F' Mike Brown

[Trainwreck2100]

Yeah maybe he can score 94 straight points next time and die of exhaustion in the third quarter.

Good plan.

WTF kind of at ude is "Hey guys keep it close so I can take over" what if it's out of reach because the other superstar decided to put his team on his back the full 4 quarters and he could trust his team in a closeout situation. Jordan had 30+ before he passed it to Kerr, and 30+ before he gave it to Paxton. He didnt wait for the fourth Q to show up.

[BeerIsGood!]

Props to Mike Brown for some heady play calling:

5-out, clearout
5-out, clearout
5-out, clearout
5-out, clearout
5-out, clearout
Timeout
Brown: "LeBron do you want to rest and let Z take the next one?"
James: "A rest on offense? Are you kidding me?"
Brown: "Okay, Okay you win"
5-out, clearout
5-out, clearout
5-out, clearout
5-out, clearout
5-out, clearout
5-out, clearout
5-out, clearout
5-out, clearout
5-out, clearout

I saw a couple of P&R with Varejao, but Lebron mostly pulled back and waited for the clearout when that happened. How in the the Pistons let him get to the rim every time is beyond me. I guess that's what happens when you don't have a shot blocker in the game.

[timvp]

You contradict yourself here. If he's one on five that means hes dishing to open teammates.

One on five meaning he was the only player playing on his team. Who was the second best Cav from the fourth quarter to the end of the game?

Eric Snow?

That was the problem, he was going one on one nearly every time. Virtually no traps or doubles to get the ball into someone elses hands.

Sure some of it was Flip's fault but he was hitting fade away threes against double teams. What can you do there?

As for beating another team singlehandedly, it doesn't need to be done solely on the offensive end. Tim destroyed the Nets on both ends of the court from start to finish. You can't compare a one dimensional performance to a multidimensional performance like Timmys.

Its not even close.

My point is Duncan has always had at least some help. In that game you're talking about, David Robinson had 17 rebounds. Stephen Jackson nailed some of the biggest threes in Spurs history. Speedy Claxton hit the biggest shots of his life.

Duncan was of course great in that game, but he had help. No Spur has ever won a Conference Finals or Finals game with as little help as LeBron had.

[E20]

That's absolutely ridiculous. This Pistons team wouldn't have been in the '03 Finals. You think they were going to stop J Kidd at his level in '03?

Outside of Jason Kidd, who has major weaknesses in his game even at that point, the Pistons match up better against the 2003 Nets. The 2003 Nets main scorers were Jefferson(Overrated scorere) and Kenyon Martin (Undersized PF). Prince would have shutdown Jefferson and Sheed would have done the same to Martin. Billups would have torched Kidd on the offensive end, Kidd can't play D. All you have to do is give Kidd room enough to attempt a jumpshot, Kidd is a horrible shooter and Chauncey is an excellent defender. The Nets would have a hard time in stopping Rip Hamiliton and McDyess would have given them problems as well. C-Webb would do more good than bad.

[BeerIsGood!]

Outside of Jason Kidd, who has major weaknesses in his game even at that point, the Pistons match up better against the 2003 Nets. The 2003 Nets main scorers were Jefferson(Overrated scorere) and Kenyon Martin (Undersized PF). Prince would have shutdown Jefferson and Sheed would have done the same to Martin. Billups would have torched Kidd on the offensive end, Kidd can't play D. All you have to do is give Kidd room enough to attempt a jumpshot, Kidd is a horrible shooter and Chauncey is an excellent defender. The Nets would have a hard time in stopping Rip Hamiliton and McDyess would have given them problems as well. C-Webb would do more good than bad.

This Piston's team is playing unispired basketball and isn't taking advantage of any of the matchup advantages they have had. You're talking like these guys are playing like the '05 Pistons. Playing like this, Kidd would have gotten penetration at will and Kenyon Martin would have been very effective on the inside. Sheed would have been bricking fade away after fade away as would RIP. Chauncy and Prince would be turning the ball over in crunch time. That's the difference, if this Pistons' team were playing up to their potential, like they should be, the series would be over by now.

[E20]

How easily you discount the threat posed by 3 ball shooters. you do realize that the Pistons play the same kind of defense on the perimeter that we do right?

They don't leave the shooters. Period. So they spread the floor and took advantage of Bron's hot hand. Kudos.

A great performance it was. But it doesn't hold a candle to Timmys performance, no matter who the opponent is.

When Bron was going off: Hughes, Illguaskas, Gooden, Gibson were all fouled out. That is equivlanet to TD playing w/o Manu, Tony, Bruce, Horry/Finley/Barry/insert whoever.

