All-Season Player of the Year Discussion thread

[bondom34]

You're willing to give Harden extra credit for his one good game while not giving it to Curry for his.

...

Seriously, what?

Curry: I could understand using the competition to extol Curry if he was playing near the level of his peers, but he's not. The Memphis defense doesn't wipe away the gap between Harden and Curry.

Memphis RS defense: 102.2 D Rating
Clippers: 105.5

So, Curry has been slightly worse, against a better defense. But fine, Harden has a great TS percentage, that's working very well. I don't know what you're arguing at all, as you're saying he's outplaying Curry and Lebron, when he's going against a much worse defensive team. Sure, his offensive stats look fine, but he's still a sieve on defense and he's not getting a free pass for playing this poorly.

[CBA]

While you give Curry a free pass for playing poorly and being a sieve in defense, you still haven't explained why you think I'm picking and choosing which games "count."

Despite how silly I feel judgments based on 3 and 4 game sample sizes is, I'm basing my opinion on the overall play from all those games. Curry is playing much worse than Harden offensively.

[bondom34]

And defensively Harden is still awful. And the gap isn't nearly close enough offensively to make up for it when considering competition. I'm not saying Curry's playing well, but Harden is playing awful right now.

[Krodis]

You say "when considering competition" as if the Clippers aren't by far the best team out of the three teams they're playing. They're not even much worse than the Bulls' defensively. The Warriors put up 90 and 89 points the last two games: The gap between the Grizzlies and Clippers may be large, but the Warriors are actually doing worse than the Rockets relative to the defensive strengths of their opponents.

The Rockets are losing because they're giving up 120 points per game to the best offense in the NBA. Harden's defense hasn't been good, but that's not on him, the front-court is being eaten alive and the point guards are ancient.

[bondom34]

And the Grizzlies are winning in large part to domination by Randolph and Gasol. They're eating up Green and Bogut as well.

[Doctor MJ]

And the Grizzlies are winning in large part to domination by Randolph and Gasol. They're eating up Green and Bogut as well.

Yeah with all this debate that I see is going on, to me the fundamental point for the Warriors is that they are playing BY FAR the scariest team in the league for them. The Spurs may have been more dangerous because at 100% they were just so damn good, but the Grizzlies are the team that we knew the Warriors might have serious problems against specifically because of the front court situations...and even as we talk about it we're still talking about a competitive series here.

What disturbs me about the Rockets right now is not that they are losing to the Clippers, but that they just don't seem like they are on the same planet. I very much get the impression that the Clippers sans Paul might be able to win the series over the Rockets. That should not be possible.

Put another way:

If the Warriors lose to the Grizzlies the Warriors may need to re-think their core because it makes clear that however dominant they are in general, they have a particular weak spot.

If the Rockets don't make it competitive against the Clippers though, then there's basically no reason to take the Rockets seriously as any kind of contender with the model they are playing with. They have invested at this point as if they have a super-team, and this series seems to indicate they just aren't anywhere near there.

For the Warriors that might mean they have to re-think how they use Draymond Green, for the Rockets that probably DOES mean they have to re-think everything because there's no way they can look at what we've seen so far and say "if the Rockets just did X, that might fix Y". They are being destroyed. Simple as that.

What does that mean about the POY discussion? Well Houston's issues are much bigger than Harden alone of course, but as I've said before as someone who is generally a believer in Harden: There are very good reasons to be concerned that the Rockets have adopted methods that let them get by against weaker competition that just won't work when the going gets tough, and you can see the signs of this quite clearly when you watch Harden play. As such I've always felt a bit weird about championing him as the POY even though I think he lifted the Rockets more than anyone else lifted any other team this year.

[bondom34]

And the Grizzlies are winning in large part to domination by Randolph and Gasol. They're eating up Green and Bogut as well.

Yeah with all this debate that I see is going on, to me the fundamental point for the Warriors is that they are playing BY FAR the scariest team in the league for them. The Spurs may have been more dangerous because at 100% they were just so damn good, but the Grizzlies are the team that we knew the Warriors might have serious problems against specifically because of the front court situations...and even as we talk about it we're still talking about a competitive series here.

What disturbs me about the Rockets right now is not that they are losing to the Clippers, but that they just don't seem like they are on the same planet. I very much get the impression that the Clippers sans Paul might be able to win the series over the Rockets. That should not be possible.

