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Post writeups, and judging here. Thanks.

Matchups:

Snakebites v. Warspite
TMACFORMVP v. penbeast0

Damn, didn't get anything posted by tonight and tomorrow night I leave for 4 days in Costa Rica where I sincerely hope to be having way too much fun to worry about it. Can we extend the writeup deadline to Monday night?

Thanks,
Dave

Honestly, who DOESN'T want to do a writeup in Costa Rica?


I think Monday is fine, it's just the four of us, none of us have posted, and the other posters to judge are around. I'll start mine by tomorrow at the very least , and hopefully we can start the Finals by next weeks time.

Gremz in 7.

Warspite vs Snakebites

KJ 35mpg/Lever 13mpg
Miller 30mpg/Rip 18mpg
DrJ 36mpg/Cunningham 12mpg
Sikma 28mpg/Cummings 14mpg/Cunnigham 4mpg
Deke 32mpg/Ruland10mpg/Sikma 6mpg

Billups /MRR
Drexler ()/MRR ()
English ()/Dandridge ()
Pettit ()/Wallace ()
Robinson ()/Wallace ()


Im sure your familiar with my offense. Im still relying on KJ dribble penetration and pick and Pop with Sikma. Ill be running Miller and Rip off of double screens and using DrJ in the low post. Ill also be useing Sikma to give me a few posessions in the high post. to be honest I figured Snakebites would build a great team around DRob and knowing my luck I figured I would fave him or TmacforMVP in the 1st rd. So I built a team to compete with the 2 HoF bigs in DRob and Walton.

Billups has always had problems with quick/fast dribble PGs. Hes facing one of the best at his absolute peak. I believe KJ will break down Billups and cause havoc in the early and very late part of the game. It will draw DRob over to help and it will be his help defense vs KJs ability to finish and/or to find open cutting bigmen. It truely will be a fun matchup to see if DRob can control the paint and handle the slashers my team is going to throw at him.

Miller and Rip will have a great challenge running Drexler off of screens and getting off shots. These guy will counted on to provide the 3pt shooting. Since Snakes team is realy not a 3pt shooting its up to Miller to shine here and try to counter the adv that Drexler has. As long as Miller is being eff and knocking down shots, keeping Drexler working on defense Im happy. I dont expect my SGs to outscore Snakes simply because they wont get enough touches. I do expect them to have a better FG% and a better TS%.

DrJ after having to battle LBJ and Durant he gets to settle down to face a contemporary in Danbridge and English. Lets be honest. DrJ is going whip these guys pretty badly. Dont get me wrong I think Bob is a very good player and hes a very good defender. English is a realy good scorer and a poor to mediocre defender. DrJ is simply a nightmare matchup for both of them. This might be a series where DrJ explodes like he did vs the Nuggets in 76 with 38ppg 12rpg 6apg 60%FG series.

Sikma will be able to score and be effective vs Pettit. He however wont get enough touches. As long as hes shooting a high FG% Sikma can be outscored by 10ppg and Im not worried. Sikma has size to post up and has a good face up jumpshot.

Deke is the 5th option who gets baskets on putbacks and when DRob has to leave him to protect the basket. Again no hes not going to score alot of pts but we want him to be eff and as long as hes getting 10ppg on 7FGAs and 4FTAs Im happy.

Defense:

Again I have maybe the best def frontcourt in this league and thats going to be important because we playing the best offensive frontcourt in this league. We are going to use both Deke and Sikma on DRob. I believe both of them can gaurd DRob about as well as can be expected. I realy feel comfortable with Sikma on Pettit. Pettit might go off for 20ppg but as long as hes shooting sub .450FG Im happy to let him keep shooting.

Dekevs DRob
In a 23 game sample including the yrs selected DRob has a FG% of .496 and is what I would call very up and down. He has a 42pt (OT) game and a 6pt game. Deke still avgs 11rpg and 4bpg. He does commit a ton of fouls. In fact Deke fouls out almost a 3rd of the time but he still avgs almost 40mpg. DRob is going to have a ok game or 2 a great game and hes going to disapear once or twice. Thats the nature of Drob when hes playing Deke. Deke however is a very consistant player avg a double double and 4bpg.

Sikma vs Pettit
Sikmas great def and def rebounding come into play here along with his size to frustrate Pettit. Will Sikma shut him down? No but he only has to make him ineffecient. let him score 25pts on 44%.

