Hopefully some of y'all can quit dogging Terry MF Stotts now

Wanna buy my jersey? Thinking of upgrading to a Collins.

 

Collins had basically zero impact on the game, even defensively

 

He was a +\- zero.

If he was playing that poorly he would have been a negative.
Id take collins with five fouls over leonard. And i own his jersey.

 

It actually is though. The more practice you have at something, the better you'll be at it. In the 2nd half, I saw Blazers that were extremely unsure of their helpside rotation responsibilities, and therefore, didn't rotate or rotated too slowly and allowed for easy layups/dunks.

 

I’m not dodging the question but this is kinda my point. They have won what, 75% of their games the last five years. 29 other professional coaching staffs and scouts are all failing at beating them. They have more talent and the talent plays well together. For what you describe above, yes it all makes sense what you say. I’m sure (and this is my point) they have thought of this. Executing it vs GS is a different story. They’ve taken away at times shots from Klay and Steph, and their role players like Shaun, Looney, Iggy, Jordan bell, know how to take advantage of it. And coordinating much of is Draymond Green, who we might hate more than anything, but is incredibly smart on a court.

 

Two sizes too big.

GS had Nine blocks to our One. Zach should have been credited with one or two that were called fouls IMO. Obviously it's highly subjective but I'm willing to bet many would agree.

 

You're not going to outscheme them, but you can outplay them, and when you do, you need to actually win the damn game. He did do some things that worked. My whole point for years has been running multiple schemes during the season would make the team better because certain schemes work better against certain teams. I also said this would be good because it'd prepare the team to properly run any scheme during the postseason whenever the situation called for it, and Stotts would have more confidence in going to the right scheme in Game 1 instead of waiting until Game 2. If he played this defense in game 1, they could've made the proper adjustments going into Game 2. Instead, he played it in game 2, and now the proper adjustments will have to be made going into Game 3. He essentially gave away a game.

Those adjustments are proper helpside rotation. The Warriors had a more balanced floor in the first half so off-ball defenders didn't have to dig far to help out, and the weren't spaced as well as they were in the 2nd half. In the 2nd half (especially the 4th quarter), they decided to put 3 guys on one side of the floor and the pick n roll on the other side (something else I've asked for Terry to do when teams trap Dame!!).

They then were able to hit the roll man for layups because the Blazers didn't rotate properly to help, and sometimes the first helpside defender rotated properly (albeit slow) to take that away and gave up the lob but the 2nd helpside defender didn't rotate to help on the lob. (Ideally, this 2nd helpside defender would be the forward rotating down with the guard leftover taking the first skip pass, which was usually Iguodala, which is the shot you want to give up).

The problem is, the Blazers were completely unsure in their rotations and their helpside responsibilities, and failed possession after possession late in the game. Some would say that it was a good adjustment by the Warriors to run side PnR with a loaded weakside, but if the Blazers rotated properly, they would've been able to account for it.

The problem is, the Blazers haven't ran the scheme all season that they need to run now, so they don't have the experience needed to run that defensive scheme to it's fullest ability. If they did, then I think they win last night, and go back to Portland with a legit chance to make it to the NBA Finals. If they had ran multiple schemes during the season, they wouldn't have needed more than 30 hours (they actually took more like 90 hours) to put it in. If they players had enough experience running the scheme, they'd understand their helpside responsibilities and be able to execute it without much "gameplanning" or "prep". The problem is, this has been a talking point for me for years, and I've stated things like "In the postseason they'll need to switch up schemes to be most effective, but I wonder how well they'd run other defensive schemes since they only practice one".

It was extremely frustrating for that foresight to become reality on the biggest stage.​

 

The problem I have is people can't separate results and good scheming.

I've seen other teams scheme really well for the Warriors and Golden State still won because they were able to hit very tough shots consistently, or won other areas of the game. They won off talent.

Last night, the Warriors didn't win off talent. We gave up numerous wide open layups in the 4th quarter that was the difference in the game. Good coaching gives the team the best possible chance to win.

None of the role players you listed shoot well outside of layups at the rim.

 

You can say he was given some bad calls, but that's the life of basketball. If the game was watched over there could likely be 2 or 3 that maybe should have been called, but we can't change what actually happened. Sometimes a player just doesn't have it and for Zach that was last night. Hoping he bounces back and has a strong showing at home tomorrow.

 

+/- is kind of a worthless individual stat in my opinion. And nobody said he played bad. He just didn't have any real impact in the game and had 5 fouls. Myers in the second half actually came in and played decent and had more of an impact that Collins last night and I am more of a fan of Collins than Leonard.

 

You calling me fat?????

 

There was a post about people posting all night and making it sound like that's all they had to do in their life. Then i made another post off hand about posting all night.
It's wrong to assume shit. People have very different lives and we all do our own thing. Just keep being you bro. Don't let that shit mess with you.
Go Blazers!

 

It didn't. I just assumed that's what you were apologizing for? It wasn't a big deal. You've said worse things to me haha.

 

Well from your perspective i'm sure you have valid points but even Kerr said he was out coached last game. Stotts made a number of very good decisions. The Blazers were absolutely in a position to win that game. You cannot deny that fact.
That is the very definition of good coaching. Make decisions that allows your team to be in a position to win the game at the end. 4 straight missed shots. They make one of them and it's Blazers game because the timing and rebounding into a breakaway three doesn't happen twice and they are set on defense the other two times. If it was the three that falls they simply foul the rest of the way? Who knows?

 

Are you sure he said that...? He said they got outplayed.

My complaints with stotts in regards to last night arent even based on his coaching last night, if that makes sense.

 

I completely agree that they are a talented team. By the end of any game they are going to have a better idea what to do to attack the defense. This goes back to my point though. Why do we run the same scheme for an entire game? If during one of the timeouts with under a minute left Stotts told them to all of a sudden blitz it hard or just straight switch then it would've been just a slight bit more difficult and maybe they don't get an easy lay-in. Sure they could and probably would still score but if you notice the last couple possessions for us on offense they switched every screen. That's different than they did the rest of the game and our only bucket in the last couple minutes was a Curry 3 off a chaotic offensive rebound.

I just want to say something about after the game too. Why did GS celebrate like they won the series last night? If we get that game they are gripping pretty hard today having to hear everyone asking if they're beatable and maybe some doubt would've crept in. Now they are back to being the super cocky champs.

 

My thoughts exactly. You can't just input something like that on the fly and expect guys to be acclimated to it. You have to employ it consistently so guys will know it.

We never ran that defense all season...

 

But you don't know because you're not a coach!!!

Oh.... wait....

 

Man.... I do this with my Sixth graders....

We go on a run and their coach calls timeout.

When that happens I immediately change my defense to either Pack Line or Gap Help depending on what we were in before.

It's annoying not to see this at an NBA level for my favorite team...

 

Because they know they should have lost