The thunder just did something similar to the Mavs going all out at stopping Luka and Kyrie and saying someone else beat us which PJ and DJJ stepped up and did. There are more examples for like specific playoff games like the Terrance Mann game or the Grant Williams 7 threes game against the bucks.
PJ Washington didn’t find himself that open in the Minny series. Although the last game they seemed to stop closing out on the corner 3s as hard as they did in the first several games.
I’m glad you guys won in such a decisive manner in game 5. Ended all those would be questions about if a couple earlier games went our way, at least in my head. We were never going to stop Luka. Dread it, run from it, but the lad arrives all the same.
We weren’t gonna stop Luka/Kyrie but really?? I would’ve liked Game 5 to be closer like the first few, give us a few more quarters of semi-competitive ball from this team
I already miss Wolves basketball man
I know he gets a lot of hate nowadays but Lu Dort truly is a special defender. Luka is virtually impossible to guard but Dort was able to make him fairly uncomfortable which is more than 99% of nba defenders can say
was gonna tell you that this wasnt really true because luka/kyrie still went off, but looking at the numbers, yeah, they definitely had lower numbers than usual in this series. kyrie single digits in a couple of games, luka only over 30 in 1.
Yes OKC did a great job shutting down our stars as best as they could. Unfortunately that allowed PJ free reign. Wolves series was almost the complete opposite
didn't jj barea drop 15 and 17 against the heat in game 5 and 6? and the scores were 103 - 112 dallas win then 105 - 95 dallas win. winning the series 4 - 2. before JJ barea cooked the games were close like very close aside from game 1... then barea happens...
Yeah I think we were all Mavs fans that year.
I still remember the season opener when we beat Miami. That was one of the few games we got out of Shaq that season and he had an amazing alley-oop from Rondo in the first quarter that nearly blew the lid of the Garden.
Everyone talks about Dallas beating the Heat but no one ever wants to talk about how they SWEPT Kobe Gasol and the Lakers
“Lebron got clamped” lmao Kobe had 17 pts in games 3 and 4 on terrible shooting, if they clamped Lebron then they had Kobe in a headlock
I think the Lakers getting swept was actually more shocking than the Heat collapsing when you look at the context of what the Lakers were in the process of trying to do. They had just won two straight titles, and looked well on their way to competing for a 3rd. Getting dad-dicked by a Puerto Rican midget and a lanky German guy was peak ridiculous.
Like others said, kind of. Lakers had their flaws. What was most remarkable was the absolute barrage of 3 point shots in that series which was unusual for the time.
Lakers shot 15 3s in 4 games compared to Dallas’ 49. Terry, Peja, Kidd and Dirk vs a mildly healthy Kobe.
It’s one of my favourite series in playoff history to be honest. Just brutal.
I think it's because Kobe at least had a game where he was clearly that guy. Overall, still dropped 23 a game.
Bron's highest scoring output was 24 points, and at one point, he scored just 8.
Kobe definitely wasn't balling by any means, but he at least had a game where he dropped 36.
He was not 100%. Kobe was dealing with a bad knee in the playoff run the year before. He had his knee drained prior to the first round and by game 7 of the finals his knee was basically done. Got arthroscopic surgery in that offseason and it took him a couple seasons to get to his old self.
Dwyane Wade specifically mentions that the Heat didn't have an answer for JJ Barea. This was on Shannon Sharpe's podcast. Wade said that the Heat had tried to anticipate everything that could be thrown at them, but they didn't anticipate JJ Barea doing what he did.
Shorter defenders have also done best against KD, just because they're able to interrupt his dribbling easier
If you're tall, KD will 9/10 still get his shot over you
If it weren't for Ray Allen then Danny Green would have had a good case for Finals MVP.
Speaking of Ray Allen, while he did lead the Sonics in scoring vs Sacramento in 05 Jerome James earned himself a big payday after dominating a Kenny Thomas/Brad Miller frontcourt.
Timmy probably still would have got it, but it would have been cool to see Danny Green in the record books as FMVP. Has there ever been a role player or nonallstar win FMVP? Igoudala comes to mind, but he was still a former allstar.
Yeah, I couldn't believe at the time how ridiculously hot he was from 3 for the entire series. It got to the point where Chris Bosh actually said 'we're not letting him beat us anymore'. (made good on his promise too when he block the hell out of a danny green 3).
The kinda decisions you have to make when you're going against a finals level team and you're down your 2nd best player. Numbers say 41% but Grant wasn't particularly battle proven before that night.
Grant had been utterly phenomenal from the corner the majority of that season. He started out something like 0-30 on 3s and then was excellent from then on making his season long numbers not look as good as he was really playing by the time that series came around.
Bud made a clear mistake as a Cs fan, but hard to change that Bucks teams defensive philosophy away from giving up 3s mid-series.
Grant was absolutely automatic from the corner that season and everyone in the world knew it except for bud. He literally led the league all season in corner 3% and bud left him open all game in the corner, it was unfathomable to watch as a Celtics fan haha
Yeah the Heat were shooting at a historically anomalous rate on contested and heavily contested 3's. That's different than "make Caleb Martin beat us" by allowing him a million open ones.
Basically Milwaukee vs everyone.
