Category: NBA Finals (Page 41 of 58)

How the Lakers should match up

June 5, 2008 / John Paulsen

All due respect to Radmanomanomanovic and Bill Walton’s kid, but the Lakers don’t have a good small forward, not when Odom is playing power forward and Kobe is at off guard. While one guy can shoot it a little and the other guy is Mr. Intangibles (or so I’m told), they both have major flaws that have been exposed. Radmanovic is lost on defense and Walton can’t hit the open shot consistently, so if I’m Phil Jackson, I’m going small. The Lakers are already at a size disadvantage, so they might as well embrace it and turn it into a real advantage in speed and quickness.

Fish on Rondo
No brainer here. Rondo is a good young point guard, but Fisher is quick enough to keep up with him and strong enough to push him around. For Rondo to win this matchup, he has to stay close to Fisher on the defensive end and limit those open jumpers.

Vujacic on Shuttlesworth
I dislike Sasha as much as the next non-Laker fan, but he’s had a great year shooting the ball and proved in the San Antonio series that he can bother a good shooting guard. At this point, all you have to do is crowd Ray Ray. He’s not going to kill you going to the hole. On the other end of the court, Vujacic can make the C’s pay if they double Kobe or Gasol.

Kobe on Pierce
If Ariza’s good to go, he could replace Vujacic in the lineup, but I think Kobe is up to the challenge of covering Pierce. I’d be leery of using my best offensive player on the opponent’s best offensive player, but if anyone can do it for a series, it’s Kobe. The worry here is Pierce will take him down low, but Kobe is stronger than most people think. Tex Winters said that it’s a little troubling to put Kobe on Ray Allen because Kobe won’t pay enough attention to him. He knows that he can control him off the dribble, so he thinks he can recover and contest the jumper which will give Allen the opportunity to knock a few down. I think you have to keep Kobe engaged on both ends of the court, and asking him to watch Pierce will do that.

Odom on Garnett
KG goes to the block occasionally, but he’s mostly a face up shooter at this point in his career. Physically speaking, Odom is sort of a poor man’s Garnett, so his length can bother KG a bit on the block.

Gasol on Perkins
Gasol did a nice job on Tim Duncan, but I don’t think you want him out on the wing trying to contest Garnett’s jumpers, so his responsibility is to keep Perkins off the glass and provide some help in the lane.

I’m sure Jackson will start Radmanovic at small forward, but my money is on the Lakers using this lineup in crunch time (unless Vujacic’s game takes a giant dump). One word of advice for Sasha – do NOT try to take it into the lane. Hit the open jumper or take a dribble or two and pull up. Every time you try to get to the rack you either get your stuff tossed or you throw it away. Now’s not the time to try to develop your penetration game.

The Lakers should push the ball at every opportunity, forcing Perkins and “the Big Two featuring Ray Allen” to hustle back every time down the court. That’ll wear them down and give L.A. an advantage in the fourth quarter.

NBA, NBA Finals

Some guys just shouldn’t own a NBA team…

June 4, 2008 / John Paulsen

…and Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley is one of those guys.

In a Yahoo Sports article, Heisley discusses the trade his team made with the Lakers that sent Pau Gasol (and a second round pick) to L.A. for Kwame Brown, Javaris Crittenton, Marc Gasol and two first round picks. Without the trade, or “donation” as Kobe Bryant calls it, the Lakers would not be in the Finals.

The mere mention of suspicions over Memphis’ motives gets the Grizzlies owner’s voice rising on the telephone, gets him going on the gossip that suggests something unseemly happened on the way to a Lakers renaissance.
Michael Heisley starts to ask, well, who is ripping Minnesota for the Kevin Garnett trade?

Some did rip the Timberwolves for the trade that sent KG to Boston, though I think Kevin McHale did pretty well for himself (and that’s not something I say often). Let’s see, McHale got 23 year-old forward/center Al Jefferson, who averaged 21 points and 11 rebounds in his first season in Minnesota. Jefferson looks like a career double-double guy and a future All-Star. Can Heisley say that about any of the guys he got in the Gasol trade? McHale also got Ryan Gomes (who looks like a solid rotation guy), salary cap flexibility in the form of Theo Ratliff’s expiring contract and two first round picks.

