QRich3 wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:I also don't get why you insist you don't see mismatches while talking about things like "Draymond's mobility has Randolph lost". Dude, that's a mismatch! Your response would probably be "But that's a mismatch for the Grizz not the Warriors. The Warriors get an edge there." But my point is that mismatches work both ways, and while it's fine to state you're confident that the net advantage is going to go to the Warriors, but the fact remains that just one guy vs the other, they both have strengths and they both have weaknesses. And of course since Randolph is the more dangerous scoring threat normally, and he's been the more dangerous scoring threat in this series by a large margin, it's just so weird for you to look at the two and fixate on Green "losing" Randolph. There's just obviously so much more to these things.
I think my wording was "I just don't get what's mismatched about defending Gasol and Randolph with Bogut and Green" which meant that I do see the mismatch one way, but I don't think there's a mismatch on the other side. That's a pretty common thing I think, two way players that can defend their man but can't be defended by their one-way counterpart. My whole analysis is predicted on how well Draymond defended Gasol in the RS, and I thought it's been going that way so far, and that's not been a specially worrisome problem for the Dubs, even if Gasol's numbers look ok. What's more worrisome for them is they're having trouble to find offense, and that's mostly because the Grizz had been dictating the pace and the defensive match ups more beneficial to them, I thought. And like I said, what makes it a mismatch in one end but not on the other is that Randolph can't guard a chair in the P&R, wether he's on Green or hidden on someone else. I fixate on this because it's one big weakness that can sway a series if attacked correctly. As it has in the past, and I have no doubt it will in this series.
Gasol/Randolph are scoring more than double what Bogut/Green are, and yet you see a one-way mismatch where Bogut/Green are the "two way players that can defend their man but can't be defended by their one-way counterpart". I think it's pretty clear that you are not comparing these guys apples-to-apples - and in theory that's fine, the problem is that you're talking as if you are and this allows me to make a sentence like the one above out of your thoughts, which to me just looks crazy.
Of course the reality is these two sets of players have very different expectations on them. GS doesn't expect Bogut/Green to carry their offense, and hence it's not some kind of meaningful debate when they don't on the face of it, but no, Bogut/Green are not burning their counterparts like crazy or anything like it, and yes, Randolph/Gasol are having far more success than a typical PF/C combo does against the Warriors. And so to look at these guys and get hung up on Randolph not being able to run with Green seems to miss the point in so many ways.
Re: Fixate because it will win the series. You think the Warriors are going to win the series because of Green as a scoring threat? Really? I mean, he's a capable guy and all, but unless you're expecting to see Green outscore Randolph by a considerable margin the rest of the way, I don't know how you can justify making such a statement.
QRich3 wrote:QRich3 wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:So I feel like you're really hung up on tactics, and while on the whole I have no issue with that, you're quibbling about things in the name of tactics that I just don't get.
I had concerns about the Warriors ability to handle Randolph & Gasol. Okay, go look at Randolph & Gasol's numbers in this series compared to the Spurs '13 series. It's a night & day difference that basically says in a nutshell why the Grizz have been more successful against the Warriors offensively given that even still their offensive effectiveness isn't great.
You want to say: "The Warriors have enough options given the Grizzlies' weaknesses that shouldn't be an issue", that's fine. But what I'm saying is that in fact the issues you're seeing in this series are nothing all that strange given the thoughts I laid out there above.
Remember: I never said the Grizz would win, or even that I was certain that it would be super-close, just that these are two very different teams with inevitable mismatches, and as a result the Grizz are more of a question mark as a match up than the other teams.
I'm hung up on tactics because tactics are really important to be able to predict a result. There's no sense in looking at past performance (i.e. numbers) without acknowledging that a meaningful change in strategy renders most those numbers next-to-useless. In this case, it doesn't matter what the numbers say to you about the Dubs' backcourt previous offensive performance if it's heavily influenced by Tony Allen defending one of them, but one simple change in defensive strategy takes Allen out of the game and their performance automatically goes up a notch.
My comparison to the 13' Spurs went no further than how to take Allen out of the game by making their offense worse, and by taking him to the bench automatically make their defense worse with the same action. And anyway, I thought the Grizzlies have been most succesful against the W's by forcing mismatches where guys other than Green and Bogut are forced to defend Randolph or Gasol.
In any case yeah, that's my amateur analysis that can be very flawed, and two days ago the series were 2-1 which I never thought remotely likely, that's why I thought the Warriors were messing up and why we started this conversation. But I just thought Green and Bogut's defense wasn't one of the points that were helping the Grizz overachieve.
You're taking a phrase of mine and running with it without acknowledging the actual point. Of course you should care about tactics, but if you're skipping right to where you assume everything will go so fast that you think it's strange when someone points out an obvious intermediate step, then I think you're driving too fast. The stuff I said shouldn't seem alien to you, it's basic. It's the type of thing you acknowledge and rebut if you truly are one step ahead. It's the type of thing you're confused by if you're simplifying the game too much and thereby making assumptions that leave you like so many other prognosticators...surprised at how the future actually played out.
I don't take my skills as a prognosticator very seriously. There are too many eventualities. I'll make predictions sometimes, and plenty of times I'm wrong. But typically when I'm wrong, I'm wrong in a way that's really not very surprising, and often I'll have told people ahead of time that that could happen.
Re: Tony Allen tactics. If I've given the impression it isn't good to talk about this, I apologize. It's a big deal, and you talking about it is good.
Re: Grizz best mismatch advantage isn't even against Green/Bogut. Well sure, Green/Bogut are simply the two best guys the Warriors have for the job - everyone else playing major minutes is a perimeter player after all...and that in a nutshell is why the Warriors are so clearly atraditional and are not designed to go up against a team whose two top scorers are on the interior.
Re: just an amateur, just thought Green/Bogut defense isn't THE problem. Understood and I apologize if I come off as too critical.
