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Defense won the game no doubt.
http://blogs.mercurynews.com/warrior...-92-spurs-102/
Pop haters better recognize! Pop is officially the longest tenured coach in all the world of major sports franchises since Sir Alex has retired from Manchester United. In Pop I trust!Gregg Popovich solved the defensive riddle posed by the Curry/Thompson backcourt. Rather than pulling help from one player to another, the Spurs kept a single guard or wing on Curry, but then pulled Duncan or another big man to trap at the top of the arc. Suddenly, one of Curry’s favorite spots for crossing over and creating space became a too-crowded tangle of quick hands and long limbs. Curry and Jackson never seemed to fully figure it out, eventually deferring to Jarrett Jack for ball handling in the center of the court. After all the heroics and blistering shooting in previous games, Curry took only 2 shots in a crucial fourth quarter with home court advantage in the balance. That would be a disappointing line for an average player, let alone one bordering on elite.
Defense won the game no doubt.
I knew he would, though the only criticism I have for Pop this season is not going to Kawhi more and not playing Joseph more. However it's not like he could foresee the Spurs needing them this much. He is the best coach ever at making in game or in series adjustments.
Pop getting praise for making the obvious moves
everyone knew he should have went big and a lot of the defensive problems would have fixed themselves
Jackson would put a non factor like Ezeli on the floor and you actually have rim protection still once one of Splitter/Duncan go out to contest the shot
It looks obvious, but I think doing the obvious is a quality many NBA coaches lack.
GSW missed a lot of uncontested shots. that's not defense
50% vs 39% won the game, esp Tony's first half, and 4 out of 5 for 9 pts from Boris.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 05-11-2013 at 10:46 AM.
So Pop gets credit for starting the guy who was starting games since December over starting the guy chained to the bench the whole season who doesnt deserve to wear a Spurs uniform
just imagine if Pop actually played Splitter from day 1
Was that really a masterful correction? I'd say playing Diaw more than he did in Game 2 was a better no-brainer move. WTF was that all about? Also, Pop can't play defense for everyone. The team decided to play with more energy on the defensive end. They just gave a better effort. And like someone else mentioned, the shots just didn't fall for GS this time around.
Sometimes playing at home in front of a raucous crowd can add pressure for a team to perform. There was no way Curry/Thompson could duplicate what they did in San Antonio. The law of averages was bound to catch up with them & the Spurs.
Well, I think Coach Popovich made the strategic adjustment that worked, and the Spurs players then started to feel comfortable and the Warriors felt less comfortable. It seems as if we didn't have to think as much once we got a strategy that worked.
Putting KL on Thompson was the real key. Pop must've figured Curry would go off anyway, so he matched up KL on Thompson hoping that he would contain him. DG locking down on Curry was unexpected.
Wenger has been at Arsenal longer than Pop has been at Spurs
Such a better job from games one and two. Take game 4 and put a strangle hold on the series. The games are so good though. I have a lot more respect for Golden State now than I did before.
Popovich just did what people have been begging him to do.
I'm glad he wisened up, but this series does not show genius. Especially after his awful coaching job in game 2.
He stopped having the defense overreact to Parker getting posted up. Didn't send the double right away and let Barnes back in before sending the bigs to contest. Pretty much what a lot of posters advocated after the Game 2 loss. No reason to overreact to guys like Bogut/Barnes/Green, just stay home on their main two.
Tim did a much better job of protecting the rim. Defensive rebounding remains an issue though.
I still think that Pop's best adjustment in this game was putting up more (three now) screens for TP so that he can finally get some space to get his shot off. Keeping a young team like the Warriors in a constant state of having to catch up puts a lot more pressure on them to perform. And the pressure doesn't hepl their accuracy. Plus Tim didn't hang on to the ball so much this game. He caught and shot or caught and moved, not giving them a chance to set up a defense
and not forcing our offense to become stagnant.
Sooo, what I'm saying is that the biggest adjustment was not D; it was what they did on O.
^^^^^Plus keeping Tony on a 'in and out' rotation. Kept Parker fresh and kept his shooting hot and kept GS not knowing when he was or wan't going to be in the game. Best move of either coach in this series.