DrJ vs Drexler
Im going to let DrJ matchup with Drexler. After Drexler chases Miller around all game now hes going to have to try to take DrJ off the dribble and try to finish over Sikma/Deke. DrJ will dare him shoot outside and again its all about making Snakes guys shoot a lower FG%.

Miller vs Danbridge
With Bob being a 4th option this is the place to hide Miller. Since both Miller and Rip are 6'7" they can handle Danbridge and English with there length.

KJvs Billups
Making Billups a spot up shooter and a pull up shooter is the goal here. As long as Billups is shooting 42% he can jack up as many deep shots as he wants.


On defense We are going to pack the paint taking away driving lanes and forcing long jumpers from below avg shooters in Billups, Drexler, MRR. I feel that Snakes big weakness is outside shooting. Im also not going to have to double team as much as Snake is used to seeing. Ill bet Bob Danbridge is in for a rude awakening when he realises hes actualy not going to be left alone to shoot that baseline jumper. With Deke and Jack we can stay at home double when we have to. Drexler who has had an athletic adv over every player hes faced is now facing DrJ whos ready to take things to another level and will rise to this challenge. We are going to take adv of our reb adv and attempt to push the ball for easy baskets. With DrJ on the perimter we will be letting him release and getting him in the open court to demoralise the opponets.

Bench:

I dont think the benches are a huge deal but I want to point out how I have Ruland posting up on the smaller Sheed and Cunningham keeping the pressure on. I expect MRR to come in and force KJ and Lever to play more pick and roll/pop. In these times this is when DrJ/Cunningham becomes even more a focal point of our offense. When Sheed falls in love with his 3 we can let Cunnigham guard him and then release for a fast break opertunity. To think that Sheed is the 2nd best outside shooter on Snakes team is IMHO a fatal weakness.

In Conclusion:

I believe my team is wining this series because it will run an EFF offense and play good defense on its volume scorers. DRobs huge def impact is mitigated by him guarding my 5th option and his 2nd best defender is matched up with maybe the MVP of this entire league. My 3 best defenders are guarding his 3 best scorers in a strength on strength battle.

My outside shooters are better
My ability to breakdown the defense is better

The big question on def comes down to if you value my man to man def vs DRobs help def. Its true that Deke will have to stay with DRob more and guard the rim less but Snakes perimeter def is weaker and my slashers are better.

The Big question on Off comes down to his big 3 having to score on my def big 3 at good enough clip to counter my better shooters and my big 3 scorers matched up with his weaker defenders. Snake has the better more legendary scorers but will 3 volume scorers out perform 1 volume scorer and EFF role palyers especialy when my team will have more possesions because it is a better rebounding team,

hey buddy, post your roster

bness888 wrote:hey buddy, post your roster

and accept our deal

Pleasure to get the challenge to play against an NBA historian and fellow Piston fan like Warspite. This is the first time we've squared off, and its a bit awkward given he's one of the people who helped me learn the ropes in these sorts of games. With that said, he's going down.

KJ 35mpg/Lever 13mpg
Miller 30mpg/Rip 18mpg
DrJ 36mpg/Cunningham 12mpg
Sikma 28mpg/Cummings 14mpg/Cunnigham 4mpg
Deke 32mpg/Ruland10mpg/Sikma 6mpg

Billups (32)/MRR (16)
Drexler (34)/Dandridge (14)
Dandridge (20)/English (28)
Pettit (35)/Wallace (13)
Robinson (36)/Wallace (12)

Offense:

The great thing about our offense is that it isn’t dependent on just one player. Its as balanced an attack as any in this league. Robinson can dominate offensively with his jumper and athleticism, Drexler can slash and post up, Pettit can score inside and at mid range, Billups can drain outside shots (his primary scoring role in this offense) as well as any at his position, and Dandridge has a midrange game to die for.

Warspite has an imposing defense, primarily up front, but we feel we can match up with it and still operate our offense effectively. In the front court, neither of our starters are players who could be stopped man to man with any kind of consistency. While in theory Dikembe Mutombo should be able to go toe to toe with David Robinson, a head to head analysis simply doesn’t support the notion that he has that strong an impact there. Robinson’s efficiency drops slightly, but he really doesn’t become inefficient. He still gets to the line a ton and shoots almost 50% with almost identical volume numbers. Furthermore, Mutombo’s guarding assignment will keep him preoccupied with man-to-man obligations which will limit his freedom to operate as a weakside defender, where his larger impact would normally shine. This can only be good news for our offense.

