2015 NBA Playoffs

Carcharodon

That jack russel, delly, is schooling curry right now, warriors are shook, cavs could land a knock out punch pretty soon

radharc

As John Madden says...Defence wins Championships

Carcharodon

Bogut, barnes, non existent.
Green taking shocking 3 point shots.
Team lacking in experience in general.
Curry needs to get angry and aggresseive.
Still all to play for though

Hats off to lebron and delly, savage performances

ButtersSuki

I'm genuinely shocked at how poor GS are playing. They look nervous and a shell of themselves but they're in a hole now and if they don't fix it quickly they'll be in serious trouble. At times they've looked like they don't care, which is criminal but the biggest problem is they're all CLE to dictate the pace. All season they've been hugely uptempo, but they've slowed down enormously during the finals. They need to force things and get back to a faster playing style.

padraig_f

Best game of the series I thought (games going to overtime is overrated when the standard is poor). The Warriors lost, but found something in the 2nd half, namely David Lee. Thought he made a huge difference when he came on, just gave them that inside-out balance they were lacking with Bogut & Green...helped rolling to the basket (which in turn helped Curry), and in rebounding. Amazing that he played zero minutes in games 1 and 2, and only played 3 minutes of the 1st half last night. Better late than never, and you'd expect him to feature a lot more in game 4. It was no coincidence that Curry played his best half of the series in the 2nd half last night too. Unfortunately it wasn't enough to come back from 20 down, but they nearly did it.

Carcharodon

LeBron goes 40-12-8 and it hurts his series averages !!!!
Granted no overtime but still very impressive.

padraig_f

Pretty good...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMTHsk2PXSs

chips1234

possibly one of the funniest things to come out of this finals, the security guy just makes it better than the lebron stare down.

can't wait for game 4

padraig_f

Nba.com has a new app, create your own Mount Rushmore.
http://www.nba.com/rushmore/

Pity there aren't more players, but I made a Mount Rushmore of dunkers:

https://massrel-pub.s3.amazonaws.com/s3_upload_proxy/nba-mount-rushmore.037146f7-0845-41e6-a6be-a9261db86f50.jpg


edit: couple of good ones here:
http://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2015/6/10/8763977/nba-mount-rushmore-website-app-neat


lol:
https://massrel-pub.s3.amazonaws.com/s3_upload_proxy/nba-mount-rushmore.629944b7-2723-4937-a090-4f9a52379c80.jpg

ok...back to work.

padraig_f

They're all big games in the finals, but game 4 really feels like a series-decider to me. If the Cavs go 3-1 up, hard to see them losing 3 in a row. If the Warriors make it 2-2, they'll be hard to beat with 2 of the last 3 at home. Massive game in the careers of both Curry and Lebron. I think the Warriors are going to play with a desperation and urgency we haven't seen yet in this series, whether it'll be enough though, we'll see.

GoldFour4

I'd agree about a Cavs win tonight being the end of the series. No matter what the Warriors throw at Lebron in the remaining games he won't lose 3 straight.

Paully D

Hoping as a neutral that the Warriors win tonight. If the Cavs go 3-1 up it's done. 2-2 would be excellent and have the series heating up nicely.

Interestingly enough you can get 17/10 on the Cavs to win tonight, which is the longest price they've been for a game all series.

qwabercd

Paully D wrote: »

Hoping as a neutral that the Warriors win tonight. If the Cavs go 3-1 up it's done. 2-2 would be excellent and have the series heating up nicely.

Interestingly enough you can get 17/10 on the Cavs to win tonight, which is the longest price they've been for a game all series.

Thought the odds looked a bit strange

qwabercd

Paully D wrote: »

Hoping as a neutral that the Warriors win tonight. If the Cavs go 3-1 up it's done. 2-2 would be excellent and have the series heating up nicely.

Interestingly enough you can get 17/10 on the Cavs to win tonight, which is the longest price they've been for a game all series.

