Tonight Pop once again went to
The Flamethrowing Five© and it again produced. With Manu Ginobili, Gary Neal, George Hill, Matt Bonner and Antonio McDyess on the court at the same time, the opposition really has a difficult time figuring out how to defend that group. That's five knock-down shooters, including four elite three-point shooters.
The offense becomes pretty damn simple when
The Flamethrowing Five is on the court. All they have to do is run a pick-and-roll, look for any help defender, pass it to the help defender's man and shoot the open jumper. If there's no help, all five players can move well enough to go all the way to the bucket.
Obviously, defense is this combo's weakness. But with Hill able to guard three positions and Neal able to body bigger opponents, they actually do decent work on that end. Add in the fact that Bonner and McDyess are the best bigmen on the team when it comes to moving their feet and it's a group that can scramble to cover any mismatches.
Tonight,
The Flamethrowing Five outscored the Mavs 19-2 in 4:21 of action. (Why Pop didn't use the lineup more may be a question for another thread.) On the season, if my math is right,
The Flamethrowing Five has now outscored opponents 131-94 in 49:41.
And perhaps the best part of this lineup is that it allows arguably the two best players on the Spurs to rest.
My question for SpursTalk is whether you think this is a gimmick lineup that will be exposed come playoff time or if it's something Pop should go to more often. Right now, he tends to use it mostly when the offense is ragged and he wants to jumpstart it. Should it be used more liberally?
P.S.
Before you reply, the key word was "arguably".