Bill Walton

[Chaplin]

seriously - this post is just stupidity Chap - I domn't pretend not to be arrogant sometimes, but the fact that you call people out on it when you yourself are probably the most arrogant person here(who else tries to start their own board and then comes grvoeling back when it's a complete and utter failure?) is really stupid.

DB

 

[Cheesebeef]

Cry me a river cheese. I certainly didn't hear you conceding any of my pertinent points.

Chap - if you had pertinent points - I'd acknowledge them.

 

[Chaplin]

Chap - if you had pertinent points - I'd acknowledge them.

So the fact that you need to score more points to win a game isn't a pertinent point??

 

[Cheesebeef]

So the fact that you need to score more points to win a game isn't a pertinent point??

the fact is the only way that you score MORE points is by stopping th eother team genius. If each team scored every single time down the court and the team with the ball last scored, then you might have a point - but ulitmately scoring more points is a product of stopping the other team AND scoring - this conversation is stupid.

 

[elindholm]

Defense wins championships is a fact. Look at the teams left. What is the number one thing Phil Jackson stresses. IT's Defense.

Miami's defense is not particularly good. And who cares what Phil Jackson stresses? Maybe coaches stress defense because players tend to be lazy about it, while no one needs to be reminded to try to score. (Well, almost no one.)

As you said, the Spurs were better than the Suns in this series, and yes, their defense was better. But it sure wasn't great. The Suns shot close to 50% for the series and broke 100 in four out of the five games. If excellent defense is so darned essential, how did the Spurs get this far?

 

[Joe Mama]

I made this point in another thread, but here goes again. There are only really two teams in the NBA right now that the Phoenix Suns would struggle to stop when they really need to do it. As we saw against very good offensive teams like Dallas the Suns were capable of stopping people when they had to. Those two teams are San Antonio and Miami. That's because the Phoenix Suns were incapable of stopping Tim Duncan and Shaquille O'Neal.

Let's not forget that the Phoenix Suns were in each of these games. They were not blown out of any game. Because of the lack of depth they really missed Joe Johnson in the first two games. With JJ they would have been at the very least 1-1 after the first two games.

There is no need to dismantle this team. There is no way to change the way this team plays on offense. What they need is a deeper bench, especially in the frontcourt. They don't have to completely go away from the skill ball, but they do need to play with a traditional lineup more often.

Joe Mama

 

[Cheesebeef]

Defense wins championships is a fact. Look at the teams left. What is the number one thing Phil Jackson stresses. IT's Defense.

Miami's defense is not particularly good. And who cares what Phil Jackson stresses? Maybe coaches stress defense because players tend to be lazy about it, while no one needs to be reminded to try to score. (Well, almost no one.)

As you said, the Spurs were better than the Suns in this series, and yes, their defense was better. But it sure wasn't great. The Suns shot close to 50% for the series and broke 100 in four out of the five games. If excellent defense is so darned essential, how did the Spurs get this far?

they actually broke 100 3 times out of 5 and when you consider that we were averaging 116 in the playoffs previous to this series and they held us to 104 - 12 points below our average - I'd say they played pretty damn good defense against a very hot offense.

 

[elindholm]

they actually broke 100 3 times out of 5

My mistake, sorry.

and when you consider that we were averaging 116 in the playoffs previous to this series and they held us to 104 - 12 points below our average - I'd say they played pretty damn good defense against a very hot offense.

Is your point that they played better defense than Memphis or Dallas? Sure, that's pretty evident. But the Suns still shot .496 from the field and .413 from three-point range, both above their regular-season averages. (These numbers are on suns.com.) There's no way that you can say that the Spurs played "great defense" if they gave up 104 points per game on those percentages. Heck, the Spurs didn't even force very many turnovers: only 13.4 per game, less than the Suns gave up in the regular season.

The Suns' offense was just fine against the Spurs. Because the games were slower, they didn't have as many scoring opportunities, but overall they were just as efficient as they were in the regular season, if not more so. Had the Suns rebounded at all -- they got beat on the boards by six per game, including four and a half on the offensive glass -- the series would still be going on.

"Defense wins championships" is a cliche, nothing more. If what people really mean is, "Overall superiority wins championships, and that includes being more successful defensively against your opponent's offense than their defense is against your offense, as well as rebounding well on both ends of the floor," then now we're talking about something substantive. But that doesn't have much of a ring to it, does it? So instead people say "Defense wins championships!" like it's some profound truth of the ages.

Well, it's not.

 

[Cheesebeef]

they actually broke 100 3 times out of 5

My mistake, sorry.

and when you consider that we were averaging 116 in the playoffs previous to this series and they held us to 104 - 12 points below our average - I'd say they played pretty damn good defense against a very hot offense.

