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Monday, June 02, 2014
OT: Monthly NBA Thread- June 2014
I estimate only 10-12 Primates care about the NBA, but with our own thread, we won’t detract from what this site is really about: Vladimir Putin’s draft strategy, Stephen Drew’s breakfast, and whether Kevin has taken a material step toward harming Russell Westbrook.
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It looks like the Spurs defenders are going out of their way to not foul Wade, peeling off at the last second when Wade expects contact.
Why? The Heat are one Lebron amazing game away from being swept. What have you seen that causes you to think the Heat have some hidden reserve they can draw on to get back into it? If they didn't deploy that reserved yesterday, don't you think maybe they have simply rubn out of answers.
This looks like dead man walking to me.
They actually won the first 2 games against the Thunder in 2012, and it was part of an overall 20 game winning streak (the final 10 games of the regular season and the first 10 games of the playoffs). But then they lost 4 straight and that was that. Hot streaks can go cold fast.
That said, I'm still not seeing the Heat making this a series. The Spurs were 8 games ahead in the regular season despite playing in a much, much tougher conference, as opposed to last year when the Heat were 8 games ahead in a weaker conference, making them essentially equal (as they showed in the Finals). I originally picked the Heat to win cuz I thought their mediocre (for a title contender) record probably had a lot to do with coasting. Now I'm not so sure. I'm starting to think the Spurs really might just be a significantly better team. No, they're not going to shoot like they did in games 3 & 4 in game 5 (and they actually shot lights out in the 4th quarter in game 1 too, turning a nailbiter into a blowout), but if they return to form, then what? They win by 5-10 rather than 20.
I hope I'm wrong cuz I wanted another epic series like last year, but I think Miami is toast.
I think that because sports are not actually a series of cliches. The Spurs didn't win because they wanted it, or because they shared the ball more, or because any of the other hack reasons. The Spurs won because they hit an unsustainably high percentage of shots. That is unlikely to continue.
True, but we're not talking about an entire season or even an entire postseason. They don't need to sustain it; they just need to play well one more time and that's it. Even if they returned to regular season form, they'd still have pretty good odds to win game 5.
It doesn't need to. This isn't a mediocre team beating a better team by playing out of their minds for a few games. The Spurs are probably a little better to begin with. Throw in 2 or 3 (if you're counting the 4th quarter of game 1) flukishly hot games, and the Heat don't have a chance. They're not nearly good enough to spot SA 3 games and expect to get away with it.
So, in game 3 they should have shot 8 for 20 instead of 9 for 20, and in game 4 they should have shot 8 for 21 instead of 9 for 21, and that explains 2 20 point losses?
Sorry, but you're wrong. One, they're shooting .542, not .600. Second, their shooting percentage isn't being driven by shooting -- they've made six more shots from three than would be expected, but two fewer from mid-range -- it's being driven by one of every three shots coming from the restricted area, where they're 64-92.
They aren't unsustainably hot from the field. They're getting easy-ass shots.
Is back-to-back blowouts in your own joint a cliche too?
I don't know what you're looking at but it sure isn't what I or anybody else is seeing.
I was meaning the last two games. And 70% in the restricted area is overperforming unless you're LeBron.
I was meaning the last two games. And 70% in the restricted area is overperforming unless you're LeBron.
Or unguarded much of the time.
This is the best and healthiest Ginobili has been the playoffs for several years. When he's healthy he really gets the team going because he's so versatile. He's a good defender and rebounder and offense he can play several roles, he's good at catch and shoot, as passer and playmaker, he's a good creating for himself, and he's really efficient. Part of the reason a guy like Mills is so effective for the Spurs is that well rounded players like Ginobili and Leonard to cover for his weak spots. A lot of people talk about how stars make their teammates better by drawing attention away from role players, but the versatility of the Spurs better players I think does pretty good job at that as well.
That's what I was thinking too. They're not shooting ridiculously high percentages and squeaking by with 3 or 4 point wins. If that were the case, I'd agree that the Spurs should feel lucky to be ahead and that Miami was probably still gonna make a series of it. But these games have been beatdowns; reduce the Spurs shooting down to normal levels and they win by moderate margins rather than blowout margins, but they still win. And that's what I expect in game 5 - a more realistic shooting performance and a little more suspense in the 4th, but a SA victory nonetheless.
Anyone up for game 5 predictions? I'm going Spurs by 8 (and it'll be closer than that until the typical free throw barrage in the final seconds).
