Basketball/NBA

Ini8 said:

I can ask you the same thing. They had the most 3PA in playoff history with 22.2 per game of all the NBA champions back in 2011. Their roster was filled with good spotup shooters. Dirk had the highest PPG in the Finals and we all know what his strengths are. As stated above, even their owner said it. How were they NOT a jump-shooting team?

Even the stats back it up:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/NBA_2011.html

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Nowhere near a classic jumpshooting team where the 2 bigs are only there to defend, rebound and make an occasional putback. How many times on average do the Warriors go to the post compared to the Mavs? Thunder are a jumpshooting team. Cavs (during LBJ 1st stint) were a jumpshooting team. Howard's Orlando were a jumpshooting team.

Dirk's fadeaway shouldn't probably even count as a jumper, because it's such a high percentage shot for him it's the same thing as Shaq's dunk, lol. Sure, 3 pointers were key to them pulling back and hanging in the series, but they are far from reliant on it. If they didn't go to Dirk in the post, they usually went for a Barea/Terry pick and roll with Chandler who scores like crazy off of lobs. They went to the rim a lot. Marion made stupendous buckets in transition too.

Where did Cuban say that actually? I might have missed it. And for the record, I am a Mavs fan.

barcafan161 said:

Disagree..this series was only close because warriors downplayed the cavs without those two.

their mindset would of been different had they been there..

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Cavs discovered that defensive identity with Thompson over Love and Shumpert/Dellavedoodoo over Kyrie. That defensive identity shook the Warriors early in the series and had them reeling until they adjusted. Going small, Iguodala bringing intensity, and Warriors learning to counter the Cavs defensive intensity was what made them take the series.

With Kyrie and Love on the floor playing big minutes, Cavs are better offensively, though still not great, but they would be terrible defensively like they were in the regular season. Warriors were both great defensively and great offensively. They would have picked apart the Cavs and gone at Kyrie and Love.

Wolfe said:

Nowhere near a classic jumpshooting team where the 2 bigs are only there to defend, rebound and make an occasional putback. How many times on average do the Warriors go to the post compared to the Mavs? Thunder are a jumpshooting team. Cavs (during LBJ 1st stint) were a jumpshooting team. Howard's Orlando were a jumpshooting team.

Dirk's fadeaway shouldn't probably even count as a jumper, because it's such a high percentage shot for him it's the same thing as Shaq's dunk, lol. Sure, 3 pointers were key to them pulling back and hanging in the series, but they are far from reliant on it. If they didn't go to Dirk in the post, they usually went for a Barea/Terry pick and roll with Chandler who scores like crazy off of lobs. They went to the rim a lot. Marion made stupendous buckets in transition too.

Where did Cuban say that actually? I might have missed it. And for the record, I am a Mavs fan.

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It was in a TV interview
We surely had many weapons back then ,Dirk could score anywhere .got to FT a lot and posted up .but he is mainly a jump shooter ,same fo Jet .while Peja/Kidd/Stevenson offense was almost exclusively spot up shooters. Marion was more of post up and Barea attacked the basket as you said

Sumlit said:

Cavs discovered that defensive identity with Thompson over Love and Shumpert/Dellavedoodoo over Kyrie. That defensive identity shook the Warriors early in the series and had them reeling until they adjusted. Going small, Iguodala bringing intensity, and Warriors learning to counter the Cavs defensive intensity was what made them take the series.

With Kyrie and Love on the floor playing big minutes, Cavs are better offensively, though still not great, but they would be terrible defensively like they were in the regular season. Warriors were both great defensively and great offensively. They would have picked apart the Cavs and gone at Kyrie and Love.

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There is nor right answer in the "what if" situation .but I think if Kyrie was healthy he would have taken minutes from JR Smith in the finals not Dellavedova .the offense would have been way better
One more important factor is they will have bigger rotation rather than fatigued roster at the end

You guys forget how Cavs dominated almost every team with love and Kyrie. With lebron experience they could have performed even better. Thomson will still register lot of minutes. JR will lose most of his minutes. Delly and shumpert will rotate. Even lebron could have got decent rest and would give very hard time for gsw. This Cavs team is strong and could beat gsw. They just need to defend with the same intensity that is it. I don't think Kyrie will impact the defense that badly only love because he doesn't defend well for his size and it affects the team. But he has other advantages and will sit out whenever defense is underperforming. The difference this series was gsw had good players coming from the bench and Cavs didn't. Sub one of your starters and risk being down by big leads. They were all tired in 4th quarter and in almost every game it helped warriors. Their late surges were pretty obvious.

But he doesn't have to say it. Almost everyone agrees that he is.

reDIOS10 said:

But he doesn't have to say it. Almost everyone agrees that he is.

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Let it go. People just love to take a dig at him whenever possible.

khaled_a_d said:

There is nor right answer in the "what if" situation .but I think if Kyrie was healthy he would have taken minutes from JR Smith in the finals not Dellavedova .the offense would have been way better
One more important factor is they will have bigger rotation rather than fatigued roster at the end

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Nah I doubt it. JR was an important cog for them even with Kyrie. Dellavedoodoo would have lost the most minutes, and Shumpert would have been second. Both were part of the defensive identity that carried them in the playoffs. Kyrie would have also taken the ball out of LeBron's hands so less offensive facilitating from LeBron to other players.