Is your point that they played better defense than Memphis or Dallas? Sure, that's pretty evident. But the Suns still shot .496 from the field and .413 from three-point range, both above their regular-season averages. (These numbers are on suns.com.) There's no way that you can say that the Spurs played "great defense" if they gave up 104 points per game on those percentages. Heck, the Spurs didn't even force very many turnovers: only 13.4 per game, less than the Suns gave up in the regular season.

all I know is that we averaged a hell of a lot more than 15 three point attempts per game during the regular season (actually shooting 25 per game) - making that 41% pretty much ineffective - sure we may have shot it a little better but we weren't GETTING THE SHOTS we wanted. They shut our three point shooting down - that had been our biggest weapon outside of Amare - that's GOOD defense. And the fact that the game was SLOWER was DICTATED by their defense. I just don't see how one can say when we one of our main weapons was shut down - the 3 - our running game was non-existant (getting back on D and rebounding) and we were held 6 points under our regular season average and 12 points under our playoff average that the Spurs didn't play pretty good defense.

but ultimately - you're right - it takes a total team performance on O and D to win a title - we did a decent job on O but our D just wasn't strong enough. In coming years - I suspect that weakness will be remedied.

 

[elindholm]

I agree that the Spurs played good defense. However, imagine for a moment that the Suns had gotten a few more defensive rebounds per game, and everything else had been the same. They'd be up 3-2 right now, or might have even won the series already.

And I can guarantee that every idiot talking head on television would say, "The Spurs are supposed to be a great defensive team, but they're giving up 104 points per game on almost 50% shooting. That is simply not going to get it done." Come on, you know they'd say that too.

That's what's so frustrating. All "analysts" know how to do is see who wins and then make up a reason why. That doesn't tell anybody anything about how the battle is really being fought.

 

[Errntknght]

Looking at the Sun's roster it's a lot easier for me to see where improved offense can come from than improved defense. Playing together another year will help the defense some - at least, that's usually true of teams.

If we could get the experienced, tough 'big' that most of us talk about and if D'Antoni would work him into his scheme that might give us a significant boost - but those are two large 'ifs'. Using hindsight the best guy we could have gotten last year was probably Alonzo - he's very effective for Miami in limited minutes now. But would D'Antoni have played him? I'm not at all sure of that - to all appearances he didn't work hard at finding a way to utilize Outlaw, who is, or at least was recently, quite a good defender and gets up and down the floor well. Zo would have slowed the pace more. Of course, he'd have contributed more to the half court offense.

Another possibility is to get a defensive guru as an assistant coach, and one that I've suggested several times. I do recognize that is easier said than done as most of the top defensive coaches have very controlling personalities so they'd probably clash strongly with D'Antoni, not to mention the players. It'd have to be a laid back defensive guru who would be willing to do the best he could with the players the head coach wanted on the floor. Does such a person exist? Maurice Cheeks is the closest to that of anyone I can think of but he's unavailable and has probably been ruined by being a head coach.

The longer I type the more clear it is that we'd better plan on improving the offense - by that I mean our playoff offense, the half court offense. The offense you need when you're up against a good defensive team. An offense that sets scoring records in the regular season is fun to watch but can prove to be an illusion when you get deep in the playoffs.

 

[Evil Ash]

Looking at the Sun's roster it's a lot easier for me to see where improved offense can come from than improved defense. Playing together another year will help the defense some - at least, that's usually true of teams.

If we could get the experienced, tough 'big' that most of us talk about and if D'Antoni would work him into his scheme that might give us a significant boost - but those are two large 'ifs'. Using hindsight the best guy we could have gotten last year was probably Alonzo - he's very effective for Miami in limited minutes now. But would D'Antoni have played him? I'm not at all sure of that - to all appearances he didn't work hard at finding a way to utilize Outlaw, who is, or at least was recently, quite a good defender and gets up and down the floor well. Zo would have slowed the pace more. Of course, he'd have contributed more to the half court offense.

Zo was going only to Miami, we never had a shot at getting him.

 

[Cheesebeef]

I agree that the Spurs played good defense. However, imagine for a moment that the Suns had gotten a few more defensive rebounds per game, and everything else had been the same. They'd be up 3-2 right now, or might have even won the series already.

And I can guarantee that every idiot talking head on television would say, "The Spurs are supposed to be a great defensive team, but they're giving up 104 points per game on almost 50% shooting. That is simply not going to get it done." Come on, you know they'd say that too.

That's what's so frustrating. All "analysts" know how to do is see who wins and then make up a reason why. That doesn't tell anybody anything about how the battle is really being fought.

yeah - I can agree with that.