NBA Playoffs 2012/13

leggo

slick89 wrote: »

Could be a crazy question but.. if Rose were to come back during this series, would it upset the rhythm the Bulls team are in at the moment or would he slot back in seamlessly?

I'd say they'll use him sparingly at first, coming off the bench for impact plays whenever they start to look a bit leggy, and ease him back into the system that way. With a player as good as Rose, it sounds crazy not to start him if he's available, but with how hesitant he's been about coming back then I feel he'd be okay with playing as a sixth man until need be.

Nuri Sahin

I fell asleep at around the 5 minute mark! After Game 6 against Denver I and I doubt many expected a repeat of the 4Q collapse in San Antonio.

On a related note, how can anyone (Warriors fans today aside :P) not love Manu Ginobili!

padraig_f

buyer95 wrote: »

Unbelievable, such a gutsy performance. About 2 months ago I laughed at someone on here who was championing Jimmy Butler as on his way to becoming a great player.

Yeah, played great defense on Lebron last night, didn't commit a foul on him in the first half. His getting to the line was crucial as well, shot 9-10 free throws. This is guts as much as anything, because a lot of the time, he has an outside shot, but puts his body on the line and goes to the rim. He made a couple of 3-point plays, but even when they don't go in, free-throws are a higher-percentage proposition than jump-shots.

padraig_f

slick89 wrote: »

Could be a crazy question but.. if Rose were to come back during this series, would it upset the rhythm the Bulls team are in at the moment or would he slot back in seamlessly?

Yeah it's an interesting one. I think even a 50% Rose, or whatever he would be, would be an asset, particularly with Hinrich banged up.

A question though, with no game practice and coming back from an ACL, would he be playing as well as Nate is right now? I'm not sure.

Part of the reason Miami beat the Bulls 2 years ago, was the Bulls offense was quite predictable in going to Rose offensively, and the Miami defense was able to focus on that, with Lebron defending him at times.

With Rose out, the offense is coming from different areas. If Rose was to come back, and the team fell into that pattern again of deferring to Rose, but he wasn't playing as well as he was pre-injury, that could be a problem.

Bottom line, his return would be an asset, if things weren't working for whatever reason, Thibs is smart enough to change it. Thibs is pretty flexible with his in-game rotations. If someone who wasn't expected to play much, comes into a game and does well, he'll stick with them, and vice versa if they're not doing well.

In general with the Rose stuff, I'm not thinking about it too much. I'm assuming at this point, he's not coming back until next season.

Nuri Sahin

Perkins \o/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN9s1IzYWng

For Forks Sake

padraig_f wrote: »

Yeah, played great defense on Lebron last night, didn't commit a foul on him in the first half. His getting to the line was crucial as well, shot 9-10 free throws. This is guts as much as anything, because a lot of the time, he has an outside shot, but puts his body on the line and goes to the rim. He made a couple of 3-point plays, but even when they don't go in, free-throws are a higher-percentage proposition than jump-shots.

http://blogs.bulls.com/2013/05/bulls-surprise-miami-for-1-0-series-lead/

This is what it has come to. Bulls players, an All-Star no less, cheering from hospital beds. Earlier in the day, Butler said he called Deng about how to play James, whom Deng usually defends.

“It’s all about being tough,” said Butler. “We’re always going to be the underdogs. We take pride in that. Everybody can overlook us, but we feel like we’re good enough to hang with a lot of these teams. I talked to Lu before the game. He was like, ‘Take up his space, make everything tough for him, challenge every shot.’ Of course, no layups. I feel I don’t want to give layups to anybody, make them earn it from the stripe. Lu’s going to rest up and we want him back. But until (then) I guess I’ll be stuck guarding him.”

This stuff has been pretty impressive with Butler, who played four minutes in last year’s playoffs and was buried on the bench even to start this season. But he’s emerged this season and especially in the playoffs as a starting level player, amazingly tough and seemingly incapable of being tired. After games he looks like he’s taken a long walk.

ButtersSuki

Re-watched the final quarter from the Bulls Heat game last night, didn't seem as obvious in real time but I think LeBron might be going back into the shell he went into in the Dallas series in 2011. He passed up a couple of shots AFTER he had beaten Butler and equally passed a couple of times when he had a clear or relatively clear path to the basket, both in motion and from standing positions. Fair enough Butler played good d, but I think it was a combination of the two - Butler's d and LeBron choking (relatively)/selecting the wrong option (the pass to Bosjh when he had a clear path to the basket, the brick 3 he threw up etc). This is a real chink in LeBron's armour, if the Heat do lose this series (and yes, I do know we're only in game 1) he'll have edure scrutiny and pressure like he never imagined. Jordan thrived in these close games, bar a few key performances, LeBron career-wise hasn't consistently made that step up....yet.

I think Chicago are really inside the heads of the Heat players. To beat them ike they did with no Rose, no Deng or no Hindrich has got to make them question themselves again. The Heat are unquestionably more talented, but they don't have Chicago's heart, teamwork, drive, work ethic, coach or I believe mental toughness. This could be a very interesting series.

Paully D

Well, well, well What a great win that was. This is far from the greatest Bulls team ever, but it's been a long, long time since I've seen a Bulls team so committed to the jersey. Nate once again showing me why he's one of my favourite players to watch in the league with that display last night. He's just an energizer bunny who doesn't know when to stop :pac:

Back to some form of reality, and of course that's not sustainable over the course of a series. Miami got beat up on the boards and while that could well happen again, I can't see it happening so convincingly. They also missed a lot of open shots and LeBron scored only 2 points in the first half (massive credit to Butler for a superb display of defending). The Heat were also rusty after a week off.

