RealGM

Mine: Not playing Collison nearly enough

I thought Thabo deserved more minutes.. He was lacking offensively but did the best job defensively on Wade/Lebron. His defensive pressure out weighed his inability on his other end..

Too many minutes to Fisher.

Switching up defensive schemes. Team couldn't stop any penetration and collapsed when the Heat walked in.

Trying to collapse/double team anybody penetrated and allowing the role playing three point shooters to shoot WIDE open 3 pointers after they've demonstrated all series long that they would hit those shots. This was the single most awful thing Brooks did, it was mind blowing to watch.

Harden played like he was paid to lose, and yet, he kept getting the ball in crucial moments,he shouldn't even been in some of games late, same with Thabo who was just awful.

One more thing about the collapsing in on the Heat as they attack the rim, why have a perimeter player cheat to help on Lebron, when you have Ibaka and Perkins who are two of the best shot blockers in the league? It was insane! Battier, Chalmers and Miller KILLED OKC. I'd rather lose to Lebron scoring 50 points than having Mike Miller limp his way to a 21 points off 7 3 pointers!

I agree 100% with the OP. As a Miami Fan, I hated it every time Collison was on. He had a huge impact defensively, and in particular on rebounds. Miami's kryptonite is keeping their opponents off the offensive glass (teams like the Bulls, Lakers), and Collison was doing a great job out there.

Perkins, I said from before the series started, would be completely useless, and he was. Brooks should have played a team of:

C - Collison
PF - Ibaka
SF - Durant
SG -Harden
PG - Westbrook

Having Durant defend Chalmers was also really dumb as Durant's defense, length and rebounding went to waste. It would have been different if Durant was up in Chalmers face, but he wasn't. Chalmers can't dribble very well, and the way to defend him is how Boston did. Press him full-court from the inbounds pass. Durant defending him totally took away from OKC's length on defense, AND he was a full step off Chalmers at all times! I couldn't believe it.

Actually it was before the finals. But it was Presti's fault, DFish. Horrible signing. I understand wanting to bring a championship culture to OKC but those tires were bald back in Utah.

Heat fan here, and I agree. Derek Fisher was washed up back in 2005. I thanked God last off season when we DIDNT sign him. I remember LeBron hosting Fisher and trying to get him to play for Miami.....i didn't know what the hell lebron was doing, and was thrilled he signed back with LA

I think it's easy to critique lineup and rotation decisions. Clearly, Kendrick Perkins should not have been playing that much (if at all) since he was injured on top of not being fit for the matchups the Thunder were seeing. Derek Fisher played too much at Thabo's expense.

But I think the biggest mistake Brooks made was changing up the defensive strategy on LeBron after game two. Brooks completely misread the Heat and why they were successful offensively in Game 2, and why Kevin Durant got into foul trouble. Let's look at Durant's fouls from Game 2:

6:58 1st Quarter Fouls Chris Bosh on fast break And-1 (weak contest)
3:40 1st Quarter Fouls Dwyane Wade on help defense
10:04 3rd Quarter Offensive Foul Charging
3:31 3rd Quarter Fouls LeBron James one on one
10:30 4th Quarter Loose Ball Foul (stupid foul)

Only one of these fouls was a result of him defending LeBron James. So why the overreaction? Why move him off of LeBron completely when he's one of the best guys to put on him, especially in the post where he can use his length to contest shots?

Miami Heat was dominant offensively in game two because the Thunder did not match up when they inserted Bosh into the starting unit. Miami scored 35 points in the 14 minutes that their starters played to begin each half. 2.5 points per minute. They scored 1.9 points per minute the rest of the game. OKC got beat offensively in Game 2 because Miami went small and we did not match up, and were unprepared for the matchup. That's the only reason.