Put another way:

If the Warriors lose to the Grizzlies the Warriors may need to re-think their core because it makes clear that however dominant they are in general, they have a particular weak spot.

If the Rockets don't make it competitive against the Clippers though, then there's basically no reason to take the Rockets seriously as any kind of contender with the model they are playing with. They have invested at this point as if they have a super-team, and this series seems to indicate they just aren't anywhere near there.

For the Warriors that might mean they have to re-think how they use Draymond Green, for the Rockets that probably DOES mean they have to re-think everything because there's no way they can look at what we've seen so far and say "if the Rockets just did X, that might fix Y". They are being destroyed. Simple as that.

What does that mean about the POY discussion? Well Houston's issues are much bigger than Harden alone of course, but as I've said before as someone who is generally a believer in Harden: There are very good reasons to be concerned that the Rockets have adopted methods that let them get by against weaker competition that just won't work when the going gets tough, and you can see the signs of this quite clearly when you watch Harden play. As such I've always felt a bit weird about championing him as the POY even though I think he lifted the Rockets more than anyone else lifted any other team this year.

Doc, thank you. I've disagreed w/ you plenty this season, but we're on the same page here for sure. I did expect LA to win that series in 5 or 6, but that was assuming Paul was healthy the whole time, and I assumed a close 5 or 6. This is just embarassing, its somewhat just luck they played a Dallas team who was falling apart moreso than they were in the first round.

[QRich3]

I don't think the Grizzlies were that good of a match up for Golden State as you guys say. All the talk before the series was how very well the Warriors matched up against them and how it would be a sweep or 5 games at most. The Warriors as a whole have not played very well in the first 3 games, that's all. They somehow allowed for Tony Allen to play 36 minutes a game and not be an offensive liability. Tony Allen has been a problem for their offense for like 4 or 5 post-seasons in a row, and somehow the best defensive team in the league hadn't been able to exploit that. It just changed in game 4, but they took their sweet time. I think both Curry and Klay should have a lot of responsibility for the series being 2-2, I don't think it's just a bad match up inside. No team in the league has two of the top defensive players in the league at PF and C, like they do, I think they actually match up as well as possible with the Grizz.

As for the Rockets though, I do think Harden has a lot of responsibility for the Clippers scoring as much as they do too, and I do agree with bondom to some extent that Harden's numbers look prettier than they are. 66%TS looks a lot less impressive when you have a turnover rate of about 25% and you play lackadaisical defense. He's being hidden on Barnes and he's still finding ways to make his man-defense hurt the Rockets a lot. Of course Terry, Prignioni and Brewer are doing their big share of defensive mishaps, as is Jones, but I don't think Harden should get a pass. He jogs getting back in transition, loses his man for backdoor cuts all the time, and can't stay in front of anyone off the dribble. He's not the only one on his team doing all of that, but he is one of the biggest offenders. Poor Dwight has his hands full having to guard two guys every pick'n'roll and they'll still blame him if they lose the series. A lot of those problems are match up related too, as the Clippers are probably the team more able to expose Harden's flaws, but he still shouldn't get a pass for f*cking up very simple things that can be solved by paying attention and maintaining focus.

[fuzzy_dunlop]

^
Agree 1000%. If the Warriors go on to lose this series they shouldn't be allowed to use the "bad matchup" card. The matchup isn't that bad and the Grizzlies aren't that good. This series is 2-2 because Kerr and the splash brothers haven't been up to par.

[Doctor MJ]

I don't think the Grizzlies were that good of a match up for Golden State as you guys say. All the talk before the series was how very well the Warriors matched up against them and how it would be a sweep or 5 games at most. The Warriors as a whole have not played very well in the first 3 games, that's all. They somehow allowed for Tony Allen to play 36 minutes a game and not be an offensive liability. Tony Allen has been a problem for their offense for like 4 or 5 post-seasons in a row, and somehow the best defensive team in the league hadn't been able to exploit that. It just changed in game 4, but they took their sweet time. I think both Curry and Klay should have a lot of responsibility for the series being 2-2, I don't think it's just a bad match up inside. No team in the league has two of the top defensive players in the league at PF and C, like they do, I think they actually match up as well as possible with the Grizz.

