I thought Bev did a better job on the 2nd half than 1st. TP was the catalyst in their comeback after being down by 23. There was only one play which Bev really screwed up; the play before his tip-in. He let TP cut to the basket for an easy layup.
You should stop talking about Lin in a Pat Beverley appreciation thread, I don't think that's what the OP intended. Wait, you are the OP! I guess the others are right, sounds like you might be trolling.
You could be right. I only finished the first half (what a freaking thrilling half too!) and didn't come back until the game was close in the 4th quarter. I checked the box score and saw that TP was doing TP thing in the 3rd/4th, but wasn't sure how Bev really did during TP's run. But, if Bev did a better job in the 2nd half than what I saw in the 1st half, then that's actually even better!
TP went into a God mode after Spurs were down by 23. He scored like 8 or 10 straight points and then assisted on the next open shot by Duncan. He single-handily brought Spurs back to life before half time. Bev must've felt really really bad at that point! In the second half, I though Jones did a great job stopping a couple of TP penetrations. After TP drove by his pick, Jones stepped in front of TP and stopped him dead on his track. TP had no choice but to pass the ball back out. Or maybe TP was just gassed.
Wow I didnt realise Parker took so many shots, I guess I got a bit emotional when Parker was willing them back in it, but he definately cooled off, quite a few were on Brooks as well, but they honestly left him on an island there. Still was a fantastic win, made big plays and Harden played like the superstar he is.
Thanks for the recap. I'll have to rewatch this game. I was so distracted, I completely missed TP going on his run at the end of the first half then. I saw that we were finishing up the 2nd quarter with a ridiculous double-digit margin so I thought TP's run came in the 3Q. All I know is I came back in the fourth and we somehow fell behind and I was biting nails till the very end. And just from what I saw it looked like Bev did a great job on TP, probably the reason why TP was so gassed!
There were definitely some quotes after the game about the Rockets being okay with Paker taking all those shots instead of their shooters knocking down threes. Yeah Parker scored 10 straight points to close the gap and give them momentum before half time but sometimes that's what great players do, no matter who is defending them. Look at what Chris Paul did to us in the game without Bev... and what he did to us the next game against us when Bev was on the bench... Man, we really do need that guy.
It's definitely NOT okay to let Tony Parker to take over the game. Thunder understood perfectly on what I am saying after they were down 0-2 two post seasons ago. They forced the ball out of Parker's hand in Game 3 by switching Sefolosha on him and ended up winning 4 straight. We were way too lucky that Spurs missed so many open 3's. The only reason TP was taking so many shots because his teammates can't hit open 3's. Rockets might be the team who takes the most 3's but Spurs have the most corner 3's by design. Average corner 3's are 5% higher than after-break 3's (34% vs 39%). Spurs missed a bunch of those open corner 3's.
I'm not sure what you're arguing here... I was just continuing the conversation about Beverley and the ebbs and flows of the game for him. The quote I was referring to was from Harden: http://www.nba.com/rockets/news/game-day-rockets-spurs When you start talking about luck and them missing open shots you could also talk about some of the open shots that we missed too. Yes, believe it or not, I do understand that it is not a good idea to give guys open corner three point shots. Yes, I understand it's one of the best shots in basketball and definitely the best 3 point shot. As they said over and over last night, the SA and H-Town systems are very similar... Post up/penetrate for easy shots at the rim or kick outs for 3's. Again, that's not really what I was referring to. I was talking about Beverley and how he matched up. I was not saying the Rockets should LET Tony Parker "take over a game", that would be silly to say about any player. But sometimes there is sound strategy in trying to force a specific player into a specific type of shot, if that's what the Rockets were trying to do later in the game (or simply failed to do earlier in the game). Anyways, if you're arguing against my point that Bev would be our best player to guard Parker, then please let me know who you think should be on him.
I know it was a quote from one of our players and wasn't really arguing with you. Dwight, on if he wanted Tony Parker to take 27 shots... Contracting views and, of course, Harden would prefer TP shooting all the shots; TP is not his man to guard. Spurs offense runs through TP. You force the ball out of his hand, Spurs becomes an average offensive team. Like Dwight said, when TP is on, it's difficult to stop him.
There are two ways to win 1) Tony Parker, Duncan and Ginobili are contained..... Let the role players beat you 2) Contain everyone else and have Parker or another guy get theirs
BTW, here's a link to Tony Parker's actual shot chart during the game: http://stats.nba.com/gameDetail.html?GameID=0021300245 (Click on Tony Parker's FG% of 48.1%, and select Shot Chart) Basically it shows that he took 19 shots at the rim, 3 mid-range shots, 2 long two-pointers, and 2 three-pointers. Of all those shots, he only made one shot that was not at the rim. So 25 out of his 27 points were either at the rim (read: layups) or free throws.* Similarly, NBA.com has this really neat feature where you can literally watch video of every single play in the game (use the same link above and click "Video" instead to see every single one of Parker's shot attempts). I highly recommend folks review the video before making blanket assertions about Beverley's defense, how Parker got his shots, and how the defense "played" him. Nearly every single one of Parker's rim-level attempts were caused by breakdowns in the defense, most notably either by him blowing by Beverley or getting a screen (that Beverley could not recover from). Given those buckets were the ones that largely accounted for his points, and his FG% of 48.1% was only slightly lower (well within sample size margin) of his career FG% of 52.6%, I think it begs the question as to how effective Beverley's defense actually was against Parker. This isn't to say that Beverley is a bad defender, but it's to highlight the point that in the modern NBA, no one is going to prevent a guard from driving to the basket, especially when he gets a screen. Beverley is not some sort of magical exemption from this issue. Similarly, if you look at the second half video, you can see the Brooks actually did a much better job of covering Parker than Beverley did, mostly because he anticipated the screens better and kept himself in-between Parker and the basket (preventing him from driving easily). This allowed the help defense (Asik/Jones/etc.) to properly hedge and contain Parker, forcing him to pass the ball out or attempt an inefficient one-on-one game. As others have pointed out, though, if any of the other Spurs shooters had their strokes, Parker would've just done a half-drive and dumped it out to them for the open bucket. There were still a lot of defensive breakdowns - it's just that the Spurs couldn't taken advantage of them because none of their guys were shooting worth a lick during the game. That's not to say that the Rockets didn't do a good job (or better than their previous games, for sure), but that's far from saying that Beverley "shut down" Parker or that the Rockets as a whole executed a flawless defensive strategy. *The majority of Parker's "inefficient" shot attempts were done at the very end of the shot clock, when he had to throw it up, so it's not surprising that he would miss those. I'd say maybe one of the three-pointers and one of the long-twos were wide open shots that probably should have gone in.
What a weird thread. I think the OP was just itching to turn this into a Beverley vs Lin thread (as if we don't jave enough of those), but no one else took the bait.
Congratulations to Beverley! Our defensive specialist shut Tony Parker from scoring 60 pts on this game. <iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ZFXIKPLQ3lk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
