2005-06 NBA Season Thread

[Dhurr]

Yeah, I know who Jerry West is. Today, he would not even start for the worst team in the league. He would be a benchwarmer.

[Dhurr]

All these so-called "great" players were great for their times. Watch any of the old games, and you can see just how much they suck compared to today's superstars. Except for Wilt, the big O, bill russell, pistol pete and company, I don't have much respect for the players from back in the day.

That does not mean I don't respect the players from the golden age of the NBA. Magic and MJ are phenomenal. Lebron will one day rise to that category. Bird was excellent but I think he gets all the hype because he is white. He does not belong in the same group as Magic and MJ.

[Tigers_eye]

UUU! Dhurr,
I beg to differ.
Nowadays, NBA superstar players are better athelete but thats about it. They have very little skills compared to the old great ones. Terrible shooters. And for heart, they have one that only pumps blood to their body. Thats about it. Dunking the ball behind the back, under the leg, spinning 360 gets you no where if you can't win a game. How can you not give credit to Jerry West? Ask Wilt and you will find how much of a Mr. Clutch he was (you can't ask cause he passed away). Wilt didn't win anything until he played with Jerry.

As for bird, without bird there wouldn't be any Magic. Unless you see some of his games you wouldn't know how much clutch he was. Magic (during his career) would pick bird when the game was on the line over anyone to take the last shot. That should be enough for you to understand what Bird was to Magic. Just so that you know Bird and Magic are the only two players who could play all 5 positions. Center, power forward, small forward, shooting guard, and point. NBA hasn't seen anyone like that yet. May be Garnette (4 positions) comes close but he can't play point all game long. Bird wasn't only hype because he was white, he was more black inside than some of the blacks he played with. Get over the race issue once for all.

These great players not would only kick butts of Garnette, Carter, Kobe, Wade, TD etc. but they would take them to school in any shooting competition. Hands down they were better ball hander, fundamentally sound, better free throw shooter, and mostly better clutch players. Bob Cousy would take no prisoners. No wonder they are considered as the great ones.

[pagol-chagol]

I have worked very hard to control my temptation and increase my productivity. By resisting from posting here my productivity at work has gone up a lot. Missed you all, but I had to win this. I think I have gained the control that I had lost and in the future I'll keep myself from going overboard. ( OK Vladmamu, I did it without my wife knowing about this)

This is the best NBA article I have ever read. I think all NBA fans got to read this:

Billy Simmon's small ball:

This is pretty long so I edited out some of his griping about the old days:

But that's not that answer. After two depressing playoff seasons (2003 and 2004) sent casual fans scurrying away, the league made a conscious decision to change the overall mentality of the game itself. And this wasn't like Lorne Michaels running an occasional "SNL Digital Short" to make it seem like "Saturday Night Live" was still hip; this was an honest effort by the NBA to change the dynamic of games and make them more appealing to watch. Here's how they did it:

1. They sped up the game by giving teams only eight seconds to get the ball over midcourt and resetting the shot clock to 14 seconds in certain situations (after a foul, a kicked ball, an illegal defense, and so on).

2. They started whistling players for the shoving/grabbing/clutching/mugging crap that had been plaguing the league since the Riley/Daly days (I still think Riley should serve some prison time though).


3. They cracked down on flagrant fouls -- almost too much, actually -- allowing players to attack the rim without worrying about being splattered against the basket support.

4. They relaxed the illegal defense rules, allowing smaller teams to use soft zones and double-team scoring threats more easily (also allowing teams to play more scorers at the same time, since they couldn't be as much of a liability defensively).


5. Referees were ordered to allow moving picks as long as the player setting the pick didn't stick a knee out to trip the defender.

The last one was an unannounced, under-the-table rule change that Team Stern will deny in public to the death, much like Marcellus and Butch always will deny what happened in Maynard's basement with Zed and the Gimp. But it happened. I have more than 200 games on DVD, including just about every relevant game from 1984 to 2004, and players were never allowed to set moving picks before last season. They had to approach the dribbler, come to a full stop, and remain still as the dribbler made his move. Watch an old Jazz game some time -- remember how Stockton and Malone were considered the masters of the pick-and-roll? Well, the Mailman held those picks every time. He never moved. If he did, they whistled him.

