Harrington Not Keen On Center

Wow, when I first started reading I was thinking Chris Webber all over again. Then when he said we have our starter in Beans I was like whew! lol

 

Al has played better as the center than either Murphy or Dunleavy have. Just imagine, Mike Dunleavy guarding Yao Ming - oh god...

But the good thing is that Al doesn't seem to be against playing center. So, though he may not be keen about playing center, it seems like he will play there when he's called to do it. Also with Andris Biedrins and next season possibly with Patrick O'Bryant, and Kosta Perovic, there definitley appears to be plenty of center help to have a standard center playing that position (there's also Foyle and my hope the return of Chris Taft).

 

Nelly is crazy if he thinks small ball can go all the way... Well maybe it can if they are not facing a very good team that can match up small.

I still think the best teams out there are ones that can go big or small and make adjustments defensively and offensively when appropriate. With small ball, all we can really do is go smaller causing us to lose a lot of defense, rebounding, and inside scoring capability. And when those factors happen, we can't run, we take long outside shots, we can't stop big players from going down the middle, and we tend to get stuck in halfcourt a lot trying to play a trapping zone defense. Run n' gun just doesn't work in the playoffs IMO unless teams stopped playing defense suddenly. It's just asking for an early first round exit.

Harrington at Center probably only works if guys like Jrich, Baron, Ellis, and others are rebounding at least 6 or 7 a game. But dammit, Harrington isn't the best guy to put near the rim to make stops as last line of defense nor is he the rebounder a center should be. 6'4 guards play bigger than him at times.

 

<div class="quote_poster">custodianrules2 Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">Nelly is crazy if he thinks small ball can go all the way... Well maybe it can if they are not facing a very good team that can match up small.

I still think the best teams out there are ones that can go big or small and make adjustments defensively and offensively when appropriate. With small ball, all we can really do is go smaller causing us to lose a lot of defense, rebounding, and inside scoring capability. And when those factors happen, we can't run, we take long outside shots, we can't stop big players from going down the middle, and we tend to get stuck in halfcourt a lot trying to play a trapping zone defense. Run n' gun just doesn't work in the playoffs IMO unless teams stopped playing defense suddenly. It's just asking for an early first round exit.

Harrington at Center probably only works if guys like Jrich, Baron, Ellis, and others are rebounding at least 6 or 7 a game. But dammit, Harrington isn't the best guy to put near the rim to make stops as last line of defense nor is he the rebounder a center should be. 6'4 guards play bigger than him at times.</div>

The Suns played small ball like this a lot last season without Amare. I think the Warriors can do it and succeed like they are now. Don Nelson is a matchup guy, and he is smart enough to change things up if this lineup starts to stumble after opponents make adjustments. Again I can see this team starting small and going big if needed. The team has a lot of bigs with Biedrins, O'Bryant, Powell, Foyle, and maybe in the future Kosta Perovic. But again Nelson is a matchup guy and obviously he has found something with Harrington playing as the center. There is no telling how long Nelson will use this lineup. It will depend on how the opponents adjust and how successful they are at adjusting. The lineup was awesome vs. the Rockets because of how Harrington and the others played defense vs. Yao. It was also awesome since Harrington could play on the perimeter with nobody on him since Yao isn't going to step out and defend him out there. That helped the Warriors get some good looks. Considering how many different lineups Nelson has used this season, I don't see any permanent starting lineup right now for this team.

 

<div class="quote_poster">Run BJM Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">I think Nellie knows small ball isn't a long term solution but its been pretty effective lately allowing us to beat some elite teams. Harrington @ C lineup has been doing a decent job of getting rebounds and they get tons of turnovers and the offense is very fluid. Harrington does suck at rebounding, defense, and finishing inside but the biggest difference between he and Murphy is that he works his ass off at whatever he is assigned to do, which makes him at 6'8 better than Murphy at 6'11 when it comes to playing C. It seems like in the lineups with Harrington at C hes just assigned to keep his man off the glass as best he can and take shots if they're there to keep the defense honest. He does do a good job of boxing out his man, essentially making the rebounding battle become a 4 on 4 which plays into our game because we have a lot of great rebounding guards and forwards.

One of the more important things about starting Harrington at C is that it lets Biedrins come off the bench and prevents him from being in early foul trouble. So far we haven't really been burned on defense or rebounding with Harrington at C and our offense has been pretty damn good so theres been no reason to put Biedrins in the game early. It seems like we control the tempo more when Harrington is at C and we can really get out and run and take advantage of the fact that we are probably the most athletic team in the league.

I don't think Nellie sees small ball as the way to go in the future nor does he see Harrington starting at C long term but right now we're just trying to scrape up as many wins as possible before the season ends. This gives us the biggest mismatch advantage and opposing teams haven't really made us pay for going super-small, plus Biedrins stays out of foul trouble and is fresh late in the game, and we force turnovers and control the tempo of the game since we've proven that we're the best pure running team in the league.</div>

Yeah, I guess whatever works for now, Run. We can't really play the role of chess champion if we don't have too many pieces to move around. But we do have some useful pieces. I just hope we can build up momentum for the next few years because we really haven't seen much continuity for the better in the last decade. It's was a constant state of rebuilding that had me so jaded ever since the 2003 salary dumps failed to produce a well budgeted team with good offensive/defensive talent.

I'm think I'm fine with Harrington as long as the other guys play defense, rebound, and block shots. Smaller teams have to hustle and squeeze inside to get the rebound. Luckily for us we have a lot of guys who want to get to the playoffs and they're pretty good leapers with great energy and wingspan. Those types of qualities can actually out-rebound the flatfooted guy on some nights, especially if the other team is forced to go zone on us because we are getting inside off dribble penetration. The zone kind of works in our favor if guys are shooting the threeball well too. I also hope we take the good kind of three rather than the "I have no choice because there's much %'s to be gained if we can't run anything and there's no room to outquick or backdown opponents or force double teams".

I think that's why Dunleavy/Jrich/Harrington took so many threes. Guys that slow vs. their intended matchups just can't create shots. But I think now that we have Jackson who resembles more of a decently high basketball IQ shooting guard who can dribble/shoot/pass with good quickness, it helps to set up Jrich to take the shots he likes to take which is the three ball or the midrange post play or inside layup/dunk. Same thing with Harrington. Then they add Baron and Ellis in there and that's two more guys that can break people down and get fouled. Harrington can probably outquick against big stiffs at center on offense, but I worry about him on defense. So I guess I have no problems offensively if we're managing to win in the halfcourt and open court. It's just that defensively and rebounding, it's hard to see us matching up with a good team that really means business.

That's what I worry about for the future. Obviously if we get a Dirk Nowitzki type guy we want him at PF, but maybe a Nelly type guy might make him go at Center. I guess wait and see what happens if we ever do get a franchise big man finally...