Keep in mind that as part of the Gasol deal, the Grizzlies have to send the Lakers their second round pick in 2010, so in essence, with the Lakers looking strong and the Grizzlies looking weak, Memphis will just move up a few spots from the early second round to the late first round in 2010. That virtually eliminates one of those first round picks they got for Gasol.

How about Seattle and Ray Allen?

For Ray Allen, Sam Presti (the Seattle GM) got Wally Szczerbiak, Delonte West and the #5 pick (Jeff Green). Szczerbiak is overpaid and fading, but West is a starter-caliber player and Jeff Green averaged 11 points and five boards in his rookie season. Not bad. Presti later traded away Szczerbiak and West, and gave himself a ton of cap flexibility in the process. So the Sonics essentially got Jeff Green in return for getting rid of Ray Allen, his degrading game and his huge contract.

The difference here is that the Sonics are rebuilding, but they traded away a 32 year-old shooting guard who was overpaid, not a skilled, 27 year-old seven-footer who has a reasonable contract.

This begs the question – why can’t you build around a 27 year-old player? With Gasol and Rudy Gay, the Grizzlies would have had a nice core to build around.

“Is anybody jumping on Popovich in San Antonio because he traded that center to Houston for virtually nothing?” Heisley wondered.

“That center”? He’s talking about Luis Scola, who is usually lost defensively, but scores and rebounds well enough to get minutes. The main problem here is that an owner of a NBA team doesn’t even know the name of player about whom he’s trying to make a point. This is wrong on so many levels.

For the first time, even Heisley wondered whether his general manager, Chris Wallace, blew it by caving so soon to the Lakers.
“I don’t know if I got the most value,” Heisley confessed. “Maybe our people should’ve shopped (Gasol) more and maybe we would’ve gotten more, done a better deal. Maybe Chris did call every team in the league. I don’t think he did, but maybe he should’ve…”

Heisley is either loyal as hell to his employees or completely clueless about what it takes to run a NBA franchise. He thinks that “maybe” Wallace should have called every team in the league? Maybe?

One source with knowledge of the process said the Bulls had made the most credible offer. For Gasol and Memphis’ Hakim Warrick, the Bulls were willing to part with Andres Nocioni, Tyrus Thomas, Joakim Noah, Thabo Sefolosha, possibly Adrian Griffin and draft picks.

I’d hate to be a Memphis fan after reading that. I can hear the phone conversation now:

Wallace: A proven forward (Nocioni) plus three promising prospects and draft picks? No, no, wait… Sorry, John. I’ve got Mitch Kupchak on the other line and I think he wants to offer up Kwame Brown and Javaris Crittenton.

“Chicago wouldn’t offer us any of their good, core players,” he said. “Our people told me that we weren’t able to get equal trade value for Gasol and that we needed to do a deal that would give us cap space and draft picks. It was no secret in the league that we were considering offers for him, but the Lakers were the one team that stepped up.”

I’ve got news for you – the Lakers didn’t offer you any of the their good, core players either.

“I have no buyer’s remorse,” Heisley said. “Listen, I can’t tell you how many people would tell me, wherever I went in Memphis, ‘Get rid of Gasol. …Trade Gasol.’ And then some of the same people are booing us because we traded him. But I don’t mind that. I’m a big boy. I can take it.”

I think those people that wanted you to trade Gasol were hoping that you’d actually get something in return. And why is a owner of a NBA team making personnel decisions based on what some schmo on the street is telling him?

This is absolutely mind-boggling.

Will somebody please buy the team from this guy?

NBA, NBA Draft, NBA Finals, Rumors & Gossip

Hoopsworld credits Kobe for the Laker turnaround

June 3, 2008 / John Paulsen

Now that the Lakers have made the Finals, a number of Kobe Believers are stepping forward and saying that he’s the one responsible for the turnaround. Bill Ingram is apparently one of these Believers. A good portion of my latest column was dedicated to debunking this theory.

Let me take Ingram’s points one-by-one.

