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Hindsight is 20-20 and the premise isn't necessarily wrong... sometimes the other team is just better. The Spurs have found themselves on that other side of the coin plenty of times in the past.
Such a crappy article. It looks as if Presti paid someone to justify every move he made. You just have to look at the Thunder so called offense to see they need some sort of coaching change there.
And lol at Fisher playing more than 7 4th quarter minutes per game not being "overplaying him by much".
Hindsight is 20-20 and the premise isn't necessarily wrong... sometimes the other team is just better. The Spurs have found themselves on that other side of the coin plenty of times in the past.
I actually rewatched game 4 and 5 of the Spurs vs. OKC series this past weekend.
I can summarize what happened to OKC:
1) Westbrook and Durant were played to death. By beginning of game 5, they were running on fumes.
2) Ibaka's injury limited him greatly
3) Jackson also was limited by an ankle injury sustained in game 4
4) OKC coach ran out of material
looking at that list above, you can see exactly how OKC lost the series. And all of those factors were symptoms of their major flaws: they are not a deep team and they have a mediocre coach.
in other words, unless OKC can get a Harden calibre player, they will never go anywhere.
Gem from the article. Spurs were 10-2 in games with 30 seconds left in which they were up or down by 2. That's insane. Sums up our team perfectly: Clutch and with precise execution.
The Spurs were very close to losing this series. Its all relative, if you were to swap the thunder for the heat it would be the thunder with 4 straight finals appearances and lebron searching for his 1st ring. The Harden trade definitely hurt but its like Pop said, you lose by a point and your too old, you win by a point and your experienced.
thanks for the analysis
Swap the Thunder for the Heat?
Well, after the ol' sports blew the finals after being up 5 with 28 seconds left, you can bet they made sure it wouldn't happen again
Westbrook shooting the team out when it counts. Did it ever change?
Wrong, Ibaka was 100%, jumpin around like his usual monkeyball self all series when he came back. Jackson had 20+ points in game 6(Game 5 we destroyed them and nobody played well for them but Jackson started hot that game). Wtf were you watching. You were right on point 1 but point 2 and 3 are just flat out incorrect. Our execution did them in, plain and simple, it wasnt an "injury" or any like that.
Ibaka's FG% and Rebounding dropped considerably after his injury. Sure he was limited.
You do make a good point on Jackson thou. Sure his #s were solid, but his defensive game dropped off considerably after his injury. He just couldn't stay in front of his attackers.
Ibaka's numbers dropped in large part because Splitter seemed to take Serge's Game Three outburst personally. He did a great job on Ibaka. The biggest reason, however, was that Matt Bonner pretty much shut down everyone he faced in Game Five. I think Ibaka thought that Bonner was an easy opponent and constantly tried to beat him in the post or off the dribble. But Matty wasn't playing that game. The result was a lot of Ibaka misses on ill-advised attempts.
This. Ibaka saw Bonner as a mismatch and was uncharacteristically aggressive with the ball... worked out well in the Spurs favor since Serge doesn't really know how to be a scorer
I can agree on Jackson's defense being limited but man, I really feel like Ibaka was 100%, he really didnt seem to have any issues, even late in the games and into OT, he always seemed ready to jump all over the place and play defense. And as the above posters mentioned, ill advised attempts dropped his numbers.
The main problem for OKC is they played against a buzz-saw that was just getting warmed up
not playing their young talents during the season.
That, and Bonner is a seriously underrated post defender. He's not gonna jump out of his sneakers or swat shots or play help defense like the Ibaka's of the league, but he has deceptively good positioning, knows how to get into his opponents body, and stays straight up when he is defending one on one in the post. For a 4th-5th big, his defense is adequate.
The fact that he looks like a bagger from HEB probably doesn't help from guys trying to go aggressively at him.
Oh, boo hoo. They had injuries. It's part of the game. TP, our ONLY All NBA player, missed the second half and OT in game 6. You man up and get it done.
Next season we should hand out pics of the Paul George injury and wave them behind the basket when he shoots free throws. Would that be in bad taste? Or wickedly funny?
People arguing about Ibaka injury seem to forget that Tony was not even close to 100% either...
I clearly remember Durant and Chuckbrook looking gassed, particularly the night of elimination.
It was a breath of fresh air to see another team's young, star players looking so tired against US, rather than the opposite story. I loved it.
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