I'll take Heat by 5.
Word. And the reason they're getting them is they are running a passing clinic in the halfcourt and have the Heat tongues hanging by the beginning of the second quarter.
I'd like some of that action.
It's a system and style difference that we always talk about, and there's never really a right answer to it. If you have one or two really good players, they can carry an otherwise mediocre team, but those two guys can be dragged down by a supporting cast that doesn't support them. You can get a team with talent across the board but no one with profound greatness to center it around. That team can overwhelm opponents, but can also be overwhelmed by singular talents playing at peak levels. Ideally, you get a mix, but that's tough to make happen in this day and age, what with free agency and salary caps. We've seen both types of teams win championships. Right now, the Spurs have talent everywhere playing well, and the Heat's supporting cast just... isn't. I don't think Spo's doing a bad job, he's just playing the hand he's dealt, and the other guy just has better cards.
Kevin, no offense, but you're a cancer on the site and you should have stayed banned.
Well, I'm not the one sounding like a dumbass about the Heat so there's that...
Dumbassery can be kind of carcinogenic...
And the Heat are in something the opposite of that defensively, some sort of horrible slump.
I think it's a perfect storm of a lot of the things everyone has pointed out. The Spurs are hot, and so their confidence grows. The Heat are tired and so their confidence sags. The sagging begets more Spurs passing, more confidence, more Heat fatigue etc.
"I think you're assigning the failure of the entire team solely on the leader. From a practical standpoint, what more should LeBron be doing? There's only so much LeBron can do, or be expected to do, about the fact that Rashard Lewis is starting at PF and sucks, that Wade is running out of gas, etc etc. When a team is this physically and tactically overmatched, there's absolutely no intangible or leadership quality/criticism to be made, IMO."
I agree in terms of being critical of LeBron for the Heat not winning Game 4, when his teammates were almost uniformly awful. But that's not what I was doing. The Heat weren't bad, they were utterly docile. I think that fact is fair game regarding leadership, especially since it's a narrowly focused and hardly withering criticism. This isn't some global putdown; just an observation about his impact on teammates from a leadership role. Some maniacal predecessors would have acted differently, imo, that's all. And he ain't dead yet.
I mean, what would Michael Jordan do in LeBron's place on this Heat team? The Spurs are good enough that him going off for 60 wouldn't be enough to single-handedly do it, so...could he bully DWade's knees or Rashard Lewis or Shane Battier into being 25 again? Or Birdman into being healthy? I don't really see what leadership has to do with the Heat being older, less healthy, and thinner than last year's iteration of their team. If they can't overcome that fact, it won't be because LeBron didn't lead enough. That seems like the macro version of the argument that LeBron should have been able to tell his legs to stop cramping in game 1.
Shaq was not a fire-and-brimstone guy. A guy who runs a Lakers blog also said that this series reminded him of 2004.
As to Jordan and James, when I did my personal player rankings, I had James #1 peak all-time and Jordan #2. Based on the criteria I set up for the exercise, James' versatility gave him the slimmest of edges. However, in my comment about Jordan, I said that he remains the best pure scorer that I have ever seen, and I still think so.
James played great on O in Games 3 and 4: He was 9/14 in Game 3, and 10/17 in Game 4. But what he didn't do was take 35 shots, try to go off for 55 points, and try to win the game by himself. A 29-year-old Jordan might not have done that either, playing with Wade and Bosh...but then again he might have. As to whether James' trying to do that would help Miami...don't know. But I think it would dispel any impressions some may have that James and Miami are drifting gently off to Valhalla.
But, of course, as noted, Miami's larger problem is D. They have a ton of old guys, and they were only 11th in DRTG this year. The Spurs are shooting at unsustainable rates, but it is really not that surprising that they are slicing Miami up.
Except that I vociferously disagreed with that argument. It's not the same thing at all.
The NBA grind is a LONG one. It's extremely difficult to keep finding another gear. No one stops badly wanting to win, but sometimes it's so hard to find the gear. The Heat, beyond the D problems and the Spurs' shooting, just seem whipped. LeBron seems like he can do almost anything, except maybe draw out whatever's left in those whipped teammates. I feel like Isiah and Jordan did that - that's all.
The ESPN 30/30 on the Bad Boy Pistons really captured that well. I highly recommend it.
As other folks mentioned, Anderson and Wade's health has been probably the biggest problem, in theory with a fully healthy team they should be at least on par and most likely more athletic than the Spurs, but we forget that Anderson is actually very old for an NBA player, and they rely on him a lot more than most people realize.
