More than half of the 2025 NBA Playoff First Round match-ups have already been sorted out. In less than ten days of scheduled playtime since the official kick-off of the ‘postseason that counts’, five teams across the Eastern and Western Conferences have already taken care of business, securing a landlocked spot in the Second Round. Two series sweeps, seeing each Conference’s top seed flat-out ridicule their fellow lowest-seeded Play-In Tournament hopefuls (Oklahoma City Thunder and Cleveland Cavaliers versus the Memphis Grizzlies and the Miami Heat, respectively), one giant upset (sixth-seeded Minnesota Timberwolves dethroning the LA Lakers), as well as a couple predictable verdicts, albeit not without late clutch play drama (here’s looking at you, Indiana Pacers—more on this in a jiffy). Amidst it all, there isn’t even a need to front here: our predictions have so far left a lot to be desired—see bracket below; the 19th April Bluesky timestamp is proof…

Were the Nuggets, Rockets, and Knicks to go on to win their respective series tie in the next couple days, that would leave our bracket accuracy attainment rate at a measly 3/8 correct guesses. That’s a laughable 37%. Achieved by guessing that OKC, the Cavaliers, and the Celtics would win their charitable trips to the Semis, no less—wow. Geniuses. What’s troublesome too here are two deadpan implications from these first ten days of Playoff action: our presumptive NBA Champions Lakers are already on their way to Cancún as of 1st May, and this year’s wishful Cinderella story—the unlikely thrusting of the living-breathing scaffolding Milwaukee Bucks all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals—well, ain’t happening either. Nostradamus would be proud of us.

When your biggest postseason’s brag is that you predicted that the defending NBA Champions Boston Celtics reach the Eastern Conference Finals again, you should definitely stay away from sports betting. Frankly, even a 100% correct bracket guesses should, but that’s a story for a different day. And yet, we really believe(d) in our earnest predictions when we first filled them out. Did we go out on a few limbs here and there, just for fun? Of course. Comment this post if you also had the Lakers making it all the way to raising the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy this year. Or if you too were hopelessly optimistic that Damian Lillard’s miraculously unprecedented return from his blood clot issue would be the decisive X factor that could bring a somewhat disgraced franchise to unthinkable heights this season, only to capitulate in a seven-game series loss against the reigning champs.

Yes, they were both stretches, but not entirely unfounded. The Lakers won seven out of their ten final Regular Season games—including a marquee triumph against the top Western seed Thunders—and finished third with their best record in six years (50-32, .610 win percentage). Oh, and they low-key pulled off the biggest blockbuster NBA trade of this century, acquiring Slovenian superstar guard Luka Dončić in a multi-pawned deal that sent veteran center Anthony Davis to the Dallas Mavericks. Also, Austin Reaves was on a sensational ascent. And this might be LeBron James’s last season, so why wouldn’t he do everything in his power to tip it off with at least one last Finals appearance? It all kind of made sense.

Not dissimilarly, the Milwaukee Bucks wrapped up the Regular Season with eight straight wins, that arithmetically pulled them out of the Play-In relegation slump, and officially set them apart enough to lock in the official fifth seed vis-a-vis the unlikely All-American success story of the Detroit Pistons. Considering how brutally disappointingly the 2024/2025 season started for the Giannis Antetokounmpo-led franchise, there was a great deal of new wind in their sail that would have allowed us to fantasize about them at the very least making it past the fastidious Indiana Pacers in the First Round (yup, even we’d have to acknowledge that beating the Cavaliers four times out of seven was perhaps too prohibitive and likely not on the cards for this year…). So, about that Bucks-Pacers series…

On Tuesday 29th April, Tyrese Haliburton and co. officially took care of business by eliminating Milwaukee 4-1 in a frankly pretty one-sided best-of-seven series. Pacers in five. The game ended 119-118 in dramatic fashion in overtime, and while the Bucks would probably have deserved to win the game and force a game six back in Indianapolis after blowing multiple double-digit leads, it’s what transpired in the moments immediately following the final buzzer that took on a whole other life of its own. To recap the succession of events for the uninitiated—right after Indiana clinched the series, Tyrese Haliburton’s father John Haliburton, sitting courtside, entered the floor during the celebrations. He then walked up to a petrified Giannis Antetokounmpo and proceeded to wave a towel featuring his son’s face, before directing provocative remarks at the Greek Freak. Giannis then confronted John, leading to a brief but tense exchange before teammates intervened to dissuade the situation.

There is so much that can, has been, and will be written about the altercation. For starters, the public embarrassment expressed by Tyrese over his father’s actions, indicating in a postgame press conference that he had had a conversation with his father to address the situation while also planning to speak with Antetokounmpo at a separate time. Tyrese’s awkwardness was followed by John’s too, who took little time to issue a forced public apology on social media, acknowledging how his behavior did not reflect well on himself or his son. As if it were not enough, it’s news as of 1st May that after conversations with John Haliburton, the Indiana Pacers front office saw fit to ban Tyrese’s father from attending the team’s home and road games for the foreseeable future. And yet the teachable, noble moment here comes from the former NBA MVP and Champion himself. Let us unpack the complete answer Giannis gave during his own presser after the game, when asked to speak on the incident:

All I’ll say is that I believe in being humble in victory. That’s the way I am.