Robinson is also only half of our dominant offensive front court. Bob Pettit was an absolute monster on the big stage. His skillset made him extremely difficult to guard, and even frequent double and triple teams didn’t stop him. Sikma is a fine defender, but he’ll have his hands full with a player of this magnitude, and with Mutombo’s hands full, he’ll be on his own. Rasheed Wallace complements both of our starting bigs extremely well with his outside jumpshot, and he will further disrupt defenses by drawing one of Warspite’s bigs out to the perimeter to open things up for our offense. Overall, I see no way that our front court doesn’t outproduce our opponent’s in a very major way.

On the perimeter, we are equally confident. Playmaking simply won’t be an issue. Billups can run the halfcourt offense with the best of them, and while KJ isn’t a defensive liability, his size limits what he can do against a larger guard like Billups. Billups destroyed Chris Paul offensively in a playoff series with the Nuggets. Drexler is also a great passer as well.

In terms of scoring, we are perfectly fine with Billups playing the role of the shooter, as in the selected years he could drain outside shots with the absolute best of them. It is extremely likely that our opponent will put Erving on Drexler. We aknowledge the relative merit of this decision, but only because the alternative is much rougher. Even in this best case scenario for our opponents, Drexler still manages to produce admirably. Lets not forget Drexler frequently turned in great performances against Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan, even as the former reached his defensive peak. Erving presents an interesting challenge, but there is every evidence Drexler is up to it. This also leaves Miller to guard our small forwards, and this is problematic. Dandrige was an underrated big game performer who averaged 24 ppg in the playoffs while helping the Bullets win their only NBA championship. And with a natural sg not known for his defense guarding him, he will have a fun series. If our opponent is ever unfortunate enough to see English on the floor alongside Drexler (likely given how many minutes he is playing), this will be even more problematic, as English is an elite scorer in this game by any standards, and will be able to score in an efficient and devastating manner.

Our team isn’t an outstanding outside shooting team, but we do have Billups and Rasheed to help spread the floor most of our players have midrange games, so we don’t forsee offensive spacing as an issue. Indeed, this isn’t a major separating point, as Miller is the only player on war’s team with documented 3pt range, and Sikma is his second best shooter with anything near that type of range.

The overall cohesiveness of our offensive unit that has seen as through previous matchups should also help us get through this series.

Defense: As ever, our defense begins with David Robinson. Mutombo is in the starting lineup for one reason, and it isn’t to score. This means Robinson will have a lot more freedom (certainly quite a bit more than his counterpart) to patrol the lanes and counteract War’s slashers (KJ and Erving, on whom much of his offense rests).

We’re fairly confident with our other matchups as well. Sikma will be matched either by Pettit or by Wallace, the latter of whom in particular will be ideally suited to guard him. Ultimately, Sikma’s role in the offense is to provide supplementary scoring from mid-long range and draw out a defender, but in our case Robinson isn’t going anywhere. Erving is the only man on War’s team I’d characterize as “nearly unguardable”, but Dandrige is well noted for playing him tough in playoff situations, particularly when the Wizards defeated the Sixers in 1978 in route to their championship. Couple this with Robinson patrolling the paint unhindered and we’re about as well equipped to deal with Erving as anyone is likely to be. We won’t insult anyone’s intelligence by arguing that we’ll stop him, but limiting him to a less than epic series is certainly possible.

With the robust Clyde Drexler guarding Miller, the only matchup that troubles us particularly is Kevin Johnson. We intend switch Michael Ray Richardson onto him at certain stages of the game to offer some assistance.

Overall: Warspite has a nice team of role players built around one superstar. It’s fundamentally sound and has clearly defined roles, and we greatly respect the way it is put together. Our team, however, is simply stronger and more balanced. Our front court is relentless and talented enough to overcome his defense, and are perimeter complements it perfectly. We are equipped defensively, particularly with the interior defense of Robinson at our disposal, to disrupt an offense that requires the effective use of the interior by slashers to get much of its work done. I see any number of ways our team could beat this team, while in the case of Warspite I only see one: Erving rising above expectations. This might be enough for two or even three games in a seven game series, but it won’t carry the day.