I don't know what to tell you. I've literally been telling everyone who asks that the Grizzlies are the big question mark for the Warriors for months now. The front court is very clearly a huge mismatch. Now, mismatches are a gamble in both directions. I wouldn't have been shocked if the Warriors got the long end of the stick on this front, but I looked at Gasol & Randolph and wondered what the Warriors were going to do against that with a true center who plays limited minutes and Draymond Green playing the 4. I honestly don't know how anyone could look at the match up and not take note of that.

And yeah, those 2 guys are the backbone of the Warrior defense, but it's always been clear how atraditional that is, and those who were skeptical of the Warriors should have been pointing to that. As I say, I was, and I'm not even a skeptic.

Re: Curry/Klay should have responsibility for 2-2. Okay, but what does that mean? It's not like anyone is going to pretend they were putting up huge numbers in their bad games. It's fine to knock them for that, but big picture, what are you taking away from it? Either the Warriors suffered because their shooting was unlucky, or it was because Memphis has a particularly good defensive set up, right? I suppose if you want to take it a step further, the thing to do would be to describe in detail why Memphis succeeded and why it's reasonable to expect that plenty of other teams can do the same thing.

Re: Tony Allen bad on offense, but Warrior defense can't exploit that. Allen is scoring 9 PPG on bad efficiency and the Grizzly offense hasn't actually been very effective by ORtg in this series. I don't know how you end up thinking that means the Grizzlies aren't being hurt by Allen's presence out there on offense. The fact that the Grizzlies can ride Gasol/Randolph for their offense in some ways makes Allen less painful on offense, but Allen's presence is still emblematic of their team focusing on defense even if it means the offense is weaker.

[cpower]

I don't think the Grizzlies were that good of a match up for Golden State as you guys say. All the talk before the series was how very well the Warriors matched up against them and how it would be a sweep or 5 games at most. The Warriors as a whole have not played very well in the first 3 games, that's all. They somehow allowed for Tony Allen to play 36 minutes a game and not be an offensive liability. Tony Allen has been a problem for their offense for like 4 or 5 post-seasons in a row, and somehow the best defensive team in the league hadn't been able to exploit that. It just changed in game 4, but they took their sweet time. I think both Curry and Klay should have a lot of responsibility for the series being 2-2, I don't think it's just a bad match up inside. No team in the league has two of the top defensive players in the league at PF and C, like they do, I think they actually match up as well as possible with the Grizz.

I don't know what to tell you. I've literally been telling everyone who asks that the Grizzlies are the big question mark for the Warriors for months now. The front court is very clearly a huge mismatch. Now, mismatches are a gamble in both directions. I wouldn't have been shocked if the Warriors got the long end of the stick on this front, but I looked at Gasol & Randolph and wondered what the Warriors were going to do against that with a true center who plays limited minutes and Draymond Green playing the 4. I honestly don't know how anyone could look at the match up and not take note of that.

And yeah, those 2 guys are the backbone of the Warrior defense, but it's always been clear how atraditional that is, and those who were skeptical of the Warriors should have been pointing to that. As I say, I was, and I'm not even a skeptic.

Re: Curry/Klay should have responsibility for 2-2. Okay, but what does that mean? It's not like anyone is going to pretend they were putting up huge numbers in their bad games. It's fine to knock them for that, but big picture, what are you taking away from it? Either the Warriors suffered because their shooting was unlucky, or it was because Memphis has a particularly good defensive set up, right? I suppose if you want to take it a step further, the thing to do would be to describe in detail why Memphis succeeded and why it's reasonable to expect that plenty of other teams can do the same thing.

Re: Tony Allen bad on offense, but Warrior defense can't exploit that. Allen is scoring 9 PPG on bad efficiency and the Grizzly offense hasn't actually been very effective by ORtg in this series. I don't know how you end up thinking that means the Grizzlies aren't being hurt by Allen's presence out there on offense. The fact that the Grizzlies can ride Gasol/Randolph for their offense in some ways makes Allen less painful on offense, but Allen's presence is still emblematic of their team focusing on defense even if it means the offense is weaker.

Tony Allen has played a historical defensive series thus far, and just to prove my eye test, BPM backs it up (http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... nto01.html) I think it's safe to say playing him as much as you can, since you are not going to outgun the GSW with J.Green and Carter.

[QRich3]

I don't know what to tell you. I've literally been telling everyone who asks that the Grizzlies are the big question mark for the Warriors for months now. The front court is very clearly a huge mismatch. Now, mismatches are a gamble in both directions. I wouldn't have been shocked if the Warriors got the long end of the stick on this front, but I looked at Gasol & Randolph and wondered what the Warriors were going to do against that with a true center who plays limited minutes and Draymond Green playing the 4. I honestly don't know how anyone could look at the match up and not take note of that.

