70sFan wrote:SinceGatlingWasARookie wrote:70sFan wrote:
Overall good analysis, but I don't agree that Bulls would score on Celtics with only "a little" trouble. Bulls really struggled in ECF and the finals offensively and none of the team they faced was even remotely close to Celtics defensively. They also had quite a few options on Jordan - young Havlicek would be a good choice against older MJ, KC Jones was strong for his size and he played well against Oscar (similar size and strength). Sam Jones would be probably destroyed but he was still more capable than some guys who MJ faced in 1997 playoffs.
The question here for me is how does the legendary Celtics defense campare to the Heat and Hawks defense.
I am betting that the Heat and Hawks are better defenses than Celtics especially when consider the rules differences. The Heat and Hawks get to play uncalled illegal zonish defense that wasn't played in the 1960s. I don't think 1960s refs would tolerate the sagging that was normal in the 1980s and 1990s.
That's not true at all. Players in late 90s pushed illegal defense rules to the limit, they literally screamed at refs to call illegal d. In 1960s we didn't have anything like that, zones weren't allowed but I've never seen refs stopping the game because of zones. Celtics played a lot of help defense and small zones, Russell was himself an one man zone in the paint (unless he played against Wilt).
I don't get this point because late 1990s is the most extreme time for illegal defense in NBA history.
Game 3 Bulls vs Heat just Bulls scores and an interview where Jordan says he played like doo doo in game 2 by shooting poorly. And game 2 where the commentator says "when Michael is playing like this you wonder if something is wrong but I checked and he does not have the flu"
Spoiler:
Late 1990s was illegal defense time because teams ran plays to get an isolation or an illegal defense call. But it was as hard as ever to get the illegal defense called. The set play had to be mechanical and exaggerated to get the illegal defense enforced. Getting an illegal defense called in the normal flow of the game was rare.
I watched a bit of Heat Bulls video without seeing any of those set isolation plays. Mostly there were a bunch of Bulls arround the paint so the Heat were allowed to be there. I saw a couple things that looked like they might be illegal defense but I am not sure. That sagging might have been legal.