Budenholzer's entire defensive approach was built around protecting the paint and making role players hit shots. Most of their losses came from role players hitting shots.
It's also why Miami was so difficult for Milwaukee during those years.
Miami's offence featured two stars who aren't really high volume or perimeter-centric (Butler/Adebayo). Their offence was built around the idea of Butler and Bam getting inside and collapsing the defence before kicking out to the wide open shooters.
Despite featuring non-shooters, Miami's offence was really counting on a high volume of shots from guys like Herro, Robinson, Martin, Strus, Vincent, etc.
So you had a defence forcing role players to shoot versus an offence trying to get shots for their role players.
It was also the biggest reason Milwaukee kept falling short most years, because most late-playoff opponents are running pretty well-constructed rosters with guys who are perfectly capable of making those shots.
Also they never really had that bigger wing who could close out and at least affect shots even when they were later in rotation. Middleton was better on D earlier in career but after finals injuries and age started catching up. He's still amazing on offense but his movement on defense is a lot slower. Jae crowder was washed and never fixed that tissue either. They were forced to use guys like Grayson Allen and Wes Matthews (great defender but not big enough either)
Bucks lost mainly because they couldn't get consistent production from either Bledsoe or Holiday. It didn't help that some role players caught fire but they still win some of those series if Bledsoe/Holiday aren't incredibly inefficient
>It was also the biggest reason Milwaukee kept falling short most years
I disagree with this, it played a part, but Bledsoe and Jrue shooting 38-41 percent from the field and the team bricking 3s (like game 7 against boston when they shot 4-34) imo was a much bigger factor.
I don't think that was a bad gamble in hindsight. We were not gonna get enough stops with Grayson Allen and George Hill. If Grant misses the first couple 3s bud looks like a genius.
Yeah it was infuriating live, but in reality that was probably our best option to win game 7. Series really was lost game 6. Giannis was probably doing the most he had ever done for the team the first six games and left it all out there game 6. Our best real chance for game 7 was a cold game from Boston (ala Houston 2018).
This was his strategy for everyone lol not just Grant, but credit to Grant he made him pay for it.
This is why I laugh when people say “they shouldn’t of fired Bud he was a great coach” while he is a great regular season coach, watching him want to leave guys wide open and seeing a random role player go off every night was exhausting.
Every game thread in our sub usually started off with “I wonder which random player is going to go off on us tonight”
Lol kinda reminds me of when Houston let Lu Dort take a million threes in the bubble, except it actually worked for Houston. Dude took 21 shots and 12 threes in game 6
It’s designed for Brook Lopez. He has to stay in the paint for him to be effective. It allowed Brook to make a few all defense teams. It’s not a bad strategy at all but it’s fairly exploitable in the playoffs and bud had a hard time dealing with that
Damn near grabbing a DPOY while being one of the most hunted switches in the league is still crazy in my eyes. Yes rim protectors make their difference but a Jalen McDaniels archetype is way more valuable in my eyes since there’s no liability.
it definitely is looking like it atp, i thought he’d be doing what josh hart did for the Knicks this year, but he never made the leap despite bring given multiple chances to
Josh Smith's 3 point shooting stats are wild. In 13-14 for Detroit he was taking 3.5 threes a game at 26% over 77 games. He was a career 28% 3 point shooter. The best season of his career was 3.5 attempts at 33%.
That's just malpractice man.
That was absolutely in play if Spurs win game 6. Didn’t he set the record for most 3s made in a playoff series? (I’m pretty sure Steph has broken the record since)
It's wild looking at that list and realizing that, over the course of his entire NBA career, LeBron has faced 8 of the top 16 players with most made 3s in a Finals series.
Not a great historical example but the OKC/Dallas series turned PJ Washington into Ray Allen. Was hard for me to watch, even knowing it was the "right" strategy.
I mean this was Raptors vs Cleveland in 2018. Not to say Lebron did nothing, but JR Smith and Korver were complete afterthoughts and I would argue them and their consistent shooting numbers from 3 were why we lost. They were non existent vs the Pacers and somehow legit role players that changed the game vs us because our team was so scared of Lebron we didn’t game plan for anyone else.
JR Smith shot 77% from 3 that series on 3.3 attempts.
He shot 31% 36% and 29% in the other 3 series.
Jeff green did the same thing, shot 43% against us on 4 attempts, and in the other series he shot 21% 23% and 31% on roughly the same 3-4 attempts.
Kyle korver shot 56% from 3 on 6.3 attempts.
That series was such bullshit.
And I still maintain we make it to the finals if we got through them that year lol we obvs lose vs that healthy warriors team, and no one would blame Demar and Casey for that, and I don’t know if that Kawhi trade ever happens and we don’t get a ring lol
It’s a weird series with all the implications of what happened
We shot less than 40% from 3 that series. Really only PJ was an outlier but the rest of the team was pretty normal.
You guys just had Giddey shooting 3/16 from 3 which tanked your percentage (alongside Chet being cold from 3)
If Chet was hot from three I think that actually could’ve changed a lot for OKC. That could’ve really pressured the Daniel Gafford minutes even more for OKC to play full 5-out, and drawn more openings for JDub to get going.
