Otis Thorpe was legit, and Kenny Smith and Mad Maxwell were at least a competent back court. And it’s not like the Knicks team they beat was a juggernaut.
And talk about a throwback. The 94 Finals was probably the last time a center was the best player on each team.
They’ll never do it, but why not play full court defense if you’re GS? The Cavs can go 8 deep at most right now. And one of those is Mike Miller who will not play 10 minutes. The Warriors can go 10 or 11 deep. Why not make LeBron work every time down the floor. He’s going 45+ minutes every game.
Here’s a good article on what the Cavs are doing defensively:
You have to ask what the advantage to your team would be while you were pressing. LeBron would probably be more tired after 40 minutes, but so would your guys. In the meantime, you’ll have been asking someone to try to guard LeBron James for 90 feet. These are NBA players so it’s not like you can trap him. I think it’s a recipe for a couple lobs, a couple transition threes, and a timeout.
That’s why I sad full court defense and not full court press. I wouldn’t advocate trying to trap every inbound, just guard LeBron and don’t let him walk the ball up the floor. The Warriors’ depth would hopefully allow them to rotate defenders on LeBron. It’s not like Iguodala, or anyone else, has been super effective guarding him in the half court.
GS has to change something. You can’t let LeBron back you down in iso every possession for the entire game.
I’m talking about a man press, too.
I think you’re minimizing just how impossible it is to guard NBA players full court. When LeBron beats Green or Iguodala 75 feet from the basket (which he will; he’s LeBron James), and the help comes to cut him off before he just bangs it on you himself (ditto), you’re either giving up transition threes or you’re leaving one of the bigs, both of whom can run the floor and like to finish. So then it becomes a question of whether LeBron does a good job of exploiting the rotation… which he will. I think it would just be a drill for these guys - and making the average shot even 10% easier means you probably get blown out at this level.
Honestly, I think they’re OK defensively. You would think that Kerr would live with knowing that LeBron was going to shoot .402 in the series and miss 20+ shots a game. He just probably wouldn’t expect his team to be shooting about the same.
Pressing can work in the NBA, for a little bit, just to change it up. It might work OK against Cleveland just because they have so few guys you can trust to dribble more than five feet.
Mogzov is legit. This isn’t the first time he’s owned the Warriors. TT is a rebound machine. Depending on what GS does in the next couple seasons people might not see them as a juggernaut either, more of a lucky paper tiger.
I was mistaken, though. '94 was impressive, but '95 was the crazy year I was thinking about. That team acquired Drexler late so they were more well rounded than '94, but they were the six seed. Never had home court. Went through the Malone/Stockton Jazz, D-Rob Spurs, Barkley Suns, and Shaq/Penny Magic. That’s the best run to me, given the competition, especially at his own position. That’d be like if LeBron outplayed Wade, Kobe, Durant, and Curry all in the same year.
I’m not real clear on what one-man show means here, so I might not really be following what you’re saying, but if the word for what Otis Thorpe was is legit, then no, Mozgov isn’t legit. Otis Thorpe in his age 28 season averaged 18 and 10 on 56% shooting. He had a 1700-point season under his belt at that point. Mozgov is 28 and he has 2000 points in his career.
Not that it’s a super-compelling way to do this, but Mozgov’s win share comparables list is:
Primoz Brezec
Manny Leaks
Skip Thoren
Bob Houbregs
Melvin Turpin
Lee Davis
Phil Jordon
Isaac Austin
Omer Asik
Dean Garrett
Thorpe:
Alex English
Rasheed Wallace
Detlef Schrempf
A.C. Green
Buck Williams
Rashard Lewis
Bobby Jones
Horace Grant
Chris Bosh
Terry Cummings
Mozgov has looked much better with the Cavs than before, and he’s not useless, but those are very different lists (and him getting a lot better when he’s alongside LeBron kind of cuts both ways). Thorpe got traded for Drexler, like you say. And then there’s Horry, who also helped a ton. The rest of the guys are probably washes, but I don’t think the supporting casts are very close overall. I mean, how could they be, right? This is a pretty poorly-managed team that had Kyrie Irving and then traded a bunch of stuff for Love, just how full could the cupboard be?
Oh, and PS, for my money, Hakeem didn’t outplay Shaq. It’s always bugged me, even though I like Hakeem a lot more than I like Shaq, but Shaq dominated.
I wonder if the clock struck midnight and everyone turns back into a pumpkin now.
LeBron is having all sorts of problems with Iggy. His jumper was broken but he was scoring in the paint. Now he’s missing easy hooks and layups. Not good.
LeBron’s size has advantages (people bounce off him, walking mismatch, pass over people), but also disadvantages. He can’t really split double teams or navigate around people or change directions like a true guard can.
Jimmy Chitwood:
By one man band I mean a team whose success was driven, more than most teams, by mostly one person. Sure, you can argue any of them have “good players.” Talk up Otis Thorpe or Maxwell if you want. Or on the '11 Mavs, praise Chandler and old ass Kidd and Marion, or lil JJ Barea. These teams have serviceable players. One guy can’t score 100 points or defend five guys by himself. But without Dirk or Hakeem they’d be absolutely terrible, and even with them they don’t seem like title favorites. Contrast with GSW, Curry stinking it up and being carried by a stacked roster.
I’d add the 2006 Heat too. The only reason they have a title (besides refs) is because Wade went super nova.
