Blend being the operative word. Too many young guns won't get it done. Every team has weaknesses. You name a team and I'll tell you there weaknesses. Teams normally win because one team has the best player on the court. The ONLY exception to that rule would be the Pistons. But even they got beat this season because they ran into a team with ONE player they couldn't contain. Agreed. Although I'd like to see us replace some of our vets for better vets AND bring in some youth. Miami just demonstrated something different. Because Miami has a good blend of young and old. You need the young guns but you can't have a team full of them. You are blaming veterans for allowing missed free throws? Lets look at turnovers in Game 6. J Williams: 2 D Wade: 3 Haslam: 3 Walker: 0 Oneil: 2 Posey: 2 Payton: 2 Mourning: 1 S. Andersen: 1 The young athletic guys Haslam, Posey, Wade and Williams all had 2 or 3. The old guys has 1 or 2. hmmmm. Coincidence?
How so? What center dominated the finals? It certainly wasn’t Shaq with his 13 points a game. The veterans are the ones that missed the free throws. Look at their free throw percentages for the series. Payton 33% JWill 63% Walker 55% Shaq 29% Mourning 66% Of course none of veterans are going to have as many turnovers as Wade. None of them handled the ball nearly as much as he does. But you would expect them to add some sort of calming influence while they’re on the floor. They didn’t. Collectively, Walker, O’Neal, JWill, Mourning, and Payton combined for 58 turnovers. That’s more than the 55 turnovers that the younger, more inexperienced Diop, Dirk, Howard, Terry, Harris, and Daniels combined for. Not to mention, the much better free throw percentage that Dallas shot. I don’t see how you can possibly look at those numbers and say Dallas lost this series because of their youth and Miami won based on their veteran leadership. Dallas lost because they just flat out couldn't shoot. Miami won because Wade played like a man possesed. It had absolutely nothing to do with Miami's veterans beating the young Dallas team with their experience.
Maybe if our role players were former all-stars instead of former bench scrubs on other teams, we would have shot.
