I spent a healthy proportion of the regular season wondering why people seemed to be writing the Spurs off, and now I think everyone's going to be favoring them to win yet another championship. That said, their brilliant performance in Game 5 did leave me disappointed that San Antonio didn't attempt to unveil the brutal Bonner-Oberto-Barry-Ginobili-Udrih all-white lineup.
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Western Conference
31 May 2007 08:09 am
Comments (40)
San Antonio didn't attempt to unveil the brutal Bonner-Oberto-Barry-Ginobili-Udrih all-white lineup
Even better if they had done it in Utah. Chance of a lifetime missed.
I am a Spurs fan, so everything I say should be taken with that as a given.
From what I have seen from the ECF, I don't see either Detroit or Cleveland having the fluidity required to score consistently on San Antonio's defense. The Pistons are the tougher match for the Spurs for several reasons. Billups can overpower Parker, and Rasheed Wallace for a decade has been the best one on one defender of Duncan in the league. He is long enough to play a half step further back in the post than most defenders can, which allows him to cut off angles to the rim while still being able to contest jumpers.
The Spurs lost both games against the Cavs, but I wouldn't give them more than a 20-25% chance to win in the Finals. The Spurs beat Detroit both times, and I think their chance would be closer to 40-45%.
Glorious comeback of The Great White Hope?
Your comment points to one of the reasons that professional basket ball stinks.
Why were people writing the Spurs off? Well because everyone was looking at Dallas and Phoenix and saying "wow." But their flashy regular season records and playstyle are meaningless. There's no medal or trophy for the best regular season record. Sure maybe there's bragging rights... they last until your team is eliminated in the playoffs.
Eight teams from each division make the playoffs, 16 teams out of 30! You only need to be the median NBA team to make the playoffs. Yes, the NBA playoffs, come see all the teams at, or only slightly below average compete for the Championship of the World!
Consequently the regular season is totally yawntastic except for teams so marginal that they set their goal as "making the playoffs." There's division rivalries, playoff elimination, homefield advantage, these things are meaningful in other pro sports (well, other than hockey... but everyone knows they don't count). Not in the NBA. Where you wind up in the brackets can be meaningful to some extent, but getting a favorable seeding is not really predictable; there are times that you would rather be 2 or 3 rather than 1 say.
The Lakers figured this out after they won thier first championship of the Kobe/Shaq era. They basically mailed it in during the regular season. Everyone was saying "oh gee look at thier record, they're no longer the best team." When the playoffs came they where, unsurprisingly, the best team.
God, I hope the Cavs win the East. As disappointing as LeBron has been this year, at least it would be nice to watch him in the finals. If it's Detroit vs. San Antonio, I might not watch any of it. Somehow, it feels like those 2 teams have played each other in the finals for the past 5 years, even though they haven't.
OK, I know I'm going to watch. It doesn't matter how many times David Stearns pulls the football away, I'm going to keep coming back to kick it.
Stern handed the Spurs the series against the Suns. Cleveland will win the east, and the deck will be stacked in favor of a LeBron finals.
IMU, let's not be promiscuous in our use of "everyone." many people recognized that the lakers with shaq and kobe were the team to beat. (matthew is a little softer when he says "people," because many "people" were willing to write the spurs off as too old or something.)
which is really the point: fans want to see unusual matchups, new faces, that sort of thing (look at text, who is still whining that "stern" and not the spurs defeated the suns).
seasoned observers of the game look at the basics: who defends well? who blocks out well? who limits their turnovers? who can execute their offense under pressure? who can play lockdown defense down the stretch of a game? who moves the ball well?
and every year, there is a limited number of teams who meet these criteria, and pretty much every year (the '75 golden state warriors being the big exception over the last 40 years) the champ comes from one of these teams.
which is to say, if we get san antonio v. detroit, one of them will win the title. if we get san antonio v. cleveland, san antonio will win the title.
and frankly, we can already say that dallas, phoenix, san antonio, and detroit have good chances to be in the finals next year....