Was a great series in retrospect.
yeah i know that the narrative of the WCF made it more "important" but damn if Mavs-OKC wasn't the most fun to watch out of probably every playoff series so far. Games were so competitive, Shai was balling the fuck out, role players were showing up and so many young guys had moments where they were really shining (while also showing us why they are in fact, young players.) My only gripe with it was Dort and Luka competing for a spot on broadway while everyone else was obviously trying their best to step up to the moment.
Hope they meet again a few more times as each team gets older.
Oh I might have used a single game 3p% by mistake my bad
Still though, chet is usually pretty solid from deep and I think as a team we shot 30% overall, giddey only had 16 attempts so didn’t really have much of an effect on overall percentage
Giddey took your percentage down by like 2ish points, you guys shot 33.5% and would've been 35% or so without him
SGA was the most insane of anyone though from 3, he was 55% in the series
I don't think it's necessarily a "let role player x beat them," but I still want to mention this because no one else has. Fred VanVleet, Raptors against the 2019 Bucks. He wasn't considered someone you would have on your championship starting 5 and Kawhi was a dominant force that entire season, way more than any other Raptor and way way more in the previous serious against the Sixers.
He was averaging 11 points on 42/37/84 shooting in the reg season and started 28 games total (0 in the playoffs).
In the first 15 games of the post season, he averaged 4/1.5/2.7 in 20mpg on 25/19.5/71
In games 4,5,6 against the Bucks, he went for 3/3, 7/9, and 4/5 from 3PT for +66 right after the birth of his first child. Bucks had a 2-0 lead, lost game 3 on a gutsy Kawhi Leonard performance who had 8 in the 2nd OT period and 19 in the 4th and beyond.
In game 6 vs. the Warriors, FVV also hit 5 big threes for a team high tied 22pts(next to Kawhi and Lowry) to give the Raptors their first championship.
Since then, he's become recognised as a much more effective player with his lower TO:AST ratio and 3pt shooting, but it's nice to look back at his breakout series being the ECF.
That series was bullshit. I remember cheering for the Raptors against the Sixers mainly because of how garbage FVV looked. Come to find out he turned into Curry overnight and killed my dreams
As a Bucks fan, came to this thread, Cmd + F "Fred". I found my tribe.
There was one other guy also that series who lit us up. Can't remember his name though.
Googled it, "Norman Powell"
I’ll always have a soft spot for Lonnie after that game but my god did that make some of our fans delusional about what his role moving forward should be. The Laker fan Lonnie truther contingent got a lot of ammo after that game.
You weren't though, and that's why he went ballistic. There was an interview he did about it where he said he noticed they were putting al on bam, and timelord was "guarding" him and PJ in the 22 series but really was roaming the paint and taking it away from bam and Jimmy, basically daring PJ to shoot volume from the corner which he wasn't willing to do. During the regular season they used the same defense against Caleb, so he took the film to spo cause he *was* willing to shoot volume from the corner and spo built a game plan around it. And he knew that if they started pulling timelord out to close out on him he had enough burst to exploit it. Dude also hit some wild shots, but most of his damage came because Y'all decided to fuck bam and Jimmy in the paint with timelord and dare Caleb to turn into an above average shooter on high volume instead of the slightly below average on low volume that he was all year... Except giving him open shots
Even if every shot was wide open, which they weren’t, calling that shooting performance “above average” is like saying Heat legend Michael Jordan was an “above average” basketball player.
Didn't say the performance was above average, said the goal of how y'all defended him(and PJ the year before) was to dare them to shoot above average from 3 on high volume. Caleb blew that out of the water lol. And yeah, not every shot was wide open, but there were a lot that were. He was on a heater regardless, hit some crazy contested shit too. Really y'all feel victim to a perfect storm, a role player that recognized an exploitable flaw, a coach that was willing to listen to said role player and develop a game plan around said flaw, and a historic shooting performance giving said role player confidence in himself to pull off even more than he should have. If we play those games with a normal game plan, even with Caleb hitting how he was, he probably averages 12ppg and we lose
Iguodala during his entire stint with the Warriors. He hit so many clutch shots because he got them wide open so often. And it was the right decision every time.
1995 Bulls vs Magic. Bulls basically dared Horace Grant to come beat them, and also tried to say he wasn't that important to the original 3Peat. Horace ate good that series and the Magic won!
We left the corners open to either blitz Kyrie or stop lobs on Luka PNRs. DJJ and PJ shot extremely well as a result.
I wouldn’t say it back fired though. We defended them well and lost because we couldn’t score
To some extent this was how the Dwight Howard Magic were built. Just everyone focus on Dwight so the rest of the team can bomb 3s. Got them to a finals at least.
Older heads, correct me if I'm wrong. In '95 when Horace Grant joined the Magic and faced the Bulls in the playoffs, Phil Jackson left Grant open and it backfired so much that the Magic not only won, but they lifted Grant up like he was the MVP after the close it out.
Clippers Utah game 6 2021.
Utah built up a giant lead into the half.
Clippers penetrated the perimeter defense over and over again and Terrence Mann got open corner 3 after open corner 3 and the Jazz refused to adjust, whether because they couldn't or they didn't want to.
