Originally Posted by
SAGirl
Frankly I can't believe no one is going to mention the team staying BIG the entire game and running a lot of offense through Tony to get TD rolling. TD struggled against GSW and was sat down bc he could not handle the matchup, was slow making rotations on one end, could not punish them offensively on the other. I saw a distinct effort to get him rolling this game. He got a lot of plays and a lot of PnR. That is not to say we are going to be playing like this in the playoffs, but Pop wanted to get TD confidence rolling. That is why Kawhi was frozen out for a good chunk of the game at times and the ball in Tony's hands a lot. When you play TD offensive sets have to take advantage of the bigs bc otherwise they just clog the lanes for dribble penetration.
Pop IMO was trying out his BIG man based offense and seeing what they could do against a team that was playing small/perimeter ball for a good chunk of the time. Charlotte was able to put on display why this BIG man line-up can get killed in the playoffs. They cheated, playing passing lanes as everything is more congested with two big men in the paint, were very active defensively and killed us in transition off our TO.
Dwest was our worst big against this team. Fouled a 3 pts shooter for a 4 point play, was passive, passing up good looks for himself, didn't want to man up inside, TO the ball, and was very slow getting back on transition. His assigned big outran him for easy buckets couple of times and he can't defend in the perimeter.
Make of that what you will. Pop wanted to see the big men step up against a perimeter team and it was a disaster. CIA Pop.
