14-15 NBA Playoffs Thread

[Arles]

Originally Posted by nol

I don't think that damned them as much as injuries did. LeBron is equal opportunity enough with his passing that it's not like they went to Delly any more in this series than they went to someone like Shumpert (who just missed a lot of high-quality looks) this game.

This chart is basically what you just described in a less anecdotal form:

What's more impressive is that Russ did a lot of his damage against the TWolves, Lakers, Kings and so forth. Lebron did his near 50% eFG against the top defense in the NBA in the finals (with far less help).

Here's Russ' shooting numbers in his regular season games vs Golden State:
32% avg FG (7.7-23.3 per game), 26% avg 3P (1.7-6.3 per game)

What Lebron did in this Golden State series is pretty incredible.

[murrayyyyy]

Originally Posted by nol

final edit: as great as it is to see Iggy get his due in a broader NBA sense, it's pretty insulting for the last two Finals MVPs to be guys who were the 4th-5th scoring options on their teams who did not demonstrably slow LeBron James down. I would have been more accepting of a Steph Curry MVP or even some Atlanta Hawks-style MVP given out to the entire starting 5.

10-28 from the line is the NBA Finals MVP. With (if you are into analytics) his highest game score being 18 and four of his games were below 15. Curry deserved it more than Iggy did.

Time to get rid of the award...

[Brian Swartz]

Agreed. Added to his body of work from the rest of his career, LeBron is now very close to being on the all-time Mount Rushmore in my opinion.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by bhlloy

DOLA - Shawn Marion might not be a good player any more but I can't believe he hasn't made it off the bench given how terrible some of the other rotation players have been.

Blatt was so dye in the wool about not expanding his rotation and it made no sense at all. I think it was one of the many ways he showed his ignorance to the NBA game, he probably had no idea what Marion did a few years ago and I think he wanted to live and die by his limited bench, so as to be able to say "we lost my way or won my way..." and well...we saw the result.

I doubt the corpse of Marion would've made much difference, but he literally showed no adjustments at all and when he did adjust, he adjusted to play right into Kerr's hands.

Kerr's VIDEO GUY outcoached Blatt in a Series where he mismanaged minutes, rotations and everything. Sure he wasn't working with much, but damn, he ruined what little he had after what LeBron did.

But hey, at least Golden State needs a new assistant after Gentry leaves.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

But hey, at least Golden State needs a new assistant after Gentry leaves.

They'll probably elevate the video guy lol.

Blatt is a terrible coach for the NBA. His stuff may work in Europe, but he has shown little ability to adjust to the game here.

[nol]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

Kerr's VIDEO GUY outcoached Blatt in a Series where he mismanaged minutes, rotations and everything. Sure he wasn't working with much, but damn, he ruined what little he had after what LeBron did.

What? There's a reason the Warriors had to adjust in the first place. The Cavs played better defensively against the Warriors than any other team had - someone came up with that game plan. The worse team had the advantage after 3 games and the better team adjusted to it and won. That's not getting outcoached.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by nol

What? There's a reason the Warriors had to adjust in the first place. The Cavs played better defensively against the Warriors than any other team had - someone came up with that game plan. The worse team had the advantage after 3 games and the better team adjusted to it and won. That's not getting outcoached.

Umm..if he came up with that scheme, he'd have been smart enough to keep it going when it was working. And even if we're giving him credit for that and not Tyronne Lue the highest paid assistant in the NBA, then well where the hell else were his other adjustments?

But yeah, you're not going to dissuade me that the guy is not a motivator, has no pulse on his players and while I'll give him credit for being a good coach and a dude who could probably survive in the NBA on a team like Stevens has in Boston...his performance these whole playoffs have just not be impressive at all.

I knew he was lost all year, but this playoffs exposed him for what he was.

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

They'll probably elevate the video guy lol.

Blatt is a terrible coach for the NBA. His stuff may work in Europe, but he has shown little ability to adjust to the game here.

Yeah hope that kid gets a raise. But hey, 28 and a NBA championship ring isn't bad either.

Also if LeBron and Lue were trying to overcompensate for him, there's only so much they could do. If you've ever had a boss who showed up to supervise you but where you had a better handle on stuff than they did, you'll understand the difficulty they had.

Now multiply that by an entire season?

[stevew]

Fire Blatt and promote Lue tomorrow if LeBron wants it.

