<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">MIAMI -- Tayshaun Prince was mopping his face with a small hand towel. He patted his forehead. He wiped around his nose. He looked like a skinny man with a cold, or at least one who couldn't stop sweating. This was in the emptying hallways of American Airlines Arena, a full hour after Game 2 had ended Wednesday night, but Prince still seemed to be wafting in the steam of his opponent, Dwyane Wade. Can you blame him? Wade had been a one-man sauna. The streaking Miami guard had flamed on for 40 points and had single-handedly turned the series into a series again. Wade is Prince's defensive responsibility. Thanks a lot. "Do you feel it's like last year's Finals, after Game 2, with everyone talking about Kobe Bryant and you being the guy who's supposed to stop him?" I asked Prince. "Well, obviously, what I did last year in the Finals, they expect the same in this series," he said. "And obviously this could be a tougher situation for me because Wade is a lot faster. ..." How about that? In one year, Bryant, whom experts considered the best non-big man in the league, had been surpassed by a guy three inches smaller and several years younger. And Prince, who is hailed as "long" by every admiring analyst in the business, is supposed to guard him -- again. You can take your polls about who's the most important player on the Pistons, and this newspaper did, and it came back choosing the most photographed player, Ben Wallace. But photographs don't create points or stop points, and it's pretty clear that Prince, in this series, must be the gas that fuels the Detroit fire and the foam that puts Miami's out. That means some long nights for the longest player out there.</div> Source
That's true. Wade is quicker so it would be a harder matchup for Prince. But Kobe is still a better overall player. Lakers bring championships again.
<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">That's true. Wade is quicker so it would be a harder matchup for Prince. But Kobe is still a better overall player. Lakers bring championships again.</div> The thing with Wade is that he's more relentless that Kobe. He's willing to attack the rim more so than Kobe does. However, Wade size does play a role as well, being smaller he's quicker and he can get by Prince easier. But thing that really makes Wade special is that despite his size and quickness he is a very strong player. They say Tayshaun Prince is stronger than he looks, but I would not be surprised if Wade has the strength advantage over him. So when you take all these things into account, Wade is the whole package and thus that is why he does the things he does on the court. If Prince wants to do a better job on Wade he needs the team help. The whole defensive performance he did on Kobe was a little overrated in my opinion. If you watch the Lakers/Pistons series and the Heat/Pistons series you would notice that the Pistons almost never doubled Shaq in the Lakers series. Now as a watch the Heat series, I noticed that the Pistons doubled Shaq in Game 2 numerous times. The thing with Prince on Kobe is that the help defense that would normally go on Shaq went to Kobe, now in series the help defense they would play on Shaq stayed on Shaq instead of applying it to Wade. The help defense that they should be playing on Wade was not part of they?re defensive scheme in Game 2, thus that freed up Wade. They didn?t double Shaq in Game 1, Wade struggled, they doubled Shaq in Game 2 Wade explodes for 40. Those are not necessarily the main reason why Wade had those performances but it played a role. I remember seeing a statistic in Game 1 on Wades FG's when being defended by different defenders. I remember him being 1-6 when Prince is guarding him, 1-4 when Hamilton was on him and so on. In Game 2 Prince was on him for majority of the time, so that's evidence that the help defense wasn't really there.
