Insider article on Hollinger Q&A? [Archive]

CubanMustGo

04-30-2007, 05:51 PM

It wasn't hard to see the signs, provided you were looking for them. As early as the ninth game of the season, I mentioned that the Heat were in a whole lot of trouble and looking nothing like defending champions. Sure enough, on Sunday their season ended much like it began -- with them getting their clocks cleaned on their home court by the Chicago Bulls.

In between there were various streaks and slides and what have you, but the big picture remained remarkably consistent -- this year's team wasn't anywhere near good enough to win an NBA championship. Dwyane Wade was the league's best player for much of the season, but with Shaq in decline and the supporting cast mostly AWOL, the burden was simply too great for him to carry.

Obviously, one of the key culprits was team president Pat Riley's decision to leave the roster intact rather than address some of the weaknesses that had been exposed during the Heat's title run -- the decline of Gary Payton, for instance, or the lack of reliable offense from beyond the Shaq/Wade core.

Instead, Miami's safari summer left the Heat a year older and rather shockingly worse. That's the insidious effect age can have on a team -- players such as Antoine Walker, Alonzo Mourning and Jason Williams were able to contribute far less than they could just a year earlier because their 30-plus-year-old bodies are beginning to wear down.

And it brings up another interesting point -- that throughout his tenure in Miami, Riley the executive has been Riley the coach's worst enemy. He was able to rebuild the team around Wade and Shaq only when he took a leave from coaching to focus on the big picture. But when he's worn both hats he's made self-destructive, short-term-focused moves, and showed way too much loyalty to his veterans -- with the latter weakness being his main undoing this time.

Somehow, Riley has to rebuild his roster this offseason, but it won't be easy. The five-year extension Shaq inked last year helped Miami win the championship in 2006, but it makes it much harder for the Heat to compete in the future because they're overpaying for a declining asset. Ditto for Walker, who was generously compensated in a sign-and-trade deal because Riley knew he could be the missing piece a year ago. Between those two, Williams and Wade, the Heat are already close to the salary cap limit.

MORE HOLLINGER Q & A
Any chance the Mavs come back and put those uppity midgets in their place?

Hollinger: Yes, they absolutely have a chance, because only one of the final three games are in Oakland, and also because Baron Davis is capable of getting injured at any time. But Nellie's underdog schtick is growing tiresome.

What's going on with the Mavs? I don't understand how a team can collapse like
they have, especially after how well they did in the regular season.

Hollinger: The Mavs aren't collapsing; Golden State is playing out of their minds. Look at the run they went on to end the season; this is NOT your typical 42-win team, and if they get past Dallas I would give them great odds of making the conference finals.

That makes it extremely difficult for Riley to work around the edges, because he's under orders from ownership not to exceed the luxury tax threshold. That task only gets more difficult this summer because he's losing his most cost-effective players. Jason Kapono, James Posey, Eddie Jones and Payton all are free agents, while Mourning could decide to hang up his sneaks now that he's already earned his ring.

So, armed only with a midlevel exception and the prospect of good weather, Riley will have to rebuild his rotation on the wings, find a new backup point guard, and possibly a new backup center. Those are the things he has to do; while he's at it, he also might consider getting an upgrade over Walker at backup power forward and finding a starting point guard who can stay in the lineup to replace Williams.

Again, the reason he's left himself such a Herculean task this summer is because he failed to act a year ago. Now he has no choice but to act. But one has to wonder if his inaction a year ago has made an already difficult task impossible.

Wade's brilliance will stem some of the bleeding, but with the core declining so rapidly, one still has to wonder whether the Heat of the next few years won't be much like I described them nine games into the season -- as a warm-weather version of the Timberwolves, with one awfully frustrated great player.

Of course, the Heat aren't the only ones with questions. After a first round that's left lots of us surprised, here are some other inquiries on my mind this morning:

What's the difference between Don Nelson and Sam Mitchell?

Well, I can think of quite a few differences, but one is called "Not freaking out when his best player gets two fouls."

Nelson made the most underrated coaching move of the playoffs last night. Or non-move, I guess you'd call it. With 8:07 to go in the first quarter, Baron Davis picked up his second foul when he charged into Dallas' Devin Harris. The book says to take Davis out for the rest of the quarter; Nelson just shrugged his shoulders and left him to continue wreaking havoc on the court. Davis ended up playing 44 minutes, leading the Warriors to a 103-99 win and a shocking 3-1 series lead over the Mavs. But he could do that only because Nelly allowed him to.