Facing penbeast is always a fun task, among the best posters on RealGM, it's always a learning experience to face one of the best. As usual, he's built a terrific team, but one I feel with weaknesses that can be exploited. May the best team win in this series, which my team fully intends to do so.

I'm rather short on time, so I'll keep it rather brief bullet points of why I feel I'll come out victorious in this series.

1.) I've already gone over in the previous matchup how I feel the "locker room" troubles of my team is specifically overrated. And what I feel about the double standard when it comes to Walton and him meeting the game requirement total.



2.) Rebounding, Gilmore is a terrific rebounder, however Walton was even better. Jones was a solid rebounder, but Cowens is also one of the elite rebounders to have ever played, and has a huge edge in that regard. Marion helps make up for that advantage, but not enough to tip the rebounding advantage in penbeasts favor. The perimeter players don't really create an edge for each other, and the TRB% for both teams are somewhat comparable, but once again, we have the best rebounder in the series. Having the edge on the boards will fuel our fast break, which will be evidenced by how little Paul does to stop Deron.

3.) Marion is good, and that's his main purpose in the starting lineup, but once again, we have him outmatched in Cowens, whos likely being defended by Jones, who was the worst rebounder of the trio. Neither backcourt gives eachother the edge, as they are pretty similar.

4.) Deron outplays Chris Paul. penbeast can talk about efficiency all he wants, but in this matchup, we have the edge in that regard. It's not exactly a mystery that Paul has struggled against bigger guards, and in this case, it's not more apparent with Deron Williams.

- 7 GAME SAMPLE SIZE OVER SAME TWO YEAR PEAK.
16.8 PPG, 9.0 APG on .438 ---> Paul
16.5 PPG, 10.7 APG on .580 ---> Williams
(Jazz went 6-1 in these games, Hornets regular season record 105-59, and Jazz regular season record 102-62, so teams were evenly matched, but both season, Hornets had finished with more wins).

5.) Lack of spacing for penbeasts team. Paul is the one that needs spacing around him, as he'll likely be the orchestrator of the offense. He's a slow it down PG that prefers a grind it out execution game, one in which Marion plays poorly in. Moncrief wasn't a floor spacer, neither was Jones, and Gilmore was strictly in the paint. Marion is the only one in the starting lineup with three point range, and he shoots it at roughly a 33% clip. We'll be glad to let him take that shot (though we will obviously recover) because that wasn't a large part of his game. And in a halfcourt set game that Paul likes to play, Marion will likely be relegated to that role because he can't create his own shot.

6.) We have a better passing team. Paul is likely the best passer, but Deron as we've seen outproduces them in head to head matchups. Walton and Barry are the next best play-makers in the entire series.

7.) Let's be serious, penbeast needs out of the world offensive performances from Gilmore, Paul, and Moncrief to win this series. With having Walton on Gilmore (who shot sub 50% in their playoff series in 78), Deron decidedly having the head to head edge over Paul (shoots 43% against him), and Artest, one of the elite perimeter defenders guarding Moncrief, the chance that they even stay to their averages (which won't be enough) is unlikely. penbeast's team just doesn't have the firepower to hang with the firepower of my team. penbeast cleverly tries to make up for lack of volume through efficiency, but that as evidenced shouldn't be an all end advantage in this series.

8.) I'll pose this question. In a close series, who do you trust more to close out the series? Paul? (1-6 against Deron would say not). Gilmore? (consistently rated below a peak Walton, even in his ABA days? I was watching a video clip the other day, the commentator mentioned Gilmore as very underrated but that's likely due to being in the shadow of two much better centers, Walton and Kareem). The same Gilmore that lost playoff series to Walton.

But most importantly, do you trust Moncrief, or Barry more to absolutely take over down the stretch of a playoff series and lead his team to a victory. Again, only Barry and MJ are the two players in NBA history to do 30/6/5 and lead his team to a championship. He led the sweep over the much heavily favored Bullets, and was considered to have sparked huge runs to change the outcome of the series. I'd expect similar results in this series.

In conclusion, I think we have the defense to stop his main offensive options (Walton on Gilmore, Artest on Moncrief, and Deron on Paul), and outside of that, he just doesn't have enough firepower to win this series. We're better down the stretch, have better rebounding, and passing, while marginalizing the efficiency advantage with Barry being the best closer in the series. penbeast has built a great team, but one with holes that we're fully equipped to attack. May the best team win.

