NBA Playoffs Thread

He said he needed a minute to pull himself together, very emotional, didn't want to show it on the court. His teammates made him come back out for the trophy presentation.

 

A byproduct of this is noting once again that no member of the Fab Five ever won a Big ten title, NCAA title, or NBA title.

Losing that one rankled until they won it again in 2000.

 

Of course in leaving the court so quick he didn't shake hands with the opponent and some of the same people here making excuses for him were killing peyton manning for the same thing a few years ago....

 

I'd say the Shaq-to-the-Lakers thing was similar to this. The others, not as much. I think Garnett and Allen had done their time with their teams and it was clear those teams weren't going to to peak again with them still there. So it's a little difference.

In both the case of Shaq and LeBron, they left their teams as those teams approached in the middle of what was widely perceived as their windows of opportunity. In Cleveland, the mentality was "what piece or two can we put around LeBron to get over the hump" and then all of a sudden LeBron was gone. I think Orlando had the right to feel sort of the same way.

 

Think their might be an impending sense of deja vu in Orlando, given Dwight Howard's situation? Can the Magic keep and build around him?

 

Over-under on the Spoelstra firing announcement: 4 p.m. tomorrow.

 

Sorry, but Spoelstra wasn't the reason this team lost. And if Riley is brought back to the bench, I don't see him getting through to James.

 

And Phil's in the bullpen? Phil loves teams with Hall of Famers, ha.

Dallas executed the game at obviously a very high level throughout this series although I think they screwed the pooch on easy plays early in the series because I thought they allowed themselves to get intimidated a bit by Miami's athleticism. For example, Miami never contained Berea in this series. He got into the lane at will. But early, he'd miss layups because it's almost like he was looking over his shoulder for Bosh, James, etc., to swat him. Later in the series, he finished his drives, shot with confidence and got better.

I thought similarly, they quit throwing the ball away. It was almost like they pressed their passes early out of fear of Miami's ability to get in the passing lanes. Later in the series, the ball movement was great. The ball went to the open man whether it was Terry, Dirk, Barea, whoever.

It was funny. Miami had some cases in the series where it was moving the ball around like Dallas, but when they do it, it's a countdown until somebody walks, dribbles it off the foot or whatever. They were almost better off when they minimized the passes. Even when they had a good passing game in Game 5 it was the ball with either James or Wade, a double-team, and a pass for a shot. It wasn't always a lot of ball movement.

To me Miami getting over the hump isn't going to be about a particular player, it'll be about improving their functionality as a team, just a little altered culture. For as much as we tend to just point to stars when we look at championships, these are always highly-functional teams. Phil Jackson's specialty to get talented players to buy into a team concept and those teams represent probably the Lion's share of championships going back to the 80s. We tend to gloss over that.

 

Not in this lifetime.

 

Howard was the silver lining for me if the Heat won. Christ, at one time the Heat had him and Eddie House on the floor at the same time in fourth quarter of the deciding game of the NBA Finals.

Jesus.

And, Zag, James played hot potato with the basketball in the fourth quarter. He did not want anything to do with the ball when the game was on the line. Until he gets over that, and fucking up the offense because all of his team mates are expecting him to do something, he will be a cancer to any team trying to win a championship.

And as of right now, there seems to be no real cure of cancer other than cutting it out.

 

Funny, isn't it? Before last night, it was the Mavericks who were widely seen as the exemplars of playoff failure due to character flaws. Remember what people were saying after they blew that lead in Portland? Poor guys finally break through, and they will always be known as the winners of the series LeBron lost. Not even top billing for their own title.