And yeah, those 2 guys are the backbone of the Warrior defense, but it's always been clear how atraditional that is, and those who were skeptical of the Warriors should have been pointing to that. As I say, I was, and I'm not even a skeptic.

I just don't get what's mismatched about defending Gasol and Randolph with Bogut and Green, they're probably the best couple of interior defenders I can think of in the West conference. If it was Griffin-Jordan, or T.Jones-Howard, or Duncan-Diaw, it'd be a lot harder a match up. Draymond defended Gasol really really well in the regular season, Bogut can be a fire hydrant for Randolph's post ups, and in general they have the defensive synergy to exploit the Grizzlies shooting woes. On the other end, Draymond's mobility has Randolph lost, and when they try to hide him on Barnes, the Warriors are having him set picks for Klay and Steph just like they did Ryan Anderson in the first round, exposing him again.

What the Grizzlies have done well (before yesterday at least) is to find options that go outside of their very simple offense, some creative screen play to switch Bogut out of Randolph for post-ups, put Gasol on Green on the defensive side, etc.

Quite frankly, your opinion goes against every analyst I read before the series, mostly everyone was picking a gentleman's sweep. There's this in detail Zach Lowe article, to point out someone everybody loves, that specifies how bad it was for the Grizzlies before the series even started. A few more of these around.

Re: Curry/Klay should have responsibility for 2-2. Okay, but what does that mean? It's not like anyone is going to pretend they were putting up huge numbers in their bad games. It's fine to knock them for that, but big picture, what are you taking away from it? Either the Warriors suffered because their shooting was unlucky, or it was because Memphis has a particularly good defensive set up, right? I suppose if you want to take it a step further, the thing to do would be to describe in detail why Memphis succeeded and why it's reasonable to expect that plenty of other teams can do the same thing.

There's several things, there's specially two things that bothered me about Klay and Steph in games 2-3, and specially Steph. The most glaring one is he wasn't patient in forcing the Grizzlies to the plays they wanted to avoid, specially pick'n'rolls where Randolph was the defender. The Grizzlies would fight tooth and nail to contain the 1st P&R and if they were succesful, he'd just chuck a contested shot or move on to a different play. What's made the Warriors ruthless in the RS is that they'd go to your weakness again and again and they were very undisciplined in doing so in games 2 and 3. Then, they'd be obstinate in taking shots that weren't there, and forcing the issue several times. I get that one of the things that make the Warriors succesful is they force their quick pace on you, and that should be an advantage against the Grizzlies specially, but when the shot is not there, there's no sense in taking it for the sake of the system. Klay particularly took 35.7% of his shots in the first 6 seconds of the shot clock on those 2 games, up 15% from his reguslar season numbers. Steph is partly responsible for that in that he rushed bad passes early in the clock too, not only commiting turnovers but forcing teammates into rushed shots.

In general, the Warriors let the Grizzlies force the match ups more advantageous to them, when in paper it should clearly be the other way round.

Re: Tony Allen bad on offense, but Warrior defense can't exploit that. Allen is scoring 9 PPG on bad efficiency and the Grizzly offense hasn't actually been very effective by ORtg in this series. I don't know how you end up thinking that means the Grizzlies aren't being hurt by Allen's presence out there on offense. The fact that the Grizzlies can ride Gasol/Randolph for their offense in some ways makes Allen less painful on offense, but Allen's presence is still emblematic of their team focusing on defense even if it means the offense is weaker.

Come on, it's not about Allen's numbers at all, he's obviously gonna be bad on offense cause he always is. The thing is that in the post season you can't just get by with a disadvantage as big as Allen's offense or Randolph's defense, and I thought the way the Warriors played yesterday made that point in a cartoonish way. The Spurs showed the blueprint two years ago by just ignoring Allen and playing defense 5-on-4 and Bogut did that in an exaggerated way yesterday, roaming the paint guarding no one and everyone. That will kill any NBA offense in an abrupt way. It's not about the Grizzlies having a moderately low ORtg, it's about embarassing them to the point they can't play Allen no more, which is what happened yesterday.

[fuzzy_dunlop]

^
GREAT post, really nailed it.