I mean, do we look at foreign white players the same way we look at US born white players? So, does this really count? I mean, Tony Parker, to me, is French (or Belgian), not black. And I think of Nowitzki as German more than white. And, why do we consider Manu and Fabricio (who are Argentinian) to be white when I don't think Eduardo Najera (who is Mexican) or Anderson Varejao (who is Brazilian and looks like a Simpsons character) would count toward any whitewash lineup. Globalization has killed off many things it seems, including any reasonable definition of an all-white or all-black lineup. I mean, is a Duncan, Parker, Horry, Elson, Bowen lineup all-black when only 2 of them were born within the 50 US states?
It's at best an open question as to whether the Spurs could have won that series without the suspensions.
Equally so the Lakers a few years back, when the questionable calls were going against the Kings. For whatever reason, the NBA skews against the team game. This isn't so at the international level, though.
text, it is certainly true that the refs handed the lakers that game 6 against the kings a few years back; conceivably that was the worst-reffed playoff game of all time.
but the notion that it's an open question whether the spurs could have won that series without the suspensions assumes facts not in evidence; the actual fact is, stern laid the same suspensions on the knicks in a series against the heat where the knicks already were leading 3-2 (he suspended so many players that it had to be distributed across the final two games), and the heat won, so he had literally no choice in the matter. if you want to blame someone, blame the phoenix coaches for failing to have schooled their players in what can happen if you leave the bench.
but the reason i bother to comment, text, is that the spurs play a team game: whatever makes you think that even if you were right, that for some strange reason stern favored the spurs over the suns and therefore "handed" them the win, that this manifest a "skewing" against the team game?
I share Citizen’s position (stated above)- and hope - on the role of globalization in finessing the race/color question. But I also think he’s missing the point here, which is that the race/color question is still a powerful motivating factor in the local thinking about sports in America as well as, of course, in all other aspects of American life.
In basketball, in particular, some people are still waiting for Godot, The Great White Hope.
Why else would Yglesias even bother to raise the otherwise irrelevant issue of being “disappointed that San Antonio didn't attempt to unveil the brutal Bonner-Oberto-Barry-Ginobili-Udrih all-white lineup.”?
Right, the spurs play a team game, and detroit, who has had success, also plays a team game. But I get the feeling that, this year, things have worked out rather neatly in favor of a Lebron-highlighted finals. I might be wrong. Do the Cavs match-up better against the Spurs or against the Suns?
In saying that an outcome under different circumstances would be uncertain, what facts am I assuming? And how can you say Stern had no choice in the suspensions? He easily could have chosen not to suspend anyone, or to only suspend Horry. That sounds like a choice to me.
Why were people writing the Spurs off? Well because everyone was looking at Dallas and Phoenix and saying "wow." But their flashy regular season records and playstyle are meaningless. There's no medal or trophy for the best regular season record. Sure maybe there's bragging rights... they last until your team is eliminated in the playoffs.
The reason that people were writing the Spurs off, though, began with the fact that Dallas eliminated them in the playoffs last year. Remember that?
Others have written that Dallas posed difficult matchup problems for the Spurs. Fortunately for the Spurs, the Mavs got knocked out early this year by a team that posed unique matchup problems for them (which were vividly demonstrated during the regular season, and didn't change in the playoffs). The rock-paper-scissors element of playoff basketball shouldn't be overlooked.
Game 6 of the Lakers/Kings series was the one where Kobe Bryant elbowed Mike Bibby in the face and gave him a bloody nose and Bibby got called for a foul, right?
the mavs barely, by the slimmest margin (pretty much a dumb foul by manu, though there was time left), got by a hobbled duncan last year. writing the spurs off on that basis, when duncan was again fully healthy and playing better than just about anyone in the leagure, was silly.
as for the suns, please. raja bell created the situation, not horry. if bell doesn't charge horry for no reason, horry gets suspended, suns are fine. and the suns at full strength, with a well rested amare and diaw, got beaten soundly by the spurs. the notion that it was the suns' series aside from some hiccups just doesn't wash, and nash pretty much admitted it at times, noting that his team just wasn't determined enough. (by contrast, sacto was robbed against LA, i've never seen worse officiating.)