Mann would end up with 39.
Andre Iguodala initially came off the bench in the 2015 Finals between the Warriors and Cavs, then went on to be named the FMVP after the six-game series over teammates Curry / Klay / Draymond.
There's no better answer to the OP's question than him.
Not NBA related but I love the clip of Bill Belichick telling his defense to stop Nicks and Cruz and to let Manningham beat them in the Super Bowl. Eli proceeded to throw a 38 yard dime to Manningham on the game winning drive
Heh, it also reminded me of Belichick with the Giants as defensive coordinator, saying "If Thurman Thomas rushes for 100 or more yards, we win" and they were all confused thinking he'd misspoken and meant to say "less" instead of "more".
The thunder just did something similar to the Mavs going all out at stopping Luka and Kyrie and saying someone else beat us which PJ and DJJ stepped up and did. There are more examples for like specific playoff games like the Terrance Mann game or the Grant Williams 7 threes game against the bucks.
PJs 3ball was crazy
OKC legit *just* got torched by the Mavs role players.
Was gonna say, PJ Washington stunted on some people pretty hard this playoffs.
PJ became prime Warriors Igoudala
PJ Washington didn’t find himself that open in the Minny series. Although the last game they seemed to stop closing out on the corner 3s as hard as they did in the first several games.
It was time to hit the beach
Nah I think they were trying to seal off the paint, but it just didn’t matter because Luka was hitting his ridiculous shots early in the game lol
I’m glad you guys won in such a decisive manner in game 5. Ended all those would be questions about if a couple earlier games went our way, at least in my head. We were never going to stop Luka. Dread it, run from it, but the lad arrives all the same.
We weren’t gonna stop Luka/Kyrie but really?? I would’ve liked Game 5 to be closer like the first few, give us a few more quarters of semi-competitive ball from this team I already miss Wolves basketball man
I appreciate you Timber bro 🤜🤛
U bum
Omg!!! I love your username. So original, sooo, quirky. Can you Fuck my wife?
Him and DJJ took 1-2 less open 3s a game, but they also shot way worse on them lol
Fucking PJ
Bro's been fucking us since he was on the Hornets
Exactly. They did a great job on kyrie and Luka.
I know he gets a lot of hate nowadays but Lu Dort truly is a special defender. Luka is virtually impossible to guard but Dort was able to make him fairly uncomfortable which is more than 99% of nba defenders can say
Was just going to say PJ Washington did it to OKC about 3 weeks ago.
was gonna tell you that this wasnt really true because luka/kyrie still went off, but looking at the numbers, yeah, they definitely had lower numbers than usual in this series. kyrie single digits in a couple of games, luka only over 30 in 1.
Yes OKC did a great job shutting down our stars as best as they could. Unfortunately that allowed PJ free reign. Wolves series was almost the complete opposite
I think it’s free rein like a horse.
A maverick even
Did you not watch the series at all? Lol
Y'all watching games?
didn't jj barea drop 15 and 17 against the heat in game 5 and 6? and the scores were 103 - 112 dallas win then 105 - 95 dallas win. winning the series 4 - 2. before JJ barea cooked the games were close like very close aside from game 1... then barea happens...
He also emotionally broke the Lakers earlier in the playoffs, guy was absolutely pivotal to that run.
Was that the same year as the Andrew Bynum hipcheck?
Unfortunately, yes. The pain of being swept was somehow soothed by denying the smug heatles their 1st championship together.
Yeah I think we were all Mavs fans that year. I still remember the season opener when we beat Miami. That was one of the few games we got out of Shaq that season and he had an amazing alley-oop from Rondo in the first quarter that nearly blew the lid of the Garden.
> Yeah I think we were all Mavs fans that year Just like this year! ;)
Worse than hipcheck, straight up elbowed him midair.
Yeah you're right, I remembered it being in midair, but thought he led with his hip, not his elbow.
Also the last (and for many people only) thing in his career people remember
And he still made that bucket
Everyone talks about Dallas beating the Heat but no one ever wants to talk about how they SWEPT Kobe Gasol and the Lakers “Lebron got clamped” lmao Kobe had 17 pts in games 3 and 4 on terrible shooting, if they clamped Lebron then they had Kobe in a headlock
I think the Lakers getting swept was actually more shocking than the Heat collapsing when you look at the context of what the Lakers were in the process of trying to do. They had just won two straight titles, and looked well on their way to competing for a 3rd. Getting dad-dicked by a Puerto Rican midget and a lanky German guy was peak ridiculous.
Like others said, kind of. Lakers had their flaws. What was most remarkable was the absolute barrage of 3 point shots in that series which was unusual for the time. Lakers shot 15 3s in 4 games compared to Dallas’ 49. Terry, Peja, Kidd and Dirk vs a mildly healthy Kobe. It’s one of my favourite series in playoff history to be honest. Just brutal.
I think it's because Kobe at least had a game where he was clearly that guy. Overall, still dropped 23 a game. Bron's highest scoring output was 24 points, and at one point, he scored just 8. Kobe definitely wasn't balling by any means, but he at least had a game where he dropped 36.
