Hollinger

[jthig32]

Didn't really want to start a thread for this, but I didn't really see an appropriate spot.

I found this a good read from Hollinger, especially the highlighted part:


What's up with San Antonio's defense?


The Gregg Popovich-era Spurs are perhaps the greatest defensive team of all time. San Antonio was No. 1 in the NBA in defensive efficiency for the fifth time in the past six years, and for the ninth year in a row the Spurs were in the top three in field-goal percentage defense.

So it's a little shocking to see them getting carved up on a nightly basis in the playoffs. One may recall that prior to the Dallas series, Sacramento had similar success attacking the Spurs at the offensive end, and the Kings were just the 11th-best offense in the league this year. In six games against the defending champs, the Kings averaged 106.7 points per 100 possessions, or nearly 10 more than San Antonio gave up during the regular season.

Things have gone from bad to worse against the Mavs. San Antonio is giving up a whopping 113.5 points per 100 possessions to Dallas thus far, making it virtually impossible for its offense to keep up. For comparison's sake, Phoenix led the NBA in Offensive Efficiency during the regular season with an average of 109.1. So the Mavs, offensively, have been playing like Phoenix on steroids.
Overall, the Spurs' playoff defensive efficiency mark ranks 12th -- the worst of any remaining team -- and a jaw-dropping 12.2 points worse than the Spurs fared in the regular season.

Breaking things down points to an obvious culprit: the Spurs are fouling like crazy. San Antonio's other defensive numbers -- shooting percentage, turnovers, rebounding and 3-pointers -- are worse than their regular-season averages, but not glaringly so. One might expect that against the superior competition in the postseason.

Then there are the free throws. San Antonio permitted only .298 free-throw attempts per field-goal attempt in the regular season, the fourth-best rate in the regular season. That number has ballooned to .432 since the playoffs started -- the worst of any playoff team. While the postseason in general has been one big free-throw parade, no team has been affected nearly as much as San Antonio.

Of course, some of the credit for this has to go to the Mavs. By swapping out Adrian Griffin for Devin Harris, Avery Johnson has made it virtually impossible for San Antonio to use the lineup it normally employs. Centers Rasho Nesterovic and Nazr Mohammed combined to play nearly 3,000 minutes in the regular season, but have been reduced to bystanders because there's nobody for them to guard.

Robert Horry was the latest victim, consigned to the second unit after Dirk Nowitzki repeatedly burned him at the start of Game 3, leading to the shocking sight of the Spurs breaking a crunch-time huddle and Big Shot Rob staying on the sidelines. (While we're at it, can we officially discard the soft label on Dirk now? Shaggy played 46 minutes on a sprained ankle, scored 28 points while missing only five shots, demanded the ball on the final two possessions of regulation, and calmly hit the game-tying free throws to send the game to overtime. What a wuss.)

With a much smaller Michael Finley now thrust into the role of San Antonio's second "big" man, the lanes to the basket suddenly look a lot more open. And Dallas, probably the best one-on-one team in basketball, has taken advantage. With Griffin out of the lineup, every key Mav except Jason Terry bettered the league average of 0.33 free-throw attempts per field-goal attempt on the season -- most notably Harris, whose average of 0.58 was the best in the league among point guards.

So when the Spurs go back to the drawing board today to figure out how to salvage their season, they'll need to start at the defensive end. And in particular, they'll need to focus on how to end Dallas' free-throw dominance. Yes, some of it has to do with the way the games have been officiated, but mostly it's been because Dallas' penetrators repeatedly beat the Spurs off the dribble, and there's no longer enough size in the middle to deter them once they blow by. For San Antonio to defend its title, one of those two facts must change.

Here's the whole article, covering the other series' for those with Insider:

http://proxy.espn.go.com/nba/playoff...ohn&id=2446683

[Drbio]

There is some serious Mavs love in that article. I love it.

Noone can stop the Mavs train from their championship destination. Noone.

[HexNBA]

I already posted this hehe but yeah good stuff

[EricaLubarsky]

Originally Posted by Drbio

There is some serious Mavs love in that article. I love it.

Noone can stop the Mavs train from their championship destination. Noone.

Hollinger plays numbers. There is no way he can avoid it.

[Thespiralgoeson]

Hollinger is seriously the only guy at ESPN who actually deserves his job.

[dude1394]

An intelligent sports journalist. What a treat that was.

[mkat]

Originally Posted by Thespiralgoeson

Hollinger is seriously the only guy at ESPN who actually deserves his job.

Stein's ok. and I like Broussard (he picked the Mavs).

[Thespiralgoeson]

I don't know about Broussard, but I can't stand Stein.

[harsh euro barge]

http://www.nysun.com/article/32871

Playoff Underdogs Use Opponents' Strengths Against Them
Basketball


By JOHN HOLLINGER
May 17, 2006
A D V E R T I S E M E N T

There have been some years when the NBA playoffs over delivered on hype and undelivered on excitement. Suffice it to say, 2006 is not one of them.

Monday night gave us a doubleheader featuring two of the best playoff games you'll ever see. Last-second finishes, crazy home crowds, clutch plays, surprising outcomes - it was all there. And the upshot from it all is that the Spurs-Pistons final we were all expecting suddenly looks a lot less likely to happen.