You have to understand what a knee-jerk move this is for almost every coach in the league. Virtually every time a player gets two fouls in the opening quarter, the coach will sit him out the rest of the first quarter, and for good measure a little bit of the second. For good measure, the coach will take him out again toward the end of the first half, because God forbid he use three of his six fouls before halftime.

What ends up happening is rather ironic. The outcome the coach is trying to avoid -- losing a player to his sixth foul -- is effectively guaranteed by him instead, as he diminishes the player's minutes much more than a sixth foul in the fourth quarter could ever do. And as I keep reminding people, points in the first and second quarter count just as much as they do in the fourth.

In fact, that knee-jerk coaching reaction is exactly what Sam Mitchell did with Chris Bosh in Game 1 of the Nets-Raptors series, and it's something he may have all summer to ponder. Playing most of the half without Bosh meant Toronto carried a nine-point deficit into the break, and when the Raptors couldn't make it up after halftime the Nets had the one road win they needed to take the series.

Obviously, there are differences between the two situations. Big men are more prone to picking up additional fouls, and of course players with four and five fouls tend to be less-spirited defenders, so there's some logic to avoiding the situation in the first place. Nelson also had more freedom to gamble, since he knew he'd lose if Davis didn't play nearly the whole game.

But too many coaches go way too far in this respect, so once in a while it's good to get a slap in the face from a contrarian like Nellie. His move went against the book and was a game-saver, and I'm shocked more people aren't talking about it this morning.

Um, who won the Atlantic division again?

I'm told that the Raptors did, although watching their first-round series against New Jersey you'd have trouble proving it. The Nets' second straight blowout of Toronto just goes to show the value of timing. If these two clubs had met in February, it would have been all Raptors. But now? They're going in opposite directions.

In retrospect, perhaps this means we've undervalued the contributions of one Jorge Garbajosa. Losing him to an ankle injury late in the season has clearly hurt Toronto defensively -- that had been the most improved aspect of the team, but it's the one that's utterly failed the Raptors in a pair of humiliating defeats at The Swamp.

Magnifying the loss has been the struggles of rookie Andrea Bargnani, who should have been able to fill in at Garbajosa's spot. Unfortunately, he returned from injury just in time for the playoffs to start and has been way behind the curve, struggling to provide the bench spark he provided earlier in the year.

The other half of this equation is Richard Jefferson. As great as Jason Kidd has been the last two games, it's Jefferson's renewed spark that has been the biggest difference between the postseason Nets and their muddling regular-season outfit. Jefferson struggled with ankle problems all season and posted numbers that were well below his established norms, but in the playoffs he's averaging 20.3 points per game to help take some of the heat off Carter and Kidd.

New Jersey still has to close the deal, of course, and the Nets get one only more game in The Swamp. But based on the first few games, it looks like the Nets have a date with LeBron in Round 2. Can we consider them Atlantic Division champions now too?

Why didn't the Nuggets yank J.R. Smith?

Smith's meltdown during the second half of the Nuggets' Game 3 loss to the Spurs -- which included a backcourt giveaway to Robert Horry that led to an Horry 3-pointer, a rushed 3 of his own immediately afterward, two other misses and repeated defensive mistakes that culminated in hog-tying Manu Ginobili for a flagrant foul -- brings up the obvious question of why he was left on the court to do so much damage.

According to my spies in Denver, the logic here was that George Karl didn't mind losing the battle if it meant he'd win the war. He felt like he'd lose Smith for the rest of the series if he came with an immediate hook, and with Denver's bench already struggling to provide offense he didn't want to get his best bench scorer into a funk.

In Smith's defense, he also brought some positives to the table. Even during that decisive 13-3 San Antonio run Saturday, it was Smith who provided the only three Denver points. He also had a strong first half and finished with 12 points and two steals in 16 minutes -- pretty healthy numbers for a scapegoat, one must admit.

That said, don't be surprised if you see more of Linas Kleiza on Monday night. Karl alluded to the possibility in his postgame news conference Saturday, and one has to think Karl will evaluate that battle-war tradeoff a little differently if he sees his team staring a 3-1 deficit in the face.

What's the Canadian word for Magician?

Here's an underrated fact that makes Steve Nash's 23-assist explosion against the Lakers Sunday even more special: It came on the road.

It's a well-known fact that some home-team scorers can be extremely generous awarding assists to their team's point guard, but for a neutral observer to credit Nash with 23 dimes speaks volumes about the quality of shots he was generating for his teammates. And that doesn't even count the passes that led to foul shots.

Obviously, the 23 is impressive in all kinds of other ways -- it was the third-highest playoff total ever, it accounted for more than half of the Suns' baskets, and Nash was able to spread all this wealth around while making only three turnovers. But the fact it came in somebody else's gym, with somebody else's scorekeeper, only adds to my amazement.

