Doctor MJ wrote:I'd say mystic and I are mostly on the same page, but...
-I wouldn't say that neither Wade nor LeBron know how to play off ball. The two make fantastic passes to each other all the time which rely on the off ball guy making a good cut. This makes the team's offensive struggles all the more frustrating as obvious ways to improve are being accomplished, and yet still the offense with the two of them on the floor is not operating that much better than with one of them.
It makes me harken back again to Phil Jackson's Bull teams. He turned them from a bit above average to all-time great level not with more scoring threats, but with good role players playing well designed rolls.
Well, this is one of the problems with Miami right now. Bibby absolutely has not been filling his role, save for 1 game. He doesn't get the team into its offense quickly, he doesn't hit open shots and provide spacing, and he's not great defensively. Haslem is erratic...he still brings good D, but sometimes he misses rotations (which is due to rust, cause he never missed rotations before) or mis-times rebounds, and his mid-range J has been inconsistent. Miller also has been hit-or-miss, due to having no thumbs. Chalmers is really the only role player who has been consistently playing well for Miami.
2. Let's also be clear that there's no way that the Mavs defense gets 30 points worse per 100 possessions without Dirk in any decent sample size. With that said, people very much underrate Dirk defensively. This is a guy who makes smart plays, will block your shot if you're not careful, and his rebounding on defense isn't nearly so bad as people think (it's offense where he's weak, specifically because he's operates from the perimeter).
Yeah, I'm still curious about colinearity issues there.
I'll add, and I think is important, that Doc's |Wade| + |Lebron| > |Wade + Lebron| is not always necessarily true, even if it is true in these Finals. Matchups matter, and not just individual matchups, but team matchups.
When Miami is able to go to their hybrid lineup--big in the backcourt, "small" in the frontcourt--I actually think that equation might reverse. People on the Heat board have been wondering where the Wade/Lebron PnR has gone this series, but its not too surprising to me that we haven't seen since Miami doesn't get much out of it when they're at the 2 and 3, respectively.
But when Lebron is at the 4, Wade running it from the 2 is dynamic. When Wade is running that from the
point its unbelievably effective. With James Jones having an injured foot and the Mavs frontcourt punishing Miami's undersized one the first time they tried to go small, we have not seen that lineup much at all. That's limiting.
Miami did play something similar in the 1st half last night and it actually worked for a few minutes so maybe we will see it more.
Also, Miami had a 116 Ortg last night, and were scoring very well with Wade/James/Bosh on the court late into the 4th. I'm not sure how that game can be used as an example of them not working together or struggling against the Dallas zone; they scored 24 points in the fourth, getting a
ton of open layups at the rim. How is that bad production?
The problem was giving up 28.