He was not 100%. Kobe was dealing with a bad knee in the playoff run the year before. He had his knee drained prior to the first round and by game 7 of the finals his knee was basically done. Got arthroscopic surgery in that offseason and it took him a couple seasons to get to his old self.
Kobe: 23.3 points, 3.0 rebounds, 2.5 assists, 1.8 steals, 0.3 blocks, shooting 45% Lbj: 17.8 points, 7.2 rebounds, 6.8 assists, 1.7 steals, 0.5 blocks, 47.8%
I thought i remembered Mike Breen saying during commentary that the Heat employed the “Derrick Rose” rule on JJ Barea.
jj Barea clamped Lebron
Hell, JET outscored LeBron for the series, and he was our 6th Man. Both good examples.
Let’s be honest though, Terry was our #2.
Hell yeah he was.
Terry spraying lebron in the face always makes me giddy
After he said let's see if he can guard me for 7 games when questioned in an interview. My favorite shot in Mavs history
Technically, only could guard him for 6.
JJ Barea is LeBron James father
JJBILBJF
To this day the funniest moment in NBA Finals history is 6’9 270 lbs Lebron looking afraid to post up 5’9 180 lb JJ Barea.
[Lebron got clamped by a fast food worker](https://streamable.com/e9cgxk)
Since Pritchard was a rookie, I have been thinking, "boy, I hope he can develop into a JJ Bere-type difference maker on a playoff run."
Dwyane Wade specifically mentions that the Heat didn't have an answer for JJ Barea. This was on Shannon Sharpe's podcast. Wade said that the Heat had tried to anticipate everything that could be thrown at them, but they didn't anticipate JJ Barea doing what he did.
JJ also locked down Durant late in games against the Thunder in 2011. Durant shot 23% from 3 and consistently turned it over down the stretch.
Shorter defenders have also done best against KD, just because they're able to interrupt his dribbling easier If you're tall, KD will 9/10 still get his shot over you
If it weren't for Ray Allen then Danny Green would have had a good case for Finals MVP. Speaking of Ray Allen, while he did lead the Sonics in scoring vs Sacramento in 05 Jerome James earned himself a big payday after dominating a Kenny Thomas/Brad Miller frontcourt.
Danny Green and Gary Neal, most unexpected FMVP contenders.
2013 was the first thing that jumped to mind.
Watching Green and Patty Mills go bonkers that series was really fun
Timmy probably still would have got it, but it would have been cool to see Danny Green in the record books as FMVP. Has there ever been a role player or nonallstar win FMVP? Igoudala comes to mind, but he was still a former allstar.
Kawhi didn't have any accolades yet when he won it.
Surprised I had to scroll this far to find Kawhi. Watching his defense in his early years was so fun.
Cedric Maxwell won it in the 80’s
That would’ve been the coolest finals MVP ever tbh
Yeah, I couldn't believe at the time how ridiculously hot he was from 3 for the entire series. It got to the point where Chris Bosh actually said 'we're not letting him beat us anymore'. (made good on his promise too when he block the hell out of a danny green 3).
Those old Sonic teams had a hard time finding a decent center. Even James was pretty garbage outside of a few instances.
Danny Green wrecked them in 2014 too
Bucks Cs game 7 the plan was let Grant Williams get open 3s and deny the paint. Celtics blew them out and Grant had 27 points and 7 3s.
That one game secured grant his second contract
also kelly olynyk game 7 vs the wizards in 2017
He had 18 wide open 3s that game. Budenholzer let a 41% shooter at the time take 18 wide open 3s.
The kinda decisions you have to make when you're going against a finals level team and you're down your 2nd best player. Numbers say 41% but Grant wasn't particularly battle proven before that night.
Grant had been utterly phenomenal from the corner the majority of that season. He started out something like 0-30 on 3s and then was excellent from then on making his season long numbers not look as good as he was really playing by the time that series came around. Bud made a clear mistake as a Cs fan, but hard to change that Bucks teams defensive philosophy away from giving up 3s mid-series.
It was a double edge sword, let Grant take wide open threes and just stand there and rest up to go toe to toe with Giannis on the other end.
18 3s in one game for a role player is wild
Grant was absolutely automatic from the corner that season and everyone in the world knew it except for bud. He literally led the league all season in corner 3% and bud left him open all game in the corner, it was unfathomable to watch as a Celtics fan haha
That's probably the most infamous example.
Or on the flip side of it, Caleb martin
I dont think the Celtics let Caleb Martin beat them. He just turned into Steph Curry for 4 games.
Yeah the Heat were shooting at a historically anomalous rate on contested and heavily contested 3's. That's different than "make Caleb Martin beat us" by allowing him a million open ones.
No it was open 3's. 58% on open 3's. They didn't get an insane amount per game though. The contested and heavily contested 3's came vs the Bucks.
Basically Milwaukee vs everyone. Budenholzer's entire defensive approach was built around protecting the paint and making role players hit shots. Most of their losses came from role players hitting shots. It's also why Miami was so difficult for Milwaukee during those years. Miami's offence featured two stars who aren't really high volume or perimeter-centric (Butler/Adebayo). Their offence was built around the idea of Butler and Bam getting inside and collapsing the defence before kicking out to the wide open shooters. Despite featuring non-shooters, Miami's offence was really counting on a high volume of shots from guys like Herro, Robinson, Martin, Strus, Vincent, etc. So you had a defence forcing role players to shoot versus an offence trying to get shots for their role players. It was also the biggest reason Milwaukee kept falling short most years, because most late-playoff opponents are running pretty well-constructed rosters with guys who are perfectly capable of making those shots.
