richboy wrote:UnbelievablyRAW wrote:richboy wrote:
First your making statements that have no backing. There nothing to prove that the Clippers would have beaten the Trailblazers. They barely beat the Warriors. Now they are winning imaginary playoff series.
How are the Clippers not the better team. They have far more depth than OKC. People keep saying OKC has the better team but the only player they mention is Durant. Well lets look at Durant this series. Before game 6 Durant was scoring 32 per game on 45% shooting and a PER of 22. These numbers aren't even close to second best player in the league numbers that Durant put up during the year. In reality you would have said Clippers win the series if Durant's PER fell 8 points Blake was 24 and 9 the first 5 games with a similar PER shooting over 50% from the field. Durant was not near 2nd best player in the league level.
Also the 2 guard rotation of Crawford and JJ Redick gave the Clippers a combined 28ppg. OKC is getting 12ppg from Caron Butler and Thabo. Matt Barnes matched them combined by himself nearly. Reggie Jackson averaged 8 ppg in the series. Same as Darren Collison. Collison was playing a lot less minutes than Reggie. They are getting nothing from Kendrick Perkins. Serge Ibaka is getting 12 ppg. If Paul wins his matchup with RW there is no chance OKC wins the series. You can talk about team but the reality RW was better than Paul in the series and it is what sent them home. That can't be ignored.
The Mavs were a game away from beating the Spurs, does that mean they should have lost to the Trailblazers? Its matchups. That's why Miami fans would rather face OKC than the Spurs even though the Spurs have been destroying teams up to this point. That's why the Pacers almost lost to a sub .500 team in the playoffs.
The reason people mention Durant is because he's Kevin Durant. The Miami Heat on paper are worse than the Nets but they won because they have Lebron James
32 ppg on 45% shooting are the heights the likes of Kobe Bryant have reached. The fact you're trying to make it seem as if that small fragment of a statline is mediocre shows the greatness of Kevin Durant in the first place. You're looking at on paper matchups, and I'm telling you the reality of things. Westbrook is the most athletic guard since prime Dwyane Wade and that was who Paul was matched with. Someone faster, stronger and a few inches taller than him.
JJ Redick is not a good defender, so his scoring is leveled out by the fact he can't play a lot of minutes. On paper Crawford is great but in reality he heavily struggled all series averaging 14 points on 35% shooting.
ESPN showed a stat that Russell and Durant each get a third of OKC's scoring by themselves, no one is going to stop them. Its not really about Paul. He outplayed Russell last night but they still lose because Kevin Durant is the second best player on the planet and went lights out. You have no hope of containing both every game, and thats why most people had Thunder in 6 or 7 and then coming out the West.
Chris Paul after the knee surgery isn't the guy you look to to have a "Lebron night" and score 50. He's the Steve Nash type now, he averaged 22.5 ppg, 12 apg, 5 rpg, 2.5 spg 51% FG 46% 3PTFG in the series. The Thunder as a collective are the better team, not saying the Clippers had no chance, but I'm not gonna pretend they were the favourites to win the series
You think they lost because of Durant.
I think they lost because Chris Paul had 13 points the first 42 minutes of that game and scored a bunch of garbage points when they were down 10. That is a big problem I have with CP3. I don't buy you can be a great and have usage so low. People come in and say well he had this offensive rating. He put up these stats. Yet I keep saying Chris Paul is not aggressive enough to be considered great. He might be efficient but that is not enough. I wish he would play the first 43 minutes like he plays the last 5 minutes of every game. He had 13 points the first 42 minutes and the last 6 he nearly doubled that. You look at him being guarded by Reggie Jackson for big stretches and thinking why doesn't he just attack him. It isn't just this series. It is all the time I watch the Clippers. The second Darren Collison comes in the game RW ready to attack him. Reggie Jackson is terrible defensively but until the Clippers fall behind he will just keep running the team. I don't want want running the team. Go out and try to dominate. For me he doesn't go out and try to do that.
Matchups? GS went 7 games with the Clippers without Bogut. A series that Jordan dominated. DJ couldn't do anything against even Adams and Perkins of OKC. They could have easily been taken out by the Warriors if Bogut was healthy. Why should I think they dominate the Blazers? Clippers have more depth but the starting lineups are pretty even. I think the Clippers would win but it would not be easy. I wouldn't be surprised if the Blazers won.
Just to note. The Spurs earned the right to play the 4/5 winner. Clippers weren't the number 1 seed for a reason. Suggesting they would have went further if they had the road that the number 1 seed had is meaningless. They weren't good enough to get that seed. If not for the Howard injury they probably would have been the 4 seed. They would have gotten Blazers first round and the Spurs in the second. I don't think they would have beaten the Spurs.
This is an extremely inaccurate narrative richboy, I'd expect better from you, but this is just way off. Chris Paul had 7 pts and 6 assists in the first half. The Clippers were up 8 at half. There's no reason for him to be chucking. Paul had 4 pts in the 3rd quarter, at the end of the 3rd, the game was tied 72-72. He didn't have 4 pts because he was being passive. He had 4 pts because he was 2/7 FG and had 2 turnovers along with 4 assists. He shot, they didn't fall, it happens.
Paul had 14 pts in the 4th quarter, the most by any player in the 4th. Durant had 11 pts in the 4th, Westbrook 10 pts. The only baskets we could call garbage since it was just about out of reach were his quick layup and the heavily contested 3PT shot. Take those away and take away KD and Westbrook's 2 pts from FT's with less than 30 seconds left and we have: Paul (9 pts), Durant (9 pts), Westbrook (8 pts), still tied for most 4th quarter pts.
The Clippers made 11 FG in the 4th quarter, Paul scored on 6 and assisted on 2, so 8/11 made FG, he was directly involved. Even before the last two FGM, he had made 4/9 of the teams baskets and assisted on 2.
I don't know how without specifically trying to find some time split to prove something that wasn't evident in this game, one could come to this conclusion, unless you missed the first half and didn't know what happened then. I don't know how pts scored down 10 pts with 6 minutes left in a game are garbage points. The game was tied with 8 minutes left and OKC got up 10 at the 6 minute mark, 2 minutes to go up 10 pts, and in your conclusion, it was garbage time at the 6 minute mark...
There was no reason for Paul to even try and do anything individually as a scorer for the first 24 minutes of the game, what's he trying to prove, that he can score a lot in a loss? Team offense > individual player stats, and they were up 8 pts at half time. In the 4th, Paul tied the game at 80 at the 8 min mark, OKC had a barrage to go up 10, then Paul scores two in a row to bring the Clippers within 6 pts with 5:13 left, so that was all garbage time? Down 7 pts, we then had the offensive foul on Paul against Collison, the offensive foul on Griffin on the break, and a missed three by Redick that would have cut it to 4 pts with 3 minutes left, but hey, it was all garbage time.
Maybe you say it is over after the Redick miss, but a Redick basket assisted by Paul, the layup and 1 by Paul, and a Barnes basket assisted by Paul and the Clippers were down 4 pts with 50 seconds remaining, still not totally over.
You didn't do a good job analyzing here, you seemed to have a previous conclusion or argument you wanted to make and instead of going by what happened, you tried to direct the happenings to fit into that narrative, that's not good. In the regular season, this is true that he might sit back sometimes, but in the post-season, when scoring has been needed, Paul scores or at least attempts to do so, that's what we've seen from him as a Clipper. The only series we didn't see this was when he was injured vs SA in 11-12, though even then, he came out in game 4, but it wasn't enough as LAC still couldn't defend anyone on SA but Parke. Everu other time, he's taking shots and made them really, but he's one player on a whole team.
