Western Conference Semifinals: (1) San Antonio vs. (5) Portland

No, Spurs did not double team LMA, Splitter is doing an excellent job on him. LMA has trouble against quicker bigs, and Splitter's footwork improved tremendously this year

 

This is stupidest thing I've seen in a while and clearly shows you have no idea what you're talking about.

 

People say that the Spurs can run a system because of the kind of players they have. Well, Duncan maybe. But I don't think Parker is the kind of guy that would take very well being yelled at, having a short leash on his neck, etc. You've got to start early, when the dude is still a rookie.

Notice the stars they have are both home grown? The coach can mold a guy when he's young and humble. After he's realized he is a real star, it's too late.

 

The Spurs are supposed to historically struggle against LMA's Blazers. They've also been destroying the Mavs lately. Yet the two series flipped in the playoffs

 

Hard to struggle when one team doesn't even try to play defense.

 

While the rockets defense is on a historic level, the blazers D also says a lot about the rockets offense.

 

Lack of ball movement on the Rockets. Lack of ball movement can be overlooked if your superstars are ridiculous. And we know Harden was ridiculous (ridiculously bad),

 

If you believe 50/50 means "no idea", then so be it. What I'm saying is it's a tossup series. If TP continues playing like Superman, Spurs probably win but I don't know if he can do that.

KD can defend anyone on the Spurs except TD. Diaw is a perimeter guy and Splitter is no challenge at all.

 

Take a break son. Comparing OKC vs Spurs and Rockets vs Spurs is a non-starter. Not the same thing at all and don't understand where you are running with that.

Spurs played animated and energetic against OKC and lost anyway. Leonard played in 3 of the 4 games against OKC and KD had his worst game when Leonard DID NOT play. Leonard has never been a "Durant-stopper". You made that up.

Pop has had OKC in his crosshairs ever since they beat the Spurs 4 straight in the WCFs to snap their 20-game win streak. OKC is the one team Pop doesn't have a handle on how to beat.

 

You will find Duncan has everything to do with it. When parker first walks into the door, he sees there best player who is happily held to the same standard as everyone else by Popovich.

 

What is absolutely clear is that coaching matters come playoff time and in a big way.

You can get through the regular season on pure talent just like how the Rockets did. Rockets won 54 games inspite of the clueless McHale not because of him but come playoff time, McHale got his clock cleaned by Stotts.

Likewise now Pop is giving Stotts a clinic in coaching.

 

Agreed. Even the Blazers fans consider Stotts to be outmatched. In the words of one of the Blazers' beat reporters...

http://www.oregonlive.com/sports/or...sf/2014/05/canzano_spurs_inc_blowing_out.html

Coaching evens out over the regular season because for every Gregg Popovich, there's a bunch of Mike Woodsons that can't coach their team well enough to overcome the talent differential.

However, let Pops coach against you for a series and make adjustments from game to game and he'll dissect you like a frog in Biology class.

Unless you have a serious advantage in talent over the Spurs, you're going to need a coach like Thibs, Doc Rivers, Carlisle, etc. to stand a chance. Without a play off caliber coach, in anything even close to an even match in terms of talent you'll get the train wreck that is Portland vs the Spurs.

It's really been amazing seeing the shift in the attitudes of the Portland fan base. In 10 days they've gone from "1 piece away to contending!" to the realization that they're multiple pieces and years away.

You know it's bad when even the Blazers players are admitting that they're out-classed.

 

The games in Houston we played against the Spurs, we both played with so many people missing, it was like a 10th seed vs a 12th seed, but the first two, the Spurs definitely put everything they had into them.

The Spurs even spelled out what their biggest issue was, they were giving up more space to everyone not named James because of Dwight, and they have no idea how to stop James (heck even Spurs fans are more afraid of Harden than Durant because of how he seems to just explode against them). Heck we were the team playing with injuries to 2 rotation players in the Christmas game (the highest rated game for its timeslot ever, because it was just such a great game to watch, the complete opposite of the last 2).

 

Makes Morey look silly..

 

That blazers spurs series could've gone either way. -delusional gm

 

How? Did Morey pass on bringing in the iconic Pop to Houston? Or is it because he felt the blazers having a lot of similar strengths and weaknesses as the Rockets do, could repeat what Houston did in the regular season. A lot of people are up in arms, talking about how the regular season differs from the playoffs dramatically, is that why so many 8 seeds have gone on to win a ring? Get over yourselves. The regular season is a decent diagnostic for the playoffs. Is it perfect? No. The blazers are getting torched because a lot of calls that went there way aren't now. They are also getting torched because LA isn't having the prolific scoring show he had in games 1 and 2. Some of that is San Antonio, and some of that is because the blazers game plan isn't sustainable. The blazers game plan is quite similar to bringing Jeremy Lin in and expecting him to put up Linsanity numbers on a nightly basis. Sure, there will be stretches of brilliance, but for the most part both plans will lead to inconsistencies.

 

Morey said Blazers is an amazing team, one of the best 5 seed ever and will give Spurs problems. He already looks silly with that statement. A sweep makes him looks even sillier.

 

No we got load of talent, but a very undisciplined and poorly coached team.

 

Read my post that you quoted, it's completely reasonable to use the rocket's regular season performance as a marker for how the blazers would do. The only people that look silly are the ones who think because they post in online forums they can do Morey's job.