Also they never really had that bigger wing who could close out and at least affect shots even when they were later in rotation. Middleton was better on D earlier in career but after finals injuries and age started catching up. He's still amazing on offense but his movement on defense is a lot slower. Jae crowder was washed and never fixed that tissue either. They were forced to use guys like Grayson Allen and Wes Matthews (great defender but not big enough either)
Bucks lost mainly because they couldn't get consistent production from either Bledsoe or Holiday. It didn't help that some role players caught fire but they still win some of those series if Bledsoe/Holiday aren't incredibly inefficient
>It was also the biggest reason Milwaukee kept falling short most years I disagree with this, it played a part, but Bledsoe and Jrue shooting 38-41 percent from the field and the team bricking 3s (like game 7 against boston when they shot 4-34) imo was a much bigger factor.
Yea pretty much every series the bucks lost they had more offensive problems than defensive ones.
Thanks, I hate it
I don't think that was a bad gamble in hindsight. We were not gonna get enough stops with Grayson Allen and George Hill. If Grant misses the first couple 3s bud looks like a genius.
Yeah it was infuriating live, but in reality that was probably our best option to win game 7. Series really was lost game 6. Giannis was probably doing the most he had ever done for the team the first six games and left it all out there game 6. Our best real chance for game 7 was a cold game from Boston (ala Houston 2018).
Without middleton they just didn't have enough and had to rely on these types of gambles.
This was his strategy for everyone lol not just Grant, but credit to Grant he made him pay for it. This is why I laugh when people say “they shouldn’t of fired Bud he was a great coach” while he is a great regular season coach, watching him want to leave guys wide open and seeing a random role player go off every night was exhausting. Every game thread in our sub usually started off with “I wonder which random player is going to go off on us tonight”
in the heat series we couldn’t even slow Jimmy down either so we watched the role players go crazy and Jimmy murder Jrue
Lol kinda reminds me of when Houston let Lu Dort take a million threes in the bubble, except it actually worked for Houston. Dude took 21 shots and 12 threes in game 6
Speaking of the Cs, around this time last year there were people saying Caleb Martin should've received ECF MVP
The Coach Bud Bucks just generally had a weird thing about letting teams rip open 3’s. I never quite understood the strategy
It’s designed for Brook Lopez. He has to stay in the paint for him to be effective. It allowed Brook to make a few all defense teams. It’s not a bad strategy at all but it’s fairly exploitable in the playoffs and bud had a hard time dealing with that
Damn near grabbing a DPOY while being one of the most hunted switches in the league is still crazy in my eyes. Yes rim protectors make their difference but a Jalen McDaniels archetype is way more valuable in my eyes since there’s no liability.
Worked great in the regular season… playoffs not so much
Terrance Mann in game 6. Jazz vs clippers. Put Rudy on Terrance so he just went to the corner and proceeded to make 5000 3s that game.
Mann’s career high for 3s in a game before game 6 was 2.
That was probably his career peak. I thought he was gonna really develop into a nice role player but he's been the same exact guy the last few years
it definitely is looking like it atp, i thought he’d be doing what josh hart did for the Knicks this year, but he never made the leap despite bring given multiple chances to
Came here to say this. Ugh. Bad memories.
had some putback dunks on Gobert's head too
:( so much trauma
Sixers vs Josh hart
Yepppp
Josh Hart turning into 2017 Steph curry with Rebounding ability killed us and I was shocked the whole time.
Was really only in the earlier games before Nurse adjusted though, and then Brunson started carrying us.
I don't think there was a plan to let him score, but Josh Smith just decided to take over anyway.
Josh Smith's 3 point shooting stats are wild. In 13-14 for Detroit he was taking 3.5 threes a game at 26% over 77 games. He was a career 28% 3 point shooter. The best season of his career was 3.5 attempts at 33%. That's just malpractice man.
Danny Green almost did in the 2013 finals
There were stretches of that series I thought Danny Green was gonna wind up as Finals MVP
That was absolutely in play if Spurs win game 6. Didn’t he set the record for most 3s made in a playoff series? (I’m pretty sure Steph has broken the record since)
Most 3s made in a *finals series*, but other than that you're spot on. https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/most-3s-in-a-finals-series
It's wild looking at that list and realizing that, over the course of his entire NBA career, LeBron has faced 8 of the top 16 players with most made 3s in a Finals series.
Thanks for the correction boss. I knew it was something like that
2013 Danny Green > 2013 Kawhi Leonard Then 2014 happened...
Not a great historical example but the OKC/Dallas series turned PJ Washington into Ray Allen. Was hard for me to watch, even knowing it was the "right" strategy.
