You definitely don't watch the Spurs, Celts, or Lakers then. edited to add; KB is also not allowed to finish 4th quarters apparently.
HUH??? I watch a lot of basketball and good teams ALWAYS substitute in the first quarter. Especially if the talent on the floor and the talent on the bench are similar with different strengths. All good teams and even crappy ones sub in the first quarter. Check out the Lakers, Spurs, Celts and Cavs the next time they are on. They all substitute early to keep the players on the floor fresh and teir rotation options open.
With seeing many games via League pass for the 10 or so years, that's the way I observe it too. Flip burned out our starters the last couple of years playing at least least three of them 10 minutes in the third qtr before giving them blow and the other two would be subbed out at the first time out in the 4th qrt and you know the drill...all of the starters had to be in there in the last five minutes even if we had 15 point lead......we paid for that in round three of each of the past three post seasons..
The Spurs do it exceptionally well. In fact, I'll go as far as to say that no coach in the league utilizes his bench more effectively than Gregg Popovich.
Watching WAS play CLE is the epitome of frustration. They use Blatche and their quickness the way we don't use Amir and ours. They exploited the Cavs interior perfectly and had so many 0 rebounds.
The big difference was where the games were played. Just another road loss as compared to trying to give them only their 2nd loss at home all season.
I don't know. WAS also would have beaten them at home this year w/o Arenas had the refs not stepped in in the last minute.
losses in ECF were results of taking anything for granted. When things went rough, they were not able to respond because of "we are better team anyway".
The longer those series went on, the more of a disadvantage we had. That is either fatigue or it is the coach not being able to match the adjustments of the other coach. The fatigue issue can be b/c we didn't have enough youth in the lineup or because the starters were getting overplayed. We all saw how LB could outcoach others when he was on our sideline. We just happened to be on the other end of it when we had Flip.
I think raxrets is correct. In 04, we were hungry, we were the underdog, and those guys fought hard. Since then, they've been playing with a sense of entitlement. Playoffs were a boring chore they unwillingly had to do before they get to eat their ice-cream. LB's yelling could get them to the brink of doing so. Flip never did it and each year since then we folded to marginally good teams. Back to it being all about me: I could've been wearing a Pistons Pride shirt with 5 banners instead of 3 now if those guys just took their jobs seriously.
The key against the Cavs seems to be to use your young athletic players, crash the boards (esp O), and drive constantly. Their interior defense is really non-existent without Ben. <And i need to stop watching the Cavs lose or this thread will never die LOL>