Not that it matters much, but Otis Thorpe wasn’t 28 in the title run. He was 31 and averaged 11/10 in the playoffs. Mozgov is averaging 11/7 right now. His numbers didn’t change much from Denver, one more point on better efficiency (easy LeBron assists).
Winning the series would be a great accomplishment yes, but i don’t think getting to the Finals is, like at all. Lebron has gotten a free trip to the finals five years in a row just by virtue of playing in the East. There haven’t been any legitimate contending non Lebron teams in the East since the Celtics and Magic stopped being good, and both those teams beat the Lebron teams several times. So far Lebron is 2-3 in Finals apperances, and one of those was on a miracle shot by someone else.
Another pretty decisive win by the Warriors tonight. That’s two in a row.
It’d be nice to close this out in six, but it very well might go seven,
“I am the best player in the world.”
Obviously that has little value in a team game, huh, Lebron?
What a bizarre statement. It’s not like LeBron orchestrated the injuries to his 2 all-star teammates. Are we really about to criticize LeBron for being a one-man team after criticizing him for four years for joining other good players on the Heat to win a title?
Geez, as soon as it looks like he’s probably going to lose, right back to the insane LeBron talk.
[QUOTE=Mince]
I am the best player in the world."
Obviously that has little value in a team game, huh, Lebron?
[/QUOTE]
For sure, if there’s anything this series has shown me, it’s how little value LeBron James has.
[QUOTE=DigitalC]
So far Lebron is 2-3 in Finals apperances, and one of those was on a miracle shot by someone else.
[/QUOTE]
Yep, he was handed that championship after that game 6 shot by someone else. That someone else: Ray Allen, who averaged 25, 11, 7, two steals and a block in those Finals, including 37 and 12 in game 7 to win it, after another 32 in another game 7 against Indiana in the series before.
Oh, wait, I had my card filled out wrong.
[QUOTE=marshmallow]
Talk up Otis Thorpe or Maxwell if you want. Or on the '11 Mavs, praise Chandler and old ass Kidd and Marion, or lil JJ Barea. These teams have serviceable players. One guy can’t score 100 points or defend five guys by himself.
[/quote]
What I’m unclear on is whether what we’re comparing these guys to the rest of the Cavs, who are bad, and do not include multiple Hall of Famers. It’s one thing to say “talk up Otis Thorpe” because Otis Thorpe wasn’t Scottie Pippen, but it’s a whole different thing to suggest that JR Smith and Mozgov are just another couple of serviceable players in the mold of Marion, Chandler, Thorpe or Heat Shaq.
I figured including his accomplishments up to the title run would have been even more unfair to Mozgov. If you want to compare directly, then we’re talking about former All-Star Otis Thorpe. (The “better efficiency” part is pretty much the entire ball of wax when we’re talking about Mozgov’s value, anyway. His PER in Denver was 13.8, in Cleveland it was 18.7. That’s the difference between Dwight Powell this year and Kevin Love this year.)
All I’m trying to say is that if you’re saying Mozgov is as good or comparable to the second bananas on other title teams, this is a non-starter. When names like Kidd and Chandler are coming up in a conversation that started with Mozgov and Tristan Thompson, it gets a little confusing.
And talent wins out in the end. What an amazing season by the Warriors. It will be interesting to see if they can sustain this level of success, but they are in thetop 10 all time for regular season winning percentage, and all the other teams on that list were good for a long time (OK, I don’t know offhand about the 1947 Syracuse Nationals). Anyway, congratulations to the W’s, and cheer up, Cleveland, it’s almost football season!
Question: Is LeBron the series MVP despite losing? I think he might be; his performance all series was really otherworldly and he was pretty much singlehandedly responsible for them winning two games.
Warriors!! A great season. It has been 40 long years here. Congrats also to those long-time faithful Warrior fans like my former coworker Layne N., R.I.P.
Damn the Warriors, and their stupid small ball nonsense.
I do hope that “Justin in Cleveland” calls into Bomani Jones’ radio show tomorrow night, though.
So, the Warriors won wire to wire. Congrats to them- they were the best team in the league all year, and they deserve it.
One question: did anyone connected to the Warriors give even a LITTLE credit to Mark Jackson, who had already built them into a formidable contender before this season? I hope so. Steve Kerr did a great job, and I won’t begrudge him any praise he receives, but even he must know he was handed a team that was ready to win NOW (which is why he took this job rather than the Knicks’ offer).
The Warriors were the healthiest team all year, and that’s huge. Heard Stephen A. kind of downplaying their accomplishment because 1) Kyrie/Love hurt; 2) didn’t face Spurs; 3) didn’t face Clippers; 4) Everyone on OKC was hurt.
Don’t agree that it has any impact on GSW’s championship. They won the games they played. This ain’t college football.
I thought I replied to this at the time, but apparently the hamsters ate it. 538.com had a very interesting article addressing this issue (I won’t try to find and link to it because my connection sucks right now, sorry). Nate Silver concluded that the biggest upset in NBA Finals history was in 1974, when the Bucks beat the Celtics as 4-1 dogs. The second biggest was the next year, when the Warriors beat the Bullets as 3-1 dogs. He thought the Cavs were 3-1 dogs this year, so the upset would have tied for second had it happened.
OTOH he is calculating these odds using a very simple Elo system that doesn’t take injuries into account, so, without having the injury reports from 1974 and 1975 handy, I think you could certainly argue that this would have been the biggest ever Finals upset given that the Cavs were down two All-Stars. I hope he follows up with data for earlier playoff rounds.