I agree with Swopa entirely. The Spurs toughest match-up in the post-season would have been Dallas. The series last year could have gone either way, with six of the seven games being decided in the final minutes or overtime. And there were enough new wrinkles to make a rematch enticing. The Mavericks had finally won a significant game against the Spurs and so had a confidence they never had before. At the same time, this season features a healthy Duncan again. Finley is being paid mostly by the Mavericks and would have played his old team again.
I wouldn't read too much into regular season match-ups, though. Even with two teams as familiar as these, the coaching staffs don't have time within the day or two between opponents to gameplan much that is particular to them. It really is a different ballgame in the playoffs.
Frankly, I remain disappointed we didn't get to see that series. The Golden State upset was exciting, but its major ramification is that we had one team in the conference finals who just simply isn't up to the caliber of that competition. We paid for that as basketball fans the last two weeks as we have had an inferior series. It is tolerable in the first round when there are seven others to cover it. But this was an exposed stinker.
The spurs are obviously very good, and it was a close series the whole way. It's too bad we'll never know how it would have turned out on the square.
"Game 6 of the Lakers/Kings series was the one where Kobe Bryant elbowed Mike Bibby in the face and gave him a bloody nose and Bibby got called for a foul, right?"
Yeah, that's the one. If I didn't stop following the NBA after that game, I guess I never will. It pains me to think about it, still.
And as much as the Western Conference finals stink, let's not forget how awesome the Warriors/Mavs series was. I'd say it was worth it.
too many steves, to tell ya the truth, that game 6 was definitely a milestone for me: i'd been veering away from basketball for a few years (i'm not especially a fan of isolation offense and loads of 3s, i don't think there's enough team play, and i think there are too many teams, which contributes to the first two problems) and that one helped push me further.
and the way i manifest that is that i watch less basketball (i still read about it to the same degree); i watch more soccer in its place (in terms of use of time).
but i will say that i think we are seeing signs - maybe thanks to the infusion of foreign players with a more fundamentals and team mentality, maybe something cyclical, maybe it was joe dumars showing you could win a title without a "superstar," maybe just fate - of more team play and "better" basketball.
reffing, though, remains the achille's heal of the game. on the other hand, for many years, every baseball umpire had "his" own strike zone and it was apalling, but thanks to concerted effort we now have a fairly consistent strike zone throughout the game, so it's not out of the question that the quality of reffing could improve.
text, you've gone from saying that stern gave the spurs the series to saying "we'll never know," so there may be hope for you! meanwhile, i'll direct you back to dj superflat at 12:27.
btw, because i know there are a lot of younger folks who hang out to talk basketball here (and you can be pretty old and still be young in my book!), i thought, speaking of team basketball, that i would draw everyone's attention to the "red on roundball" archives that nba.com has assembled. i remember those from halftime of games during the '70s, and they were very cool (and remain so): maravich on improving your dribbling skills, bill russell on blocking out and on shot blocking, julius erving on finishing your dunks, moses malone on offensive rebounding, red himself on how to run a fast break!
http://www.nba.com/roundball/index.html
"I spent a healthy proportion of the regular season wondering why people seemed to be writing the Spurs off, and now I think everyone's going to be favoring them to win yet another championship."
As others have noted, the Spurs have gotten pretty damn lucky so far.
Their nightmare matchup, Dallas, gotten taken down in Don Nelson's private dream writ large.
A better matchup for them, Phoenix, had just beaten them in the crucial game of the series when Amare left the bench.
And just maybe, Daniel Gibson is going to continue the weird voodoo curse he's got going on Chauncey Billups and let San Antonio avoid playing Detroit.
But, best I can remember, Matthew's position was that San Antonio was going to win the title because they had the best regular season winning margin. In other words, he may end up being right, but for the wrong reasons.
Last all-white lineup I remember was for the Bullets/Wizards of about 10-15 years ago. No Europeans included. Tom Gugliotta was somehow involved.
Actually I've been saying all along that it remains uncertain as to who would have won the suns-spurs series had David Stern not interfered. Given that the series was so closely contested, the suspensions effectively decided the outcome. Why is this hard to understand?
