Ignarus
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Good, thoughtful exploration on this. In so many ways, all of this recent stuff is just another few loads of the same ol' garbage, so it's good to see that people are starting to take it more seriously in the mainstream.
@timthreethreethree @Ignarus Well, I'm still partial to "Danny Green's Revenge," even if the Pacers end up winning. It's just a little bit of a reach, you see.
Can we please irrationally bill SAS-MIA as "Danny Green's Revenge," like there's all this bad blood between him and LeBron from Cleveland? Thanks.
"As a huge Joey Crawford fan, let me be the first to say it: Screw Tim Duncan." ~Nobody, ever.
It took nationalistic propaganda and the threat of nuclear annihilation to get casual fans to care about chess, and even THEN it was all about the players' personalities.
So...
Lacking the funds to start a Cold War, the only way to get Tim Duncan to be popular (against his will) is if he's ACTUALLY a robot, and his engineering team is willing to talk some smack.
Remind me to spend a lot of time rewatching Curry highlights when we're two months into the inevitable 2016 lockout.
We need to say "The Chris Paul System: a VDN Offensive Production" or something of the sort in order to rhetorically insulate CP3 from his coach's vast inadequacies.
NBA fans don't trash the college game as an act of aggression. It's a Pavlovian classically conditioned response to the howling multitudes of idiot college fans that show up in comment sections whenever the NBA and NCAA are mentioned in the same article. Experiencing this enough times causes the coupling of the disdain response that the noxious stimulus (belligerent fools who talk trash about the NBA) naturally elicits to an otherwise neutral stimulus (the mere existence of college basketball).
With time, lack of exposure to the noxious stimulus to reinforce the conditioned response should allow it to diminish to extinction.
Plus, if nobody actually *said* stupid stuff like "College players shoot better than NBA players" and "Yeah, but in college, people play DEFENSE," you'd never hear NBA fans exasperatedly pointing out the opposite. Track the stupidity outbreak back to its source.
I think a big part of it is execution - It's simply harder to execute quickly. The faster a team tries to play, the more likely they are to screw things up, turn the ball over, and just be an embarrassing mess. Why do teams always talk about pushing the pace and then end up slowing things down to reduce turnovers? Because they aren't good enough to play fast and play well. The Suns would have plenty of teams try to play at their tempo, but just fail, and it's not like Mike D'Antoni has been able to execute his offense at any of the other places he's coached.The Melo-Lin-Knicks were just too turnover prone and Melo just doesn't have the court-vision to run a quick, ball-moving offense creatively. Ironically, only after he left and the Knicks signed Kidd/Felton/Prigioni did we actually see his spread offense come to life (and in a stunningly low-turnover fashion).
There are only so many guys in the NBA that can facilitate a great high-tempo offense. And when you've got one of those guys, you also need a speedy enough roster with position mismatches and perimeter shooters to make it happen. Nash had Marion and STAT - two athletic guys for their positions to begin with who got wiiiide open when they played small at the 4 and 5, respectively. Rondo *could* run an offense like that, but the aging Celtics roster often lacked guys to run with him at the wing and frontcourt positions. For the short while that he and Avery Bradley shared a court, they actually had some solid chemistry but Bradley's injuries derailed it. I also don't think Doc tried to run much before Rondo got hurt - the fact that Boston has a functioning fast break without him shouldn't be taken to mean that he's a Marbury-esque ball-hog who will demand the ball in the backcourt and walk it up every single time just to ensure that he controlled the possessions.
A coach with the knowledge and will to do what works best on paper just isn't enough. There's risk to mitigate your expected payout and just like a lot of teams don't have the personnel to be ballhawking, lockdown defensive squads, many just don't have the guys to set the court on fire whenever they get the ball. And even if they do, the coach still has to determine that it's optimal to go all-out for offensive pace - a move that might leave some of his more talented but less athletic players sitting at the end of the rotation.
To make it more difficult, your defense needs to generate opportunities to run. You need to encourage low percentage shots and get rebounds without committing too many guys to the glass, or you need to generate turnovers, a risky business that can undermine a defense. Every player that can get out and run, but doesn't help the defense set up those plays is a problem. Big burly rebounders that aren't quick and don't spread the floor are also a problem.