Does the sweep change my opinion of Chicago?

Honestly, not really. Entering the playoffs, I thought they were a close second behind Detroit in the Eastern hierarchy, and I still feel that way. But as I outlined above, what happened in the first round had a lot more to do with the Heat and the unjustified respect the media gave them heading into the postseason (I include myself in that comment, by the way -- I still thought Miami would win twice in six games, after all, but now it's apparent that these teams could play 20 times and the Heat still might not win twice).

Where the sweep changes Chicago's outlook is in terms of rest. With Detroit sweeping Orlando, the Bulls would have been looking at a quick turnaround before a road Game 1 in Detroit against a rested Pistons team. Now that each club has a week to nurse its wounds, the opening game will be a much fairer fight.

This is important, as Chicago needs to steal one on the road to take the series, and the first game is often the best opportunity to do so. Just ask the Pistons -- they lost Game 1 to Miami last year in the conference finals and never got it back.

Where do the Lakers go from here?

Well, Phoenix obviously, since they have to play Game 5 on Wednesday. But after they absorb a 118-96 spanking that eliminates them from the playoffs, what do they do then? It appears L.A. has a lot more work to do than it thought earlier in the season, when a fast start had visions of title contention dancing in their heads.

Defensively, the Lakers are a complete mess, and at both point guard and center they're struggling to get any quality production. Obviously these areas need addressing in the offseason, as does the bigger-picture need to pair Kobe Bryant with more star talent while he's still in his prime. Meanwhile, mistakes like the Caron Butler-Kwame Brown trade and the signing of Vladimir the Snow Flake have knocked them a step back.

That said, don't judge the Lakers too harshly right now. Lamar Odom and Luke Walton aren't 100 percent, Andrew Bynum is going to be a lot more productive in coming seasons than he's been in this playoff series, and youngsters Ronny Turiaf and Jordan Farmar look like the real deal. Look for L.A. to be aggressive in the trade market this offseason to try to get Phil and Kobe more firepower, and if they succeed expect them to be much more of a factor next postseason.

Would the Cavs-Wizards series end already?

Patience, people, it will be over Monday night. But before we write off the Wizards for the year, I'd be remiss in not mentioning Antawn Jamison's performance this postseason. Even though everybody on both teams knows he's the only Wizard who can hurt Cleveland, the veteran forward is averaging 32.3 points and 11.7 boards in the first three games, and doing it while shooting 47.4 percent from the floor.

He's going against one of the league's best defensive teams, too, which makes his effort even more noteworthy. While none of this ultimately matters because his team is so incredibly overmatched, Jamison's excellence in the face of adversity is worthy of our admiration.

Is it all on T-Mac on Monday night?

One of the more puzzling aspects of Houston's two lopsided losses at the Polonium-210 Center this week was Tracy McGrady's inability to punish the Utah defense. After famously saying that it was his responsibility to get the Rockets to Round 2 and end his string of first-round defeats, McGrady is shooting only 36.8 percent from the floor on the series.

What makes it more confounding is that Utah's defense should be vulnerable against a player such as T-Mac. The Jazz's primary defenders against him have been 6-3 Derek Fisher, whom McGrady can shoot right over, and 6-7 Gordan Giricek, whom McGrady can blow past with ease. But his normally reliable jumper has been shaky in the first four games -- witness his 6-for-21 mark on triples -- and he hasn't been able to shake his man off the dribble as easily as one might have expected.

With Yao Ming also having a harder-than-expected time with the defense of Mehmet Okur, it's left the Rockets bereft of offense. They've scored more than 85 points just once in the first four games and are last in playoff offensive efficiency, which is inexcusable when you consider that the Jazz aren't even a good defensive team (Utah finished 19th in defensive efficiency this season).

It's an exaggeration to say it's all on McGrady, of course -- especially since the Rockets' role players have been terrible. None is averaging double figures for the series, and the four most frequent Rocket shooters after Tracy and Yao have been firing up bricks -- Shane Battier (40.6 percent), Rafer Alston (33.3 percent), Luther Head (21.7 percent) and Juwan Howard (19.1 percent) all need to step up their games. Only Chuck Hayes has played well, and his value has come in part because there have been so many Rocket misses for him to go after on the glass.

Nonetheless, it all starts with T-Mac. He's the guy who can overcome the supporting cast's struggles by dropping a 40-point bomb on Utah, or make it easier for the other guys to get rolling by commanding double-teams that lead to open shots. It may not be all on him ... but if he shoots 6-for-18 again in a Rocket loss Monday night, it's sure going to feel that way.

John Hollinger writes for ESPN Insider.