Thought the odds looked a bit strange when I was looking at it earlier.

limerickfc

Bogut moved to the bench for iggy

The Reservoir Dubs Anchorman

Paully D wrote: »

Hoping as a neutral that the Warriors win tonight. If the Cavs go 3-1 up it's done. 2-2 would be excellent and have the series heating up nicely.

Interestingly enough you can get 17/10 on the Cavs to win tonight, which is the longest price they've been for a game all series.

Cavs were 12/5 in first game and 13/5 in game 2, the only game they've been shorter than tonight was game three where they were still underdogs at 1/1 with the Warriors at 10/11 game three.

Warriors playing better at the moment and deserve their 10 point lead but I cant help but feel that a big pressure run in the last 6 minutes might crumble the warriors.

The Reservoir Dubs Anchorman

6 points in it with a quarter to go, Lebron looks spent and Delly's legs are gone. If the Cavs win this it will be a miracle.

Liam O

Lebron looking pretty spent going into the 4th, can't see them overturning this lead, even though it's not that large.

The Reservoir Dubs Anchorman

prime example of the difference there 3 attempts by JR for 3 missing all , straight down the other end Curry nails one, gap is 13 too big with the big guys spent

Carcharodon

Warriors play with some intensiry and get it done, iggy was fantastic, curry was ok, should be getting more screens and loooks but did ok, thompson was meh but they played well as ateam.
I've been screaming for lee to play all post season, about time he is geting minutes, bogiy deaerved to be dropped, not getting it done at all, they got killed by mosgov again but that was happening anyway all series.

Roll on sunday, it could go all the way !

NufcNavan

It looks like JR Smith has remembered that he is JR Smith.

padraig_f

Fatigue was obviously a big factor in game 4. I was wondering about how you evaluate fatigue. Do you ignore it when evaluating the performance, or does Lebron get a pass because of it? Somewhere in between I think. Fatigue is inevitable, and he's carrying a big load, but I think you also have to be critical how much his game goes off a cliff when he is tired.

Lebron finished the 3rd quarter on 7-20 shooting. He finished the game 7-22. So 0 points in the 4th quarter on 0-2 shooting. He sat the first couple of minutes, then passed quite a bit and shot a couple of jump shots.

Not the first time it's happened...

@tomhaberstroh:

LeBron James points in the fourth quarter.

2011 Finals Game 4: 0
2014 Finals Game 4: 0
2015 Finals Game 4: 0

@tomhaberstroh: "A note on fatigue: LeBron's FG attempts in the restricted area by quarter this series.
1Q: 11
2Q: 8
3Q: 7
4Q: 3
OT: 1"

So it affects both his performance and the type of shots he takes.

There are two days off before game 5, one day before game 6, and two days before game 7.

I think the worrying thing for the Cavs is Curry didn't do anything special last night. If the Warriors won, I thought he was going to have a big night, but he didn't especially. It was more the role-players stepping up, and Kerr's swapping Bogut out of the starting lineup.

NufcNavan

As long as Lebron keeps shooting under 40% I think GS are happy to let him put up any numbers he wants. I think game 4 really showed that he just doesn't have the help there to carry the load.

Paully D

Interesting read on the motivation behind the Iggy for Bogut switch:

http://www.si.com/nba/2015/06/12/warriors-steve-kerr-nick-uren-andre-iguodala-andrew-bogut-nba-finals-cavaliers

Anyone have any stats re: pace last night? Did the Warriors push the pace a lot more than they have done this Finals as they did all regular season, or was it a pretty slow tempo again?

NufcNavan

Paully D wrote: »

Interesting read on the motivation behind the Iggy for Bogut switch:

http://www.si.com/nba/2015/06/12/warriors-steve-kerr-nick-uren-andre-iguodala-andrew-bogut-nba-finals-cavaliers

Anyone have any stats re: pace last night? Did the Warriors push the pace a lot more than they have done this Finals as they did all regular season, or was it a pretty slow tempo again?

