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#1
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Some of us have given Pop hell over his "small ball" play approach against the Mavericks. I was one of those questioning Pop's wisdom in playing small ball. But having looked at the Heat-Mavs series, maybe Pop was right. Miami doesn't seem to match up well playing a center like Shaq or Mourning. You probably need an athletic center like Duncan who can run the floor. Thoughts/Comments???
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#5
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There's about a half a dozen individual plays from that series which you can point at and say if any one of those plays had gone the Spurs way then we'd be in the finals talking about how brilliant Pop was for being able to beat Dallas at their own style. Small ball wasn't the problem, execution was.
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#6
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You can play big against Dallas, but you have to be able to attack Dirk. Udonis, Rasho and Nazr oare not going to get it done. Dirk has the night off when guarding these guys, and none has a shot at guarding him. |
#7
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Pop did what he had to do to give them a shot to win the series and it almost worked, infact the last few games it worked really well IMO. I am not mad at Pop at all for doing what he had to do, he knows more than some fan criticizing him for it and gives his team a shot to win.
__________________ Win or lose this is a game - You could let it pick your brain for weeks and months, just replay it over and over, won't do you any good at all. When someone loses a loved one and they do that it only brings forth anguish. I feel acceptance is sometimes the key, it happened, now you have to react to it. Giving up is not an option. |
#8
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This series not only took out our bigs defensively but it took out Bruce. He was forced to guard a guy who was 5 inches taller then him along with not getting any respect from the refs. Bruce couldn't contain Dirk with all the factors going against him so the spurs pretty much wasted their best defender trying to contain somebody who couldn't be contained under the new rules. So in summary small ball screwed our defense by putting Nazr-Rasho on the bench because they can't guard Dirk since he would go off for 30 plus oops but then again he still went off for 30 plus and Bruce was rendered useless when he could have guarded one of their perimeter players along with giving up offensive rebounds along with layups to the mavs. |
#9
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#10
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The Spurs/Mavs series could have just as easily ended with the Spurs moving on. The Spurs were not playing their best but were still able to compete and give themselves a chance to win the series. I dont think you can second guess the decisions that were made.
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#11
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#12
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#13
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Also depite being in these games with it it is flawed the defense was absolute crap. To me trying to outscore team is always going to be flawed because you are gambling bigtime espescially against a team that is better offensively. Seriously it had to kill you when the spurs were giving up layups and dunks in all these games along with high FG percentage. I can't recall the last time a team shot 80 percent at the SBC center in a quarter and like 70 percent for the first half like the Mavs did in game 7. To me thats a terrible strategy defensively and that goes to small ball. Pop's defensive schemes were never built for small ball and it was clear throughout this series when our smalls tried to play the roles of Rasho and Nazr by trying to rotate on the baseline only to get dunked on are give up a layup. Yeah small ball kept us in it and had the ball bounced a different way or had the refs not called bs phantom fouls the spurs could have won. Still its a bad strategy when you have to hope for the refs to not make bad calls at the end or praying for the other team to miss after hitting 10 shots in a row. If the spurs want to win it all again it will come down to defense and not relying on an offensive shoot out with the Mavs. Its really a bad strategy and I hope to never see it again but with Pop you never know what will happen next year. If the spurs do it agian they will lose next time around to the mavs. Its time to scrap it and go back to the old big ball along with adding a few defensive tweaks on the perimeter. |
#15
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Its a diffcult mactup for ne1 especially when their 7footer is a legit sf,so of course they have two 7 footers on the floor to our one along with josh howard and spanked us down low on the glass. Rasho and nazr stunk it up down the stretch neway soo the spurs were stuck between a rock and a hardplace in terms of producton and matchups.What i felt really hurt was we did rely to much on bruce bowen the guy brings alot defensively but killed us because he couldnt score to give us that extra scoring punch againt a team with the fire power of dallas. I still feel if tony parker was healthy we beat that team but in the end our bench came back to bite us in the ass nazr,rasho ,van exel and horry could not contribute and help out all fading down the stretch
__________________ ![]() thanks Jc u da man!!! |
#16
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#19
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the Spurs were one shot from the NBA finals and had chances to win that series even before game 7...not to mention the questions that happened in games 3 and 4 that series could have easily gone the other way...despite what people think about not playing Nazr or Rasho Someone will be in place of Nazr next year and Rasho may or may not be here as well...how SA plays them remains to be seen but even if Dallas wins the title this year I see no reason SA wont have a great shot to knock them off. |
#20
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"Right" or "wrong", doesnt change the fact that we still had incredible potential to win the series, despite everything going against us. That in itself should be encouraging to us fans. If anyone was going to take out the Mavs, it would have been the Spurs imo. Now, do I think the small ball strategy handicapped us from the start? You bet... As DaSlicer said, we just dont play Spurs-defense with a small lineup, it just wont happen. And the (oh so crucial) rebounds, we just simply cant get them. I'm starting to think its not as much Pops fault, as much as it is the Spurs just simply not having a few key parts (young PF, long SF) to keep up with and adapt to contenders. |
#22
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I don't think the Spurs played great "Spurs Defense" at all during the whole regular season, even with Rasho and Nazr playing. The Spurs won a lot of games, but not by shutting people down. Pop experimented with small ball constantly. I think he saw which way the wind was blowing in regards to the new defensive rules and the inadequacies of his two centers. Yes, he should have played Nazr some in certain situations to get rebounds but he had already lost all faith in his centers (wrongly or rightly) by that point and wasn't going back.
