Points in the Paint 5.01.08: Playoff Talk
Posted by Rob Bonnette on 05.01.2008
Plus, Pat Riley's latest move...
Hey there everyone and welcome to another edition of Points in the Paint. This week it's all first round, all the time as I recap some of the first round playoff series, and talk about two old coaches. Let's do it!
He'll be back…he always is.
As a Knicks fan, I hold both contempt and respect for Pat Riley. On the one hand, he made my favorite relevant after over ten years in the wilderness of being a lower level playoff team/lottery team. On the other hand, as soon as he thought the decline was about to begin, he jumped ship and got out of dodge, going to the Miami Heat. And now, as has been his standard operating procedure, he walks away from the Heat's coaching position again. This guy does not stick around once he thinks it's time to get off the Titanic; that might not be so bad on its own, be we all know that as soon Riley the GM is able to put together a Heat team that contend, he will jettison whoever is keeping the seat warm and re-hire Riley the coach. Stan Van Gundy found this out the hard way, as will whoever this guy is that will be the head coach. Seriously, it's not even worth it to learn the guy's name because if the Heat draft Michael Beasley and start out above .500, we all know that Riley will kick the guy to the curb and take the job back so he can ‘get the team to the next level'. No need to get angry, it's just what he does. If anything, give him credit for realizing that the best way to achieve job security in coaching and management is to get as close to the owner as possible and have as much authority as you can get. He won't have to worry about being a Hall of Fame coach who's been fired five times, like a lot of other guys. I won't get mad at him for figuring out the game and then playing it. Can't knock the hustle!
Same deal, different coach
And you can't have a Pat Riley leaving story without a Larry Brown returns story. Brown has coached damn near half the league now, and he's adding to the list by agreeing to accept the head coaching job in Charlotte. The Bobcats showed some promise this season, and have some good players. They need a power forward or center to put next to Emeka Okafor should he come back, and then they'll be ready to roll. Brown will, as he usually does, make this team better and possibly get them in the playoffs as early as next season. We all knew Larry would be back, and once Mo Cheeks got the Sixers in the playoffs his job was no longer available for Larry to poach in the offseason, so Charlotte makes sense. He'll be working for a Carolina guy in Michael Jordan, and there is definitely a Carolina influence on the roster (Raymond Felton and Sean May are Carolina guys). I'll bet anyone that Adam Morrison is the player casualty of the Brown regime, along with Nazr Mohammed, but we'll see soon enough.
Playoff Updates
So far we have four series down and four more to go in the first round. I won't jump the gun on series that are still in progress, even though for all intents and purposes it at least looks like Cleveland-Washington and Detroit-Philadelphia will be over after the next game.
Orlando over Toronto, 4-1: I had the Magic winning in six; I figured that Bosh and Ford/Calderon would be able to pull out two wins, and they had a shot at it in game four, but didn't come through. The Magic backcourt, especially Jameer Nelson, played beyond expectations, while Dwight Howard tried to take over the universe in one fell swoop. His worst game of the series was still a double-double, and he put up three 20-20 games. That is unreal and whoever they get next, probably Detroit but we never know, is in for a battle. At this point I may be willing to pick them in the upset, but I'll wait to see how the Pistons do before I go making that call. Clearly blue skies are ahead for the Magic; they just need to solidify their shooting guard spot and get a frontcourt guy to come off the bench and they're set. Toronto, on the other hand, is not. They have one consistent frontcourt player in Chris Bosh and a good backcourt, but they get nothing on a consistent basis from the rest the rest of the frontcourt. Yes, Rasho Nesterovic has had some good games here and there and Jason Kapono is a good outside shooter off the bench, but Andrea Bargnani is looking more and more like a bust. The guy is seven feet tall and does nothing other than shoot. He gives them nothing on the glass and isn't worth much at the defensive end either. Seeing as how Bosh isn't Mr. Hardcore, whoever lines up next to him at the power forward/center spot has got to have some ferocity and some rebounding prowess. Bargnani is bringing neither right now, and I bet a lot of Raptor fans are wishing their team took LaMarcus Aldridge with that first overall pick last year.
New Orleans over Dallas and San Antonio over Phoenix, both 4-1: I'm lumping them together because you had very similar scenarios here: teams that made huge trades in hopes of combating certain foes in the postseason in Dallas and Phoenix against two teams that didn't make any drastic moves at the trade deadline in the Hornets and Spurs. What's really creepy is how both of the losers were sent home mainly because of their inability to stop the winning teams' point guards, and how in both cases the team traded away a guy who could have at least helped defensively (Dallas gave up Devin Harris while the Suns gave up Shawn Marion) and paid for it in the postseason. Tony Parker averaged 29 points and seven assists against the Suns, put up a 41/12 in game three, and never scored less than 18 points in any of the five games, all while shooting 52 percent from the floor. You won't win any playoff series against a guy who puts those kind of numbers on you. And to add insult to injury Tim Duncan, the man who the Suns brought in Shaquille O'Neal to do battle with, still managed to average 25 points and 14 rebounds for the series. Duncan got a 40/15 in game one and had his worst performance in game four, where he only played 29 minutes because they were getting blown out. Now I'll admit that Duncan could have put up those numbers against the Suns as they were constituted before the Shaq trade, but I don't think that Parker would have savaged them the way he did if Marion was still there to guard him. The Suns also made a tactical error in not playing Boris Diaw as much as they should have during the first three games of the series. Diaw was unstoppable over games four and five where he averaged 21 points, nine rebounds, and eight assists, games that the Suns either won or lost by a small margin. Looking at how this series unfolded, the Suns had their chances but blew them. They choked a million different times in game one and lost a third quarter lead last night. Steve Nash looked to have worn down as the series went on; in games one and two he averaged 24 points and 11 assists and shot 54 percent from the floor, but in games three and five he was a combined 7-for-24 from the field, including 1-for-6 from three point land. He's going to need a solid backup next season; Leandro Barbosa is a shooting guard, not a point guard and is better as a scorer off the bench than as a distributor.
Now onto Dallas…..what can I say? They did as poorly stopping Chris Paul as the Suns did, and like the Suns they suffered from not having Devin Harris around to at least make life a little more difficult for him. Paul averaged 24 points 12 assists for the series, had only one turnover per game, and shot 50 percent from the floor. And oh yeah, he finished them off in game five with a triple double. How embarrassing is that? And to make matters worse, their big acquisition Jason Kidd was matching Paul's brilliant performance with an absolute stinker of his own. Kidd put up ten points and eight assists over the four games he actually finished (I'm throwing game four where got tossed for a flagrant foul), and was completely helpless against Paul. In fact, the whole Maverick team outside of Dirk Nowitzki played poorly for most of the series. Like the Suns, they're going to have to find some way to get someone who can defend the better point guards in the West, because I can't see either team matching up well on defense against Paul, Parker, Deron Williams, or Baron Davis next season with what they have now.
The Lakers beat Denver 4 to 0: Point blank, the Nuggets shouldn't get paid for this series, other than Allen Iverson and Linus Kleiza. Carmelo Anthony put up numbers but clearly wasn't feeling up to the task of carrying his team to at least one win. Marcus Camby got crushed by Pau Gasol repeatedly, and Kenyon Martin proved once and for all just how much of a fraud he really is. The guy talks tough, makes mean faces, and then gets torched by Kobe for 34 points per game over the series, including a 49 point humiliation in game two. Have a nice summer fellas.
OK, that's it for now. Next week, I'll finish off the first round and start looking at round two.