[nol]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

Umm..if he came up with that scheme, he'd have been smart enough to keep it going when it was working. And even if we're giving him credit for that and not Tyronne Lue the highest paid assistant in the NBA, then well where the hell else were his other adjustments?

Because when a team swaps out its starting center for a small forward, odds are the same gameplan isn't going to work as well. There comes a point at which you can't make any more adjustments. Mozgov and Thompson aren't good enough to post up 6'6 guys; they obviously didn't have the wing players to beat Golden State going small (Shumpert, Smith, Delly, and James Jones combined to go 0-21 when LeBron wasn't on the floor). The main thing is it's silly to be like "The head coach is worse than the other team's video guy!!" because an idea can come from anywhere.

I'm sure there was some random video guy or scout on the 2011 Miami Heat who was like "uh how about instead of having Mike Bibby and Joel Anthony out there just because they are nominally a PG and C, we put some good players in," but it doesn't matter how good your idea is if it isn't implemented.

[Vince, Pt. II]

I'm not sure I get all the Blatt hate. What could he have done? He had the best team in the league at a disadvantage through three games in the finals, and he was missing his #2 and #3 players. Oh, and the team he was playing against was 100% healthy. Honestly, the weirdest thing that happened was he benched Mozgov, but even that had some merit to it because they freaking LOST the game where Mozgov went off.

[miami_fan]

Let's be honest, the questions about Blatt did not start in the Finals or even at the start of the playoffs. IIRC when he was hired, Blatt's profile was one of an offensive innovator with a Princeton style offense that would get everyone on the team involved. This was an obvious upgrade over the last coach. Then they added the best player in the game and arguably the best offensive power forward in the game. 39 games into the season, the team was under .500 and that offense was no where to be found. There was all sorts of speculation as to why that happened but it did happened. After that, the narrative was that LeBron came back after his two week break and the team took off. Maybe that was some great adjustment that no one wants to give Blatt credit for.

I have made the comparison before. Blatt gets the same amount of credit that Mike Brown gets for leading the Cavs to the 07 finals. I am not sure why he deserves more.

[stevew]

I feel like he's gone next year with a slow start or any kind of pre Christmas doldrums. Since there's gotta be a more likely than not chance of a short leash firing, just give Lue the whole off-season and training camp and let Blatt step down and collect his money.

[miami_fan]

Originally Posted by stevew

I feel like he's gone next year with a slow start or any kind of pre Christmas doldrums. Since there's gotta be a more likely than not chance of a short leash firing, just give Lue the whole off-season and training camp and let Blatt step down and collect his money.

This is the thing. I don't think Blatt should lose his job. I also don't think Blatt can succeed with Lue on the bench. Blatt is not Steve Kerr at this point. By that I mean while Steve Kerr seems okay with Alvin Gentry being known as OC and Ron Adams being known as DC, Blatt does not strike me as being happy sharing the credit with Lue or anyone else.

[nol]

Originally Posted by miami_fan

I have made the comparison before. Blatt gets the same amount of credit that Mike Brown gets for leading the Cavs to the 07 finals. I am not sure why he deserves more.

Winning 2 games against arguably the best non-Jordan team in NBA history compared to getting swept by a Spurs team that wasn't particularly special is a good place to start. This year's team beat better teams in the East and had fewer losses in doing so. This year's team had two All-Stars get injured and had to adjust on the fly.

The Cavs went through three rounds against teams coached by Brad Stevens, Tom Thibodeaux, and Mike Budenholzer and you could make the case that Cleveland made the better adjustments each round. I just find it simpler to believe that a coach who was pretty well-regarded before the season had a rough start, made some adjustments to the NBA and got better over the course of the year (and was helped out by LeBron getting better and some good trades) to become pretty decent on balance rather than believe that every single good thing the Cavs did strategically came from Lue/LeBron/some other assistant and every single bad thing was Blatt's idea.

[miami_fan]

Originally Posted by nol

Winning 2 games against arguably the best non-Jordan team in NBA history compared to getting swept by a Spurs team that wasn't particularly special is a good place to start. This year's team beat better teams in the East and had fewer losses in doing so. This year's team had two All-Stars get injured and had to adjust on the fly.

The Cavs went through three rounds against teams coached by Brad Stevens, Tom Thibodeaux, and Mike Budenholzer and you could make the case that Cleveland made the better adjustments each round. I just find it simpler to believe that a coach who was pretty well-regarded before the season had a rough start, made some adjustments to the NBA and got better over the course of the year (and was helped out by LeBron getting better and some good trades) to become pretty decent on balance rather than believe that every single good thing the Cavs did strategically came from Lue/LeBron/some other assistant and every single bad thing was Blatt's idea.

