I think BrainFromWA's point was that the Suns shouldn't get any shots. Thus, horrible coaching by Nate. I apologize if I am misrepresenting his opinion.
What about Rudy missing wide open 3's? Does that mean the Suns shouldn't sleep tonight, thinking about all those wide open 3's he missed? Batum missed a couple of easy ones as well.
"Pace" was the main reason they could not get a good rithym and shot a poorer percentage and did not have as many chances to run. We made them have to play much more D than they normally do. Coaching and player execution. Maybe we are just better? Could be!
Uh, "percentages" say that letting people shoot 3's at a 40% clip (1.2points per shot) is worse than letting someone shoot 56% from 2. (1.12 points per shot). So, yes, I'd rather have Amare shoot all damn night from 15 feet. I'm slightly confused on how this became a "you hate Nate' thread. I asked what he did tonight to get the credit we all are trying to give him (myself included).
Nate wasn't using Rudy correctly on those wide open shots. Everybody knows Rudy shoots better with a hand in his face. Bad coaching.
I've read that like 4 times. I'm confused. I even went back to see if you participated in this thread so I could figure it out. And btw, you haven't. So. I'm still confused. No, wait. I get it. What's your argument, STOMP? I think, no, I know, that you're fishing.
You answered your own question, and you're ignoring or arguing valid answers. I can only assume that you hate Nate.
Apology accepted. We won the 4th quarter by having them take the same shots they'd been taking, but not going under the screens--not switching unless Batum was involved, since he can guard 1,2,3, and 4. We won by attacking the basket (Andre Miller, take a bow). All those were good adjustments that Nate implemented. Personally, I liked webster getting 20 minutes and wish he'd gotten more. I'm not sure that keeping Rudy in when he's on a cold night helps the team, but that's debatable. I'll ask again, did all of you hatin' on me right now like the 8-man rotation, the starting lineup, the sub patterns, etc? On a tangent...IMHO, saying you'd want Nash to keep shooting open 3's all night is not a good plan.
my argument is as complete as yours. Even without Brandon, Portland has the superior talent. Simple fact. STOMP
He got the game in our tempo, which meant we got most easy (fast break) baskets than one of the fast breaking teams in the league. Easy baskets are the best way to give shooters confidence from the outside, where Phoenix struggled. Nate also put in an offensive game plan that got us a lot of open threes, especially Rudy, who returned the favor by bricking everything. He wasn't stubborn with his rotation, and allowed Bayless to play, forcing Nash to play defense against a slasher. Nate also mixed up our defensive schemes and rotations, keeping the suns out of a rythem, which most great shooting teams feed on, and in my opinion, contributed to Phoenix shooting below their season average. That's why he gets some of the credit.
Nash is an MVP caliber player. Amare may have been the best player in the NBA, post all-star break. Grant Hill and Jason Richardson are former all-stars. You'd have a tough time making the case that this Blazer team without Roy, Oden, and Joel as more talent that Phoenix.
I liked that we pushed more: I heard Mike and MIke talk about how Nate focused on "the first 5 seconds" of the clock--to push the ball and then figure out if you were going to pull it back or not. This is one of the first times this has actually been implemented--we normally hear Coach talk about pushing the ball but not a lot of execution on it. I also heard Camby talk about how Nic and Martell were told not to crash the offensive boards, to get back and stop the breaks. This also was one of the things I give Coach credit for tonight. The bolded I like the best. I imagine that the playoff rotation is going to be an 8-man until Roy gets back, and it looks like 2 of Rudy, Bayless or Webster are going to get 25+ minutes. I'm more wary of leaving their shooters open and hoping that "being out of rhythm" makes them miss more than usual, but maybe there's something to that. I have to read Tince's post again about the PHX gameplan--I'm not blowing it off. EDIT: BTW, this was the point of the question: to talk about coaching decisions that may or may not have been changed for the playoffs (and that led to a road W)
I understand what you're saying. I seriously doubt the game plan is to leave Richardson or Frye wide open, but NBA P&R's are difficult to defend. I think you are left with three choices when Nash and Amare P&R defense breaks down (which will happen). 1) Let Nash take a wide open 3 or layup. 2) Allow Amare to slash down the lane for a dunk. 3) Give one of their role players an open 3. I think we're making the right choice. It might result in a 20 point loss in game 2, but I think options 1 and 2 are worse!
It's always interesting to see what coaches do in that situation. Some coaches makes the role players beat them(like Nate did tonight), others make the starters beat them and shut down the role players. I remember the Lakers letting Tim Duncan score 40 by not doubling him and just make sure no one else scores.
I disagree a bit. If you go underneath the screen, Nash shoots 40+% on threes. If you switch a small guy onto Amare, you're probably going to get dunked on. But we were able in the 4th to a) fight through screens if Batum wasn't involved or b) switch Batum b/w Nash and Amare and not get burned by it (though Nash was making a ton of jumpers over Camby, you can kind of live with that as long as they're long twos and not threes). I wholeheartedly agree that I'd rather have Dudley and Hill and Barbosa taking more shots than Nash and Amare. But IMHO, you don't need to go under Nash screens or be forced to doubling Amare b/c you've got Miller switched onto him and leave those guys wide-open shots. We showed that in the 4th, which is one of the big reasons we won.
It appears we are basically on the same page. Going under a screen with Nash is death. Bayless did this in the last two minutes and it cost us three points. I think the key defending the Suns is giving them different looks as far as our perimeter rotations go. If we have Batum on Nash and Camby on Amare, it give us our best option to straight switch, but we saw Nash take advantage of Camby a time or two. The guy isn't a two time MVP for no reason!
