It's called trying to learn from the whole "full speed" thing. I would venture a guess that timeouts will be taken in the playoffs.
our team still gets the same position as the past two seasons, i hope the first round will be a little bit different.
You know why players love JVG? Because he is RUTHLESS with them and he is RUTHLESS about everything when it comes to basketball. Bill Parcells said it best. To paraphrase he said that you can't be a "nice guy" with players. Players respect authority. And if you are a coach or manager in sports, your job is to be a dictator. Sounds like a winner to me.
I don't disagree with some of your points, some of them may be right. My point is: That's not the main reason we lost. You can look at every game we play and say the coach played somebody wrong at SOME point in the game. Once again, my point is, despite the fact that Scola shouldn't have been on Dirk, and Scola was having a bad night, etc. etc., this TEAM lost the game. Dirk is one of those players that no matter who you put on him, it's hard to stop him. That sound familiar? It should, we have one of those guys, his name is Yao Ming. Unfortunately, our TEAM (including coaches), couldn't figure out how to get him more than a couple shots in the second half. THAT is why we lost this game. A lack of offensive presence in the 4th quarter (14 points) is why we lost this game. It wasn't just because Dirk was guarded by Scola. That's not looking at the big picture. I understand there may have been goofy substitutions made, etc. etc. That's fine. This team still had no offense in the 4th. They went in a few points ahead, and left the 4th losing the quarter 30-14. That's unnacceptable REGARDLESS of who is on the court at the time. It's hard to score that few points in a quarter...
Just wanted to respond to those saying it's Yao's fault and he "just needs to seal off his man". If you want to blame him for being too slow/unatheletic to punish teams for fronting that's fine. But correct me if I'm wrong, I think it's pretty impossible to maintain inside position and stop a defender who decides to run around you consistently the whole night without picking up offensive fouls for obstructing. He will be able to hold off his defender for awhile on some posessions, but he isn't going to be able to do it the whole night on every posession without racking up offensive fouls.
he has done what he has done all year, let his players play through the tough times, i am wondering if this is on purpose, maybe to get his team through hard stretches, he doesn't care if we win or lose, it's about the playoffs and making us stronger? i don't know, just a possibility, he should have used better judgment on his timeouts, and told them to get yao the ball... as for scola, i mean he played defense, dirk was just on fire, so i don't really think it's his fault, i mean he torched landry in the end, sometimes there is nothing you can do, scola is a pesty defender, which aggrevates people like dirk who whine alot, it's just unfortunate he was hot. on the matter of scola, we need to get him more involved, he has disappeared lately, struggling to get into the game for big games, yao needs to get his 20+, but i think scola needs to be involved in the game as well, if he can avg 15+ in the playoffs and yao gets his usual 20/10, we will be okay, that's only 35 points, but artest just needs to get 15, battier 10, brooks and landry 20 together, landry and wafer 15-20, and we'll be fine