So where is the disagreement? To use your words, David Blatt IS on balance pretty decent. Do I think he can improve? Sure. Unfortunately, no one on that team is running forward with the pieces of tactical genius that Blatt provided.

[RainMaker]

I thought Blatt did a great job in the playoffs. Outcoached Thibodeau and Budenholzer. Went toe-to-toe with Kerr.

[law90026]

Re Mozgov not playing as much or being taken out: there was absolutely no choice, at least in Game 6. He was being destroyed out there on the defensive end when Curry and Green played high pick-and-rolls. Mozgov was constantly on the perimeter and that just opened up the entire floor for Green when Curry slipped the double team and passed it to him.

[nol]

Originally Posted by miami_fan

So where is the disagreement? To use your words, David Blatt IS on balance pretty decent. Do I think he can improve? Sure. Unfortunately, no one on that team is running forward with the pieces of tactical genius that Blatt provided.

Because the Cavs were substantially out-coached by the Spurs in 2007. I think people are making the surface comparison along the lines of "hey look I could be an NBA coach too, just give it to LeBron every time and get outta the way" without realizing how disciplined the Cavs' offense was in its extreme clock-milking and the matchups it sought out. That was more out of the ordinary than what the Cavs did on defense, which was generally the same game plan other teams tried (make Curry a passer in pick-and-roll, put a lot of effort into shutting down Thompson at the expense of leaving Green and Barnes sometimes).

Again, maybe those ideas came from somewhere else and Blatt is purely a figurehead, but it's funny to contrast the sideye I got a couple weeks ago for saying that Alvin Gentry was one of the better assistant coaches out there due to his substantial role in designing Golden State's offense to the way credit and blame is divvied up among Cleveland's coaching staff.

[Vince, Pt. II]

Originally Posted by nol

final edit: as great as it is to see Iggy get his due in a broader NBA sense, it's pretty insulting for the last two Finals MVPs to be guys who were the 4th-5th scoring options on their teams who did not demonstrably slow LeBron James down. I would have been more accepting of a Steph Curry MVP or even some Atlanta Hawks-style MVP given out to the entire starting 5.

Here's a pretty good argument in favor of Andre Iguodala for MVP.

[Galaril]

Yeah Blatt has no right coaching the NBA and am wondering if he was hired for know basketball reasons by Cavs owner. Lue should be the coach as Kerr at times coached circles around him.

[Groundhog]

My biggest problem with Blatt is not his coaching style, it's the fact that I don't know if he even has one. Especially in the finals there was way too much 'iso LeBron on the left', and IMO that was 99% LeBron's play calling.

[nol]

Originally Posted by Vince, Pt. II

Here's a pretty good argument in favor of Andre Iguodala for MVP.

The defense was the same throughout the series - 38 vs. 44 percent shooting is a pretty small difference over 6 games (and there were certainly a handful of high-profile non-calls on Iguodala that would have narrowed the gap even more). The difference was that Curry started to hit enough shots - despite the individual team and defensive effort on LeBron, the Warriors were down 2-1 and were a few minutes from being down 3-2 before Curry reverted to being the game's best shooter.

[Groundhog]

I think the real difference in games 5 and 6 was that Draymond and Iggy both stepped up on the offensive end. Yeah, Curry was knocking down his shots again, but Green and Iggy not missing on their open looks created from the attention given to Curry really hammered the nail in the Cavs coffin.

[whomario]

Originally Posted by nol

The defense was the same throughout the series - 38 vs. 44 percent shooting is a pretty small difference over 6 games

The difference in +- and offensive rating however ...

[nol]

Originally Posted by whomario

The difference in +- and offensive rating however ...

That's because Iggy played the largest proportion of his minutes in the all small lineup, which as a whole changed the series.

Between the defense (which is already getting some revisionist history along the lines of "the Warriors put Iguodala on an island with LeBron and cut off the role players" when they put five guys in the paint and the role players missed open shots) and the offensive numbers he achieved by virtue of being the 5th option who was either ignored or guarded by a center, it was an unworthy performance. Curry played poorly in one game, had the best individual performance of any Warriors player all Finals in the series' most important game, and played well in all the other games (while indirectly creating most of his teammates' open looks).