NBA Finals - Jerry Zgota

[Camden [enjin:6601484]]

I think you're stretching to find reasons why taking Okafor makes sense. Giving Okafor defensive credit for a team subbing in a similarly sized player to defend him? In my best Chris Carter voice, "Come on, man!"

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

Drew, You make some good points, but PnR defense isn't just about guarding your own man (in this example we're talking about Okafor on Draymond Green), but also how you deal with switches, traps, and rotations. Heck, Cleveland set picks multiple times on Iggy purely for the purpose of trying to get LeBron cross-matched with someone OTHER than Iggy defensively. In fact, it was often Delly setting those screens explicitly for that purpose.

The problem for Okafor would be those times he gets switched off on a guy like Curry or doesn't hedge hard enough or can't recover back to Green or some other guy fast enough. Defending the pick and roll is the rocket science of basketball - it's super, duper hard and you want the smartest, most mobile players executing it. It also helps if you have guards that can fight over screens, something we were absolutely horrific at last year, especially LaVine. We would have to file a missing persons report every time someone set a screen on him. He would disappear for hours! Do we really want Okafor to be the guy dealing with the fallout of that!?

As for Okafor being automatic in the low post offensively, I certainly wanna believe that would be the case against smaller competition in the NBA. Believe me, I have a sentimental spot for the old school low-post game and I would be fascinated to see how Okafor would look in a T-Wolves uniform. However.....My brain tells me that it simply isn't the weapon it used to be. Double teams come faster and rotations are smarter than ever.

[SameOldNudityDrew]

I think you're stretching to find reasons why taking Okafor makes sense. Giving Okafor defensive credit for a team subbing in a similarly sized player to defend him? In my best Chris Carter voice, "Come on, man!"

Isn't that exactly the benefit of going small in the first place? Forcing the other team to make adjustments? Why can't it work the other way? If not, shouldn't teams start 5 PGs?

[thedoper]

I think you're stretching to find reasons why taking Okafor makes sense. Giving Okafor defensive credit for a team subbing in a similarly sized player to defend him? In my best Chris Carter voice, "Come on, man!"

Isn't that exactly the benefit of going small in the first place? Forcing the other team to make adjustments? Why can't it work the other way? If not, shouldn't teams start 5 PGs?

Is that you Rick Adelman?

[Monster]

I think you're stretching to find reasons why taking Okafor makes sense. Giving Okafor defensive credit for a team subbing in a similarly sized player to defend him? In my best Chris Carter voice, "Come on, man!"

Isn't that exactly the benefit of going small in the first place? Forcing the other team to make adjustments? Why can't it work the other way? If not, shouldn't teams start 5 PGs?

Is that you Rick Adelman?

Nah sounds more like George Karl.

What seems to be lost in this Cavs GS discussion about going small is GS went small because they had too. It was a bold and somewhat desperate move (getting IGGY on the floor was a big deal). They didn't want to go as small as they did but the reality is the Cavs big guys Mosgov and TT were killing them on both ends of the floor which sounds bizzare but it was true. Ironically Towns (not Okafor) projects to be much more like those guys that forced GS to go small. Obviously Okafor could force a team to try and go small but the biggest reason GS went small was to change what the Cavs were doing defensively. This series is pretty interesting to watch unfold eith rookie HCs trying to match wits and neither looks clueless that for sure imo.

[Camden [enjin:6601484]]

I think you're stretching to find reasons why taking Okafor makes sense. Giving Okafor defensive credit for a team subbing in a similarly sized player to defend him? In my best Chris Carter voice, "Come on, man!"

Isn't that exactly the benefit of going small in the first place? Forcing the other team to make adjustments? Why can't it work the other way? If not, shouldn't teams start 5 PGs?

...Because what you suggested is traditional basketball where a center matches up against a center. Going small is a change of pace unit. I'm not giving someone defensive credit for having a normal matchup on offense. That's like giving someone $100 because they donated $100 to charity. It doesn't make any sense.

[AbeVigodaLive]

I think you're stretching to find reasons why taking Okafor makes sense. Giving Okafor defensive credit for a team subbing in a similarly sized player to defend him? In my best Chris Carter voice, "Come on, man!"

Isn't that exactly the benefit of going small in the first place? Forcing the other team to make adjustments? Why can't it work the other way? If not, shouldn't teams start 5 PGs?

Is that you Rick Adelman?

Nah sounds more like George Karl.

