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Boo.
Here's an article in today's NY Times about the arrival of small ball in the League. I'm still not sure Pop should have gone with it entirely against the Mavs, to the exclusion of any playing time by the centers, but it is a sign that he understands that the style has changed and we're in a new era. Oh, and it also shows what an owner in a position of power can do to give his team a leg up. I guess it's no surprise that the Suns are three games away from the Finals, even with the injuries they've had this year.
Every night has seemed like the Fourth of July during the N.B.A. playoffs, bright and breathtaking to the frantic finale, with few duds in the show.
Television ratings have risen like LeBron James at the rim. When Steve Nash led the plucky Phoenix Suns to a last-second victory over his former team, Dallas, in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals, the smoke had barely cleared from the Mavericks' upset of the defending champion San Antonio Spurs.
Why, some might wonder when rubbing their eyes the next morning, have the games been more dramatic?
Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich offered a concise explanation just before his team lost Game 7 at home to Dallas. "Maybe the new rules have created parity where everybody is able to attack more and everybody's best players are able to show their wares and be aggressive," he said.
"People can use small lineups, big lineups, there's more variation on the floor," Popovich said. "Everybody knows how to take advantage of the rules. Thus you see the scores and the dynamic play of everybody on the floor. It's not just isolation; it's attacking, it's pace."
In 73 games (not including last night's Detroit-Miami game), 14 have been decided by 2 points or less (tying a 1995 record) and 23 have been decided by 5 points or less. Teams are shooting 46.1 percent, the highest mark since 1993. The 2-point field-goal percentage is 49.1, the highest since 1991, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
The fast pace of the games and the numbers did not just explode overnight. Five years ago, Jerry Colangelo, then the Suns' owner and chairman of the N.B.A. Board of Governors, had a game-altering conversation with Commissioner David Stern.
"I was in New York, and I told him how down I was on the game and as much as I loved the game, I didn't like it the way it was played," Colangelo said yesterday in a telephone interview from Dallas. "We had a long conversation, and he said, 'Go ahead, put a committee of people together and go at it.' "
A committee was formed in March 2001, and it included executives, former coaches and players like Jerry West, Rod Thorn, Motta, Jack Ramsay and even Miami center Alonzo Mourning. It introduced rules to discourage isolation plays, reduce physicality (hip and forearm checks) and enable cutters to move through the lane unimpeded.
"It was becoming more and more of a contact sport, which takes away from the finesse part, making it almost impossible to play," Thorn, the Nets president, said yesterday.
After 2004, when the Pistons won their defense-oriented le, referees cracked down on hand-checking along the perimeter. The zone defense was made legal again in the 2001-2 season, further opening the floor.
As a result, the high pick-and-roll has become so prevalent, young superstars like James and Miami's Dwyane Wade are slashing a familiar path to the basket.
Stu Jackson, the N.B.A.'s senior vice president for basketball operations, said officials had altered their interpretation on block-charge calls. "Referees have a tendency to call blocks when there are ties, and all of those factors have served to encourage players going to the basket," Jackson said.
Jason Terry, the Mavs' 6-foot-2 guard, has noticed. "Definitely this is the most dunks I've had in my whole career," he said last week, "just because the lane is so open now, if you blow by someone you can get to the basket and finish."
Dirk Nowitzki, Terry's teammate, and the Suns' Boris Diaw are doing the same. Nowitzki has adapted his 3-point-shooting game toward the trends of athleticism and penetration.
To speed play, the league changed how long a team had to bring the ball over midcourt to 8 seconds from 10. The Suns have not needed that much time since Nash signed two years ago and won two M.V.P. awards while pushing the tempo to the brink.
"Hopefully the wave of the future is the history of the past," Bob Cousy, the Boston Celtics' Hall of Fame guard, said yesterday in a telephone interview. "Transition, that's the way all the teams played in my day."
The Suns have perfected it. "For Coach Mike D'Antoni, this is what he believes in anyway," said Colangelo, the Suns' chief executive and chairman. "Then you got to have the right people."
Or person. Nash, as the Dallas Mavericks' owner, Mark Cuban, rationalized after letting him go, is the best possible fit for D'Antoni. The Suns, averaging 110.5 points in the postseason, are playing even smaller because the 6-11 Amare Stoudemire played in only three games this season because of a knee injury. With Nash averaging 10.6 assists and the Suns shooting 48.5 percent, he is facilitating the flow, planning the pick-and-roll party.
It is this kind of play, rather than individual personalities, that piques the viewers' interest, Cuban said. "Pick the one rivalry that everybody across the country is tuning into," he asked last week. "That's the point, you can't. I think great games sell."