With a guy like Boris Diaw setting moving screens for him, Nash suddenly became a lethal player -- and two-time MVP.Now? You don't have to stop -- you can run over, pretend you're setting a high screen and basically careen into the defender. You can pretend to stop and continue moving your feet to sideswipe the defender as he's stepping around you (a Tyson Chandler specialty). You can even set a screen, make a 180-degree turn, chase the defender, then clip him with a moving pick a second time (a Yao Ming classic). All of these moves are legal in a wink-wink way. Boris Diaw raised it to another level -- instead of setting the screen on Nash's defender, sometimes he runs next to Nash, then quickly cuts toward the basket and "accidentally" picks off Nash's defender at full speed, almost like a wide receiver cutting across the field and picking off someone else's cornerback.

I know this all sounds mildly confusing, but the high screen has become the single most important play in basketball. Four teams execute it correctly (by bending the fake rules that aren't actually in place): Phoenix, Dallas, San Antonio and Detroit. Gee, what do those four teams have in common? And while we're here, if you ever wondered how Steve Nash played for eight years and never even made second-team All-NBA, then became a two-time MVP in the blink of an eye, it wasn't just because of his hair and his skin color, or because he found a coach that understood how to build a team around him. Nash took advantage of the aforementioned rules that made penetrating guards just as valuable as reliable low-post scorers (as we're seeing in this year's playoffs with Nash, Wade, Harris & Terry, Parker, Hinrich, Billups, even an old-timer like Sam Cassell).

Thanks to those rules, SmallBall has taken over the Western Conference playoffs this spring. Avery Johnson realized after one game that Dallas could only beat the Spurs by playing two point guards (Harris and Jason Terry) and exploiting San Antonio's shoddy perimeter defense; eventually, Gregg Popovich had no choice but to go small himself (even Big Shot Brob is riding the pine). The Suns-Clips series turned into a splendid SmallBall contest in Games 4 and 5, with the notable exception of the Chris Kaman parts (it's simply the wrong series for him, something Mike Dunleavy will probably realize around Game 12). Coincidentally -- or maybe, not coincidentally -- these have been two of the most entertaining and electric playoff series of the decade.

Which raises the million-dollar questions ...

Is this where we're headed? Are teams better off building for SmallBall over a conventional style? If you can only play five players, and you don't have an above-average center on your roster -- which most teams lack, by the way -- why not just play your best five guys regardless of position?

For instance, last summer's most important signing turned out to be Raja Bell, a much ridiculed move at the time. Remember? Twenty-five million for Raja Bell? What was Phoenix thinking? Actually, they were thinking that he's a great defender who makes 40 percent of his threes. Perfect for them. So they started pursuing him on midnight, July 1, then overpaid to make sure they got him. Ten months later, he looked like an absolute bargain even before he saved their season Tuesday night. Meanwhile, the Zydrunas Ilgauskas contract (four years, $55 million) would have been fine in 1998, but it's a roster killer in 2006. Much like in real life, you can't survive with slow big guys anymore.

Just look at this year's draft. As recently as three years ago, LaMarcus Aldridge would have been the first pick, because, after all, you always take a good big man first, right? Not this year. LSU's Ty Thomas (a Marion-like forward) will be the first pick, and I have a sneaking suspicion that Aldridge and Adam Morrison (another player who would have been more effective five years ago) will drop out of the top three, whereas Brandon Roy (Washington's outstanding shooting guard) and UConn's Marcus Williams (yes, the Laptop Guy, as well as the only elite point guard in the draft) will end up going higher than people think (and doing better than people think). In the old days, you needed a franchise player to realistically contend for a title. Now? You need two penetrators (including an alpha dog), three or four shooters and two guys who can rebound and protect the rim. That's it. Just ask Phoenix.

