Starters
G Parker
G Manu
F Bowen
F Duncan
F Elson
have Elson guard Dirk extremely tight, and let Tim shade over his way. Dirk will try and drive by and he will meet Duncan and either get blocked, take a tough shot, or have to dish it off to Dampier. thats where you have to take your chances. try and rotate Duncan over fast enough to block Dampier's dunk, he'll get a dunk every now and then but it is Dampier and it wont be often. so this year instead of rotating Bruce you rotate Tim.
So you'll have Bruce on Howard which will minimize the damage done by him.
Then rotate Oberto in, and have him run around setting picks, and giving hard fouls to wear Dirk down. The spurs didnt wear down the Mavs last year like they use to do in championship years.
Third, run 4-Wide every time on offense. we couldnt stop you guys when it was called but too many times Manu or TP went 1on1 and took bad shots
not gunna happen. no way in Elson will really give Dirk much of a hard time, especially in the playoffs. and Dirk is too smart and crafty to just drive and get swatted by Duncan. he is way too versatile.
Lately, when Howard doesnt seem phased one bit by Bowen either. and Harris' penetration will again, screw things up for the Spurs defense.
SA actually didn't do a bad job D'ing up last year with one exception: securing the defensive board. You can't give the Mavs that many second chances. If SA rebounds, they can win. If not, then no.
In the three games this year, I think he's shot close to 41% against the Spurs - well under his season average. In the last game, he shot 6-for-16. So I don't know if he's phased or not.
As for the other stuff, I don't think Elson is going to do that much to slow Dirk - no one in the league really can. But the Spurs will likely throw a variety of looks against him, bringing the double team from different angles, etc just to throw him off a bit.
In the end, he'll still get his.
The Spurs need to try to contain everyone else and rebound the frickin' ball.
Is it too late in the season to bring Paul Silas in as a rebounding coach?
Silas or Larry "Mr. Mean" Smith would do.
There best bet is to bring Manu off the bench to give the second team some pop ... And remove Udrih's turnover/bad shot tendencies.
They also need to play zone. Watch the mavs games and thats what you learn ... Zones slow the Mavs down. If the Mavs start running, its over for the Spurs. Play the Zone and take your chances with the long ball beating you.
Man-to-man Dirk will eat up Elson, or Oberto, or anyone else ... He will be on the bench with foul trouble before he breaks a sweat. You double him and you can watch his assist numbers go up. That was the area of his improvement this last offseason .. passing out of the double. Although not reflected in his average yet, you need only look at the last 10 games to see the improvement (Close to a triple double 3-4 times, 5-8 assists)
The Zone will keep Duncan near the basket and keep everyone from foul trouble. It is their best shot .... But will Pop do it?
now they need a rebounding coach?
WTF is this a goddamn football team?
Yep. Let Dirk go off. Just shut down the other Mavs.
I second that.
Yep. Let Dirk go off. Just shut down the other Mavs.
Spurs went away from their gameplan last year with the smallball nonsense and they suffered greatly defensively trying to use guards to man the paint. Use up all of Elson/Horry/Bonner/Oberto's fouls on Dirk but stay at home on the other Mavs and always keep two bigs out there to rebound. Rarely if ever double Dirk.
This is exactly how the Mavs played Duncan last year, throwing Diop/Dampier/Mbenga at him single coverage and staying with all our other players. We used this strategy against the Suns in '05 but went away from it last year against the Mavs to our detriment.
What the was all that about Dirk giving Duncan single coverage that last game? Somehow they got away with it, even though that's how Manu got that open three in Game 7 last year.
I mean, if Dirk can handle Duncan then it's over. But it doesn't make any sense theoretically speaking, so what gives.
No, most of time he'll draw a whistle.
Unfortunately they're not capable of that. Rebounding is one of the most consistent, reliable stats in the L. You either have it or you don't. Spurs simply can't rebound like Dallas and no amount of effort is going to change that.
No F-ing Small Ball!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
W3rd. Dismantling the rotation by worrying too much about Dirk allowed everyone else to kill the Spurs last year. Hopefully they aren't doomed to repeat that mistake.
The Spurs were annihilated in Game 2, then they went small ball, which gave them more than a decent chance to win the series. Besides, they got rid of their big, slow centers specifically for matching up with Dallas, right? Maybe I don't quite understand the real motivation.
yes! i don't know why the spurs didn't do more of this last time. if san antonio lets dallas shoot all the jumpers they want, the spurs are going to the next round.
Manu guards Howard, Bowen guards Dirk. Tim will on Dampier, but he will help both Manu and Bowen. The x-factor for the Spurs is Tony Parker. He must play good defense. The Spurs can't let Terry get going if they face each other in the playoffs.
And as a Pistons fan, you know Parker can play good defense when he wants to.
The problem the Spurs had last year was they worried too much about individual matchups at the cost of TEAM defense, which has historically been the strength of the team.
They didn't do it because its not "In the system". The Spurs decided to do what they were good at and what the Mavs were comfertable in facing (Man-to-man) instead of doing something that would take the Mavs away from their comfert zone.yes! i don't know why the spurs didn't do more of this last time. if san antonio lets dallas shoot all the jumpers they want, the spurs are going to the next round.
They didn't do what the mavs do every night. The Mavs do what makes the opposition uncomfertable ... If they don't like the Zone, then thats what they are going to face. If they don't like man-to-man, Mavs will play it all night.
They adjust their defense to the opponent and run their offense. If the other team doesn't do the same ... They will be outscored as the Mavs stay comfertable and the other team struggles with what they don't like to face.
If you watched the game with Orlando last night it demonstated this plan in action. The Magic slowed the game to a crawl for most of the first half (They controlled the tempo, something that AJ corrected by starting Harris in the second half).
After the half the mavs made the run and took the lead .... then Harris fouled out and it was back to the slow tempo of the Magic and back into the Zone they went.
Dirk and Terry made some clutch shots to get the win .... But then the Spurs are better then the Magic and CAN score some points in crunch time.
The Mavs can be beaten. But you have to play zone and take your chances.
Fazed, not phased. Learn English please.
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