BurningHeart wrote:DirtyDez wrote:BurningHeart wrote:The whole "Defense Wins Championships" thing in sports is so trite.
Talent and luck win championships.
In basketball, making more shots than the other team and rebounding their misses wins championships. Taking care of the ball wins championships. Capitalizing on free throw opportunities wins championships.
Yes talent is the most important factor but when the Suns were contenders it seemed like we could never get stops late in games. WCF's in 05' and 06', game 5 vs San Antonio in 07, games 1-2 vs Spurs in 08' and game 6 vs LA in 2010 come to mind. Horrible defense at the PG and C positions always came back to bite us. No rim protection.
If we had someone to get even TWO more rebounds in each of those fourth quarters, we would have won multiple titles during that run.
But no. We had to get abused on the boards. We lost a game in 2010 WCF directly because one of our worthless **** (Frye) couldn't grab a **** rebound.
I think what killed us over the years was not just rebounding, but overall defense. Yes there are cases where a rebound could've given us a win. But getting more stops, steals, blocks, and better p & r defense could've given us a lead where the game didn't need to be decided over a rebound.
Players like David Lee and Carlos Boozer are good rebounders but they give up just as much points on man to man and p & r defense. And these players usually need a good defender beside them like joakim Noah or bogut.
And when our shots aren't falling, which happended a lot especially in the 4th, we needed both good overall D and rebounding to get stops.