The new breed of NBA player: quick point guards like Chris Paul will become even more valuable in the new-and-improved NBA.It's a different world. Suddenly, Chris Paul and Devin Harris have more value than Chris Bosh and Andrew Bogut. Suddenly, a max contract for Ben Wallace doesn't make quite as much sense. Suddenly, Kirk Hinrich's ceiling has been raised from "multiple All-Star" to "potential three-time MVP." Suddenly, expensive, shoot-first point guards like Baron Davis and Stephon Marbury are untradeable unless you want someone else's junk back. Suddenly, you would be committed to an institution if you drafted Rafael Araujo over Andre Iguodala, and you would throw a three-day long party if Jameer Nelson fell to you at No. 20. Suddenly, it doesn't seem smart to trade Ben Gordon, Tyson Chandler and two lottery picks to Minnesota for Kevin Garnett with about 98,000 miles on his odometer. Suddenly, a team like the 2006 Dallas Mavericks can win an NBA title.

Back in April, I predicted the Mavs would lose to Detroit in the Finals. Now? I'm reconsidering. Can the Pistons really match baskets with the Mavs? How does Ben Wallace have an impact guarding Nowitzki 20 feet from the basket? Who does Rip Hamilton guard? Can the Pistons keep pulling that whole "fat cat" routine -- they assert their dominance one night, then relax the next, and they've been doing it since late January -- against a team as explosive as Dallas? And could the Mavs really end up becoming the first team to win a title solely with outside shooting since the '73 Knicks?

I think they can pull it off. In the meantime, let's kick back and savor a new era of professional hoops. Last night, the Clips rallied from 19 points down in Phoenix by playing SmallBall and out-Phoenixing Phoenix (which should have happened from the opening tip, of course), eventually blowing a three-point lead with a foul to give and 3.6 seconds remaining in overtime, then losing a borderline Stomach Punch Game in double-OT. (Have I mentioned that Mike Dunleavy is coaching this series with both hands wrapped around his neck? I mentioned that, right?) But it was a phenomenally exciting game, and somewhere during the night, I realized that this was the eighth or ninth ESPN classic-caliber playoff game of the spring. This can't be an accident.

So maybe it's time to recant my "There will never be another game like Game 4 of the 1984 Finals" proclamation from three years ago. Maybe there won't be another game with that kind of star power. Maybe Kareem and McHale would have sprung for 60 a night against these gimmicky small lineups. Heck, maybe McHale would have been imprisoned for what happened to Rambis nowadays. But Game 5 of the Clips-Suns series was nearly as dramatic, Game 4 of the Mavs-Spurs series was almost as well-played, and with the way these playoffs are going -- you have to go back to 1993 to find a spring with this many high-caliber games, and we're not even in Round 3 yet -- there's an outside chance that one of these games could rival the famous Game 4 in every category but "Hall of Famers on the floor."

One thing is for sure: I'll be watching. As Devin Harris proved on Monday night, with the New-And-Improved NBA, you never know what you might miss.

[cricman]

"We are all witness" Lebron 3 - Detroit 2! It just went from 70% chance of detroit winning the series to 50/50.

[Tigers_eye]

Fascinating thoughts. My thoughts on back in the days moving screen was too harsh. Come to think of it nowadays, the call has become too linient for sure. Nice Article. But I think the example of Zydrunas Ilgauskas was a cheap shot. The guy half of his career was injured and never could develop as his hype. Second he is an european center for crying out loud. Third he is never the 1st option for the team.

This guy thinks Dallas do not deserve to be a champion with this team. I tell you what, Stacking up pound for pound, they are much better team than the 3 lakers team which won. The only thing this dallas team lacked was the heart and desire. Now they have it.