The 1993-1994 Bulls team went 55-27 when MJ first retired in an Eastern Conference that wasn't quite as weak as it is today. The 2013-14 Heat team went 54-28. I'm not saying that that Bulls team were a better or even an equal team to this year's Heat. That Bulls team played well over it's Pythag record, and was playing all out that year. This year's Heat team has been pacing themselves through the regular season.
I do think that Jordan's supporting cast get severely underrated by history and that too little of the credit of the six championships go to them and too much credit to Jordan's mythical aura of single handedly carrying and prodding his team to greatness. Scottie Pippen was an all-time great player who was significantly more valuable from 1991-98 than either Wade or Bosh in the Big 3 era. Horace Grant from 1990-93 and Dennis Rodman from 1995-1998 were better third bananas than either Wade or Bosh with their superior rebounding and interior defense. The Bulls bench had better players than the Heat bench during their respective championship seasons.
I really doubt that Jordan, as great as he was, could win a 7 game series against the Spurs the way they're playing right now with the current Heat team, sans Lebron. And I think Lebron could have won 6 or more rings with the supporting case the Bulls had. And I think that's true for even with all the yelling and bullying Jordan may have done with the current Heat team, and with the lighter touch that Lebron would have brought to the 90s Bulls.
Ultimately, as said by others above, talent wins in the NBA. I think the 90s Bulls supporting cast, despite its rep, was a lot more talented than the '10-'14 Heat supporting case.
Personally I think it pretty much has to be Chicago.
I would say that whatever alleged leadership/character flaws assigned to LeBron as regards to his teammates are vastly overshadowed by the degree to which he makes them better on the basketball court with his passing, getting them open looks, keeping them involved, etc. There are other ways to make players better than hollering at them.
This has been mentioned numerous times before, but I also think that whatever Lebron leaves on the table by not yelling and intimidating his teammates like MJ/Kobe did, he more than makes that up by attracting other players to play with him while signing on for below-market contracts. Of course, South Beach, Florida's tax and bankruptcy laws, and Riley have a lot to do with that as well - Cleveland had a lot of trouble attracting decent players in Lebron's 2007-2010 prime. Nonetheless, I'd rather have a guy with Lebron's personality on my team, than a guy with MJ/Kobe's personality on my team. The latter arguably drove off top level guys like Shaq in '04 and Howard in '13, in addition to many other valuable players.
--
Feel free to list who you think they are, their stats after leaving LA, and how many titles their departures cost the Lakers. Nobody cares anymore, but Malone and Payton, back in the day, actually gave up money to play with O'Neal and Bryant. Ron Artest supposedly came to LA in part to play with Bryant. O'Neal, BITD, among other things, screamed "Pay me!" at Jerry Buss in public, and gained 50 pounds, to help get himself out of town, and then after LA, of course, bounced around from team to team, with some bad vibes at many stops.
As to Howard, Bryant was certainly one of the reasons that he left, among many. Howard stated publicly that he didn't like the D'Antoni hire, and had gone to the FO at the time and asked them to hire Phil. But I think the main reason that Howard bailed is the same reason that Anthony will probably bail New York: the roster sucked and there was no flexibility to improve it quickly. After he left, Howard pointed out in an interview that he is not a young guy in NBA terms anymore--and neither is Anthony, of course. My guess is that if the team had been good, and/or if Paul had been allowed to be traded here, Howard would have stayed. Winning/chasing titles cures a lot of problems. The Shaq/Kobe stuff escalated after the Lakers had won three times and then started to decline on the floor.
Assuming the Spurs win, we are going to see some articles comparing Spurs/Popovich/Duncan to Lakers/Jackson/Bryant, and there will be a lot of focus on Shaq and Howard and on Bryant's contract. It is great for the Spurs that Duncan is playing for 10M, and power to him. OTOH, Bryant would have been taking less money on spec, not to help keep an elite team together, and as Bryant pointed out when he signed the deal, the owners locked out the players to get as much money as they could, so he was going to get as much as he could, as well.
Bryant's deal is really dumb for the team, and has almost no chance to work out, but I blame the FO for offering it, not Bryant for taking it.
Bryant may well be as bad of a guy as his detractors make him out to be, and certainly he played a role in the Howard debacle. But having seen Bryant's whole career, I think the argument that his badness has hurt the team appreciably on the floor over the years is very weak. The Lakers' two Finals losses were to better teams, and Shaq and Howard are guys with issues of their own.
