playaloc916 wrote:What an insane series... I have to admit, I lost all hope after the team lost the first two games and seeing Luka look like a player with all the sliders at 99, but the team deserves the utmost respect after battling hard to grind out the series and win it in 7. Props to Lue for having the cajones to make the right adjustments and bench Zu and Bev, and play Batum as the C and give some decent minutes to Mann and even Kennard. Kawhi kind of faded in Game 5, but he just went into Terminator mode in Games 6 and 7. PG, while not shooting the best in this series, contributed a lot in other ways, and Reggie was our 3rd best player in the series, and kept the team in so many games with his 3's. No more Mavs in the future, please... Lol.
Utah will be interesting. They seem to be the heavy favorites, but I think it will be a pretty competitive series. Bev might actually be of some use in this series.
Definitely had my doubts after the first two games. Agree with a lot of this.
Lue deserves credit for eventually making the right moves that many were thinking he was incapable of. Give doc this team and you know zubac/bev would be starting every game with some dumb 3-guard lineups off the bench.
Kawhi was phenomenal. He looks healthy and when his super flat shot is falling (lol) then he's capable of taking us all the way. I won't lie: for a while now, since the end of the last playoffs, i thought his MJness had worn off. After this series? It's a concern of mine no longer.
PG had a really solid series. He didn't put up 30 ppg, but he didn't need to. And he did just about everything else either well or really well. Anyone who is poo-pooing on him at this point is literally clueless about basketball and their opinion is literally worthless.
I give reggie a lot of grief because he is just so maddening sometimes. But he played well overall. As did batum.
I had a feeling morris would show up in game 7, and he did. Honestly you could tell he was figuring things out in game 6, even if he shot poorly. His defense in that game and this one gave us that dimension we've been looking for, for a while now. I expect him to be solid for the rest of the playoffs.
Mann and kennard: game-winning efforts in the most high-stakes game of their careers. That's gotta make both these guys feeling confident. I wasn't sure mann would be able to replicate his efforts with confidence in the playoffs, but here we are. And kennard, you just gotta give this guy some major credit. I did not think he would do anything of worth in the playoffs and he looked like he would be glued to the bench. Then in game 6 he started showing defensive IQ i never knew existed in him. And THEN he started hitting his shots in today's game. This team can go FAR if they keep showing up.
I've been bemoaning, for a while now, the team's decision to skip chemistry building at the end of the RS to attempt it in the playoffs. Really risky move, but hey, here we are now and it seems to be paying off. This is the kind of series that will help the team realize what it's truly capable of. The team seems to have figured out a defensive synergy that it hadn't really seen all season. Keep that up and this team can go far.