There was no threat of the three ball. The lineup for most of the OT's was:
Lebron
Vareajo(sp)
Snow
Blank
Blank

I don't even remember the last two. Eric Snow/whoever were no threat at all. All 5 Pistons players were in the paint looking at Lebron while he was guarded by either Billups or Rip and everytime a screen would come his way he would automatically get double teamed and yet he still managed to hit every shot imaginable in the game.

[Mr. Peabody]

We have such an inferiority complex here. If the game analysts, newspapers, websites, other teams, coaches, etc. don't constantly mention how great our team/players are, people here get offended. Give Mike Brown a break. His team just won a double overtime game, with his star player having one of the greatest playoff performances ever. I don't think he's thinking about Duncan or his time with the Spurs right now.

[E20]

This Piston's team is playing unispired basketball and isn't taking advantage of any of the matchup advantages they have had. You're talking like these guys are playing like the '05 Pistons. Playing like this, Kidd would have gotten penetration at will and Kenyon Martin would have been very effective on the inside. Sheed would have been bricking fade away after fade away as would RIP. Chauncy and Prince would be turning the ball over in crunch time. That's the difference, if this Pistons' team were playing up to their potential, like they should be, the series would be over by now.

Matchups and inspiration are two different catogeries to judge teams. I agree that Kidd's Nets were more motivated and inspired, but still since we're talking strictly matchups and you can't take emotions/feelings. The 07 Pistons look better on paper and I guarantee 90 percent of people would take 07 Pistons over 03 Nets, if they just saw the roster for those teams without the year in which those rosters were intact.

[ManuTim_best of Fwiendz]

We have such an inferiority complex here. If the game analysts, newspapers, websites, other teams, coaches, etc. don't constantly mention how great our team/players are, people here get offended. Give Mike Brown a break. His team just won a double overtime game, with his star player having one of the greatest playoff performances ever. I don't think he's thinking about Duncan or his time with the Spurs right now.

Amen.

[Solid D]

We have such an inferiority complex here. If the game analysts, newspapers, websites, other teams, coaches, etc. don't constantly mention how great our team/players are, people here get offended. Give Mike Brown a break. His team just won a double overtime game, with his star player having one of the greatest playoff performances ever. I don't think he's thinking about Duncan or his time with the Spurs right now.

I just knew someone would call people out for this. I just knew it. Everybody picks on us for no reason. It's just not fair. We should get more respect for our comments in this forum.

[Mr. Peabody]

I just knew someone would call people out for this. I just knew it. Everybody picks on us for no reason. It's just not fair. We should get more respect for our comments in this forum.

Nice one.

[BeerIsGood!]

When Bron was going off: Hughes, Illguaskas, Gooden, Gibson were all fouled out. That is equivlanet to TD playing w/o Manu, Tony, Bruce, Horry/Finley/Barry/insert whoever.

There was no threat of the three ball. The lineup for most of the OT's was:
Lebron
Vareajo(sp)
Snow
Blank
Blank

I don't even remember the last two. Eric Snow/whoever were no threat at all. All 5 Pistons players were in the paint looking at Lebron while he was guarded by either Billups or Rip and everytime a screen would come his way he would automatically get double teamed and yet he still managed to hit every shot imaginable in the game.

False, they rarely doubled, and when they did it was successful for a few possessions. On one fade away 3 Webber doubled weak off the P&R and Billups went under the screen and dove in the lane expecting penetration. Webber didn't show hard and gave James the wide open look (didn't even contest it). After the doubles the Cavs started to abandon the P&R and ran clearouts in which Lebron drove and Maxiell did not even rotate over to stop penetration. No weak side rotation to stop the ball. Just gave up a dunk. Horrible defense. A good defensive team with a shot blocker inside doesn't give up uncontested dunks and let Lebron get in rhythm and gain confidence in his shot.

[aaronstampler]

I can't believe you're falling for the ESPN hype machine, LJ.

Yeah, LeBron had a great offensive game, but the greatest performance you've ever seen? Give me a break.

First off, the Cavs, AS A TEAM play excellent defense, and guys like Sideshow Bob and Gibson and even Ilgauskas repeatedly shutting down the Pistons offense helped LeBron keep hte Cave in the game. There are two sides of the court.

Secondly, Flip Saunders contributed majorly to LeBron's night. I don't understand why they barely ever doubled him. EVERY TIME THEY TRAPPED HIM CLEVELAND DIDN'T SCORE. So why did they only resort to this tactic 10% of the time? They mainly played him one on one, first with Prince, then with Rip, then finally with Billups. Manu's less talented than LeBron and he was burning Prince regularly in the finals two years ago. Prince is terribly overrated. He's a decent help defender, but one on one he can be had. He's definitely a notch below Bowen and Artest as a defender. LeBron was beating him by ten feet off the dribble and no help, whether it was Maxiell, Rasheed or Webber was ever arriving in time.