That said, I do think we can split the games at home and have the series at 2-2 going back to Miami which would be brilliant and physcologically, it could start to play with their heads. As far as I know, we're the only team LeBron has a losing record against since joining the Heat, and Thibs is a master at game planning. But remember, we won game 1 of the EC Finals in 2011 and things were looking good before we imploded, throwing away a 12 point lead with 3 minutes left in game 5.

As I said before, I don't think we take them over a series but come the end of it they will be battered and bruise and will dread playing us again. After such a tough season with so many set backs to the roster, I'd be satisfied with that. I really am proud of this team. There's nothing better than knowing that your team will give 110% every single night no matter what. At the end of the day that's all you can really ask.

Oh, on a separate note - 24 years to the day since this happened:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuCxuq-yn1w

Dublin Red Devil

Let's go Pacers. Game 2

Dublin Red Devil

God Damn, I love Paul George

Dublin Red Devil

Pacers finish the half with an 8-0 run to move within 5 points of the Knicks.

NufcNavan

Pacers need to stop turning over the thing and they will win.

Roy needs to try and establish position in the paint on the offensive end. Knicks doing a much better job defensively.

Dublin Red Devil

Pacers take the lead for the 1st time in the game with 4min to go in the 3rd

Dublin Red Devil

Strange game. Pacers just seemed to give up late in the 3rd. Amazing collapse.

Nuri Sahin

Series tied, 1-1

Prigioni just killed it out there. Melo found his groove again. Shump was very good too Defence was much improved overall. If Smith can pull his head from out of his arse and stop jacking up ridiculous shots now..

Anyway, good win after the dismal Game 1.

edit -

kmart6

Happy with both results last night! Good to see Melo get out of his slump a bit and glad the Grizzles got one, felt they didn't deserve to lose Game 1!

Nuri Sahin

:pac:

Felexicon

http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2013/5/8/4311850/george-karl-nba-coach-award-2013-nuggets

ButtersSuki

Felexicon wrote: »

http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2013/5/8/4311850/george-karl-nba-coach-award-2013-nuggets

Deserved on regular season performance but looks a little hollow after they exited in the first round.

GoldFour4

Spoelstra was robbed, second longest winning streak in the history of the league and a lot of was without the complete team, best record in the league and not a notion of complacency about them after last season.

Felexicon

malistheman wrote: »

Spoelstra was robbed, second longest winning streak in the history of the league and a lot of was without the complete team, best record in the league and not a notion of complacency about them after last season.

Mike D'Antoni can feel hard done by after turning the season around in the second half

ButtersSuki

malistheman wrote: »

Spoelstra was robbed, second longest winning streak in the history of the league and a lot of was without the complete team, best record in the league and not a notion of complacency about them after last season.

Don't feed the troll.........:D

buyer95

Felexicon wrote: »

Mike D'Antoni can feel hard done by after turning the season around in the second half

Kobe deserved Coach of the Year ahead of D'Antoni, he led that team to the playoffs, it had nothing to do with D'Antoni. I would have given it to Thibs.

Paully D

Thibs not even in the top 5 of the coach of the year award. 8th FFS :pac:

ButtersSuki

Relax people......

Thibs and Pop are the Top 2 Coaches in the league by a mile and both have won this in the last 2 years. Unlike the MVP Award, the voters like to share the wealth on the Coach of the Year Award and spread it around, hence their (relative) poor showing this year.

Plus, it's a regular season award - on the games to date in the Playoffs so far, there's hardly a soul who wouldn't vote Thibs No.1.

Spoelstra is in a no-win. With that much talent at his disposal and the best player on the planet having his best season ever, there's not a chance in hell he'd win it. If they come unstuck he'll ship a lot of the blame too. If they repeat and are there or thereabouts next year, then he'll have a shot at it, but until then no. Most people assume (wrongly I might add) that the Heat would win 50 games if they were coached by Declan Kidney (before I get jumped on, I am making a deliberately ridiculous example to highlight a point)........and Spo suffers from that.

leggo

ButtersSuki wrote: »

Spoelstra is in a no-win. With that much talent at his disposal and the best player on the planet having his best season ever, there's not a chance in hell he'd win it. If they come unstuck he'll ship a lot of the blame too. If they repeat and are there or thereabouts next year, then he'll have a shot at it, but until then no. Most people assume (wrongly I might add) that the Heat would win 50 games if they were coached by Declan Kidney (before I get jumped on, I am making a deliberately ridiculous example to highlight a point)........and Spo suffers from that.

They'd win 50 games if Pat Riley was telling Declan Kidney what to do though. :pac:

Nah I kid, the streak alone makes him worthy of the award on merit, but you're also dead right in your analysis. If all continues to go to plan for the Heat, he'll be like the Lord of the Rings in that the first two seasons will get snubbed then he'll be smothered in awards after the third.

For Forks Sake

Poor Nate

For Forks Sake

Paully D

Well, it worked when I asked before game one :pac:

Is anyone giving us a shot tonight? Bookies make Miami 12.5 point favourites again for this one.

slick89

Lebron came out aggressive 1st quarter, 6-6 FG. Jimmy Butler finally taking a rest start of 2nd!