Here's an interesting trade article from Grantland: Bill Simmons weighs in on some possibilities. http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7666048/nba-trade-value-part-2
http://espn.go.com/new-york/nba/story/_/id/7686638/new-york-knicks-coach-mike-dantoni-resigns D'Antoni is gooooonee. Very interesting. I would like to see where they go from here.
The "defense wins championships" myth debunked: The 04 team is mentioned: Defense Wins Championships…Except Offense Is More Important » Back Picks - +EV Sports Blogging
Pretty interesting. Detroit had relatively the worst offense of any champ on the list and were head and shoulders above all others on the defensive end. The other thing that jumps out at me is that all 3 Pistons Championships were defensive dominated ones. The last 3 of the Bulls were defensive dominated. Most of the Spurs too. If you look at the years starting with the Bad Boys and you exclude the Lakers, then 12 defensive teams have won and 6 offensive teams have won. However, during this period, the Lakers have taken 6 Championships, all with offense. In fact, the last 10 Championship by the Lakers have been show time type with offense being better than defense. I might argue that the Lakes are a specific example that are heavily skewing the results. I agree that offense trumps defense if you have Magic, Kareem, and Worthy, or Kobe and Shaq. Another interesting way to look at it would be to figure out what the payrolls were on the offensive dominated teams that got it done vs the defensive ones. The result may show that defense outperforms offense on a dollar for dollar basis. If that is true, then it is a much better strategy for a smaller market team to build with defense in mind since they can't possibly compete with the payroll or get FA's like the Lakers.
But the Lakers had those guys in the regular season too. He's comparing the regular season to the post season and the stats show that offense has a bigger impact in the playoffs than the regular season which is the opposite of what people usally claim. It's not a perfect analysis and the sample size is shaky but the difference is pretty large.
I would guess that is mainly rotation shortening. Dirk's mpg went from 32.2 in the reg season to 39.3 in the playoffs last year (+22% increase) MJ and Pippen went from 37 mpg to 41 mpg in the playoffs. Magic went from 37 to 40+, etc. When you shorten the rotation, you put in your offensive firepower and the defense gets fatigued? One other possible factor is that playoff games tend to be closer and there are more personal fouls. The Mavs averaged 22.6 FTA in the regular season last year, but they averaged 25.4 in the playoffs (+12%). That might tend to reward offense disproportionately and inflate scoring with intentional free throws occurring in a higher percentage of playoff games. These are just theories of course. Just pointing out some possible complications to concluding that their correlation means that offense is more important (and that teams should potentially allocate more resources toward that end of the spectrum). One thing that I think is really cool about basketball is the offense and defense are pretty much the same guys (with the exception of end game substitutions). It creates a really interesting optimization challenge to find the right balance. There is also feedback between the two- missed shots leading to fast breaks, faster tempo on offense leading to more defensive possessions, and many other factors to consider. Phil Jackson, Greg Popovich, and Larry Brown all seem really intelligent when it comes to the balancing act and the way that they dissect it.
For those beloved Pistons fans outside the D and without LP, your hopes of seeing a live Piston game on ESPN has just been dashed by that network. The April 13th game vs the Bucs would have been the only appearance on national TV this season for the Pistons, with the exception of an appearance on NBA TV next Friday 4/6/12 in Atlanta. NBA TV has grown over the years but still is not carried by that many cable and satellite systems. The Celtics, Lakers, Heat and Bulls, each had a minimum of 25 national appearances on ABC, ESPN, TNT and NBA TV this season, but I guess the fans want to see winning teams with superstar players.... Pistons lose only nationally televised game « PistonPowered #mce_temp_url#
This isn't NBA, but I could find a good place to put it. This guy from the Harlem Globetrotters dunks while barely leaving the ground. World's Tallest Basketball Player Dunks With Worst Vertical Ever | ThePostGame
No thanks. Even though he'd be the 2nd best big man on the team, we need someone who can play above the rim.
You mean the same Bill Laimbeer that was a: * 2-time World Champion * 4-time NBA All-Star * 2-time Rebounding league leader * 10,000 career rebounder * 84% career FT shooter We wouldn't want another one of those guys?
