Shewasfly wrote:If the zone works against them that's great. But I'm skeptical. They have AD who can just get in the middle and shoot warmup jumpers every time down. And LeBron who can get in the middle and cherry pick assists to pad his stats.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think we'll need to matchup in some way. Not completely man to man bc we still need to hide weak defenders like Gogi and Herro and Robinson, but a straight up zone? I don't think so.
Another reason I'm skeptical of the zone is because of rebounding. They are already so much taller than us and will get a lot of offensive boards. We will be guaranteeing they get a good 5-10 more a game going nothing but zone.
This is why LA is a tough out for us. You can't "build a wall" as their stars can shoot beyond 12 feet. You can't exclusively zone because AD is as good a zone buster as there would be in the league at the 5. Lebron is Lebron, he's one of the best players in the world - he'll figure out the zone pretty quickly and find the gaps and passing lanes for open cutters.
We need to keep them unbalanced and guessing. Switch up the coverage, different defenders on him, somehow make the other guys beat us. AD and Lebron will get theres. That's just about guaranteed. But we need to be baiting KCP, Green, Caruso etc into playing above themselves and taking more shots. You live and die by those results.
What will be key for us is Crowder regaining his stroke. Super weird how he went from scintillating to bricky so quickly. If we're any chance, he needs to make them pay from outside.
I'm intruiged to see how they match up. I'll assume they stay big on us in Game 1.
KCP on Dragic?
Green on Robinson?
Lebron on Butler?
AD on Crowder?
Dwight on Bam?
I don't think they really want Lebron on Butler, but the alternative is him chasing Robinson and that's just not going to happen. They may go big and put Lebby on Dragic, KCP on Duncan and Green on Butler.
I just don't think they'd risk putting AD on Bam and getting him in foul trouble. I'm a little worried about their size, not gonna lie. Defensively, they're going to be a big problem on the boards with AD/Dwight/Lebron - Spo is going to match down and it could get ugly if we're trying to hide Jae/Iggy on Dwight. We saw what Kanter did to us in small doses, Dwight is >>> Kanter.