Googs! Poor bastard.
text, we'll review this one last time, and then you can forge on in your fantasies: your initial claim was that stern "handed" the spurs the series. this is simply not the case.
which is to say: by precedent, stern had no choice but to suspend; stern didn't make the phoenix players leave the bench; and the spurs won the series in 6, not 7 (which is to say, as dj superflat already did, that in game 6, with their backs against the wall, their roster complete, and amare with extra rest, the suns just plain lost).
petey once pointed out that there's a stat with a 100% correlation to winning: scoring more points than the other team. the spurs did it 4 times out of 6. stern didn't make that happen: the players on the court did.
look, we can all speculate about alternate universes (in mine, willis reed doesn't get hurt in 1970 and the knicks win 3 or 4 titles in a row), but there in this universe the spurs won it fair and square.
Howard:
Yesterday I ate a turkey sanwich. It had gone bad. Today, by precedent, I must eat a rotten turkey sandwich.
When I went to purchase the turkey sandwich, the man in line behind me helpfully reached out and handed it to me. Therefore, I could not have picked it up on my own.
Afterwards I regretted eating a rotten turkey sandwich. But that was foolish. It wasn't I who made myself eat the turkey sandwich, but the person who assembled it, without which, I could not have eaten it.
& etc.
Petey, you are being too hard by far on the Spurs.
Yes, Dallas would have been the most difficult match-up. But after the way they crapped the bed in the first round, do you really think they would have had the mental toughness to see it through a seven-gamer with the Spurs?
The Suns had won a crucial game, not the crucial game. The Suns win made game five the crucial game. How the rest of the series plays out without the suspensions is a matter of dueling suppositions, and it is a shame we will never know, but the Spurs were far from done in that series.
It always takes good fortune to win. If Duncan isn't playing on a sprained ankle last year, the Spurs might well be trying to three-peat right now. Except of course if Joe Johnson doesn't get his face broken against the Mavs, the Suns might have come out of the West in 2005 and the Pistons might have repeated.
Winning a championship is about more than having the best team. You have to have one of the top teams, you have to be playing well, and you have to get the kind of breaks that seem to trip up a couple of other elite teams each year.
which is to say: by precedent, stern had no choice but to suspend; stern didn't make the phoenix players leave the bench;
This is wrong. He could have distinguished it away, or he could have suspended Bowen and Duncan for coming out on the court, or he could have simply and winkingly bought the claim that Stat was going to check in. He wasn't in the least compelled to reach the decision he did. I'm not sure what is supposed to have happened if he had gone another way.
Don't you know that Stern's decisions are appealable to the Most High Tribunal of Roundball, SCMT? Any deviation from precedent and Stern gets quashed. That's, like, embarrassing. Stare decisis got nothin' on the NBA.
"Petey, you are being too hard by far on the Spurs."
I'm not saying the Spurs aren't deserving.
Prior to the playoffs, I thought there were 4 genuine title contenders, and the Spurs were one of them.
But they've managed to avoid having to beat 2 of the 3 other teams straight up. Maybe they could have beaten the Suns without the suspensions, sure. Maybe they could have beaten the Mavs without home court, sure.
But they haven't had to do either.
And if their luck holds, maybe they won't have to beat Detroit too.
A championship is a championship, no doubt. But I thought the Spurs were quite vulnerable when the playoffs began, and they haven't proved me wrong yet.
again i ask, why do most folk ignore that it's bell who caused the altercation? that is, nash didn't spring up and get in horry's face, it was a fairly notorious hothead for the suns who caused the scene which led to the suspensions. and please don't pretend the foul was that egregious -- i've seen about 4 or 5 worse against manu in the utah series, none called flagrant, a couple times parker has just been hammered, etc. it was not a big deal until bell made it one, and then other suns stupidly left the bench. and are we just supposed to ignore the fact that the players know they are ruled by a draconian commish willing to suspend whenever he deems necessary? that is, people talk about it as though selig was NBA commish and you could pretty much do what you want with impunity. regardless of what you think about how stern rules, everyone knows by now that you deviate from the rules at your peril. that is, you'll get suspended whether there's some excuse or not.
"why do most folk ignore that it's bell who caused the altercation?"
Probably because most folks think that Horry caused it. Your description of the event differs from my memory so much that I don't think our positions can be reconciled.
