris is behind him now he only has one player to beat and he scores the Bucks would win game three preventing the Nets from going up

3-0 after the game Steve Nash was asked about Harris’s struggles and he responded with this statement everyone has off shooting nights it’s unfortunate that we lost the game I’m not worried about Joe Harris at all he’s smart he’s tough he’s an incredible shooter and if he gets the same looks my money’s on

Him there’s the ramp by Lopez comes to Harris who fires and he’s off through b [Applause] LZ game seven overtime with the score tied at 111 the Nets would not score a single point in the last minute as they went on to lose the series in the most

Important moments down the stretch in two of the most important games of this series Games 3 and 7even Harris completely failed the team in the Years following Harris was never the same player again and dropped off immediately after this series of course that’s also due to an ankle injury that he needed

Surgery on but he did make a recovery however fast forward to the 2023 playoffs his last appearance in a Net’s Jersey despite averaging over 20 minutes a game in the regular season he was completely unplayable in the playoffs against Philly averaging fewer than two points a game he shot two for 13 the

Entire series a whopping 15% from the field it’s safe to say the Nets lost faith in Harris and he could not produce under the pressure at this point his career is coming to an end this was a guy who once led the league in 3o per percentage in two different seasons

Shooting over 47% which is honestly insane for his volume after that Series against the Bucks that was the last we heard of Harris he fell into irrelevance and his career never bounced back Isaiah Thomas in a completely different situation for Isaiah Thomas a single playoff series changed the course

Of his NBA career for good but not in the way you would think if we take a look back at the 16 to 17 season this was by far the greatest season of Isaiah’s career he legitimately looked like a top three point guard in fact he was third in the entire league in

Scoring top 10 in the league in win shares and true shooting percentage at 27 years old Isaiah Thomas was at the peak of his Prime and he was bound to get even better then something happened later in that season in a seemingly routine drive to the basket Thomas

Collided with Carl Anthony towns then after Thomas fell to the ground towns fell on top of him at first it seemed like a normal hip injury Thomas was diagnosed with a latal tear of the hip it’s an injury that’s kind of risky there’s the option to get surgery but

Then he’d missed the entire postseason if he did not get surgery and continue to play there’s a chance he’d aggravate his hip even further and perhaps the injury could get worse Thomas being the competitor he is he’s not going to miss the playoffs so he opted to keep playing and not get

Surgery fast forward a couple months later and this brings us to the Eastern Conference Finals this was when he experienced the worst thing he could have experienced in game two of that series he felt something pop he reag grav that same hip injury he suffered back in March forcing him to

Miss the rest of the playoffs little did everyone know this injury was way more serious than originally anticipated in fact the Celtics did not even report this injury to the public when it first came out most fans did not know isaia had been playing through this hip injury

For months and over time the tear became worse and worse it turns out it was so serious that when he re-aggravated this injury it was the beginning of the end for his NBA career the only thing that I would that I would have against Boston I think they

Handled wrong was not explaining to me what the extent of my injury could be if I do play cuz nobody gave me no Insight okay if you do play right this can happen Isaiah Thomas never recovered from this injury and almost immediately his game fell off a cliff now you could

Say if he didn’t aggravate his hip in this series it would have happened eventually anyway and you’re probably right the Celtics got a lot of criticism they knew about his injury and they should have stepped in to force him to sit out even if if he didn’t want to the

Rumors were you know the Celtics either made him play through it or Isaiah made himself play through it it seemed weird that they would trade their franchise star just 2 months after the Celtics lost in the Conference Finals and it was at this point when everyone realized oh

His injury was far more serious than the Celtics were letting on I mean the Cavs kind of got screwed on this trade there’s no way they would have done it had they known his hit problem was basically career ending he was in line for a contract worth over $100 million

But due to the timing of his injury he never got that brings truck that he was hoping for Darren Williams when I was growing up the debate of the best point guards in the NBA was between Chris Paul Steve Nash or Darren Williams Nash was a bit older and

People focused on the CP3 vers D will debate because they were both young upcoming point guards both from the 2005 draft class drafted literally right next to each other naturally their careers got compared they also sparked the Revival of their respective franchises so the two of them had their careers

Linked from the get-go while CP3 typically put up better numbers D will LED his team to more playoff success due to his better Supporting Cast some folks even believed Darren had more upside since he was bigger faster and just a more explosive athlete compared to Chris

Paul however as the years passed at a certain point their careers diverged as Paul became an all-time great point guard while Darren started falling off after the age of 27 it was mostly due to his Myriad of ankle issues that caused his downfall and this was not any more

Apparent than the playoff series against the Miami Heat to give you guys some context this was the year the Nets attempted to create a super team so they had a bunch of Aging former Stars who just didn’t have enough gas Darren was supposed to

Be the guy in charge he was still in his prime after all and his team needed him to step up and play like the Darren we all knew sadly he laid a big fat egg in that series he averaged 11 points a game on 37% shooting this included a game

Where he shot 0 for9 from the field up until this point it was his worst playoff series ever and it was especially bad because the reason the that’s formed the super squad in the first place was to challenge the Miami Heat yet this is how their star point

Guard performed after the series was over both Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett called him out before I got there I looked at Darren as an MVP candidate but I felt once we got there that’s not what he wanted to be he just didn’t want that

I think a lot of the pressure got to him sometimes the media in Utah is not the same as the media in New York so that can wear on some people I think it really affected him this loss to the Miami Heat became a huge turning point

For his career he’s had bad games before but to perform this poorly when the pressure was higher than it’s ever been he shrunk in the moment his former teammates also mentioned that Darren was mentally weak and sometimes would take things to heart and could not handle criticism well whenever anyone called

Him out he crumbled that was why Jerry Sloan quit and the Jazz traded him away the aftermath of this playoff series can be seen in his numbers and his shooting especially got really really bad it’s like he lost all his confidence after that miserable series it still haunted

Him not too long after he got traded to give you an idea of how far he fell fast forward to 2017 3 years later and now Darren was riding the bench on a Cav team that had like no depth the fact that he barely got any minutes on this

Sh shallow Cav’s roster that says a lot about how his team viewed him he stopped caring quite frankly they realized he just couldn’t play anymore it was very apparent in the 2017 NBA Finals Darren played 12 minutes a game but he should have played zero honestly whenever he

Got minutes he was the worst player on the entire floor probably the worst player in history to get 12 minutes a game in the finals across five games the dude shot two for 16 from the field and scored a total of five points that

Wasn’t even the worst of it as bad as he was offensively he was even worse defensively somehow whenever he played the Warriors made it their mission to seek him out and abuse him in every pick and roll in every switch every mismatch cuz they knew he was the biggest

Liability still it’s crazy to see how far he’s fallen in such a short time to go from one of the League’s Premier point guards to to this a laughing stock by the age of 32 Darren was out of the NBA his one and only finals appearance

Would be the last time we’d ever see him play and That’s all folks those were three NBA players who experienced a drastic change in their careers after a single playoff series their circumstances were all different but the result was the same it impacted them so much that they were never the same

Afterwards let me know your thoughts in the comments section can you think of any other players who fit this criteria where one series changed them forever let me know your thoughts thank you all so much for watching I hope you all enjoyed the video and of course as

Always I’ll see you next time Peace

These 3 NBA players saw their careers get ruined by a single playoff series. They were never the same after that. Hope you enjoy!

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Stats and box-scores from Basketball-Reference.com, NBA.com, Statmuse.com, PBPstats.com
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/20595342/nba-cleveland-cavaliers-guard-isaiah-thomas-faces-uncertain-return-potentially-career-ending-hip-injury

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