[HeartBreakKid]

Any team the Grizzlies do good against people just say they are that teams kryptnonite. No one likes to give the Grizzlies credit that they are just a good team and not some gimmicky mismatch nightmare.

[Dr Positivity]

GSW being 1st defense 2nd offense makes it hard to envision a team who's great on one side of the ball only beating them. They have the defense to make Memphis offense scoring on them a mismatch and the offense to make the Clips defense stopping them a mismatch, although the Clips D has been on a roll these playoffs. If Clips D played GSW like they played OKC last year with all that soft transition and perimeter D they would get killed.

[Doctor MJ]

I don't know what to tell you. I've literally been telling everyone who asks that the Grizzlies are the big question mark for the Warriors for months now. The front court is very clearly a huge mismatch. Now, mismatches are a gamble in both directions. I wouldn't have been shocked if the Warriors got the long end of the stick on this front, but I looked at Gasol & Randolph and wondered what the Warriors were going to do against that with a true center who plays limited minutes and Draymond Green playing the 4. I honestly don't know how anyone could look at the match up and not take note of that.

And yeah, those 2 guys are the backbone of the Warrior defense, but it's always been clear how atraditional that is, and those who were skeptical of the Warriors should have been pointing to that. As I say, I was, and I'm not even a skeptic.

I just don't get what's mismatched about defending Gasol and Randolph with Bogut and Green, they're probably the best couple of interior defenders I can think of in the West conference. If it was Griffin-Jordan, or T.Jones-Howard, or Duncan-Diaw, it'd be a lot harder a match up. Draymond defended Gasol really really well in the regular season, Bogut can be a fire hydrant for Randolph's post ups, and in general they have the defensive synergy to exploit the Grizzlies shooting woes. On the other end, Draymond's mobility has Randolph lost, and when they try to hide him on Barnes, the Warriors are having him set picks for Klay and Steph just like they did Ryan Anderson in the first round, exposing him again.

What the Grizzlies have done well (before yesterday at least) is to find options that go outside of their very simple offense, some creative screen play to switch Bogut out of Randolph for post-ups, put Gasol on Green on the defensive side, etc.

Quite frankly, your opinion goes against every analyst I read before the series, mostly everyone was picking a gentleman's sweep. There's this in detail Zach Lowe article, to point out someone everybody loves, that specifies how bad it was for the Grizzlies before the series even started. A few more of these around.

I'll confess that I didn't look at many articles giving predictions. The statements I made came long before we knew this matchup would happen.

Here's an example of my type of thinking though:

http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2015/4/30/8 ... 1427257779

1. What do you think is your team's biggest advantage in this series?

Grizzly Bear Blues: The matchup against Draymond Green. This may seem counterintuitive, considering he just won the popular vote for Defensive Player of the Year, but he doesn't have the size to contain Marc Gasol when Golden State goes small and Green is the type of player Playoff Zach Randolph was put on this earth to consume. Right now, Randolph is doing pushups in his house staring at pictures of Draymond. (Tony Allen broke in last night and taped them up in a bunch of places Randolph can't reach because he can't jump.)

It's fine for you to say you think that Green can do fine in this situation, but it's weird to me that you don't understand the perspective that I and the Grizz blogger state: Gasol & Randolph are legit 5s by size, and Green is a guy b-r still classifies as a small forward. Green's made his impact by hustle and length while playing in an era where most teams have abandoned offenses based around behemoths on the interior, I think if you put him in this position in an earlier era, he'd really struggle.

And going up against the Grizz is like going into a time machine. I don't mean that as a compliment. Teams have moved to other strategies for good reason, and as such I have no reason to think of the Grizz as true contenders until they make some shifts themselves. But not following trends has some advantages, and one is that any team that has gone all-in on the trend probably isn't geared toward working against you, and hence you may be able to make things closer that many would think.

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.

Re: Curry/Klay should have responsibility for 2-2. Okay, but what does that mean? It's not like anyone is going to pretend they were putting up huge numbers in their bad games. It's fine to knock them for that, but big picture, what are you taking away from it? Either the Warriors suffered because their shooting was unlucky, or it was because Memphis has a particularly good defensive set up, right? I suppose if you want to take it a step further, the thing to do would be to describe in detail why Memphis succeeded and why it's reasonable to expect that plenty of other teams can do the same thing.