Back but sick as a dog . . . will throw a quick writeup out there and flesh it out with numbers and the like tomorrow.

The 5 factors that make great teams win are offensive efficiency, defensive efficiency, rebound differential, turnover differential, and team play (intangibles and the like).

TMac does his best to avoid talking about 3 of these 4 factors in favor of some small sample size head to head . . . 7 games in one case, a single playoff in the other.

The first key is offensive efficiency. This is the key to the series. What TMAC glosses over is just how badly our efficiency numbers outmatch his. At center, Gilmore was the most efficient center to EVER play in the NBA -- not based on his ABA numbers great though they were, but his NBA numbers alone make him significantly more efficient even than Shaq (though not as dominant; Shaq was a much more aggressive player in getting the ball). Here Gilmore scores significantly more and better than Walton. Cowens was a poor efficiency center -- great rebounder and fiery leader but a mediocre shooter. And, with Gilmore and Walton inside, he is up against arguably the greatest PF defender ever in Bobby Jones (though Rodman has an argument) -- he may shoot more than Jones, but Jones will make a much higher percentage. Same for Barry -- a spectacular gunner but Marion is a strong defender and we will be running Marion toward the basket against the lazy Barry who tended to slack off and gamble for steals -- and again Marion shoots appreciably better. To continue the analysis, Moncrief is much faster than Artest who is at his best against wings who try to body his 250 lbs; Moncrief won't but again, as our whole team does, shoots close to .600 ts% while scoring 20+ppg. Finally, Paul has said he prefers a running offense, it's one thing that started the Paul to NY rumors. Deron can body him is a slow, walk it up game but we don't play that. We play an open court running game that takes advantage of the speed differential that we have at every position. We shoot not just a little better than TMAC, we shoot a lot better -- enough so that if we take the same number of shots (and he admits rebounding is pretty equal plus our turnover differential is a lot greater), we iwll score a good 10-15 points high just on that alone. Not from only one sport but from every spot, 1-10 in our lineup!

And it doesn't get better for TMAC on defensive efficiency. He has good defenders but he also has a big weakness in Rick Barry who didn't play much defense and Paul is a perennial All-NBA defender -- Deron Williams is solid but hardly to that level. And, to get his rebounding up, he is playing a center out of position at PF (Cowens in Milwakee complained publicly about that) and Artest out of position at SG where his best asset, his chest to chest strength is minimized and his weakest asset, his footspeed, is emphasized. We will be attacking Barry with whoever he guards; he can't handle Marion's explosion to the basket and Paul and Moncrief are outstanding passing guards who will get him the ball in his sweet spots where he is a terrific finisher. We will also attack Artest and generally exploit our speed in the open court with Artis trailing to set up our halfcourt game. We have GREAT defenders at every spot; no holes. TMAC is solid but not as deep.

Rebounding he covered -- the total lineup differential is about equal with Walton in there (and if Nance has to play for Walton, TMAC falls behind).

Fourth, turnover differential, we have better shotblocking, more steals, and generally quicker players who can not only generate those turnovers but create scoring opportunities off them. They say "you can't teach size" but "speed kills"

Finally, intangibles and Bill Walton's feet. We have solid players who play team ball everywhere; they have Rick Barry, Ron Artest, even Walton and Cowens were known for bitching to the press and disliking anyone who played a "street" game (and Walton and Barry have publicly fueded). Additionally, the OP did NOT say that anyone who met the game requirement was assumed to be healthy -- as I told TMAC when he was talking to me about who to draft. And Walton is the single most injury prone superstar in NBA history. If it was a one season requirement, sure, he's great. In a two season requirment, Walton NEVER had two healthy seasons as a starter in his whole career, just one with one as a reserve who they carefully husbanded minute for. He didn't play in the playoffs in one of the two chosen years becasue he was injured. IF you ignore that, you ignore who Bill Walton was in NBA history -- that's his main legacy, more than the 76 upset title. This would leave Walton and Nance up front, which does improve offensive efficiency at the cost of passing, defense, and rebounding. It also leaves Dave Cowens, undersized at 6'9, guarding 7'2 strongest man in his ear Artis Gilmore -- Cowens made his rep pushing and banging Kareem but Kareem for all his size was a finesse player, Artis was not. As Mo Lucas said, when you played Artis, you were careful not to get too physical because you didn't want him getting fired up. Cowens would be overmatched.