Thirdly, one of the major reasons this game went to 2 OTs was that A) LeBron missed a bunch of free throws in the 4th quarter and B) He was holding on to the ball way too long on the occasions he was trapped. By the time he passed it to Pavlovic or whoever, there was like 3 seconds left on the shot clock. His shooting was great, but his passing was very undecisive. He basically didn't give anyone a chance to score the last 12 minutes.


The reason these games are so close is mainly because both teams have awful, awful coaches who have no idea what the they're doing. If Pop, Larry Brown, Phil Jax or Riley coached Cleveland, the series would be 4-0 Cavs. If they coached Detroit it'd be 4-0 Pistons. No matter how well he shoots, there's no way LeBron is gonna get 48 on us, not unless the zebras give him 25 FT attempts, because Pop won't be dumb enough to let one guy guard him with nobody in the lane.

[Agloco]

One on five meaning he was the only player playing on his team. Who was the second best Cav from the fourth quarter to the end of the game?

Eric Snow?



Sure some of it was Flip's fault but he was hitting fade away threes against double teams. What can you do there?



My point is Duncan has always had at least some help. In that game you're talking about, David Robinson had 17 rebounds. Stephen Jackson nailed some of the biggest threes in Spurs history. Speedy Claxton hit the biggest shots of his life.

Duncan was of course great in that game, but he had help. No Spur has ever won a Conference Finals or Finals game with as little help as LeBron had.

Good points Timvp. If you talk about it in terms of supporting casts, yeah LeBrons is more impressive. I think Timmys performance was so great because he did it over the entire game and on both ends of the court.

It's because of the completeness of that effort that I have a hard time giving the nod to LeBron. I do however have to rank it as one of the top 10 playoff performances of all time.

[timvp]

What's classic about this thread is Manu scored 24 consecutive points against the Atlanta freakin' Hawks in the second quarter of a game in February and Spurs fans had to be restrained from having a river parade to hail what was said to be the greatest moment in the history of human civilization.

LeBron goes for 25 straight point against the Detroit Pistons in the fourth quarter and two overtime periods in Game 5 the Eastern Conference Finals on the road and Spurs fans aren't impressed.

Classic

[E20]

False, they rarely doubled, and when they did it was successful for a few possessions. On one fade away 3 Webber doubled weak off the P&R and Billups went under the screen and dove in the lane expecting penetration. Webber didn't show hard and gave James the wide open look (didn't even contest it). After the doubles the Cavs started to abandon the P&R and ran clearouts in which Lebron drove and Maxiell did not even rotate over to stop penetration. No weak side rotation to stop the ball. Just gave up a dunk. Horrible defense. A good defensive team with a shot blocker inside doesn't give up uncontested dunks and let Lebron get in rhythm and gain confidence in his shot.

True, they didn't double him persay(sp ), but everytime a screen came at him for a P'n'R, almost everytime the help defender showed. Lebron had to go on the opposite side of the screen everytime. It's a matter of opnions and I just think Lebron won the deciding game of this series by himself and made unbeavable shots covered by one man, two, or three. And you can't deny the fact that he did in fact connect with some of his attempts over two/three defenders.

[BeerIsGood!]

Matchups and inspiration are two different catogeries to judge teams. I agree that Kidd's Nets were more motivated and inspired, but still since we're talking strictly matchups and you can't take emotions/feelings. The 07 Pistons look better on paper and I guarantee 90 percent of people would take 07 Pistons over 03 Nets, if they just saw the roster for those teams without the year in which those rosters were intact.

I would take them too in the matchup because I would assume they would play with fire and gusto. That's the difference in this series and why I would not take this team over the '03 Nets right now, because they aren't playing the smart ball that got them the recognition as a great team. They are making rookie mistakes that they didn't make in the past. Their defense has been suspect down the stretch in games.


Look at it this way, the Spurs are a better matchup and team than the Suns, but if the Spurs played a series with the energy Detroit is playing with... the Suns would be waiting on the winner in the Finals.

[ATXSPUR]

Who cares...though brown's statement is not accurate...this thread makes us Spurs look like babies.

His team is one freaking win away from the finals...I expect him to be excited.

Spurs will win the finals...that is all I care about.

[ManuTim_best of Fwiendz]

What's classic about this thread is Manu scored 24 consecutive points against the Atlanta freakin' Hawks in the second quarter of a game in February and Spurs fans had to be restrained from having a river parade to hail what was said to be the greatest moment in the history of human civilization.

LeBron goes for 25 straight point against the Detroit Pistons in the fourth quarter and two overtime periods in Game 5 the Eastern Conference Finals on the road and Spurs fans aren't impressed.

Classic

I don't know about being "unimpressed" heh, I think they're just threatened that another great player's performance takes anything away from Tim D's Finals Performance or something like that.

Well some of the fans in this thread.