I agree, the Suns should have stayed on the bench, but even though they got up, I don't think they should have been suspended.
scmt, you lure me back in, although first i'll refer everyone to dj superflat, who does better than i'm about to.
sure, of course there is no higher tribunal, but that doesn't mean that therefore, stern can do whatever he wants without reference to precedent. he has made it extremely clear that he believes he governs in a highly consistent way; if ewing et al were suspended 10 years ago for going a sneaker-length onto the court in a comparable situation, then he's going to do the same thing today. he doesn't see himself as having any choice in the matter (and text, really, the turkey sandwich analogy fails the first test: it ain't analogous). indeed, let's remember what he specifically said in defending the suspensions:
"Our players have to learn that they can't leave the bench and move 20 feet down the line, wherever it is, and be subject to all of the possible things that can happen," Stern said Wednesday. "That's why it's a red-letter rule."
(snip)
"To listen to the palaver that Robert Horry changed the series is just silly," Stern said. "What changed the series is Amare and Boris ran out onto the court and they either forgot about it or they couldn't control themselves. I don't know which one. And there wasn't an assistant coach there, one of six, to restrain them. OK, so now either we have to have new rules, put up a fence, or hire more assistant coaches."
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2872926
that's not a guy who felt he had any choice in the matter, which is really all that counts.
; if ewing et al were suspended 10 years ago for going a sneaker-length onto the court in a comparable situation,
My recollection is that Bowen and Duncan were more than a sneaker-length onto the court. NBA rulings are constantly inconsistent. See, for example, LeBron James's "unnatural basketball movement"; I've not heard anyone suggest that the NBA's credibility with the wider public has been destroyed because James wasn't suspended.
It's not analogy; it's an illustration of poor thinking, Howard. As to Stern's self-perceptions, I have as little insight as you do. Whether he felt he had a choice, I can't say, but the fact is that he did have a choice, and he made one.
my point is merely that horry fouled way hard and walked away. that would have been it (aside from some free throws and maybe horry's suspension) if bell hadn't decided someone needed to defend lil stevie's honor (steve clearly didn't feel the need). hard fouls happen, and happen fairly frequently. dumb near dustups generally take something more -- a dumb reaction. put another way, regardless of who started what between the knicks and the nuggets, melo acted like a fool thereafter. he's responsible for his end of the deal, not whoever made the initial contact to which he objected. (and yes, i agree, this became tiresome a long time ago, apologies.)
speaking of the Knicks and Nuggets, you know what pisses me off? When NBA teams whine about somebody "running up the score." These guys are all professionals. If you lost by 40, that's your fault. You shouldn't suck that bad. It's not like college ball where there's a huge innate difference in ability between, say, UCLA and Cal State Northridge, so that CSUN has no chance of competing.
So yeah, Melo still acted like a bitch, but the Knicks pissed me off more. And Nate Robinson is probably the least classy guy in the NBA, apart from his own coach and GM.
every NBA champion needs luck. That is why there are four rounds, and each round is a best of seven series. This is supposed to minimize that the amount of lucky games, and differentiate it from the NCAA tournament. The best team should win. Luck is part of the deal.
Is cleveland lucky for playing the depleted Wiz? Is detroit lucky that Wade was hurt and they didn't have to play Miami? Is Utah lucky that they faced an 8-seed in the second round? Is denver unlucky it ran into a buzzsaw in the first round against SA? Fuck yeah, all of these involve "luck", but an NBA champoinship is a brutal undertaking and good fortune is part of it every year.
But the choir of shouts of "lucky" being hurrled at the spurs at this point is kind of childish. Just a couple a weeks ago it was "dirty." Maybe the term should be "best."
I think that is what Matt was saying all year, that SA had the best "chance" to win it all. Considering talent, potential matchups, and experience, the spurs are best equipped to weather any bad luck, and take cold-blooded adnvatage of any good.
But the choir of shouts of "lucky" being hurrled at the spurs at this point is kind of childish. Just a couple a weeks ago it was "dirty." Maybe the term should be "best."
Rest easy. I'm sticking with "dirty."
Comments closed June 14, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Oberto and Ginobili have gold medals from the 2004 Athens Olympics. Tim Duncan has a bronze from the same event. They aren't that brutal as players.
Posted by joejoejoe | May 31, 2007 8:50 AM