So, we have a huge advantage in offensive efficiency, an edge in defensive efficiency and turnover differential, and are about even in terms of rebounding for the lineup. TMAC's best player is injury prone and his star scorer is a classic jerk, on a team of guys who were notoriously intolerant of that. What does he have going for him . . . Less than 14 games of head to head numbers as opposed to the 120+ games where the regular season numbers were generated and the even lightly larger efficiency differential in playoff games. And that's with Walton healthy -- which he never was for any two years in his career. But, if people assume he is, they still have to realize that we have more weapons with no weak spots, more efficient weaopns, better defense and greater team speed which should lead us to victory.

I don't think I'll do a rebuttal. I've already addressed how Deron does against "perennial All-NBA defender Chris Paul." Even quick guards have success against him, Parker in Paul's chosen seasons in nearly 14 games including playoffs, averaged 20 PPG on 52%. And I've gone to lengths about why I feel my team shouldn't hinder each others performance in terms of attitude, or my thought on the double standard of Walton. I've also talked about how efficiency is overrated when there just isn't enough volume to match it (I think it's a stretch to play off the Barry matchup as if Marion was a more efficient player. If I had a team of Calderon, Hawkins, Jones, Thorpe, and Yao, that teams combined TS% is easily better than mine, with a perimeter defender, and interior anchor, does that beat my team as well)?

But yeah, don't want to turn into an actual rebuttal, lol. I think, since we've all had well over a week to do our writeups. Judging can begin.

Snakebites and pen in the Finals.

If this were a 1-year peak game, the penbeast matchup would go differently. It was really close for me, but Walton and Artest and to a much lesser extent D-Will all suffer from their off season.

As for the Snake/War matchup, I think Snake got the most bang for his buck with the #2 pick in the Admiral. I looked at just 1994-95 and Robinson never shot under 55% in any game against Mutombo.

Reggie Miller is an HOFer...yes, yes, he is...but Clyde Drexler won't have a lot of trouble here.

Just a quick rebuttal

I want to point out my teams experience and FT% adv

DRJ is a 2 time champion and Finals MVP in yr selected
Cunningham, Sikma and Rip are vets with rings.
KJ and Lever have WCF experience
Deke is the winner of the famous 1vs8 1st rd series.
Cummings and Ruland have ECF experience.
Reggie Miller is the upstart young kid but hes played the Bad Boys and taken the Celtics to deciding 5th game pushing Bird, McHale and Parish to the brink.


FT shooting for leading scorers
KJ 84%
Reggie 88%
Rip 85%
DrJ 80%
Sikma 84%

Reb rate
Deke 18.9/19.9 Sikma 18.5/17.8 DrJ 13.6/13.6 Miller 5.4/5.4 KJ 5.7/5.3= 62.99%
DRob 16.2/18.4 Pettit 19.2/19.0 Bob 7.9/8.6 Drexler9.4/10.9 Billups5.5/5.1=60.1%


It realy is a off vs def series. When Snakes team plays yours I would be willing to bet that when they are on they are much more impressive and in a reg season I expect them to have a better record. I contend that my team is built more for the post season and when my team comes into your gym they arent the impressive/pretty team. They simply make your team look bad. They win ugly but they win. Maybe you look at the box score and think that you could have won but too many of your guys had a off night. No my team didnt blow your team out nor did they put up huge offensive numbers. Certainly we wouldnt do what Snakes team does with its firepower. Im sure Snakes team could beat yours much easier than mine could but this is not a comparison of teams vs mutal opponets. Its the matchups and high powered albiet volume scorers have to score on a tougher defense than my highly eff yet not high powered offense will have to score against.

TMACFORMVP wrote:I don't think I'll do a rebuttal.
. . . I've also talked about how efficiency is overrated when there just isn't enough volume to match it (I think it's a stretch to play off the Barry matchup as if Marion was a more efficient player. . . .

Judging can begin.

Fair enough. I won't go deep either except to say efficiency isn't overrated, it's underrated . . . what is overrated is volume. Marion is ridiculously more efficient than Barry (though he scores about 8ppg less as a second option in a slower system) . . . .593ts% v. .512 for a difference of over 80 points of efficiency! To see the comparisom, Michael Jordan is only 50 points more efficient than Allen Iverson over their careers -- it's a ridiculous idea to think either that Barry is efficient or that Marion isn't.