Kyrie playing would have mainly meant another player that could create his own offense, when Cleveland ended up with only LeBron capable of that. Though Kyrie doesn't create for others like LeBron does.

I think both Kyrie and Love's offensive improvement would not have been enough to offset their defensive deficiencies.

Wolfe said:

Nowhere near a classic jumpshooting team where the 2 bigs are only there to defend, rebound and make an occasional putback. How many times on average do the Warriors go to the post compared to the Mavs? Thunder are a jumpshooting team. Cavs (during LBJ 1st stint) were a jumpshooting team. Howard's Orlando were a jumpshooting team.

Dirk's fadeaway shouldn't probably even count as a jumper, because it's such a high percentage shot for him it's the same thing as Shaq's dunk, lol. Sure, 3 pointers were key to them pulling back and hanging in the series, but they are far from reliant on it. If they didn't go to Dirk in the post, they usually went for a Barea/Terry pick and roll with Chandler who scores like crazy off of lobs. They went to the rim a lot. Marion made stupendous buckets in transition too.

Where did Cuban say that actually? I might have missed it. And for the record, I am a Mavs fan.

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I never said they were a classic jump-shooting team, more like a modern one where one of the bigs is a stretch 4. Chandler was mainly there for defence though. Him and Dirk took care of the rebounding. I don't have the exact stats for that, but you can compare the shot charts:

Mavs: http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/shot-chart/201106090DAL.html
Warriors: http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/shot-chart/201506160CLE.html

A case of '11-'14 Heat being a jump-shooting team could be made too tbh.

As for Dirk's fadeaway, well, the same could be said about Curry's corner 3. It's not like this GSW team always went for the 3 - they made adjustments during the playoffs and Finals. For example, once Curry started to recognize the double-teams from the Cavs, he'd pass it out to Green who would most of the time have an easy way to the basket. GSW went to the rim a lot too, as this shot chart of all made shots by the Warriors shows and the shot chart above shows.

I can't find a link atm, but I saw it on youtube at the time.

I don't see anything wrong with jump-shooting teams btw. If you have the roster for it as Kerr does, he'd be ignorant not to.

Just to continue the LeBron bashing:

http://espn.go.com/blog/marc-stein/post/_/id/3896/lebrons-handling-of-blatt-unbecoming

Ini8 said:

Just to continue the LeBron bashing:

http://espn.go.com/blog/marc-stein/post/_/id/3896/lebrons-handling-of-blatt-unbecoming

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Well that's no news really, only more details to what we already knew/suspected. The control and power he wields in the Cavaliers was the main reason he returned there. Though the details are certainly cringe-worthy.

ESPN loves their narratives too.

khaled_a_d said:

It was in a TV interview
We surely had many weapons back then ,Dirk could score anywhere .got to FT a lot and posted up .but he is mainly a jump shooter ,same fo Jet .while Peja/Kidd/Stevenson offense was almost exclusively spot up shooters. Marion was more of post up and Barea attacked the basket as you said

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Are players who were purely spot up shooters considered a separate offense? It's not like many plays were designed to free them up. Apart from Terry they were in many cases contested or left open by bad defenders and taken advantage of when Dirk was getting doubled.

Ini8 said:

I never said they were a classic jump-shooting team, more like a modern one where one of the bigs is a stretch 4. Chandler was mainly there for defence though. Him and Dirk took care of the rebounding. I don't have the exact stats for that, but you can compare the shot charts:

Mavs: http://www.basketball-reference.com/...106090DAL.html
Warriors: http://www.basketball-reference.com/...506160CLE.html

A case of '11-'14 Heat being a jump-shooting team could be made too tbh.

As for Dirk's fadeaway, well, the same could be said about Curry's corner 3. It's not like this GSW team always went for the 3 - they made adjustments during the playoffs and Finals. For example, once Curry started to recognize the double-teams from the Cavs, he'd pass it out to Green who would most of the time have an easy way to the basket. GSW went to the rim a lot too, as this shot chart of all made shots by the Warriors shows and the shot chart above shows.

I can't find a link atm, but I saw it on youtube at the time.

I don't see anything wrong with jump-shooting teams btw. If you have the roster for it as Kerr does, he'd be ignorant not to.

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Modern jumpshooting team, which even though utilized spot up shooters, designed plays based on picks and post-up.. And as said before, the spot up guys were simply red hot for most of the playoffs, whether left open or contested. They weren't reliant upon.

Chandler was the defensive coordinator wherever he was, but his speed and savvy in pick and roll was what made the Mavs offense killing back then (and last season too with Monta and Harris!). Compare the pick and roll game of his with Brendan Haywood's in 09/10 and the season after.

As for the Warriors, THEIR bigs are for defense and rebounding, and setting screens for shooters. They are the true jumpshooting team albeit with great shooters. They went to the rim a lot? I think only when Iggy reincarnated and Curry realised he can't keep on shooting over Dellavedova? From what I've seen him and Klay were shooting jumpers from beyond the line and a few feet closer for most of the playoffs. Not many exceptions to the rule. And that's far from what Mavs did.

[youtube]watch?v=qhX0OYBn_Kk[/youtube]

But Lebron was 3 times better than Curry in the finals so i don't really get the video. It should be the warriors stun Lebron

Funny video tho