Now, Brooks addressed this somewhat in Game 3. The bigs were a little bit more prepared to defense the perimeter. But Brooks did more than just encourage the bigs to stick to the perimeter shooters, he completely overreacted to Durant's foul trouble and took him off of LeBron James, and resorted to double teaming him on the perimeter. This was the worst decision Brooks made all series, by far. LeBron was not scoring the ball very efficienty all series, he did not have one game with a TS% above 60%. But Miami sliced us up especially in Games 4 and 5 because of the over zealous double teaming of LeBron. If OKC had stuck to their original game plan in Games 1 and 2 defensively, while making the same adjustments they made with their bigs to stick on the perimeter, their defense would have performed far better than it did. Brooks screwed the pooch on defensive game planning, bit hard on Spoelstra's bait, and gave LeBron exactly what he wanted to see. Rotate Thabo and Durant on LeBron in single coverage and it would have been a huge difference.

wiff wrote:Actually it was before the finals. But it was Presti's fault, DFish. Horrible signing. I understand wanting to bring a championship culture to OKC but those tires were bald back in Utah.

Yes. I was rooting for Miami and was thrilled every time Brooks put in fisher into the game. The guy needs to be cut permanently away from all NBA teams.

Accepting a job

Brooks' lack of adapting to Miami's strategy of playing small all series.

I seem to remember Joel Anthony and Ronnie Turiaf playing in the front court for the Heat a lot in the regular season. Zero minutes in the finals. Meanwhile, Brooks stuck with Perkins, who couldn't guard Bosh, got beaten on the glass by everyone, forced Ibaka out on a perimeter player, defensively, which takes away the best rim protector in the game, and scored very little.

Meanwhile, the Heat were able to expose extremely poor rotation, man-to-man defense and put on the best 3point shooting the league has ever seen (43% as a team).

IMO, starting Cook, which he did during the regular season for a stretch, would've been the better matchup. Plain and simple, Perkins had no matchup in the series and should've seen the court for 10mpg, if that. Volluson should've been the feature matchup against Bosh with Ibaka spelling him. Many more minutes of Sefolosha on Lebron.

Oh well, it was a learning experience for Brooks as well. I give him a pass until he makes the same mistakes again. In hindsight, the Thunder never advance past the Lakers without Perk, but he should've swallowed his pride and volunteered to sit for the better matchup. The chances of a pro athlete doing that these days isn't good though.

*Collison

This is odd to say, but I think he should have went with Collison defending Lebron. Lebron was on an epic cold streak jumpshooting wise and Collison played him very well the few times he did guard him. It forced Lebron off the block and then Collison basically said 'I'll play Shane Battier defense, I'm not going to let you drive but you can have a semi-open jumpshot where I just try to get my hand in your face'. It may not have worked over the long haul, but he was just abusing Thabo in the post and it was opening up way too much for other guys.

The obvious mistake was not having Collison in the game at all though. That and continuing to play 'don't let Lebron beat us' ball when the Heat's role players were going ham all series. Also, and I don't know if this was Brooks or the individual players, but every single time Lebron got the ball at the top of the key his defender sagged off to the free throw line, their line of thinking was obvious, but Lebron doesn't struggle to drive against that type of defense because of how strong he is. Thabo especially should have been playing him closer, not giving him space to put the ball on the floor and giving the bigs more time to react when Lebron did beat him. Instead he kept getting a full head of steam, then blowing by his defender, and since his defender was already in the lane before he was beat it kept the bigs from rotating. Every time Lebron got the ball there you knew it was either a foul or bucket (or both).

Playing players based on Presti's decisions without any meaningful deviation.

slick_watts wrote:I think it's easy to critique lineup and rotation decisions. Clearly, Kendrick Perkins should not have been playing that much (if at all) since he was injured on top of not being fit for the matchups the Thunder were seeing. Derek Fisher played too much at Thabo's expense.

But I think the biggest mistake Brooks made was changing up the defensive strategy on LeBron after game two.

BINGO! Totally agree with that.

I also think (although this would have been extraordinarily out of character for Brooks) he should have went small to start the game. He stubbornly stuck with his set lineup while Shane Battier got to start off every game in the series with Ibaka losing him on the perimeter and then subsequently getting open look after open look. This allowed him to get in rhythm early and then it was hard to put out that fire.