The truth is that Kupchak attempted to trade Kobe numerous times. Deals were discussed with a number of teams, the most notable being the Chicago Bulls, but each time Kobe shot them down. It could be, in fact, that Kobe never wanted to be traded.

It’s true that could be the case, but Kobe’s frustrations last summer were real and I believe that if there had been a deal in place that wouldn’t have gutted his new team, he probably would have approved it. Every deal that was floated (through the media, anyway) would have left Kobe’s new team decimated, so what’s the point of making the trade?

Kobe forced the Lakers to be all they could be. His remarks about his lackluster supporting cast pushed those players to raise their collective games to a higher level. Sasha Vujacic, Luke Walton, Ronny Turiaf, and Andrew Bynum (pre-injury) all turned their games up a notch.

So Ingram’s premise is that all of those young players he mentioned – Vujacic, Walton, Turiaf and Bynum – were just going about their own business last summer and then suddenly decided, after Kobe’s media tantrum, that they were going to become good players. (By the way, I wouldn’t include Walton in a list of players that “turned their games up a notch.” And why did Ingram snub Jordan Farmar? Other than Bynum, Farmar probably stepped up his game the most, despite his playoff struggles.) Most young players improve year-to-year. That’s what they do. There was an article about Bynum in ESPN The Magazine which discussed the personal trainer he hired and rigorous training program he adopted well before Kobe’s outburst. Bynum implied that there were times that Kobe’s harsh words…

“Andrew Bynum? Are you f—ing kidding me? Andrew Bynum? F—ing ship his ass out. We’re talking about Jason Kidd …”

…helped him push through a difficult workout, but the truth is that the regimen was already in place.

Back to Ingram…

Kupchak stepped up his game by trading away a bunch of nothing to land All-Star Pau Gasol…

This is the line that really kills me. Does Ingram honestly believe that if Kobe hadn’t thrown a fit the previous summer that Kupchak would have passed on the Gasol deal? Any GM with an owner willing to take on Gasol’s contract would have made that deal, with or without their star player throwing a hissy fit.

At the end of the day, though, it was Kobe Bryant who pushed the Lakers to the NBA Finals. He did it with his play on the court, and he did it with the pressure he exerted on his franchise off the court.

I’ll agree that Kobe had a terrific season. But he has had terrific seasons before and his team didn’t get out of the first round. It’s the improvement of those young players (whom Kupchak drafted) and the addition of Pau Gasol and Derek Fisher (whom Kupchak acquired) that make up the difference between the one-and-done 2007 Lakers and the Finals-favorite 2008 Lakers. Kupchak deserves most of the credit, with big assists from Memphis’ GM Chris Wallace for giving away Gasol and the Jazz for being so generous with Fisher’s situation.

Crediting Kobe for the turnaround is a big stretch. It’s true that superstars can raise the level of their team, but that usually happens during the season in practices and games, not in a parking lot on a YouTube video.

Fantasy Basketball, NBA, NBA Draft, NBA Finals

Flip Saunders fired

June 3, 2008 / John Paulsen

In a fairly unsurprising move, the Detroit Pistons have fired head coach Flip Saunders.

Saunders led the Pistons to a combined 176-70 regular season record (.715), which is enough to get your clipboard retired with most teams. But it was his “failure” in the playoffs that was his undoing. His Pistons were 30-21 in the postseason and lost in the Eastern Conference Finals three straight times after making the Finals the two previous seasons.

It’s a risky move for the Pistons to let Saunders go. He has a proven track record (he won 50+ games in seven of his last nine seasons), but just hasn’t been able to get over the hump in the
playoffs.

No replacement has been named, but Avery Johnson seems like he’d be a good fit.

NBA, NBA Finals

Do the Celtics or the Lakers have the better dance team?

June 2, 2008 / John Paulsen

The 2008 NBA Finals are not only a matchup of two great teams, they are also a matchup of two great “dance” teams. On one hand, you have the Laker Girls, who have tapped into Los Angeles’ constantly refreshing pool of dancer/model types, pioneering sexiness in the NBA. On the other, you have the up-and-coming Celtics Dancers, who are known for pushing the envelope when it comes to skimpy attire and dance moves that would make a stripper blush.

Click on each picture for a bigger view and make your choice!