Further, the whole idea of our team not having the volume scoring to match TMAC's is equally silly. They have 1, count them 1, player averaging over 20ppg in their starting lineup . . . that's the inefficient Rick Barry. We have 4, count them 4, players averaging over 20ppg in their chosen years led by the NBA's all-time most efficient star Artis Gilmore scoring 24ppg. Then as 6th men, we have Chris Mullin averaging over 25 ppg at a similar outstanding efficiency level as our starters while he has Larry Nance, another player averaging under 20ppg. If either team lacks explosiveness, it's TMAC's. We are actually the higher scoring team despite having a team full of guys known for being willing to share the load and play well as a team -- plus the better shooters, the better defenders, etc. That dog just won't hunt.

TMac vs Snakebites gets my vote for the finals.

In an attempt to keep this going I'll throw a vote to TMACFORMVP.

I suppose I like his team a little bit more than some other people do. I think his front court is immensely talented and am more inclined to believe his offense has the capacity to take control of games in the late going.

I don't see an offensive player on pen's team with the reputation of taking over games on the big stage (or, for the most part, in the regular season either), and I believe this is a problem with the potential to negate a defensive advantage.

I also think that while Paul may be better than Deron against common opponents, the numbers for the matchup in their careers up to this point don't lie. Paul struggles against Deron.

Overall, I see sufficient reason to believe TMAC will win this series.

Warspite v. Snakebites

This is an awesome series. War has two decided advantages in KJ and Erving on the perimeter. On the other hand, despite the interior defense War has, the same can be said about Robinson and Pettit upfront. I like that War decides to use Erving on Drexler to bother him with length and athleticism, but I agree with Snake in a sense that Dandridge gets underrated. However in an all time setting, where Bob is arguably the 4th/5th option, he shouldn't kill Reggie on defense. But Snake had arguably the best/most underrated pick of the entire draft in English. He counters War's plan by using English, and playing him nearly the minutes Dandridge receives (though he also plays significant minutes at the 2). So in the occurrence that both Drexler and English are the on the floor, since Erving won't be stopped anyway, Snake can exploit Miller's lack of defense versus superstar caliber players.

I like how War points out Snakes lack of shooting compared to other squads. Billups and Sheed being the only ones with legitimate three point range, but the same can be said somewhat for War's team even despite having Reggie. I don't think spacing should determine this series, especially since neither have big man that completely pack the paint.

What I love about both teams are how well defined roles are. I think both teams work to perfection with War's interior defense headlined offensively by their trio of perimeter players. Snakes team also has terrific balance, with a bit more firewpower I'd think. Defensively, I'd think both teams are similar, potentially slight edge to War. So, what I just said was that Snake's team is a bit better offensively, while War's is a little bit better defensively. So who has the edge?

I seriously can't decide, but since I have to... I think Warspite needs large series from his perimeter players. While, I certainly believe they're capable, Dandridge isn't a poor option to at least limit Erving to his godly averages (matchup I read about in 78' where he actually got the best of him). In one regard, Miller and Billups have similar roles on their team, to create space for better players, and knock down the open shot. I also think Drexler and KJ have similar roles in their offensive mindset to attack the defense. I think because of Billups struggles to guard quicker players, we're a bit too quick to dismiss the impact he'll still have on the series. Offensively he should be just fine, and defensively it's hard to say he'll be that much a liability, especially since he can sag a bit off KJ from the perimeter, and DRob has a bit more freedom to roam defensively. I'm also not sold that Miller will outproduce his counterpart either, despite being guarded by Dr. J. Overall, Erving will dominate, but so will Snake's frontcourt, so it comes down to the backcourt play, where I don't think War has enough an advantage.

For that reason, my votes goes to: Snakebites.

Sorry War, this was was real tough, could have gone either way.

I asked TMAC to call this if we don't get more votes and end in a tie by 5PM EST Saturday night. I will concede it at that time with TMAC winning 2-1. I haven't voted in the other matchup because it isn't close enough that my vote would make a difference . . . I will if it closes to a one vote margin.

If You need more vote I would vote for Penbeast.

Ouch, now it is tied 2-2, we need someone else to vote then . . . thanks War