But if the Knicks are smart enough to let him walk, they are suddenly going to be poised to have a future again. They are toast salary cap wise with or without him, but will have a huge amount--shitload is the technical term--of money the following year. And I would guess that Phil will have a plan to spend it.
And they'll be lousy this year and actually have--for once--the draft choice to take advantage of it.
But boy will this coming year be terrible.
More than anything, these finals, I've been shocked at Wade's lack of offensive touch. This is pretty subjective, but I can't believe the number of times he's used his still potent combination of handle, strength, footwork, timing, and spacial awareness to fake San Antone's bigs and get off a clean look at a bunny of a 3' baby hook—and just come nowhere close to making it. I get how a loss of lift will change how that shot comes off your hands; still, on a gut level, it feels wrong that a player as skilled as Wade hasn't been able to adjust to that new reality. Historically, that shot is nearly a guarantee; if he made all of those looks in games 3 and 4, San Antonio's runs aren't as long or as dominant, their defense gets compromised by someone besides just LeBron, and some of those underperforming old guys might start getting open looks from deep again.
Two important caveats here: I'm speculating based on subjective takes, instead of, you know, counting a countable thing; and I've always thought Wade is a whiny whiner with a history of dirty plays, so #### him.
A lot of points there, not all of which I can adequately cover, but here are my main thoughts:
1.) I don't put much weight on Pau's statement. Pau's speaking in a public forum about a co-worker - an extremely high-profile co-worker with a lot of supporters. I've been in that position many times before, and I'm sure many of the posters here have as well. Nearly all people in that same situation will speaking positively of said co-worker even if that he privately has serious personal or professional disagreements with the co-worker. Let's wait to see what Pau says after he's no longer playing for the Lakers.
2.) I have no idea how LBJ/MJ/Kobe are like in real life, but the common consensus seems to be that LBJ is generally nicer and more respectful and that MJ/Kobe are nastier and more domineering. Regardless, there seems to be a general consensus in the basketball media that the type of personality attributed to MJ/Kobe is, all else being equal, more conducive to winning championships in pro basketball as an alpha player than Lebron's personality is. I've never played professional sports before, but I would imagine it's not too different in that most professionals would rather work with, all else being equal, colleagues who are nicer and more respectful over those who are nastier and more disrespectful. If this is wrong in regards to the NBA, I'm open to hearing why that's the case.
3.) I don't follow the Lakers and I defer to your greater knowledge of why certain players left or stayed. Nonetheless, even upon conceding all your points, I would still submit that Lebron seems to have had a greater positive impact in influencing players to stay/join the Heat than Kobe has with the Lakers. (MJ played in an era with very different FA and salary cap rules; hard to make any comparisons here). And I believe that whatever on-court advantage gained through the superiority of an MJ/Kobe personality over LBJ's personality, if there is an advantage, is wiped out by the greater personnel advantage gained by better attracting and retaining players as LBJ has.
4.) All that being said, personalities matter very little. MJ had 6 rings; Kobe has 5 rings and two other finals; and Lebron has been in 5 finals, has 2 rings, and is only 29. Talent trumps everything else far more often than not.
just want to say, I've truly enjoyed and appreciated the give-and-take here. a textbook example of how people can disagree - without being disagreeable about it! again, a tip of the cap.
:)
My team has never played them, so no history. I don't really dislike the team - Parker and Ginobili are among the most egregious floppers and call beggars in the league and rub me the wrong way sometimes, but like half the Clippers (e.g.) are floppers and I don't have the same feeling watching them. I certainly harbor no ill will to the Spurs fans here - by all appearances decent and thoughtful one and all. But when the Spurs are doing well at home, I feel a deep seated (sports) hatred toward their fans. Has anyone else had this experience?
Funny, I have an equally bone-deep (and probably equally irrational) like of Duncan. He's one of my two favorite athletes of the last twenty years, and I'll be thrilled if they win this series.
It's (pretty much) Mike Breen's job to be stunned by everything.
This line of thought has sprung up all of a sudden. It didn't exist prior to this series, or prior to the series being 1-1. And it is truly a ridiculous assertion.
But right now? it's over. It looks like my prediction of the Spurs blowing them out for 15+ is going to come true.
The Spurs have been the much better team all year.
The second half of your statement contradicts the first half.
Yeah, that totally stopped him last time.
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