"There's no question, they were watching that series against the Rockets," Lopez said, seguing without warning from a list of problems San Antonio poses to Portland's defense into a list of problems San Antonio poses to Portland's offense. "They saw how we had success against [Houston], and they changed it up. I've noticed defensively, I've only guarded Tim and Tiago on the block maybe once each. They aren't throwing the ball into the post. They are moving the ball around offensively. [They're] trying to disrupt us, packing it into the key, and running us off the three-point line."
Did they really defend us? I mean we scored bunch of points against them in that series. The problem was we couldn't stop them from scoring one more bucket than we do in 3 of their 4 wins.
I called Rockets and Blazers "pretenders" back in January. http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showpost.php?p=8592800&postcount=182 Teams with mediocre defense are all pretenders. It's not a myth that defense wins championships. No team outside of of top 10 in defensive efficiency had ever won a championship for the last 20 years. Only one team had reached the Finals and Suns had the most efficient scoring in NBA history.
Well, take a look at Harden/Parsons and Lin's productivity in the series... and their shooting percentages for the series... It's not like we were lighting them up from the top down....
The scored one more baskets than us. We missed free throws. Those guys act as if they were that much than us. All they earned was a freaking sweep by the Spurs. Rude awakening. Call me bitter. It is what it is.
The Blazers can talk all they want about how we were easy to guard but we still smoked their defense. I know one thing, if we were playing the Spurs, I know damn well we would not be getting swept and annihilated like they are. I don't want to discredit what the Blazers accomplished, but we lost this series because of Harden's disappearing act and because of McHale's utter incompetence.
If this is the case, then a lot of the blame would be on Morey for equipping the team as it is. (And also on McHale for not making lemonade)
Stop blaming the coach. We dont have a Patty Mills and Manu off the bench. Spurs have more players that can play than we do. Our role players are young and still developing. No matter what plays are called, they wouldn't execute like those spurs players. So please, stop this blaming the coach for the series loss. We had bad matchups at their strongest two positions.
Harden drive??? Since when you have delusion that harden with explosive and quick first step. He has skills but that's it.
You cannot be serious. What plays do you even see with McHale as the coach? Did you watch the plays Pop run? Pop knows how to develop a young player into a seasoned player. He can draw all your talent out can McHale do that? If the team or organisation isn't performing well, you blame the head. That has been and will always be the case, in basketball and in life.
No Tony Parker, Spurs still destroyed Blazers easily like a piece of cake. Rockets should feel shame on this.
i watched every second of our series. we have problems on offense as well, mostly due to the coaching and lack of 3-pt shooting. the only reason we score a lot is because of the pace we play