I don't necessarily agree with that.
1st, Pacers are the team that really exposed Miami's only weakness, and that is a weak inside game. The Pacers will have a difficult time going past the Bulls if they were to meet. Also, the Bulls does have the inside muscle to expose Miami's weakness as well.
I think the Pacers are overrated some what. Don't get me wrong, they are a very good team, but I just don't see them going to the Finals. The two East teams that have a legit chance of going to the finals are the Heat and the Bulls.
As for the West, I think the Spurs are the favourites. While the West is better 1 to 8, the top 2 teams of the West aren't really as good as the East. In fact, I can't even really nail down the top two teams in the West.
Please watch the Bulls-Heat game going on tonight and see why the Bulls are not a threat to Miami, they're still having the same issues scoring the basket, outside Rose, they have zero, zip, nada production.
They shouldve kept Nate to run that second unit, watching this Thibodeau team on offense is like watching a paint goes dry
Bulls, surely. And I in' hate the Clippers
mantle not mantra tbh
Bulls have size, but not post scoring with size. Pacers match up better and that's because they have length and PG is a very great defender (along with their overall team). They can play physical, tough and they have plenty of athletes/size.
People wondering about Dwill on BKY - I think he will be more than fine. He actually had a decent season last year despite not shooting great. He has some injury concerns, but he is still one of the best IMO. You will see that with options around him.
I don't think OKC is overhyped or overrated. In two years they've turned James Harden into trash spare parts. And Westbrook is gonna miss some games. They went from having three of the top 20 players in the league and a bona fide le contender to just another very good team. They have little depth after Durant and Westbrook. 80 games of Durant and 60-plus games of Westbrook should be enough to get 50+ wins and at least the second round of the playoffs, but I don't think they're expected to ring this year.
They have a black coach now, or at least, a half-black coach. Brothers are more likely to listen to one of their own and tend to tune out the white ones not named Jackson or Popovich.
Jason Kidd is half-black, tbh....
Only 2 Black coaches have won a le in the modern era..
One of them had Thibodeau's defensive system as the strength of the team + 3 HOFers in their primes, tbh..
The other had Larry Bird and a stacked team, and all reports from that era claim that he hurt more than helped and generally didn't do much coaching, tbh..
Jason Kidd is a figurehead, though..Lawrence Frank will coach their team..
The list is pretty damn short of coaches who have won a le period in the last 25 years, what with Riley, Jackson and Pop having won about 20 of them. 95 percent of NBA coaches don't win les.
smhtypical manu . rewriting history at a whim
truth is, Bulls with an experienced Rose have wiped the floor with Spurs: 4-1 in from 2009-2012
my point was, in regular season a Rose less Bulls more than handled the Spurs and even Joakim punked Timmy on his own floor with Manu hiding in the corner.
The offense is unimaginative for sure but that doesn't make it a bad team. It's the first game of the year and they haven't Played together as a group in a year and a half. The defense isn't really that great this game either but that doesn't mean they are a bad defensive team. They just need time to gel.Please watch the Bulls-Heat game going on tonight and see why the Bulls are not a threat to Miami, they're still having the same issues scoring the basket, outside Rose, they have zero, zip, nada production.
They shouldve kept Nate to run that second unit, watching this Thibodeau team on offense is like watching a paint goes dry
I never said they're a bad team though, I only implied they're match up horribly against the Heat due to their lack of offense. Miami have Chicago's numbers for the last 3 years. The Heat has improved by addition, Chicago not so much relying heavily on Rose and Jimmy Butler to take them over the hump.
And that other addition (Dunleavy Jr.) is a sad attempt to compensate their deficiencies.
It's a messy situation, I know Kidd was a great leader but the player-player relationship quickly changes when that player becomes a coach. In an 82 game stretch, it gets old after a while. D-Will may start putting Kidd under a different light, once they both realize they're not on the same page, who knows.