Let's start in Cleveland, where the Cavs snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in the fourth quarter for the second time in three days. It was also the second time in three days that LeBron James was deified for leading Cleveland to victory when, in truth, he turned in a mediocre performance - at least by his lofty standards.

No, the reason the Cavs are still alive and kicking is because they've defended far better than any reasonable person had a right to expect. The Cavs were an average defensive team during the regular season, finishing 14th in Defensive Efficiency (my measure of a team's points allowed per 100 possessions). They did nothing to change that impression in the first round, permitting Washington to score at a better rate than the Wizards did in the regular season.

Thus, when the Cavs entered the conference semifinals against the Pistons - who boasted the league's third-most efficient offense - one figured they would be giving up points left and right. Sizing up the series, I figured only a brilliant offensive effort from James and company could keep the Cavs competitive.

That scene played out in the series opener, when the Pistons nailed one wide-open jumper after another en route to a 113-86 decimation. But the tide slowly turned in Game 2. After the Cavs gave up 78 points in the first three quarters of that contest, they slammed the door in the fourth, holding the Pistons to just 19 points while making a late-game run before ultimately losing 97-91.
The Game 2 fourth quarter set the tone for what has happened in the two games in Cleveland. Incredibly, the Cavs have kept up the defensive intensity and sustained it for eight more quarters. As a result, what had been a free-flowing, skillful Detroit offense became sluggish and predictable. The Cavs held the mighty Pistons to 149 points in the two games, on an embarrassing 36.3% shooting mark.

And once again, Cleveland raised the defense another notch when it mattered most. The Cavs held the Pistons to 35 points after the break in Game 3, then completely stifled them in the fourth quarter of Game 4. Detroit scored only 13 points in the quarter - including just one in the first 6:40, when the Cavs erased a six-point deficit.

In truth, that defense was the only thing saving Cleveland from a sweep, because the offense was mediocre at best. James's brilliance sometimes causes his teammates to stand around waiting for him to do something amazing, which leads to some of the worst ball movement you'll ever see. Most teams run a play called "pick-and-roll," but only the Cavs run "pick-and-stand-there-like-an-idiot-watching-LeBron." The one glorious exception has been backup center Anderson Varejao, who seems to be the only Cavalier to figure out that if he runs around without the ball, James will reward him with a parade of a lay-ups.

That's why I don't necessarily see the past two games as a coronation of Le-Bron. Yes, I think he's the best player in the league and got robbed in the MVP voting, but in the past two games only his fourth quarter of Game 3 had a whiff of greatness about it. His stat line in Game 4 - 8-for-23 from the field, 5-for-10 from the line, eight turnovers - looked more like something from Antoine Walker's portfolio.

No, the coronation I see here is of Cavs head coach Mike Brown. Having cut his teeth as an assistant in San Antonio and Indiana, he's been preaching the gospel of defensive intensity since he arrived in Cleveland. It appears his message may finally be getting through. And with Rasheed Wallace nursing a sprained ankle, that defensive feistiness may allow Cleveland to pull off a shocking upset.

Ironically, it's another San Antonio disciple who's getting all the credit for preaching defense - Dallas coach Avery Johnson.Yet his team has been winning the way the Mavs always have - by turning the game into a track meet and overwhelming opponents with their offensive firepower.
That's not meant as a knock on Johnson's work. In fact, he came up with the single most important adjustment of the 2006 postseason when he inserted speedy second-year guard Devin Harris in place of defensive specialist Adrian Griffin before Game 2 against the Spurs. Johnson loves Griffin's defense, but he realized that replacing him with Harris would completely alter who the Spurs could put on the court.

When the offensively-challenged Griffin played, the Spurs could play Tim Duncan against him and Rasho Nesterovic or Nazr Mohammed on center DeSagana Diop. The lineup gave the Spurs the two-big-man alignment that forms the foundation of their defense, helping to snuff out many of the Mavs' drives to the basket. The proof was in the pudding, as Dallas scored only 85 points in a Game 1 defeat.

Once Harris entered the lineup in Game 2, that all went out the window. Duncan couldn't guard any of Dallas's perimeter players, and San Antonio was reluctant put him on Dirk Nowitzki. Instead, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich had to take his centers off the floor, put Duncan on Diop, and insert Brent Barry or Michael Finley to handle Dallas's smaller lineup.

The Spurs' defense is totally screwed up as a result. With one less shot-blocker to deal with, Dallas's driving lanes are wide open, and that's the thing they do best. People don't normally think of the Mavs this way since their best player is a jump shooter, but Dallas is a devastating one-on-one team that loves to drive to the basket. Players like Harris, Jerry Stackhouse, Josh Howard, and Marquis Daniels repeatedly take it to the rim.

All those fouls have given the Mavs a source of easy points and taken key Spurs off the floor in crunch time. In Game 3, it was Duncan's sixth foul that left San Antonio a star short on its final play; in Game 4, it was Manu Ginobili's turn to ride the pine down the stretch. Should it happen again in Game 5, San Antonio's summer will begin a month earlier than expected.

In short, then, everything we thought we knew is backwards. The Cavs, not the Mavs, are the upstart winning with defense, while Dallas has taken over its series with an offensive explosion. One thing is for certain, though: If the Pistons can't solve their offensive woes, and the Spurs can't remedy their defensive problems, then the Pistons-Spurs repeat we've been expecting for 12 months will have to wait for some other year.

[EricaLubarsky]

the guy knows his stuff