And the moral of the story, kids . . .

[whottt]

Seriously, I just want to know if anyone thinks that the Spurs would have had one broken down Manu by the time the ECF rolled around if they played in the East? Anyone?

IMO Manu never healed from the injury he got at the end of the regular season. He j never looked quite right, and he seemed to lack explosiveness for the entire playoff run. So I think at some point barring time off to heal, he would have wound up breaking down like he did against the Lakers.


Who knows...Pop may not have brought him back as quickly in the east, or he might not have had to play as much without rest...but I think it was inevitable that he was going to breakdown sooner or later since he never got fully healed to begin with.


I really don't think what happened to Manu had much to do with the Lakers...but what was wrong with him had everything to do with them beating the Spurs.

[E20]

I didn't even think we needed a healthy manu to win against the lakers. We just played horrendous D on Kobe. Better D on Kobe would have resulted in a game 1, 4, and 5 win.

[T Park]

I didn't even think we needed a healthy manu to win against the lakers. We just played horrendous D on Kobe. Better D on Kobe would have resulted in a game 1, 4, and 5 win.

THey forced him to shoot long jumpers, thats all you can do.

A healthy ginobili getting 25 a night instead of 9 doesn't change things?

ooook..

[1Parker1]

Well, I think maybe what E20 is saying is that the Celtics this season had the first seed in the East. When you have the best record, you get the right to an easier road in the playoffs. Spurs would have trampled, perhaps even swept both the Hawks and the Cavs.

Meanwhile, if you think about it, if the Spurs hadn't lost gimme games to the likes of Memphis or Bobcats this season, they could very well have had the first seed in the West. And if they did, I do think Manu and the rest of the Spurs would have retained a lot more energy and had 10 times the easier road to the Finals. Going through the Nuggets and the Utah Jazz isn't that much harder than going through the Hawks and the Cavs.

Of course, to Manny and Shoog's point, if the Spurs didn't have to battle it out 4 times against the top WC teams in the regular season, this would all be moot.

I think the most important moral, at least for the Spurs, this season they learned is that with the Western Conference being as tough as it is, it's now more important than ever to grab the top seed and HCA in the playoffs. The usual "coasting" the Spurs do in the regular season, somewhat backfired on them this season, I think.

Reverse positions and I think the Spurs could have easily gone through the Nuggets and Jazz and then be well rested to face whoever else in the Conference Finals. Meanwhile, I'm not sure how the Lakers would have fared with the third seed if they would have had to go through the Suns and the Hornets. IMO, we'd probably be looking at a completely different Western Conference Finals matchup.

[N.Y. Johnny]

The fact that we know the names of so many officials should say something.

Going back to Stern and the NBA state of affairs, he has to be blamed for the bad perception of the league now. He is just such an arrogant pompous ass that won't admit there is a problem and he will do nothing.

Ginofan is absolutely right here on this one point, which is a huge problem. I mean those of us that are NFL fans we can't name 4 referees if we tried!
I challenge you to. Also, we're never bummed about hearing someone in the NFL like Ed Hochuli, only reason I know this NFL ref is because he's the buff guy, is reffing the Monday Night Redskins vs Dallas game, ohh Dallas is screwed.

This is precisely how assenine it was to keep Joey Crawford in the league after that idiotic display of jackassery with Tim Duncan. THEN the beautiful part is in a critical Playoff Series...involving San Antonio, THERE IS CRAWFORD!!! WOW. Stern you deserve every bit of criticism you get and you should be ridden out on a rail.
The point is no other league in Major Pro Sports has officials known as well as players as the NBA does and thats a big problem.

[E20]

THey forced him to shoot long jumpers, thats all you can do.

A healthy ginobili getting 25 a night instead of 9 doesn't change things?

ooook..

Not even long jumpers, most of his points came from inside the arc. The celtics are playing him much more smarter double teaming him. If the spurs contained kobe better we win game 1, samething with game 3, andsamething with game 5. Kobe got some ridicously easy shots those games. Spurs win in 5.

[ManuTim_best of Fwiendz]

Not even long jumpers, most of his points came from inside the arc. The celtics are playing him much more smarter double teaming him. If the spurs contained kobe better we win game 1, samething with game 3, andsamething with game 5. Kobe got some ridicously easy shots those games. Spurs win in 5.

Yeah all those dropped leads had to do with "hoping to weather" Kobe and it resulted in giving him all the looks he could get.

We held the team to lower PPG where people say "we played great D! it was jut the Offense" but it masked the scoring runs that Kobe led to narrow the gap. It was just ridiculous how we repeated the mistake more than once. "oh no here comes Kobe" in the third and fourth every single time, and yet Pop never tried doubles or forcing the other guys to beat us. Boston exposed the Spurs Defensive gameplan.
I remember Ginobili coming over to help Bruce once in the series, and that was in game 4, when we almost stole the game with the Barry three and got an actual stop in crunch time on Kobe.

Spurs thought they could hold the other guys trade baskets with Kobe.
WTF? Kobe shot what, 55- 60 percent? There was nothing we could do? Complete Bull . Jazz and Celtics did a better job on him holding him to lower FG's.

Pop got outcoached.