Kidd does have a great back up in KG though to make sure his voice and intentions are spread across the locker room and on the court. Still, Brooklyn is running under the pretention that they're a complete team and with a roster like that, it's hard to argue. But something in Deron screams "loser" for some reason. Winning is not in his bones.
Yeah watching the game tonight I definitely did not have as good a feel for the Bulls roster as I thought I did. Dear god was Dunleavy brutal.
smh
Their defense will be good enough to be top 5 in the east though...
bulls. The players around rose suck. Some of them are good like butler but cmon, boozer in the starting 5? The bulls ain't beating the heat unless they get another star. Rose comeback was so overhyped but dam,
This dude going all the way back to 2009?
truth is, Bulls with an experienced Rose have wiped the floor with Spurs: 4-1 in from 2009-2012
my point was, in regular season a Rose less Bulls more than handled the Spurs and even Joakim punked Timmy on his own floor with Manu hiding in the corner.
Both teams are sooooooooooooooooooooooo much different now you head.
This dude going all the way back to 2009?
Both teams are sooooooooooooooooooooooo much different now you head.
prime hater, tbh...
It's like the logic from the black QB thread is transported here. Making gratuitous parameters for an affirmative and discounting any positive that makes it through.
I still remember you describing a Lionel Hollins play to end the game as a basic pnr when it was a double screen on the weakside, having Gasol handling the ball moving towards the weakside play to set a screen for Conley on the handoff so he could attack the rim. It completely took Parker out of the play and if not for Splitters ability to change direction laterally --he was going the other way by design-- and presence of mind to make the switch then it would have been a layup. But according to you it was a simple pnr and you shat all over Hollins because it didn't work.
It's pretty obvious that you don't want black coaches to succeed in the NBA.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- The Memphis Grizzlies had a chance to win this game and get back in this series, and given what's happening in the East -- given how vulnerable the Miami Heat suddenly appear to be -- that means the Grizzlies had a chance to remain a serious contender for an NBA championship.
But to do all of that they needed to dial up a great play on the final possession of regulation to win Game 3 of the Western Conference finals -- and there's a problem with that:
The Grizzlies don't have plays they can dial up. Not great plays. Not good plays. Not any plays. The Grizzles give the ball to their point guard -- either Mike Conley or Jerryd Bayless or even Keyon Dooling, if coach Lionel Hollins is in one of his moods -- and hope he can make something happen.
Conley is so good that he often does make something happen. Bayless, too, on occasion. Dooling? No. Not him. Not ever. But anyway, that's the Memphis offense: Give the ball to the point guard. Send center Marc Gasol to the top of the key for the pick-and-roll. See what happens next.
Let's be clear about something: That's not a "play" -- that's a "wish" -- though I'm not sure Hollins or Conley know the difference. More on that in a minute.
For now, keep in mind that the score was tied in the final 20 seconds of regulation and the Grizzles were down 2-0 to the San Antonio Spurs. Needing a bucket to avoid overtime and win this game and get back into the series, Hollins called timeout and didn't call a play. He made a wish.
It failed spectacularly, the game went to overtime and the Spurs pulled away to win 104-93 and take a 3-0 lead in the Western Conference finals.
The second question to Hollins in his postgame press conference was about the wish at the end of regulation. He gave the ball to Conley, who was having a bad game. He called for a pick-and-roll with Gasol, who was having a bad game. Hollins put the most important play of the Grizzlies' season into the hands of two very good players having two very bad games -- and what do you know? The Grizzles got a very bad shot.
Conley tried to win it with a running hunk of crap off the glass that didn't even hit the rim. And so the question for Hollins was this:
Was that the shot you wanted?
"No," Hollins said, then stretched the truth like taffy. "I tried to get him to the basket ..."
Conley was going with the same fiction, saying that Hollins "drew up a play to try to get into the paint, let me make a play."
See, that's an interesting choice of words.
Drew up a play ...
