All this shit about us "underachieving" or so n so didn't step up. Shit, I would love to hear what Nugget fans have to say about their shitty end to the season. I dam sure don't want to hear about injuries!
As I said several days ago, I don't consider Utah winning to be a big upset. There's a good chance Sloan would have out-coached Karl, and he certainly had the edge with Karl gone.
I don't care about Denver's blame game. the Portland Trailblazers need a team overhaul including Rudy. He's been my biggest disappointment this season.
Trying to put all this, "end of the world- we are failures-I can't believe we didn't win the championship" shit into perspective.
A team overhaul? Good grief man, they had massive injuries and still won 50 games. They basically didn't have their best player and still took the first round to 6 games. Overhaul my ass.
4 of the 6 being runaway losses... (Game 6 was close for a few minutes due to a flurry of 4's by Rudy and Martell, but it was a borderline blowout most of the way.) A +10 point differential is hardly a close series. Last year's playoffs raised a concern and this year's solidified it: this team is too easy to prepare for in a 7-game series, regardless of personnel. That's both offense and defense, but especially offense. As long as you can physically match up with this group, they're too predictable to pose many challenges to an aggressive defensive rotation. So yes, I would agree, an overhaul should be closely looked at, if not absolutely needed.
They did much, much worse. Dallas had every single player on their team playing at a high level and got curb stomped by the Spurs. That is a huge choke job. OKC did better then Dallas but at the end of the day couldn't get a win in LA against a team that appeared to be sleepwalking through the series until game 5. Keving "Micheal Fucking Jordan" Durant goes 5 for 23 in an elimination game. That's pathetic. Way to choke scoring leader. Denver has the most reasons to have lost but they still had their two best players (Billups and Mello) healthy for the whole series. Neither dude showed up. Karl would have made a huge difference though. Loosing Nene was a real blow. The Western Conference first round losers, in order of fan depression after the loss, should be Dallas, OKC, Denver then Portland.
Panicky teams over-haul in situations like this. Think about this folks (or those who think we need to over-haul). Brandon Roy, arguably the 2nd best player in the series, was a non factor for all but 1 game due to an injury. Batum was hurt and wasn't nearly as good as he normally is. Joel is out, Greg is out. But most importantly, as I already said, Brandon Roy was out basically for the whole series. You take the best player off of any team (and limit their best wing defender to a shell of himself) and you'll see they look significantly worse than they really are. let's say the Suns were without Amare, or Nash. Should they "overhaul" their team? You don't overhaul teams in their 2nd year of being in the playoff hunt, especially after they had as many injuries as they did this year. You might tweak somethings (probably Rudy and or Webster will be traded), maybe you change the style of offense, but you don't overhaul. Should Denver overhaul? they went from WCF's, to 1st round and out WITH HCA. Overhaul the Nuggets!!
Kenyon Martin & Chris Anderson hauling around their legs like crutches. Nene lost mid-series... their excuse seems pretty obvious. Of course Utah has some injuries as well. Boozer has been great all year and he gashed them inside averaging 22.5 points on 60% shooting and 13+ boards. STOMP
Defense. Plain and simple. Denver didn't have any defensive answers for DWill and Boozer, both of whom had a MONSTER series. Plus all the Utah role payers stepped up and gave some great contributions. Utah would be insane to let Boozer go after what he did in round 1.
The main reason I wanted Oden over Durant is I've had reservations about Durant's big game mentality ever since Texas' flameout in the tourney.
Even with that, they had a chance to win at the final shot. Durant is a gunner, but he's a master of getting to the FT line already. He averaged over 10 attempts per game in the playoffs. From Real GM:
I'd love to see Roy spend some time this summer watching video of how Durant does that. When he drives to the hoop, Brandon often doesn't seem to draw enough contact from his man to get rewarded with the foul call. I think the refs are tired of his act where he throws up his hands, let's out a grunt and expects to get the call.
Dallas had their stars playing decently (Dirk, Caron in the last two games). I don't see them as a great team or anything. They're not too young or deep either. Durant got to the line, but yeah his numbers still sucked.
Brandon needs a few more shoe commercials and "future of the NBA" accolades to get those calls. Durant gets breathed on and it's a foul. It's embarrassing that OKC didn't get higher than an 8th seed this year considering their lack of injuries and their advantage in getting Durant to the line more than anyone else in the NBA, by far.