Now, there are a lot of people out there that can say, ‘No. When you win, you gotta talk shit. It’s a green light for you to be disrespectful towards somebody else. I disagree. I have won a championship. They haven’t. That doesn’t say anything. I’m not trying to minimize their effort, but I remember when I won, my mom, she’s never missed a game from February 11^th or 13^th when she came to Milwaukee against the Knicks, she’s never missed a game. When we won a championship, I remember my mom was scared to cross. She was like, ‘Am I allowed to come and hug my son?’

Except now my brother does media this year. He wants to come back and play, but like, except Thanasis, you’ve never seen my family sit in a courtside seat. This is not something that we do. We don’t. I try to keep my family away from the game.

But losing the game emotions run high. Having a fan, which at the moment I thought it was a fan, but then I realized it was Tyrese’s son, which I love Tyrese – I think he’s a great competitor – he was his dad, sorry.

Coming in the floor and, um, showing me his son a towel with his face. ‘This is what we do. This is what we f**king do. This is the f**k we do.’ I feel like that’s very, very disrespectful.

You know, my dad, my dad if you guys go and ask and learn my dad’s not with us no more. My dad used to come in the family room and was the most respectful person ever. You know when you come from nothing and you’ve worked your whole life to sell stuff in the street and your whole life you’ll be scared of the police of deporting you and sending you back to your country. You have to protect your kids with all means. You create this mentality of being humble your whole life.

To not kind of disrespect anybody, not make the tension high, the emotions high, so anybody can you know snitch on you, say something bad about you. So when he came here I remembered I was like, ‘Dad, why are you so humble? Why are you going to the family room? You don’t even say a word. You sit in the back. Why, why, why are you like that?’ ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry about it. Don’t worry.’ That’s how I grew up. That’s what I had around.

So when I see other dads, which don’t disrespect, maybe if my son play basketball, I might be in the court. I might be the one on the court and like 20 years later you can play this interview and say ‘Giannis, you’re contradicting yourself.’ But we’ll see in 20 years, but I’m talking about right now how I feel. You know having somebody’s that which I’m happy for him and I’m happy for his son and I’m happy that he’s happy for his son. That’s how you’re supposed to feel.

But coming to me and disrespecting me and cursing at me, I think it’s totally unacceptable – totally unacceptable. OK, and … I’m not the guy that points fingers because in my neighborhood snitches get stitches. So I don’t want to say something you know for him to say to get fined or anything, but it’s not respectful. I talk with him at the end and we huh, I think we’re in a good place.

For the record, John Haliburton’s social media handle is @PapaHaliburton. Please. Like, who does that? How much more obvious can the familiar vestibule guised as genuine grassroots support get? While it’s evident that the Haliburton-Antetokounmpo incident has sparked welcome discussions about appropriate conduct for family members and fans during professional sporting events—highlighting the importance of sportsmanship and respect—we claim no better metaphor could be realized to capture the modern day’s delusion of spoiled nepotist entitlement. The kind that involves parents as chief architects of it. And honestly, the Haliburtons embody so much of that. Incidentally, 25-year old guard Tyrese, a two-time NBA All-Star, just won the Most Overrated Player in the NBA award this year in a recent anonymous player poll by The Athletic, receiving 15% of the votes (ironically, good guy in this story Giannis Antetokounmpo finished tenth on the same list).

This story basically writes itself—Haliburton is a non-factor Olympic gold medalist, too. Last summer, he was drafted as part of Team USA’s men’s basketball roster at the 2024 Paris Olympics, where the selection managed to secure the highly coveted gold medal (all the while this season’s NBA Clutch Player of the Year, the New York Knicks’s Jalen Brunson, stayed home to record podcasts…). However, unsurprisingly, Haliburton’s on-court contributions were limited. He merely appeared in three of the six games, totaling 26 minutes—the fewest among all players on the roster. He did not step foot on the hardwood floor in either of the games past the group phase (the semifinal against Serbia and the gold medal game against France). Granted, he was a good sport about it all, tipping off the experience with legitimately funny humor on social media (posting ‘When you ain’t do nun on the group project and still get an A‘). But this also kind of makes sense. Doesn’t it?

Go back to Giannis’ integrity lesson for a second. Re-read it in full. This doesn’t all happen in a vacuum. John Haliburton doesn’t walk up to Giannis with hostility at the buzzer, before even hugging his own game-winning shooter son, had he and Tyrese not perfected the gold digging upwards mobility of ‘take your dad to work’ models. Heritage, respect, and sacrifice typically don’t fail people in moments of need. They don’t get washed away by ’emotions’. They either pre-exist, or they don’t. The Nigerian-Greek power forward is obviously one of the greatest basketball players of all time. Arguably the greatest and most incisive player of the last decade. Since his 2013 debut, the guy has been sporting a career average 24 points per game (accompanied by a 55% field goal percentage), with a peak 31.1 points-per-game registered during his 2022-2023 season. As he reminded the audience during the press conference, he is the one with NBA Championship and three MVP titles, not them. Still, Giannis’s most honorable achievement to date might just have come off the court. Yes, Giannis Antetokounmpo is a gentleman, and a damn good basketball player whilst at it.

We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time. Oh and yeah, we do root for the Knicks over here at EMS, but these Pistons man…

AV