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damn good article. thanks for posting.
The Heat have talked openly about how facing three of the league’s top five defenses over the last three rounds has taken the fast-paced style out of their offense. Great defenses, with weeks to scout a single opponent, don’t fall for the whirring decoy actions all over the floor, or scramble themselves out of position, or forget for a second which shooters demand constant attention and which do not. Miami’s high-flying motion bogs down into stasis, both because the shot clock is dying, and because the Heat simply abandon it for simpler things in the face of a defense that renders the complex ineffective. Great defenses, the Heat will tell you, just take you out of your game for long stretches.
This Finals series is reminding us that the same is true on the other end — that a great offense, a relentlessly great offense, can take a defense out of its game. It can get in a defense’s head, forcing painful adjustments, lineup changes, fatal overthinking, and mental fatigue. The Spurs’ offense has imposed its will on this series, and they have the Heat reeling in ways no team has managed since the 2011 Mavericks. “Our defense tonight,” Shane Battier said after the game, “was unacceptable.”
And he’s right, in a way. Miami made mistakes we’d associate with an out-of-sorts team battling fatigue, frustration, and total bewilderment. In the second quarter, Mario Chalmers just stopped paying attention to his man, Danny Green, as Green trotted along the baseline and popped out the other side for a wide-open 3-pointer — at least the third or fourth such triple Green has hit in this series via that simple cut. About a minute later, Chris Bosh, worried about a possible pick-and-roll that hadn’t actually happened yet, just abandoned Tim Duncan to double-team Tony Parker — leaving a shocked Mike Miller to foul Duncan under the basket:
http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-tr...ters-in-game-5
damn good article. thanks for posting.
Lowe is a hit or miss for me but this was a very good article tbh.
lowe is becoming one of the best basketball analysts/writters on the business...
woj from yahoo is the king but his best at breaking news, doesnt get into x and os.
Another article:
NBA Finals Shootaround: A Manu-Splendored Thing
Robert Mays: We’re likely to hear that last night’s Manu Ginobili performance was a return to form, but that’s not really true. What Manu did last night — at least 24 points and double-digit assists — is something he’d done only once in 155 playoff games. In fact, Ginobili’s had at least 10 assists only six times in his playoff career; half of those games have come this postseason. The scoring Ginobili isn’t new, but the level at which this Spurs machine runs, the array of guys capable of hammering home the Ginobili passes that few others would even try? That part is.
Of those 10 assists, I don’t think any better encapsulates the Spurs’ night than the one above — Green running from one corner to the other, Ginobili letting the pass go before he’d even gotten there. I don’t think Ginobili’s eyes ever moved that way, and as a result, neither did any of the three Heat players on that side of the floor. Ginobili was fantastic last night (and so was Tony Parker, who will still likely determine the Spurs’ fate), but what we saw last night once again was San Antonio operating at its fullest offensive capacity, a level at which no other team can operate.
http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-tr...lendored-thing
Assists are a stupid and somewhat arbitrary measure. With his penetration, Manu has always racked up tons of hockey assists which are not reflected in the stats.
Excellent read. Lowe per par.
That Peek-a-Boo Zone ain't ing around tbh..
Great article by Lowe! That whole Grantland write up, starting with Mays, was excellent!
Excellent. Some of the best I've seen.
The AT&T Center is the perfect arena for the media-shy Spurs. The wireless Internet works only intermittently. The distance between the home and visitor locker rooms might be the longest in the league. The little dollar slits in the vending machines weren’t working for the bulk of this trip. And there is some sort of fly infestation, perhaps linked to all the rodeos the place hosts, with flies literally buzzing all over the court during media sessions after shootarounds and practices. Udonis Haslem almost had to stop one interview to flee the flies. I like to think the Spurs have genetically engineered these flies, injected them with poison, and trained them to attack only media members and personnel from opposing teams.
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