freethedevil wrote:MyUniBroDavis wrote:MartinToVaught wrote:6-5 against teams with winning records and trending downwards. That speaks louder to me than the SRS.
I mean it comes down to this
From the perspective of talent the clippers were a top 3 tier 1 team last year, and got better and more playoff built this year.
They were not. This is what we were warning you about all of the regular season. Talent matters, talent distribution not so much. They couldn't protect the paint, and they din't have the playmaking to be the kind of all time offense you need to be to make up for an ass defense. Their defense(prdictably) got boomed by every opponent they faced and their offense(preditably) couldn't bridge the gap. Heat, Raptors, Celtics, Lakers, Bucks, Jazz and Nuggets were all potentially better playoff teams. Heck, you could probably thro the mavs there if they were healthy. Honestly, not even sure they were better than the healthy rockets.
Luckily, they've added some paint protection in ibaka, but jury's out on whether that's enough to avoid getting boomed again.
Also, didn't rivers game 7 adjustmnes create aa bunch of open looks?
At least defensively while I don’t know much about the clippers gameplans because I don’t watch the clippers I will say someone that knows a ton about it basically said in both series doc was essentially the worst coach in the playoffs or something like that, particularly how harrell was used, and at the very least George appeared on a podcast recently and kind of threw doc under the bus
On the basis of talent, no, they are obviously better than the nuggets or the mavs, considering they got out coached to a ridiculous extent and won series 1 and choked series 2. Obviously they aren’t better overall than the tier 1 teams because they lost
The bucks are a tier 1 team on talent but they lost to a team that played smarter than them.
If you give every team last year equal coaching, lakers/bucks/clippers are a clear tier 1
Just from what I’ve heard, they essentially ran a 0 iq coverage vs the mavs offense and ditto with how they defended the nuggets.
On docs adjustments, you’re not trying to say doc did a GOOD job right? He didn’t, that’s not debatable. There are a good amount of reasons why they lost, and I think they would have lost to the lakers in 5 or maybe 6. Docs complete failure to game plan on defense is a big reason though, esp in terms of harrells utilization
From a pure talent standpoint it’s really obvious that the lakers/bucks/clippers are a tier above everyone else, I’d say the lakers the best for sure but they also had a solid offensive coach that’s probably the best or second best defensive coach in the league in terms of adjustments (and overall really).
Compare that to bud whose had a history of failing to adjust, and doc who regardless of how you view what he did in the last had the worst coaching performance in the playoffs
Also wym you were telling me lol when have I discussed he clippers other than meming their L
As an overall team they weren’t a tier 1 team because of their gameplanning shortcomings. Take out gameplanning and factor in talent, they are obviously a step above a team like the heat or the raptors were, but obviously spoelstra is a amazing coach, nurse is an amazing coach, etc.
Rim protection was a weakness of their defense but to say they were doomed to a bottom tier defense is weird considering they were a top 5 defensive team, and I think 2nd or 3rd while healthy. To an extent I agree they have more attackable weaknesses than a lot of other teams on defense that makes that regress
This is a recollection and I might be wrong, but iirc most teams use a more aggressive pick and roll coverage to cover for this, (think about the lakers coverage their basically running vs every team, vs drop last year. Keep in mind AD spends his time at the perimeter when Harrell or Gasol are in, he’s often not even in the paint) and while it obv doesn’t make it go away it does mitigate the effect a lot, and it can be run against more teams than something like drop coverage so it’s honestly more “playoff stable”
I think the clippers ran drop for a lot of the time with harrell which just doesn’t make ANY sense based off his strengths and weaknesses, he’s actually solid defending in space and in rotations, drop coverage is like them being like
“Hey let’s take all you’re strengths, make sure you can’t use them, and use all you’re weaknesses!”
Like, he’s not gonna be great or prolly a positive esp since they play him at center, (although on defense harrell has flat out been the center in all the lineups his playing, he’s been more of the primary rim protector than AD in terms of positioning even though AD is probably averaging more blocks. He doesn’t play with gasol)
But like, there are ways to mitigate his impact from being horrible to neutral ish.
Also apparently the way they defended Jokic was weird beyond just harrell guarding him but idk as much for that.