__________________ “I went to Zimbabwe...I know how white people feel in America now, relaxed! Cause when I heard the police car I knew they weren't coming after me!” - Richard Pryor (1940 -2005) |
#23
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The answer is still wrong. You look at the Heat, the reason they even had a chance to win game 3 was because they outrebounded the Mavs 49-33. The Heat had been playing terrible the whole series but that's the only bright spot in game 3 team-wise. Of course going big doesn't guarantee we'd outrebound the Mavs but the chance is definitely much better.
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#24
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Rebounding was a problem for the Spurs all season with Nazr/Rasho in the lineup. The impact of rebounding would not have increased much if they played the mavs, but the fouls committed if they covered dirk would have increased their FTs. But that is neither here nor there since the season is over and we will never know for sure. Trust Pop. He has won us 3 championships and knows what his team can accomplish a lot more than fan coaches. ![]()
__________________ It is what it is -- Bruce Bowen When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks.-- Bill Walton |
#25
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Never been one to carp about officiating, but when the NBA admits there was a phantom tech that won a game, I have serious misgivings about not reversing the result even if it would be precedent breaking. That tech alone would have given the Spurs the series and as Pop said when informed of it being rescinded after the fact, "does that mean we won the series in six?" (or words to that effect) We were just not destined to win, end of story. As far as the strategy goes, I think Pop has seen the writing on the wall as far as what the rules have dictated and the direction things need to go. The end result will be that we end up with the horses required to make a race of it.
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#26
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#27
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The way Dallas spreads the floor and forces one of your bigs to to play alot perimeter defense if you employ a traditional lineup made small ball the only decision for Pop. Some people say that he should have tried the bigger lineup and tested it, but with such a small margin of error in that series, and Pop's ability to read the tea leaves I don't think he wanted to risk giving up a big run to Dallas at any point in any of the games.
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#28
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#29
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#30
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Smallball was already an integral part of the Spurs game before the Dallas series. Pop just happened to start with the small lineup instead of bringing it in after a timeout. We didn't have a physical rebounding swingman (like a Carmelo or even a Devin), so our smallball was structurally incomplete - hopefully that can be addressed. The smalls have to get a little more used to defending the paint, but that can be improved. The backcourt-C combo of Tim, Manu and Tony is ideal for the small lineup - TD in particular is the best C you can find to play smallball around. Spurs smallball can actually be very powerful if the Spurs work at it. Besides, it is pretty ironic that you want to see the return of great defense, but to you that means let Dirk get his 50. That is no recipe. So let Bruce take out Josh Howard. How are you really going to stop Jason Terry with his variety of release points? Stackhouse? And Dirk going against TD in the traditional matchup will try every trick in the book to get TD in foul trouble. No. If the Spurs want to play better defense, they will have to work on both individual and team D to get it sharper. Tony, Manu and Bruce all regressed in their individual defense this year. That is something people haven't really mentioned, but is true. Bruce is on the downside, but there is no reason why Tony and Manu can't get back or exceed their previous defensive form.
__________________ Whatcha gonna do when Huxamania runs wild on you?!! |
#31
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#34
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__________________ Whatcha gonna do when Huxamania runs wild on you?!! |
#35
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![]() Yeah, I agree. If you told me mid-season that Finley & Horry would be starting in the playoffs and Nazr & Rasho would be ridin-bench, I think I would have laughed in your face. No doubt the "adjustments" destroyed the way we won games all season. Quote:
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#36
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game 2 total of 14 min played.... I don't think that constitutes going big. |
#37
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if Miami wins this series, this question will linger on for a long time. Miami cannot do what Pop did because they dont have capability to play small ball. Also, for us our big guys were not in that great shape to say that it would have changed the outcome. Anyway, personally I feel that Pop should have tried out big ball at least in some games at some stretches. But neverthless, it is a bygone. There were lot of chances for us to move forward, it was blown out by our own mistakes (I know refs helped too), but playing small ball was not a huge factor. Anyway, considering the type of threads that get opened up these days in SR, it is not all that bad to ***** about not playing the "big ball" ![]() |
#38
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Today Miami disrupted Dallas by relying on their zone defense. Now a better question would be why didn't Pop use more zone????
__________________ Whatcha gonna do when Huxamania runs wild on you?!! |
#41
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__________________ It is what it is -- Bruce Bowen When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks.-- Bill Walton |
#42
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I thought Heat's zone defense worked pretty well against Mavs. Kinda wished we had done that to them just to give them a different look on defense especially with Dirk at top of the post receiving ball and going one on one against defender or Terry coming off that screen going to his right.
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#43
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I think that most of the time we played zone, we didn't run out on the perimeter shooters in time and they kept hitting their shots.
__________________ It is what it is -- Bruce Bowen When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks.-- Bill Walton |