YogurtProducer wrote:HumbleRen wrote:YogurtProducer wrote:Yes, the MVP of the league having a bad series is not the same as having a lack of technical ability lol
I mean that’s exactly what it was lol.
He wasn’t able to provide counters once they took away his ability to leverage his physical attributes. That’s not “having a bad series” that’s the defence neutralizing his physical gifts and making him rely on his technical ability.
You can be a mvp caliber talent and still be very raw in some aspects of your technical basketball ability. We saw it first hand with Giannis lol.
I feel like you didn't watch that series and are talking out of your ass
Lebron deciding to just play super passively =/= Lebron lacked technical ability. He came out the next year and put up a nearly identical stat line for the season, and cruised to a championship without any significant changes to his "technical" ability. He just decided to you know... not be scared to shoot the ball and be 3rd on his team in FGA
In fact, he shot 18% from 3 in the finals for his first championship.
Crazy man. Lebron lacking technical ability is a new level of a bad take.
A thing that I don't understand isn't one of the main talking points of the "3 point Era" thing is that:
In the 2011 finals, the Heat played 565/576 minutes with 2 non-3pt shooters on the floor (in 288 minutes of basketball with 2 big man spots, their 4 bigs combined went 0/1 on 3s). Horrific offensive big Joel Anthony played over 20 minutes a night. Heat had a bad offense (106 ORTG) and lost.
In the 2012 finals, the Heat played their only bigs Bosh and Haslem a combined 264 minutes over 5 games. Another 8 minutes of garbage time for bigs (Howard, Turiaf, Joel Anthony). So they went from 2 bigs to 1, and their main big (Bosh) even started taking the odd 3 (2/5 in 5 games). At the 4, Battier played 37 minutes a night and went a blistering 15/26 from 3. Heat had a good offense (113 ORTG) and won.
That's what happened. He and Wade got more shooting and the team could score. That's it. Giannis would not have won a title without shooting bigs alongside him in Lopez and Portis. Zero non-shooters in that playoff run on that team. Celtics also zero non-shooters in their title win. Lakers got their only title of the LeBron era the year their only non-shooter in the finals was 12 minutes a night of Dwight Howard.
That's basically how you win a title. Lots of shooting and defence around a star (Giannis provides defence but no shooting, Jokic provides the big man shooting and point guard passing himself but you need more defence around him), or lots of shooting and defence around overwhelming talent (Celtics). Give him room to cook, guys who can profit off of the attention that star demands, and get stops on the other end. We had Gasol and Ibaka at the 5 when we won it. The Thunder just won it with 1 non-shooter in Hartenstein playing 22 minutes a night, and he is a 5 and at least does some useful perimeter DHO stuff (3rd on the team in assists in the finals) and even they were 9 points better in the playoffs with him off the floor. Dallas made the finals with Luka the second they got a shooting 4 in PJ Washington and a guy as limited (and half the time playing through injuries) as Kleber was a key guy. Pacers surprised and made the finals with Turner as a stretch 5. Suddenly Siakam looked better again with 4 shooters around him.
If you give a star teammates the other team can ignore, they will probably lose and get psychoanalyzed (LeBron) or have their game dissected for flaws, and there aren't a lot of flawless basketball players out there.
Do people remember how powerless we were against LeBron at the 4 surrounded by shooting? Tristan Thompson was the only non-shooter out there for only 17 minutes a night in 2018. Replace Kevin Love's 35 minutes or even Jeff Green's 24 minutes with a non-shooting big and well, we'd have lost, but we wouldn't have been stomped and given up a ludicrous 126 ORTG.
The spacing is just too hard if you're playing non-shooters out there. I do think it's possible you could get by with more than 20-25 minutes of non-shooting centers if they were great defensively, and certainly you could if you had a Warriors level superteam, but those basically don't exist. The math has changed. If you transported the Jordan bulls to now, they would struggle offensively in a playoff series or 2 and realize they couldn't play Rodman/Grant and Longley/Cartwright as their bigs and I dunno trade for a time-traveling Sam Perkins or Robert Horry.