Do Spurs fans here ever give Pop any credit when the team wins? When they lose he is the worst coach in the league I guess..
One thing Pop deserves credit for that no one is talking about is that he finally managed to get it through to Green that he was not to leave Curry under any cir stances. Most of the time when Green's man scores, it's because Danny helps at the wrong time. Pop also deserves credit for making sure everybody else understood that, so that the help would still be there without Danny needing to leave his man.
The difference in the last game was that the Warriors missed the same shots they were making in the previous 2 games. The defense wasn't great in any of the games by either team. There were moments of defense but overall the game has been decided on the offensive end of the floor. If Klay goes off last night like he did before, the Warriors win easily. The 1st quarter point swing was the only real difference in the game where points are concerned. The rest of the game saw the Warriors trying to play catch up and they did at times, but that's what point differentials are for. You have to have that advantage to buffer those runs, and not many teams can make a run like the Spurs made a couple games ago, but had the Warriors had one more point, they would have won just the same.
People tend to look at things in such a "frozen in time" perspective, but the game isn't played in that perspective. At the beginning of the 4th the Warriors destroyed the 10pt lead, but that lead meant that the run was buffered and it allowed the Spurs to withstand it. Had the game been tied at that point the Spurs go down 10 points an it's a different game altogether. So trace that back to the opening round and the fact that the Warriors turned the ball over too much and shot cold. It's hard to recover when a team pounces on you early, and the Spurs have historically been cold in the 1st and 3rd quarters. They cannot do that in the playoffs and expect to climb out consistently.
That's true to a great extent. The Warriors were missing shots I fully expected them to make. Who knows what would have happened if the Golden State has shot their series average in all three games instead of having the skew.
That being said, the Spurs' defense WAS better. It wasn't just that Curry was missing shots; Green's pressure on him forced the Warriors to go away from him altogether. In the Curry thread after the first game, we talked about how much more efficient Curry is than the rest of his team. Taking the ball out of Curry's hands (21 possessions in this game and 25 in Game 2 compared with 43 in Game 1) really hurts the Warriors.
Bull . They were forced into taking bad shots because of the defensive pressure we were putting on them. And the dudes taking the shots weren't Curry or Thompson. We'll live with that all day.
Nope it's always "well that's what he's supposed to" or, "well big deal I thought of that before"
we have thousands of coaching savants here.
Warriors lost game 1. It doesn't matter how well they feel they played, or how well you or I or anyone else feels they played, if you lost you didn't play as good as you should have. They had moments, but the game is at least 48 minutes every single game. If a chef prepared the best dish in the world for you and took a in it before he brought it out, you wouldn't say how great that dish was other than that turd. That end of game meltdown by the Warriors is part and parcel of the game itself and neither Jackson nor any sportswriter can change that.
So, it doesn't matter who on the team scores all the points, just that they do. Their shooting percentage in game 2 was good, but the Spurs shot pretty poorly in the first two games. I actually believe it's a detriment to the success of the Warriors if Curry scores over 30 points, because that means other people aren't as involved in the offense. That's what the Lakers have dealt with all season with Kobe. When players aren't involved in the offense, they often aren't as involved in the defense. They are running wind sprints and that's about it. There are few players who overcome the lack of involvement on offense and still play great defense.
Also, with Curry, he's not a great defender. He's not even a good defender. So, when he's out there not hitting his shots, he's a liability on the floor, just like Tony Parker.
The Warriors run a bas ized version of the SSOL offense, but outside of Curry, they don't have a SSOL perimeter shooting team like the Suns had. Jack can shoot, but he overdribbles. Thompson is a streaky volume shooter. They have a couple of guys who can get a 3 now and then, but only Curry can drop them in at will if he's open. Unfortunately for the Warriors, he's also their PG so he's going to be picked up at half court on almost every offensive possession and he requires a screen to get a split second open look. If he could come off a double back screen instead, by being a 2, he'd be open for longer or his PG would have the time to make better decisions than Curry makes.
There's no reason the Warriors shouldn't win this series outside of just having a ty system and a coach who's ego is bigger than his IQ.
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