There's several things, there's specially two things that bothered me about Klay and Steph in games 2-3, and specially Steph. The most glaring one is he wasn't patient in forcing the Grizzlies to the plays they wanted to avoid, specially pick'n'rolls where Randolph was the defender. The Grizzlies would fight tooth and nail to contain the 1st P&R and if they were succesful, he'd just chuck a contested shot or move on to a different play. What's made the Warriors ruthless in the RS is that they'd go to your weakness again and again and they were very undisciplined in doing so in games 2 and 3. Then, they'd be obstinate in taking shots that weren't there, and forcing the issue several times. I get that one of the things that make the Warriors succesful is they force their quick pace on you, and that should be an advantage against the Grizzlies specially, but when the shot is not there, there's no sense in taking it for the sake of the system. Klay particularly took 35.7% of his shots in the first 6 seconds of the shot clock on those 2 games, up 15% from his reguslar season numbers. Steph is partly responsible for that in that he rushed bad passes early in the clock too, not only commiting turnovers but forcing teammates into rushed shots.

In general, the Warriors let the Grizzlies force the match ups more advantageous to them, when in paper it should clearly be the other way round.

Quality analysis.

Re: Tony Allen bad on offense, but Warrior defense can't exploit that. Allen is scoring 9 PPG on bad efficiency and the Grizzly offense hasn't actually been very effective by ORtg in this series. I don't know how you end up thinking that means the Grizzlies aren't being hurt by Allen's presence out there on offense. The fact that the Grizzlies can ride Gasol/Randolph for their offense in some ways makes Allen less painful on offense, but Allen's presence is still emblematic of their team focusing on defense even if it means the offense is weaker.

Come on, it's not about Allen's numbers at all, he's obviously gonna be bad on offense cause he always is. The thing is that in the post season you can't just get by with a disadvantage as big as Allen's offense or Randolph's defense, and I thought the way the Warriors played yesterday made that point in a cartoonish way. The Spurs showed the blueprint two years ago by just ignoring Allen and playing defense 5-on-4 and Bogut did that in an exaggerated way yesterday, roaming the paint guarding no one and everyone. That will kill any NBA offense in an abrupt way. It's not about the Grizzlies having a moderately low ORtg, it's about embarassing them to the point they can't play Allen no more, which is what happened yesterday.

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.

[Doctor MJ]

Any team the Grizzlies do good against people just say they are that teams kryptnonite. No one likes to give the Grizzlies credit that they are just a good team and not some gimmicky mismatch nightmare.

But it is a gimmick mismatch in this day and age, whether or not the Grizz meant for it to be. The Grizz first two scoring options are their 4 & 5, and they shoot very little 3's. This is basically how NOT to play 21st century basketball, and hence other teams are designed to face these threats.

I said in my previous response I don't mean these things as a compliment, but to be honest I don't mean it as an insult either. If your top 2 scorers score in a way that the rest of the league is not really prepared for any more, that could be great. Frankly these guys aren't good enough to go all the way, but the fact that they keep making people be disappointed in their opponents in the playoffs is precisely what one should expect for using what is now an unorthodox set of talents.

[Doctor MJ]

Last note with the talks about strategy against Tony Allen, and how easily the Spur took care of the Grizz in '13, let no one forget that the 8th seeded Grizz upset the 1st seed Spurs in 2011. When we judge the players on the Warriors, we should keep in mind that contrast. It implies that tactics may indeed be huge here, but that we could all do with a dose of humility when we pronounce an underdog to be toothless.

[bondom34]

To me Memphis is a "bad" matchup for anyone. Its not truly about the players on either team, its the style. They do 2 things:
Play fantastic defense
Slow the game down

Given these 2 things, its rare they're blown out. If you're in a game late, you can always pull it out, and in the playoffs, just winning 4 of 7 is enough. They're not really a bad matchup to me, they're just built to be a bad matchup for everyone.

[QRich3]

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.

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.

Last note with the talks about strategy against Tony Allen, and how easily the Spur took care of the Grizz in '13, let no one forget that the 8th seeded Grizz upset the 1st seed Spurs in 2011. When we judge the players on the Warriors, we should keep in mind that contrast. It implies that tactics may indeed be huge here, but that we could all do with a dose of humility when we pronounce an underdog to be toothless.

Fully agree, and it's happened enough times that we don't see a way for a team to defeat another, then the coach comes up with an adjustment that we didn't foresee and the whole prediction and analysis is worth nothing because a lot of the variables we thought to be a constant have changed.