Most rosters just aren't going to play that well on both ends if optimized for a run and gun offense. You need a great, unselfish PG, a defense that can generate opportunities to run, and you need the athletic mismatches to make all that running fruitful. You also need the maturity and mental discipline to run around a lot without being sloppy about it.
Remember Mike D'Antoni's seven-eight man rotations in Phoenix? It's a demanding style to commit to and even with ownership and management fully behind your gameplan, you're still one role-player injury away from it all going up in smoke.
@UnkleDrew Mavs anecdote-wise, it was their three point shooting that got maximized during their championship run, not Dirk's midrange game. In the Finals, he didn't really shoot that well, and admitted as much afterwards. I'm not saying Dirk isn't a master of the long two; it's just that Miami didn't have particular trouble defending him. The crisp ball movement and hot outside shooting were another matter entirely.
Absolutely with you on Chandler. though I wouldn't label him a specialist. He's one of the league's few great mobile defensive centers and Cuban seems to have made a huge mistake in letting him walk.
Note: 79 points + 11 assists = minimum of 101 pts. So, yeah, KD and LBJ actually DID combine for at least 100 pts.
Spo is having a helluva good time working his way through Doc's Ray Allen strategy guide.
I guess Dwight isn't here because of Pau? If so, reconsider. If Pau starts at Center, they'll stll have an All-Star Center, but then Antawn Jamison starts, which is the definition of "no suitable backup" in the world of defense. Not to be hyperbolic, but if he could move his feet on defense, Lebron might still be in Cleveland.
Also, no KG? Dwight's omission has a logic behind it, but KG anchors one of the league's best Ds and there's clearly no replacement if he goes down. Jason Collins? Fab Melo?
It's good to see Varejao get some credit, and I'm glad to see that Ibaka didn't inexplicably end up in the mix, but the league's various Gasols appear to have earned joint credit for two particularly glaring omissions.
@rubthemtogether The Stockton-Malone PnR is a clumsy reminder of a bygone era, crushed by the raw computing power of our tiny phones.
very good points - the problem with being a game-changing player is that the game learns from you and that's what guys do, going forward.
i still think 92 team has an advantage in size that isn't countered by perimeter dominance, but the historic nature of the team's forming was a massive recruiting advantage. they could pretty much pick anybody and they'd show up (provided that isiah wasn't there, apparently).
but the 92 team would have their hands full trying to match the absurd athleticism today's team has.
So where do those of us that are primarily interested in better understanding what we're looking at fit in?
The game itself is compelling and provides its own drama, well, at least in most of the Playoffs. If one's chosen narrative doesn't actually come from an insightful understanding of what's happening on the floor, one might as well be writing fan-fiction.
Maybe I want to read fan-fiction and maybe I don't, but it's crap if the author isn't being up-front about it.
Derivative fiction can be imaginative and entirely compelling, but in the context of something that's actually happening, it's self-serving and dishonest. There are limits to objectivity, but when a writer chooses to serve narrative over truth, it's historical fiction at best and the writer is obligated to the readers to label his or her work as such.
Interesting how both teams will probably be looking to exploit each other's disparate pick n roll defenses. Here, you point out the Magic tactic for getting Dwight open for post-ups, which uses the exaggerated big man hedging to eliminate the fronting, while the Heat are already exploiting Hibbert's non-hedging coverage for wide open midrange looks.
I suppose the Heat would start really aggressively trapping the ballhandler on Hibbert PnRs to continue trying to prevent the ball from getting to Hibbert. Not sure how well Indy can hit rolling big men under pressure. I kinda doubt they do it that much, given that nobody on the team averages as many as five assists a game.
iirc, @bballsource suggests that Indy can just pass to the top of the arc and hit hibbert rolling from the fronted post-up to the rim.
It's hard to see Vogel using the zone (I can't remember if he did it during the regular season) since it seems so inconsistent with the virtues and vices of his overall defensive scheme. But then again, using effective tactics are what the best coaches do when it helps them win.
So we'll see. Hopefully we won't see Lebron stuck wasting his energy guarding Hibbert in the post too much over the next few games.
...and of course I spelled his name wrong and can't edit it. Darn it, Livefyre.
Reddicks' development has been really impressive. From the Magic games I've seen so far, I can't understand why he's still backing up J-Rich. SVG does a great job with player development, but like with Ryan Anderson, he seems slow in giving guys minutes when they actually deserve them.
Lebrinicle.