don't give jbb extra credit with 42 wins. that was the famous "remain calm, we're the 8th seed and at 0.500" rockets.
the first year nash played for the suns, their preseason championship odds were +10000, which i think is the lowest they give. bbref doesn't list an over/under but i'm guessing it was low-to-mid-40's wins and a first round exit. they ended up with 62 wins and a conference finals appearance. then amare missed the next season and everyone assumed they would be bad. so they won 54 games and went to the conference finals. then they had an over/under of 55 and won 61 games and lost a close series to the eventual champion spurs (a series that was basically the de facto nba championship). it's like telling someone they'll never amount to anything and then, when they become a senator, saying "yeah, well...still not the president."
one thing about this is that all of it makes sense from every players perspective, including Russ. He had to get on track for them to have any chance. that he tried and failed is 100% better for everyone. Otherwise we’d be staring at a game 7 exit here and a “run it back” approach, if they just used Russ sparingly. To actually win it all he had to at least try to return to form. One thing relevant to coaching... MDA should have helped him. How many “easy” out of timeout plays have you ever seen them run?? I saw them run multiple out of timeout plays that ended up with Russ on the post guarded by a solid defender. And thinking wtf.... THIS is what you drew up out of the timeout.
MDA is one of best regular season coaches ever. But a bit like the Bucks coach, not a great play coach.
I mean I guess......but breaking off from plays during a crucial playoff games....is dumb as hell. Like Im absolutely sure he did more of this in the Lakers series. Ehhh..........I donno about that. If he had just played like he did in game 5, we would have had more rest against the Lakers. Not that it would have mattered at all because he's simply not a good player for what he's getting paid at all. He's not the second best player on a championship squad. He simply is not. He is who always was, I dont but this whole injury stuff because he simply just sucked in ways that werent related to a quad injury. He can't shoot and he can't defend. And at no point during the regular season was this not true. His lineups were always bad no matter what we did. MDA led the league in efficiency in terms of out of timeout plays. Do you really think it was the plan for Russ to post up Lebron or any strong defender, no. That's just another example of Russ breaking off from plays and doing his own thing because he's not a smart basketball player. We arent winning with Russ...no matter what coach you get imo.
Yes, that first year was 2004-05 I believe. And those are preseason championship odds you stated. By pre post season they were much better, because the Suns were: 62-20 1st seed 1st in points per game (110.4) 1st in Pace (107.1) 1st in Off Rtg (114.5) 17th in Def Rtg (107.1) 1-4 knockout by Spurs in WCF If that was Houston.....Harden.......ohhhhh buddy. Grilled
Yes, but keep in mind that also goes with my, “D’Antoni tries to win all the regular season games” and his teams don’t have enough gas for the playoffs. Often injured or heavily fatigued by playoffs. Suns added Shaq in 2007-08, kinda dropping the Pace/Small-Ball......but not really. They tried to still run with Shaq. Shaq couldn’t do it with success. I wonder why? Answer (Too big). The gimmick offense was done at that point and they soon replaced D’Antoni.
Someone else pointed out but yeah, ONE game is what it’s all about in the playoffs. Those series were suppose to be real tight when both teams are loaded, you HAVE to be able to step on their throats when there is an advantage in the playoffs. I do think they have been screwed over a little. The 27 missed threes is BS, the key part of that game is CP missing. And no one (outside of Houston) talks about how we were clearly ripped off in Game 1 last season against the warriors
JVG was talking about that last night. Excluding the Spurs series, the Rockets have been sizable dogs in the last three series losses. He's a failure for losing to the GSW dynasty and Lebron + AD, yet no one was expecting Houston victories other than Rockets fans.
Amare always had injury issues, not just with Dantnoi. Joe Johnson had like a broke bone in his eye socket. And the Suns may very well have a ring if not for David Stern suspending Diaw and Amare. Adding Shaq was a terrible decision, that wasn Mike's offense. Its not a gimmick though, its the very foundation on which the modern NBA offenses are built. We do iso to maximize Harden's efficiency. He got outcoached by Vogel and he had to go, I get it....but lets not act like he was never gonna get us there, we had unfortunate accidents.
He is bad and I do no want want to watch him play basketball anymore(but i will stomach it). This is how I feel about the whole Westbrook trade. I mean yea but like you said, we were always favored to lose those series every single time. The fact that people are calling us failure are proof that people expect more but we are in fact just overachieving with less talent.
Favoured to lose the series coming in yeah but favoured to lose without KD? Nah. Favoured to lose Game 6 against the Spurs? Nah. Other examples against the warriors I agree though.
Issues with D'Antoni We never saw the 7 seconds or less offense because Harden won't push the ball. We had to bring in special assts to run defense because he was clueless about that aspect of the game. Harden and Russ did what they wanted. This is on upper management too for giving Harden way too much say in what goes on in terms of players. Not playing the bench and running the starters into the ground..
Dude GS without KD is still like a championship level team, we lost a close because Iggy got super hot from 3, you restart that series they arent beating us. And game 6 of the Spurs was just as much on Harden as it was on Mike. But again, would you start that series without Kawhi and say they beat us...no way.
Ehh...it was really Dwight and even then the first two years of Dwight he was way waaaay better than Westbrook in the playoffs. Westbrook actually has negative Winshares LOL....like how do you even manage to do that.
I like your passion, but back then it was a gimmick offense. Yes leading to the style we see today. D’Antoni put guys outside their weight class in spots like that. A’mare was small for Center.....so let’s put him there. Marion was thin for power forward......so let’s put him there. Jim Jackson was small for small forward (6’5”) so let’s put him there. And so on, and so on. Look I’m in my 50’s and have been a basketball nut all my life. I watched it all. The Nuggets with Calvin Natt and Alex English. The Warriors with Run TMC (Tim Hardaway-Mitch Richmond- Chris Mullen). I put the Suns right with them. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hit the winner no shot of Magic Johnson’s first regular season game as a Laker. Magic Johnson went nuts. Kareem later told him settle down. We have 81 more games to play. At 5his pace you won’t make it to 42 games (improvising). Coaches can’t run players so hard that they get driven into the ground. That’s why many are turning to the term “Load Management.” But they need to execute that. This’s recent said he would. Guys playing out of position sometimes get popped in the eye. Just saying. Sometimes. Here is Kareem funny ending to game one with Magic Johnson https://hbr.org/2012/01/kareem-abdul-jabbar I give you the last word. Edited: I’ve had this conversation a million times here on Clutchfans. Before you say that’s not small for center or PF. I listed back then the heights and weights of centers and PF’s back then. Oh yeah. A’Mare and Marion were small.....especially in weight......going up against those Behemoths back then night in and night out.
But is it really a gimmick if everyone is running the same variation of what Dantoni did then? I mean cmon man, are we saying that small ball leads to more injuries now? Because the Celtics, Heat, Lakers, and Clippers all play the same way Dantoni did with guy's being out of there weight class. Like Celtics are running a center at 6'8. I dont really mind that people wanted Mike fired, thats fine, he got out coahced. But I dont want to be told he wasnt good enough to win.
