It's a combination of a lack of quickness and a lack of ball handling ability. He can still get up but it takes a perfect storm for him to get to the rim like that nowadays. On this particular dunk, Duncan spoonfed him the opportunity.
It's not a lack of effort ... on a normal half court set he's not able to drive by anyone or control his dribble in the paint.
It also hurts to do things like that as you get older, and pro athletes at that age don't recover as quickly, so they have to pace themselves. We just can't imagine how long 82 games is, and that's just the regular season. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I wouldn't be surprised to see more Finley dunks than last year, but we may not see one every game.
After a 14 year career, it's hard to understand how a player could play that long and NOT have developed a handle. But alas, it's true. We all know that Mike has evolved into strictly a jump shooter. Yet it was good to see him take the ball aggresively to the basket - for once. I agree with a previous poster in that it's unrealistic to expect this type of aggression on a regular basis. However, if he could at least drive to the cup, once or twice a game, it would help open up his offense and it would allow him to contribute when his shot isn't falling. He doesn't have to dunk, just put more pressure on the defense. He's such a superb free throw shooter that, if he gets fouled, it's still money for the Spurs.
sick !
I would rate the other dunk against the mavs that series higher than this one bc of the head butt.....but still this one was good too
There was one he had against the Spurs when he was a Mav (2003 playoffs I think) that was pretty good. He went middle and jammed one in that game and I basically thought the Mavs had won the series. It was a serious dunk.
But I think we've forgotten (maybe he's forgotten) about that style of play since he's basically a spot-up shooter in the Spurs system (not a run-and gun guy like he was on Nelly's Mavs).
Finley has exactly one dunk in his arsenal, but it is nice. Hop step, 2 foot jump, one hand smash. Even in his atlhetic prime he didn't get a lot of dunks because the man can barely dribble a basketball. But when he did dunk, they were always on somebody and vicious. One I remember particularly was for the Mavs against the Nuggets Donnell Harvey... I'm sure it's on youtube somewhere.
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