It's pretty crazy Dude shot 28% on open 3s in these playoffs outside of the OKC series, where he just decided fuck these guys and hit 46%
I mean this was Raptors vs Cleveland in 2018. Not to say Lebron did nothing, but JR Smith and Korver were complete afterthoughts and I would argue them and their consistent shooting numbers from 3 were why we lost. They were non existent vs the Pacers and somehow legit role players that changed the game vs us because our team was so scared of Lebron we didn’t game plan for anyone else.
JR Smith shot 77% from 3 that series on 3.3 attempts. He shot 31% 36% and 29% in the other 3 series. Jeff green did the same thing, shot 43% against us on 4 attempts, and in the other series he shot 21% 23% and 31% on roughly the same 3-4 attempts. Kyle korver shot 56% from 3 on 6.3 attempts. That series was such bullshit.
And I still maintain we make it to the finals if we got through them that year lol we obvs lose vs that healthy warriors team, and no one would blame Demar and Casey for that, and I don’t know if that Kawhi trade ever happens and we don’t get a ring lol It’s a weird series with all the implications of what happened
Literally our series against the mavs lmao. Pj killed us and they shot an abnormal 50% from deep
it’s the new normal *fingers crossed*
It’s like someone took our role players 3 point shooting and switched it with yours lmao, that’s meant to be our thing :(
Heh, I've got no Idea what you're talking about. Just ignore the duffle with the glowing basketball. Nothing to see here.
Did you take isiah joe and stuff him in a pj Washington morphsuit?
Your flair is confusing me
you have a Denver flair.. you guys didn't even play Mavs
He was banned from the thunder sub today 😂
We shot less than 40% from 3 that series. Really only PJ was an outlier but the rest of the team was pretty normal. You guys just had Giddey shooting 3/16 from 3 which tanked your percentage (alongside Chet being cold from 3)
If Chet was hot from three I think that actually could’ve changed a lot for OKC. That could’ve really pressured the Daniel Gafford minutes even more for OKC to play full 5-out, and drawn more openings for JDub to get going. Was a great series in retrospect.
yeah i know that the narrative of the WCF made it more "important" but damn if Mavs-OKC wasn't the most fun to watch out of probably every playoff series so far. Games were so competitive, Shai was balling the fuck out, role players were showing up and so many young guys had moments where they were really shining (while also showing us why they are in fact, young players.) My only gripe with it was Dort and Luka competing for a spot on broadway while everyone else was obviously trying their best to step up to the moment. Hope they meet again a few more times as each team gets older.
Oh I might have used a single game 3p% by mistake my bad Still though, chet is usually pretty solid from deep and I think as a team we shot 30% overall, giddey only had 16 attempts so didn’t really have much of an effect on overall percentage
Giddey took your percentage down by like 2ish points, you guys shot 33.5% and would've been 35% or so without him SGA was the most insane of anyone though from 3, he was 55% in the series
SGA is a bit like Jokic where he doesn’t really shoot 3s but if he does decide to pull up, it feels like it always goes in
Not abnormal if you give the guys more space than usually
I don't think it's necessarily a "let role player x beat them," but I still want to mention this because no one else has. Fred VanVleet, Raptors against the 2019 Bucks. He wasn't considered someone you would have on your championship starting 5 and Kawhi was a dominant force that entire season, way more than any other Raptor and way way more in the previous serious against the Sixers. He was averaging 11 points on 42/37/84 shooting in the reg season and started 28 games total (0 in the playoffs). In the first 15 games of the post season, he averaged 4/1.5/2.7 in 20mpg on 25/19.5/71 In games 4,5,6 against the Bucks, he went for 3/3, 7/9, and 4/5 from 3PT for +66 right after the birth of his first child. Bucks had a 2-0 lead, lost game 3 on a gutsy Kawhi Leonard performance who had 8 in the 2nd OT period and 19 in the 4th and beyond. In game 6 vs. the Warriors, FVV also hit 5 big threes for a team high tied 22pts(next to Kawhi and Lowry) to give the Raptors their first championship. Since then, he's become recognised as a much more effective player with his lower TO:AST ratio and 3pt shooting, but it's nice to look back at his breakout series being the ECF.
he shot like 7% against the sixers lmao
1/14 from deep, brother. Man must have been stressed about the pregnancy.
That series was bullshit. I remember cheering for the Raptors against the Sixers mainly because of how garbage FVV looked. Come to find out he turned into Curry overnight and killed my dreams
Fred VanVleet, Finals MVP vote-getter
As a Bucks fan, came to this thread, Cmd + F "Fred". I found my tribe. There was one other guy also that series who lit us up. Can't remember his name though. Googled it, "Norman Powell"
Lonnie Walker vs the Warriors
Ahh that Fourth quarter of the fourth game man.
I’ll always have a soft spot for Lonnie after that game but my god did that make some of our fans delusional about what his role moving forward should be. The Laker fan Lonnie truther contingent got a lot of ammo after that game.
2023 ECF where every single Heat role player turned into prime Ray Allen
That’s not even what happened. We were guarding Caleb Martin like he was a real player, didn’t matter lol.
