I'm sure others have noticed this, but I just picked up on it after looking at Dwight's minutes from last night. He played 41, which made sense given the bigs Chicago can put out on the floor. That got me thinking about the big front lines in the NBA and how we've fared against them so far this season. The answer is not very well. Of our 11 losses, 7 have come against teams with "big" front courts. The lone exceptions are GS 2x, Atlanta and LAL. GS and Atlanta are the two best teams in the league right now (IMO), so I can excuse that as just getting beat. The LA game was just bad. The rest... Memphis - Gasol and Randolph Clippers - Griffin and Jordan New Orleans - Asik and Davis San Antonio - Splitter and Duncan Washington - Nene and Gortat New Orleans - Asik and Davis Chicago - Gasol and Noah What's interesting to me is that it wasn't Howard that struggled offensively in most of these games......it was Harden. In the 7 losses to "big" teams, Harden went 40% from the field, 28% from 3, and got half as many FT attempts as he's averaged for the season. I do not think this is Harden "shrinking from the moment" or anything like that. I believe this has more to do with a lack of outside shooting to open up the floor and not having a secondary playmaker to put Harden in better positions to score. This team still has holes, and I hope we can address them before the trade deadline. Otherwise, I'm afraid what happened in the Portland series will happen again.
Playoff wise we just need to play more mature meaning really play defense. Offensively even though we a freedom ball we do well enough to win. All games in last year playoffs were close. We needed young players to play smart and they didn't. This year we will be better prepared we have the experienced veterans. We still must improve as the season progresses but no team will be perfect that includes us. We gotta be tough enough in close playoff games to get the big wins. We fell short on that last year.
Two bigs (hell, Chicago had THREE out there last night) completely clogs the paint. If Harden can't drive to the lane and get a basket or get a foul call even if the other team shot him in the chest, he's limited to mid-range jumpers (which he's decent at) and threes (which he's hit and miss at). His other option is to go the assist route, but Dwight gets stripped frequently on post-ups and our potential three-point shooting is a complete unknown with every game. Without some sort of plays in place to open a lane to the basket for Harden or plays to dump the ball to someone open and near the basket, he's got very few options. You can't really can't place much blame on him; he's always going to be the center of attention for the other team's defense; others on our team have got to step and take the pressure off of him.
harden struggled last night because butler is an elite defender, and has a good argument for DPOY. harden was taken completely out of his game by butler, not by chicago's bigs.
This is why we need a stretch 4 of some description.... You simply can not win an nba title anymore without one.
Do we have to stretch that much? Can we just have someone that can make jump shot from slightly outside the paint? Maybe some of our tall guys can learn how to float the ball in over a taller defender from a few steps away? We're a team where almost none of our big men can even break 50% at the free throw line, and the rest of the team isn't much better. I'd rather have everybody be able to shoot a short jump shot when the lane is clogged and make 2/3 of their free throws than have one tall guy who can sort of hit long shots, but then leaves the center to have handle the rebounding by himself.
