Oklahoma City is made of names. Utah is a team. A team that is more than Donavan Mitchell, they had all the pieces and they were waiting for an offensive superstar. Rudy Gobert is an elite center. Derek Favors is a dominant big man. Rubio is finally making something with his career. Donavan is Donavan.. They all like playing with each other, they play unselfish basketball, they are young and hungry. I'd much rather play OKC. I think we will beat either team. But Utah scares me. They want it for the right reasons.
FOR BOKI NACHBAR https://www.youtube.com/embed/fsaqR6EO-lI I know it's the Lakers, but it IS Karl Malone.
One reason Utah’s up in the series is because of OKCs inability or unwillingness to guard the 3. Jingles is getting tons of open 3s and shooting them pretty well. Either team bodes well for us. OKC is not disciplined on defense and doesn’t care to improve it which would kill them against an offense as lethal as ours can be. And if we get Utah, our defense will be a much bigger challenge than OKCs. We’ll take away the butt naked 3s and at least show the effort on the defensive end that OKC hasn’t shown all series.
OKC has too many x factors.. Brewer will try to harass the rockets and hes had breakout play off games.. Westbrook and Melo have clutch jeans, they have two many elite defensive players.. where Jazz only have Gobert who can be rendered some what ineffective with a high pick and role.
Happy to take OKC. I don't think it'll be easier. It might be more dangerous because they are a more volatile hot-or-cold team and might get hot on us. But, (1) I want to beat Westbrook, George, and Anthony head-to-head, and (2) that series would have us amped and at top efficiency going into the subsequent series with the GSW.
This. I fear Utah more than I do OKC. I think the board secretly fears OKC. Gobert shutting down Capela, shutting down the inside/driving lanes Ingles going off (from deep) Donovan Mitchell Great coach in Quin Snyder They got a team in Utah.
utah is a much better team than okc which is why they will win the series. but okc matches up better with us than utah does which is why i prefer utah. both have a defense capable of slowing us down for long stretches. utah has a methodical offense that scores at a consistent pace similar to the wolves. the thunder have an erratic offense that can either be a disaster or their stars get hot and they can't be stopped. utah is less explosive easier to game plan against, and since we are better than them, they are the better matchup for us. the thunder will explode for at least 2 wins even though we are much better than them. we are a bad matchup for the jazz. they like playing teams that want to score inside the arch like the thunder. gobert shuts down the paint and they become a jump shooting team with low %. the rockets will welcome being asked to shoot 3s. the jazz will have to adjust and overplay the 3pt line against the rockets, funneling drives into gobert. so we will go 5-out and make gobert guard the 3 point line too, to open things up for the drive. we will go small and make favors their backup center instead of the starting pf. we will switch everything so ingles doesn't get open looks from the outside and he's not a 1-on-1 player to score in other ways. we will force rubio and michell to beat us off the dribble to create for their team, and they will have success there, but it not going to be enough to stop what we can do to them on offense.