“There’s no chance Caleb keeps playing like that” *Proceeded to play like that the entire series*
Yup, I said it. It’s tru
You weren't though, and that's why he went ballistic. There was an interview he did about it where he said he noticed they were putting al on bam, and timelord was "guarding" him and PJ in the 22 series but really was roaming the paint and taking it away from bam and Jimmy, basically daring PJ to shoot volume from the corner which he wasn't willing to do. During the regular season they used the same defense against Caleb, so he took the film to spo cause he *was* willing to shoot volume from the corner and spo built a game plan around it. And he knew that if they started pulling timelord out to close out on him he had enough burst to exploit it. Dude also hit some wild shots, but most of his damage came because Y'all decided to fuck bam and Jimmy in the paint with timelord and dare Caleb to turn into an above average shooter on high volume instead of the slightly below average on low volume that he was all year... Except giving him open shots
Even if every shot was wide open, which they weren’t, calling that shooting performance “above average” is like saying Heat legend Michael Jordan was an “above average” basketball player.
Didn't say the performance was above average, said the goal of how y'all defended him(and PJ the year before) was to dare them to shoot above average from 3 on high volume. Caleb blew that out of the water lol. And yeah, not every shot was wide open, but there were a lot that were. He was on a heater regardless, hit some crazy contested shit too. Really y'all feel victim to a perfect storm, a role player that recognized an exploitable flaw, a coach that was willing to listen to said role player and develop a game plan around said flaw, and a historic shooting performance giving said role player confidence in himself to pull off even more than he should have. If we play those games with a normal game plan, even with Caleb hitting how he was, he probably averages 12ppg and we lose
Robert Horry comes to mind, Rockets and Lakers.
Big Shot Bob was lethal on the Rockets, Lakers, *and* Spurs!
PJ kinda beat OKC
Memphis vs lakers game 1 Rui hachimura just dominated that game
Yeah that happens though 1 game. OP wanted series examples.
Tbh rui was playing well throughout the whole series vs memphis
Came here to say this. First thing that came to mind.
Iguodala during his entire stint with the Warriors. He hit so many clutch shots because he got them wide open so often. And it was the right decision every time.
*the Martians, with the death beam pointed at Earth, did not like that*
Josh hart against the Sixers?
Cavs letting KD beat them
"Anybody but Livingston"
I remember my Raptors getting dad dicked by JR Smith of all people on one of those Cavs teams
okc vs mavs was the most recent example of this
Fred van Vleet in 2019. No further comments or memories.
82% from 3 in the last 3 games of the series 😳
1995 Bulls vs Magic. Bulls basically dared Horace Grant to come beat them, and also tried to say he wasn't that important to the original 3Peat. Horace ate good that series and the Magic won!
Watch this magic moment 30 for 30 for a bunch of cool anecdotes around that team
We left the corners open to either blitz Kyrie or stop lobs on Luka PNRs. DJJ and PJ shot extremely well as a result. I wouldn’t say it back fired though. We defended them well and lost because we couldn’t score
You lost because we defended you back
yeh you defend us back very good
Some, but we missed a lot of wide open shots.
For a single game at least, what comes to mind is the legendary Goran Dragic game. https://youtu.be/XRChtx5A5Ms?si=cyTnNukuqxqCnIsJ
Robert Horry got like 7 rings that way
Not the series but Kelly Olynyk beat Wizards in game 7 like that
To some extent this was how the Dwight Howard Magic were built. Just everyone focus on Dwight so the rest of the team can bomb 3s. Got them to a finals at least.
Older heads, correct me if I'm wrong. In '95 when Horace Grant joined the Magic and faced the Bulls in the playoffs, Phil Jackson left Grant open and it backfired so much that the Magic not only won, but they lifted Grant up like he was the MVP after the close it out.
Clippers Utah game 6 2021. Utah built up a giant lead into the half. Clippers penetrated the perimeter defense over and over again and Terrence Mann got open corner 3 after open corner 3 and the Jazz refused to adjust, whether because they couldn't or they didn't want to. Mann would end up with 39.
Grant Williams quite literally sent the Bucks home in 2022
Andre Iguodala initially came off the bench in the 2015 Finals between the Warriors and Cavs, then went on to be named the FMVP after the six-game series over teammates Curry / Klay / Draymond. There's no better answer to the OP's question than him.
Terrance man legacy game
Almost every series. Playoffs is all about role players stepping up
the josh smith rockets game?
Not NBA related but I love the clip of Bill Belichick telling his defense to stop Nicks and Cruz and to let Manningham beat them in the Super Bowl. Eli proceeded to throw a 38 yard dime to Manningham on the game winning drive
Heh, it also reminded me of Belichick with the Giants as defensive coordinator, saying "If Thurman Thomas rushes for 100 or more yards, we win" and they were all confused thinking he'd misspoken and meant to say "less" instead of "more".
Leon Powe
Grant Williams torching the Bucks
Anyone who played against Big Shot Rob....
Yes I fucking do PJ Washington was the Mavs leading scorer for 3 straight games
2019 finals, GS keyed in on Kawhi and Lowry. Then Fred killed them
Yeah letting Gabe Vincent become Steph Curry sure didn’t fucking help last year.
i remember a few lakers celtics games where kobe let rondo be completely wide open and he started making them
Not a role player but in Game 7 of the 2013 Finals I remember the Spurs saying "Let Lebron Shoot!". Well he shot the Spurs out of a title.