He, too, believed the new rules helped create the greatness, promoting versatile players and better shooters like Nowitzki, Josh Howard, Terry and Devin Harris.
"I thought the New York Knicks have a brilliant roster — if you put them in a system when you're pushing them," Cuban said, adding that he did not want to indict Coach Larry Brown's style. "That's our roster."
Cuban said, "Shaq isn't as dominant and you look at the perimeter players, it's a different type of dominance."
But will this diminish the diversity of the league, specifically Shaquille O'Neal?
Jackson noted that Miami's style has worked for the Heat. Although O'Neal is contending with quick whistles, Wade has taken advantage of the double-teams O'Neal still attracts. The Heat posted the second-best shooting percentage in the second round — 49.3 percent — against the Nets. The Clippers had the best percentage, at 50.9.
"It's harder to cover people, wing people, in particular, without fouling," Thorn said.
Cousy argued that defenders needed to improve, but bemoaned how coaches interpreted that by turning the game into a grinding, walk-it-up affair. "This Dallas-Phoenix series is near and dear to my heart," Cousy said. "For the old-timers, it's refreshing to see."
Last edited by austinfan; 05-26-2006 at 02:59 PM.
Boo.
NY Times...pffff...there no Express News that's for sure...
A young David Robinson would have owned this league under these rules. No one could have stopped him going to the rim. He might of been able to average his jersey number every night. He would have been a three inch taller version of Amare on steroids.
I don't mind a faster-paced game, but don't take the defense away.
If you can't touch anybody, we might as well let the teams play a game of HORSE !
There's got to be some balance. I mean, who wants to see a guy like Charles Barkley, catch the ball in the post and back down a defender with 20 dribbles? Yawn.
By the same token, who wants to see two teams run up and down the court, jacking up 3's?
But with better D
Jerry Colangelo, then the Suns' owner and chairman of the N.B.A
humm makes since since suns had the players for that
my thoughts exactly
NY Times sucks ?
Oh, yeah, right, that's a checkbox on your red-state dumb knee-jerk conservative checklist.
This isn't an opinion piece.
It's reporting on the facts as this reporter finds them.
Do you dispute the facts?
Do you dispute the history?
Do you dispute the quotes?
sucker.
He didn't at the time -- the article said this started 5 years ago.
I think he certainly was at the forefront of building a team in tandem with the new rules he was trying to put into place though.
I totally agree that defense has to be a core part of the game. But I think good teams like the Spurs will adapt by learning how best to defend under the new rules. All of the Spurs core players can shine under these rules -- even Bowen. He was never as much about knocking guys around as some defenders were.
You can screw up someone's timing and alter their shots without touching them. The techniques are just a little different.
A lot of people will say that it's a wussier style of basketball, and really, they're right. I'd rather they encouraged ball movement but still allowed guys to get physical defending their man and protecting the paint. But David Stern is going to do what David Stern is going to do, so the key for every team is to just make the best of it.
i don't like the way charges/blocks are called, it's way too inconsistent and is getting worse.
Evolve or die.
I'll buy that.
If so, we're going to need some guys with Bowen's perimeter defensive skills that can also SHOOT. That will be hard to find. If we could only find another Sean Elliot.
I always thought of Reggie Evans as a lesser lifeform though.
OMG, the great Avery Johnson is going even smaller against the Suns, starting Van Horn instead of Damp or Diop. He must suck as a coach too...
He's no Sean Elliot, but this definitely brings to mind the Stephen Jackson thread.
I don't think it's a matter of small ball, but big men are going to have to be athletic as well as big if they want to play. I don't think every team will go PF-SF-G-G-G like some teams, but the C and PF need to be more athletic than what we see now...more versatile I guess...and have big dongs.
People say its a trend but three teams still alive play a traditional center in the Pistons, Mavs and Heat.
And remember, would the Suns make it this far if the seeding in the playoffs were based on record instead of division le.
Highly unlikely they would have been in WCF and remember, they defeated a 6th seed and 7th seed to make it here.
The Spurs have a huge advantage in small ball because of TD. He's not lazy and runs the court as well as any big man in the league. The only thing he doesn't have is a three point shot.
But to win another le playing small ball, he will need the right guys around him. I think Manu, Bruce, and TP with a consistent jumper are the right pieces. It's the fourth guy that is the problem. A Lamar Odom or Andre Krilenko type of player would be the perfect fourth guy but of course, that's not gonna happen.
Highly unlikely? Maybe you should turn your TV on PHX is beating Dallas AGAIN
clippers have a center to brand
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