[E20]

I would take them too in the matchup because I would assume they would play with fire and gusto. That's the difference in this series and why I would not take this team over the '03 Nets right now, because they aren't playing the smart ball that got them the recognition as a great team. They are making rookie mistakes that they didn't make in the past. Their defense has been suspect down the stretch in games.


Look at it this way, the Spurs are a better matchup and team than the Suns, but if the Spurs played a series with the energy Detroit is playing with... the Suns would be waiting on the winner in the Finals.

You would take that exact same 03 Nets roster over the 07 Pistons roster not knowing the year in which those rosters played? Let's just say those series never happend. If you do pick the 03 Nets, then you fall in that 10%

[aaronstampler]

The biggest mismatch of the finals will be the head coaches.

[BeerIsGood!]

True, they didn't double him persay(sp ), but everytime a screen came at him for a P'n'R, almost everytime the help defender showed. Lebron had to go on the opposite side of the screen everytime. It's a matter of opnions and I just think Lebron won the deciding game of this series by himself and made unbeavable shots covered by one man, two, or three. And you can't deny the fact that he did in fact connect with some of his attempts over two/three defenders.

Lebron won the game by himself, there's no doubting that. What I know is that the Pistons made rookie mistakes on a lot of those possessions, and letting a player as good as Lebron get dunk after dunk on you in the 4th is just asking for him to get in rhythm and start making those fade aways. If the Pistons don't give him the dunks he may have not had the rhythm in his shot to hit those fade aways.

[E20]

Lebron won the game by himself, there's no doubting that. What I know is that the Pistons made rookie mistakes on a lot of those possessions, and letting a player as good as Lebron get dunk after dunk on you in the 4th is just asking for him to get in rhythm and start making those fade aways. If the Pistons don't give him the dunks he may have not had the rhythm in his shot to hit those fade aways.

I'm really disappointed by those 'rookie' mistakes the Pistons made. That was truely out of character. Bad passes and horrible offensive decisions made by vets who have been to the Finals and won it all.

[BeerIsGood!]

You would take that exact same 03 Nets roster over the 07 Pistons roster not knowing the year in which those rosters played? Let's just say those series never happend. If you do pick the 03 Nets, then you fall in that 10%

What I'm saying is this... I would take the '03 Nets (with the way they played in the playoffs that year) against the '07 Pistons (with the way they have played this series). If the '07 Pistons play this series the way they are capable of as a team this would already be a Spurs - Pistons finals. The Pistons are not playing championship ball even though they have championship caliber players.

[timvp]

I can't believe you're falling for the ESPN hype machine, LJ.

The game was on TNT.

Yeah, LeBron had a great offensive game, but the greatest performance you've ever seen? Give me a break.

Link to where I called it the greatest performance I've ever seen?

First off, the Cavs, AS A TEAM play excellent defense, and guys like Sideshow Bob and Gibson and even Ilgauskas repeatedly shutting down the Pistons offense helped LeBron keep hte Cave in the game. There are two sides of the court.

Did you just claim that Gibson was a defensive player?

Did you miss when he was pulled from the game whenever the Cavs needed a stop? Or did you miss when the Pistons offense consisted of one play -- pass it to whoever Gibson is guarding and get an easy basket.

Secondly, Flip Saunders contributed majorly to LeBron's night. I don't understand why they barely ever doubled him. EVERY TIME THEY TRAPPED HIM CLEVELAND DIDN'T SCORE. So why did they only resort to this tactic 10% of the time? They mainly played him one on one, first with Prince, then with Rip, then finally with Billups. Manu's less talented than LeBron and he was burning Prince regularly in the finals two years ago. Prince is terribly overrated. He's a decent help defender, but one on one he can be had. He's definitely a notch below Bowen and Artest as a defender. LeBron was beating him by ten feet off the dribble and no help, whether it was Maxiell, Rasheed or Webber was ever arriving in time.

Flip did have a part in it. But you must have been watching a different game because the game I watched didn't have Prince guarding LeBron. The Pistons used Billups and Hamilton on LeBron during his run more than they used Prince.

Thirdly, one of the major reasons this game went to 2 OTs was that A) LeBron missed a bunch of free throws in the 4th quarter and B) He was holding on to the ball way too long on the occasions he was trapped. By the time he passed it to Pavlovic or whoever, there was like 3 seconds left on the shot clock. His shooting was great, but his passing was very undecisive. He basically didn't give anyone a chance to score the last 12 minutes.

He got his teammates some good shots. Gooden missed a wide open five footer. Pavlovic missed about 8 shots down the stretch. Gibson had a wide open three.

But when you are shooting at a 70%+ clip like LeBron was doing and his teammates hadn't scored for literally an hour, LeBron should have kept attacking.

And be serious. If Manu pulled off the same explosion you wouldn't even be able to post because your chode would have exploded into 20,000 pieces and you'd have to be rushed to ER.

Shi--ii-i---i--ii---ii--iit.