What seems to be lost in this Cavs GS discussion about going small is GS went small because they had too. It was a bold and somewhat desperate move (getting IGGY on the floor was a big deal). They didn't want to go as small as they did but the reality is the Cavs big guys Mosgov and TT were killing them on both ends of the floor which sounds bizzare but it was true. Ironically Towns (not Okafor) projects to be much more like those guys that forced GS to go small. Obviously Okafor could force a team to try and go small but the biggest reason GS went small was to change what the Cavs were doing defensively. This series is pretty interesting to watch unfold eith rookie HCs trying to match wits and neither looks clueless that for sure imo.

Okafor against small ball teams sounds disastrous for our team defense.

But Golden State had been going small all season... blitzing teams offensively when they did.

It isn't a novel concept. In fact, they put it into action first vs. Memphis with Green at the "5" and Barnes at the "4" and then did the same thing vs. Houston. They're simply carrying on a long-developed strategy.

https://www.google.com/search?q=golden+state+goes+small+vs.+houston+rockets+playoffs&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

[The Rage Monster [enjin:8010341]]

I think Blatt made a huge coaching blunder going away from Mozgov last game. Mozgov has been been one of the Cavs best players this series, you don't go away from your strength hoping to match the opponent's strength. Instead of going small they should have gone big, start Lebron, JR, Shumpert, TT, and Mozgov. It's a frightening thought putting your future in JR Smith's hands but the Warriors are a vastly superior team so gambling on getting the good version of Smith is really all they have left.

[SameOldNudityDrew]

I think you're stretching to find reasons why taking Okafor makes sense. Giving Okafor defensive credit for a team subbing in a similarly sized player to defend him? In my best Chris Carter voice, "Come on, man!"

Isn't that exactly the benefit of going small in the first place? Forcing the other team to make adjustments? Why can't it work the other way? If not, shouldn't teams start 5 PGs?

...Because what you suggested is traditional basketball where a center matches up against a center. Going small is a change of pace unit. I'm not giving someone defensive credit for having a normal matchup on offense. That's like giving someone $100 because they donated $100 to charity. It doesn't make any sense.

I don't care so much about whether a lineup is normal or change-of-pace (both ideas really on a traditional concept of what "normal" is that I'm glad we've been rethinking in recent years). I care about advantages and disadvantages. And a very good big low post scorer has an advantage over a center who is just there because he's big. That's an advantage. Plus it could take away the advantage another team could get by going with a smaller lineup. That's negating somebody else's advantage.

There are drawbacks to both kinds of lineups (going small or going big), but if you have talent that is unique enough, you should be able to dictate the terms of the engagement and get more advantages than disadvantages. Of course, you need to have the flexibility to adjust to what the other team is doing if their talent is so good with a certain type of lineup (lots of bigs or smaller with lots of outside shooting), which is why a guy like Towns is very attractive and why I still lean toward him (which you seem to keep overlooking, Cam). But there's an advantage to being able to dictate the terms of the engagement if you can do it, and it's not crazy to think a truly great low-post talent like Okafor could do that in a league that doesn't have many guys like that anymore.

Are any of you guys old enough to remember the old school "Ice Hockey" game for the original Nintendo? The one where you got to pick your lineup, choosing between skinny fast weak guys, fat slow strong guys, or middle of the road guys? This whole discussion reminds me of that a little bit.

[MikkeMan]

Yeah. It's not a fluke thing we're dealing with here. The Warriors are 82 - 20. They're beating the teams in front of them. Often, they did so rather handily. Asterisk season?

No.

MANY, MANY championship teams win titles because of good fortune. Nobody is clamoring for Magic Johnson's Lakers to have asterisks because Kevin McHale broke his foot one year and the Houston Rockets backcourt snorted too much coke and Sampson got injured. It's part of basketball. Teams that win get good fortune. Unless you're claiming that the Warriors have won more than 80% of their games solely on "good fortune"... I'm not seeing the case why they'd have an asterisk should they win.


[Note: I've said it before... David Lee is a borderline All Star. He was an 18/9 guy for a good playoff team only a year ago. He was 11th man for most of these playoffs. That team is ridiculously talented. To be fair, I don't have an answer for L. Barbosa though...]

Abe, I agree very much with this. For example 1988-89 Detroit Pistons played Celtics that were missing Bird in 1st round, Milwaukee that was missing their best player Terry Cummings and lost starter Krystkowiak in beginning of 3rd game in 2nd round. They had pretty tight conference finals against Chicago that lost Pippen in the beginning of 6th game. In finals they played Lakers that was already missing Byron Scott and lost Magic in 3rd game. Even with that Detroit team having all its best players available during playoffs and all the bad luck that its opponents had, you cannot say that they wouldn't have earned their championship. They were the best team in whole NBA during regular season with record 63-19 and had 15-2 record in playoffs. I think that Golden State has not had as much luck than that Detroit team had and is really worthy of championship if they will win it all.