Around the NBA - March 2018

Other teams don't have Dame

 

I had to go read that again.......Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

 

Agreed, Dame is a beast and I love him.......but you didn’t answer my question.

 

Right? I was about to post this too. They really haven't beat any good teams. MIN was probably their best win all season.

 

While I don't love the idea of winning a(nother) series on Aminu 3-pointers, I do agree with your assessment of the defensive problem we pose. Let's even give them the benefit of having Kawhii back and we're looking at:

• Kawhii on Dame (good for SAS)
  
• Green on CJ (meh for SAS)
• Patty on Harkless (GREAT for us!)
• LA on Aminu (meh for both)
• Who? on Nurkic (great for us!)

If they put their best defender on our best player, we exploit the hell out of a mis-match. Even if they switch the Green/Patty assignments, that'd create two (albeit lesser) mis-matches for us to exploit. If they go traditional, Dame and CJ feast. If they go traditional and collapse on Dame/CJ we have open 3s. Unfortunately, Pops is too smart to pull a Tater and just throw a single look at us, and we'll have to be on our toes to recognize what the defense is doing every possession.

You get into the bench and you have Ed and Collins vs Pau - defense goes to POR. You've got Bazz vs Parker - defense goes to POR. Pat/Turner vs Ginobili/Gay - defense goes to POR.

SAS is one-and-DONE!

 

The phrase "those in glass houses..." springs to mind and makes me curious about how many we've won.

 

I want the Spurs. Kawhi is great but he won't be back for the playoffs. We would sweep them if they're missing Kawhi.

 

So many boring Games tonight

 

I fucking love those Harkless mismatches. He just gets the lob and dunks it home!

 

His moves are so quick when he catches in the deep post! We REALLY need to exploit that more, regardless of the mismatch.

 

You are OUT OF YO MIND! You think Aminu can guard LA? HAHAHA! I am actually laughing while I type.

 

So I got 1 out of 5 wrong? Still good for a B!

Edit: Also, I said "meh for both". Unless we're playing SAS during a blue moon, I'm not gonna worry about losing to an LA-centric offense in the Playoffs.

 

Decent-ish. Not great. Despite their records, I still don't really consider any of those EC teams to be good...or the last time we played LAC.

 

In the last two minutes of the game, there is no one I trust less in a game than Russell Westbrook. So... in the playoffs I'd ride with Dame in the last two minutes than RW.

 

One of the best game of the year tonight on NBATV between Atlanta Hawks vs Sac Kings

 

My biggest complaint after the Houston loss is "why didn't we go to Nurkless (Nurk and Harkless) more?" They ran the "Collins switch to CP, CP drains the three" for as long as they could and it really hurt us. We have great success with switching a non-center onto Nurk and then him backing them down and scoring. How in the hell did Nurk get only 10 shots and Harkless only 5? With Dame and CJ struggling, Nurk should have had 15-20 shots at least, and Harkless 10+. Houston saw CP had an advantage and ran it into the ground until Collins came out harder. We killed them with Nurkless and only got 15 attempts between them.

Next time we play a team that puts a SF or stretch 4 at center, we should Nurk them into the ground with it. I know Dame is a somewhat selfless player and did take few shots than average, but this was a game where I think they should have recognized the big mismatch and taken better advantage of it.

 

Careful or Stotts just might banish you to the bench for 80% of the season!

Edit - we should probably take the Harkless talk to the Harkless thread, which has become a Pat thread... MODS!!!

 

Aminu did a good job down the stretch on Towns and AD in previous games this year. Why couldn't he guard LA? All LA will do is shoot turn around fade away jumpers that have less than a 45% chance of going in (which makes it inefficient).