Boston gonna lose and scapegoat Brown and trade him, although I think that will be a mistake. Should move on from Mazzulla, who has made worse mistakes than Ham and probably cost them the series - but they might not do that, to save face, since they already extended him and removed the interim title back in Feb. Which was stupid to do, they could have just seen how this playoffs went and then decided.
Yup. Every DLo lineup negative, some massively so. Almost every non-DLo lineup positive, some massively so. Forget DLo's ego, we are so close to a championship - could have won these games by playing DLo less. He can even still start, but needs to be held to 20 min or less if he's not hitting shots.
Yeah it was a great series and set the seeds in my opinion for the spurs dominance over the following two years. Their execution with ball movement and shooting was some of my favourite basketball I’ve seen in the NBA. Ibaka coming back was a really underrated part of games 3 onwards and tipped the scale towards the thunder that just overwhelmed with their athleticism as you said. I think we can win this series defensively and overwhelm them that way - if their shooting settles. They won’t shoot like game 1 every time out and game 2 we almost clinched it. I expect a blow out in one of the next two and a hard fought game in the other during the home stand. If we can hold home court it all comes down to game 5.
Why is DLo such a negative these last two games? What are they doing that Memphis and Golden State did not?
it's weird, too, because both memphis (having killed him before) and gs (having employed him) should have had the best insights into how to neutralize him, but denver's doing a better job. i think it's him. i'm hoping he shows up and puts up a couple big games, because i think their defensive plan is hinging on him being this bad (malone kind of tipped his hand there after game 1). and i don't think we have a counter by sitting him (which is why malone is riding this).
I don’t feel like they’re doing anything special. Maybe they’re targeting him a little defensively? But Memphis and GS did that too, the difference is he also put more points up himself to offset it. In fact I’d say the comments by Mike Malone, are a bit of mental warefare against DLo too. I hope he can get passed it, because we need his shooting and play making.
KCP and Brown are pretty good at navigating screens on-ball screens and they’re both big enough to make DLO’s post-up game more difficult. I think we need to give DLo a few more pure isolation opportunities where KCP and Brown are a little more vulnerable IMO, but if DLo is still struggling tonight it needs to be a pretty quick hook. Lonnie tends to play well in front of the home crowd so we could get by with a Dennis/Reaves/Lonnie guard rotation.
i'm conflicted now. part of the reason us losing to denver wasn't bothering me is that i'd prefer that to losing to boston in the finals (ack!). now if miami gets there, i'll be pretty depressed by a loss to denver, as i think it's highly unlikely miami's smallball can handle lebron and AD, even with jimmy jordan.
i mean...there's not a team in the nba that wouldn't be done with that "big 3". pretty sure everyone assumed vuc and derozan were likely gone. question is whether they blow it all the way up and move lavine before his next knee injury.
They definitely need to move Vuc, I just don't know how you do that and keep your job. They gave up the farm to get him and to bail already is a big stink of failure and incompetence.