Hollins doesn't draw up plays. The pick-and-roll requires no 'X's and only one 'O' -- the one in the word "roll." Occasionally he has a grease board in his hands, but that thing must be for show. Not like he's drawing anything on it. Hollins called timeout with 19 seconds left in regulation, and while I wasn't in the Grizzlies' huddle, I imagine he used the grease board to scribble three words:
Pick and roll.
Maybe he drew a smiley face, too. Hollins is a genuinely nice guy.
That stuff worked in the Western Conference semifinals against Oklahoma City because the Thunder have a similar coach to Hollins. Oklahoma City's Scott Brooks is a players' coach, which is to say, he's not an X-and-O coach. His team wins for the same reason the Grizzlies win -- because the players like the coach, and they play hard for him on both ends, and in the NBA that's enough to win more games than you lose. So when the games were close in that series and Hollins was writing the words "pick and roll" on his grease board, that was enough for the Grizzles to win. Somebody had to win, right? Without a great coach on either sideline, it came down to the players. Seeing how the Thunder were going without Russell Westbrook, the Grizzles had more good players. They won to advance to the Western Conference finals.
But here's the thing: The Spurs are not the Thunder. Not even close. There are a lot of reasons, one named Tim Duncan and another named Tony Parker and another namedManu Ginobili. But another reason San Antonio is not Oklahoma City is because Gregg Popovich is not Scott Brooks.
So when the game is on the line and Hollins is going over his smorgasbord of offensive options -- Let's see, do I dial up a pick-and-roll or a pick-and-roll or, what the , a pick-and-roll? -- Popovich is in the other huddle grinning, or whatever passes for a grin with that sardonic SOB. He knows what's coming. So do his players. Since the Grizzlies don't have a player so good that he can make a great play when the other side knows exactly what's coming, they end up with a Mike Conley hunk of crap off the glass.
They end up in overtime, getting run off the court, their crowd getting the out of the FedEx Forum with a minute left and the team trailing by seven because let's be honest: Memphis isn't rallying from a seven-point hole in the final minute with the pick-and-roll. That's like Oklahoma, back in the day when it ran the wishbone, rallying from a three-touchdown deficit in the fourth quarter. Just not going to happen, not then or now. Certainly not against a team as intelligent as the Spurs.
In the locker room after the game, though, the Grizzlies were lamenting their defense -- as if that's what lost this game. Kind of cute, really. The Grizzlies held the Spurs to 40 points in the first half, and 86 points in regulation, and they think they lost because of defense? Wrong. They lost because they couldn't muster a measly 87 points in regulation. Not on a night when Conley and Gasol were going a combined 15-for-39 with seven turnovers. Not when Zach Randolph was dominating the offensive boards and using all of those opportunities to go 5-for-14 from the floor and 4-for-8 from the line.
But the Grizzlies see themselves as a defensive team, which means they don't blame their offense for losses even when their offense is to blame for losses. And so Marc Gasolsaid the Grizzlies lost because Tony Parker was wreaking havoc on offense. And Tony Allen concurred: "Tony Parker was picking us apart."
Parker was 11 of 22 from the floor. He had five assists and seven turnovers. That's not a great offensive game. Not even a very good one.
Defense didn't lose this game for the Grizzlies. Offense did.
Hollins has two days to try to dial up some more offense, but don't count on much in the way of adjustments. Maybe he'll write the words "pick and roll" in another color. Maybe red. Maybe blue.
It's also widely recognized that Joergens is the brains behind Memphis's renowned defense, not Hollins..their defense has been the only reason they have been a borderline contender, obviously..
Black coaches are generally motivators that allow their White assistants to architect their system/call plays, tbh..
I can't think of a Black coach that brought an innovative approach to basketball, tbh..I wouldn't want a Black coach or a Black QB, just like I wouldn't want a White star basketball player or White football player at a speed position..
And.... so you have someone that thinks that is a standard pnr as well. I just described the play to you. Did what I describe sound like a 'pick and roll.' Who was the roller? I am curious.
You don't need to repeat your same drivel. And widely accepted my ass. You accept it but don't speak for others.
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