They say the team that adapts or makes the best adjustments win in the playoffs. PHX did it to us last year after game 1. What do we need to do to win game 2? In my opinion you know they are going to bring a strong double team now on LA in the post and let us try to beat them from downtown. Do we keep leaving Kidd and hope the law of averages catch up?
They will absolutely force us to beat them from the outside. We have to shoot much better from three. Also, it will be crucial for Wallace and Matthews to get going early and often. I think we will play off Kidd at the start and make him force us to do otherwise.
We do exactly what we did last game. Get the ball to Aldridge. Get the ball to Miller and Batum when Terry and Barea are in the game. Post them up over and over until Carlyle has to take them out of the game. Play the same level of defense we did on them when we held them to 14 in the third quarter. Kidd won't score 24 again. We'll win by 5-10 points. If Wallace and Matthews show up and we hit our three point shot, we'll blow them out by 20. I'm not worried about Game 2 at all.
Came in here to drop off my 2 cents, and found that everyone else had already paid up, with interest. Steady as she goes -- there's no way Kidd keeps shooting 60% from 3, and we've got to trust that if Portland stays aggressive, the calls will come. We just have to convince the scriptwriters that we'd actually make the more dramatic 2nd round team...
The Blazers are historically streaky at shooting threes. If that's any part of their gameplan, they are in trouble.
Streaky we may be, but we will not win this series without hitting more of our open threes. On the flip side, if Dallas keeps nailing this many contested threes, we are also doomed.
Two things really concerned me going into the playoffs, our bench production/back up PG and outside shooting. Both reared their ugly head in the first game. The other thing that surprised me was playing Brandon so much at the end of the game and actually running plays for him.
I'm pretty sure we didn't bank on Kidd hitting six threes either. As an aside, you should probably check with the staff before you post stuff like this, as cool as it is to read it.
Agreed in principle, but do you think Bayno would be chatting about it in the lobby with HCP (whatever THAT stands for...) if it were considered top secret game-planning?
I get that Kidd is a 34% 3pt shooter this year, but the 3 years prior he was over 40%. It's not out of the question for him to go on a hot streak when the Blazers give him wide open looks. I get playing off of him, but don't just forget about him, either. It's not out of the question for Kidd to knock down wide open 3pt shots. And when I say wide open, I mean WIDE OPEN. The Blazers played him as if he were Andre Miller.
Did you see that last three near the end of the game? As a Blazer fan, I'll invite him to take that kind of contested, out-of-rhythm shot ANY day. Yes, he did have some open looks, and yes, he is good enough to go on a few streaks, but the key about that statement is that all streaks end. He's a decent outside shooter, but he's not 60% good, whether or not he has a defender in his grill.
Kidd was definitely on fire last night and that kind of performance won't be the norm. That said, it's not out of the question for Kidd to hit at a 40% clip in this series if the Blazers give him those kind of looks all series. The Blazers can't play him like he's Andre Miller. Kidd averaged 5.2 attempts/G in Feb from 3 and he averaged 47% from 3 that month. A very poor final two months really took away from his overall % for the year. I'm not convinced Kidd can't hit at a 40% rate if the Blazers keep playing him the same way. It's playoff time so the old guy is fired up after a long season and is ready to knock down wide open shots - as he did last night. Playing him like he's Andre Miller could be costly, imo.
Agreed, and I'll accept 40% from him -- removing 2 of those threes would have completely changed the final couple minutes of last night's match. Game 1 aside, I don't think Kidd has enough in the tank to be the man in this series, and I'd really like to see him shoot more. My hunch is that he actually is what we thought he was, and we're going to see something much closer to his seasonal 36% overall shooting from here on out.
"Momentum" in sports is actually vastly overrated -- this isn't NBA Jam. He had a good shooting night -- these things happen. If you flip a coin 1000 times you are statistically almost guaranteed to have multiple streaks of 10, 15, or more heads or tails in a row at some point along the way. Eventually, though, it always comes back to 50%.