To the naked eye they did seem to push the ball a lot more.

padraig_f

Paully D wrote: »

Interesting read on the motivation behind the Iggy for Bogut switch:

http://www.si.com/nba/2015/06/12/warriors-steve-kerr-nick-uren-andre-iguodala-andrew-bogut-nba-finals-cavaliers

One of the the good things Kerr has done is get in good assistants, with Ron Adams on the defensive side, and Alvin Gentry on the offense. Interesting to see he's also taking advice from others behind the scenes. That was a big game for Kerr as well. Down 2-1, everyone saying Kerr has to do something, he did, and it worked.

Anyone have any stats re: pace last night? Did the Warriors push the pace a lot more than they have done this Finals as they did all regular season, or was it a pretty slow tempo again?

Had a look at the pace stats on basketball-reference, didn't look a whole lot different over the 48. I thought this was a good article about the implications of the lineup change, it was as much about the spacing as the pace:

How The Warriors Figured Out Game 4, What The Cavs Can Do To Adjust For Game 5

The difference was the Warriors took Bogut off the floor and had Andre Iguodala start the game on LeBron James.

If Golden State was going to go down, it almost had to be this way. They became a title contender when they replaced David Lee with Green, going from a three-out team that couldn’t space the floor or switch pick-and-rolls to a four-out team that could. That’s what the Warriors have been about all season - spreading the floor, moving the ball and attacking in space than using their speed to dictate tempo by switching and trapping. Kerr took that identity to its logical conclusion on Thursday, benching his 7’0 C and going five-out with Green at the 5 and four perimeter players around him, none taller than 6’8.

The biggest upside to the move was the amount of space the Warriors' players could operate in on offense. Not only is Bogut unable to stretch the floor, he’s a reluctant scorer who looks primarily to pass when he has the ball in his hands. In the first three games of the series, the Cleveland big men were playing off Bogut and helping in the lane. That allowed them to send extra help at Steph Curry and Klay Thompson and dare Green and Barnes to beat them on the perimeter. The Cavs clogged up the Warriors offense and controlled the tempo of the game.

Without Bogut on the floor, Green had a lot more straight line drives to the front of the rim on the pick-and-roll. His decision-making process was simplified, as the rotating big man had to either leave Barnes (2-5) or Iguodala (4-9) on the three-point line. The Warriors had five perimeter threats on the floor for most of the game so they were able to crisply move the ball to find an open shot. All of a sudden, with everyone playing more in the flow, Cleveland began to pay for their decision to leave the Golden State role players open.

Soby

Soby wrote: »

Need to get Andre on LBJ as much as possible. Only guy over these 2 games so far who has had any real success at "stopping" him

They lied , Warriors vid guy was on boards and got the idea to start Iggy

Soby

Looking at Coach Nic's latest vid there. With regards to PnR Curry/Lee seems to be something that needs to be used more. Sadly Green just isnt shooting that well to be used a screen blocker.

Paully D

Bulls have hired Jim Boylen (Spurs' main assistant) as Hoiberg's assistant. He was Hoiberg's first choice. Very well regarded around the league.

Thoughts on tonight's playoff game then lads? Warriors are 1/4 to win the game (:eek:) and 8.5 point favourites (:eek:).

padraig_f

Paully D wrote: »

Bulls have hired Jim Boylen (Spurs' main assistant) as Hoiberg's assistant. He was Hoiberg's first choice. Very well regarded around the league.

Love it. I mean, don't know too much about him, but he's on the Spurs so he has to be good. I like also that Hoiberg has gone after a high-profile assistant (apparently Boylen's focus will be on defense). As I was saying recently, I think a key part of Kerr's success has been the assistant-coaches he got.

Thoughts on tonight's playoff game then lads? Warriors are 1/4 to win the game (:eek:) and 8.5 point favourites (:eek:).

My feeling is the Warriors have them cracked, and will win tonight. The way the series has gone though, who knows, I predicted a sweep after Irving was ruled out.