About Steve nash, I think the writer is upset because his beloved Kobe didn't get the nod for the MVP. The only reason Nash was selected this year because he surpassed the last years phenominal performance and everyone thought that wouldn't be the case with Amare sitting out. The Assist and rebounds has nothing to do with moving screens. If the screener runs side by side with the ball handler then "Stcokton to Malone" is taken away. The only option for the ball handler would be to put up a shot. The 3's that he scored had nothing to do with moving screens. Teams utilize at least 7 seconds to bring the ball up the court from their end. For Nash and Co. they are already under the basket by that time.

My analysis:
1. Early entry in the draft. These boys are still not ready for NBA. Physically and mentally. Specially the big man.

2. Rarity of true skilled Big men: You don't find the Shaq, the hakim, the wilt, the Kareem, The Russell in every draft. They are the rarest breed. So now NBA teams looks at atheletes who can be make shift centers. Powerforwards like Wallaces, Tim Thomas, Brand, chandler, Garnette, Duncan, etc have to do the job.

3. Coaches trying to take advantage of their best player: Don Nelson started it with Nash in Dallas because he didnot have any big man. There is a difference between Iverson and Nash. One is shoot first pass second the other one is pass first shoot second. both are amazing to watch. If you see one game Nash plays then you would know what he does for his team. After Magic he is the best no look passer, hands down.

As for SUNS-CLIPS best series since 84, that tells me the writer is a chicago hater. Didn't he see all those series between the sonics (kemp-payton), suns (barkley), blazers (Potter-clyde "the glide" Drexler), Utah (Malone-stockton), houston (hakim) 90's, or the pistons (bad boys) bulls (MJ-Pip), NY (Ewing), Indiana (reggie) Late 80's and 90's???

As for michale and kareem putting up 60 on these guys, may not be a 60 but they could easily have an average of 40+ in these type of series.

[Dhurr]

Cats_eye, simmons is far from being a kobe lover. i've been reading his columns religiously for the past few years, and i can tell you he's no kobe lover.

[Tigers_eye]

Whaaaat a gameeeeeee!!!
Dang When I saw the Mavs lead I was concerned. Well, I was on the edge in the entire 4th quarter. The 3 of Ginobli felt like a dagger with edges ripping my guts out. Fortunately, it was Ginobli's foul that gave life back to the Mavs. I felt it was going to the overtime the moment Nowitzki made that free-throw. Duncan and Manu showed their class but the rest of the spurs would be bench players to any other team. I thought the referee had let bowen get away with too many swipes at Nowitzki. What a player he has become. He has matured to be a leader. As it says, sky is the limit.

Mavs can keep up the pace 16 quarters with the suns. My concern is barbosa and Diaw the 2 guys that did the damage to the clips. Lets see what happens. Well rested heat will give the detroit run for their money.

Conference finals:
West: Dallas Mavs vs Phoenix Suns
East: Detroit Pistons vs Miami Heat

Great games will follow.

[Tigers_eye]

Miami got the detroit napping in game one and won. This will be interesting. If this series goes to game 7 then Mavs has a great chance. Hoping the Mavs - Suns end in game 5 or 6.

[Tigers_eye]

Never in my wildest dream I thought Detroit this season would have trouble qualifying from the east. They are down 3-1. Very few teams came back from a 3-1 down in a 5 game series. Shaq-Wade are for real. The supporting staff is contributing. Suns did that against the LA Lakers this season. Detroit has the players to do the same but the word on the street is, Flip has lost the grip on this team. The players are bickering and he can't fix the problem. Lets see how things work out.

On the Western Conference Dallas has regained the home court (2-1) advantage with a win at Phoenix. Tonight there is a very important game 4 at Phoenix. If Dallas wins then the series is over (almost).

[al Furqaan]

i hoped to see a suns-heat finals last year...hope nash and co can stick it to nowitzky and big D.

[Tigers_eye]

Amare, Diaw, Marion, Bell, Nash. Off the bench here comes T Thomas, Kurt Thomas, barbosa. Unless injury plays a roll again next season they will dominate the west. They will have the defensive presence (shot blocking - Amare), and offensive nash can win the match without scoring cause Amare may ave 35 a night. The front court of Amare and Diaw would be lethal.

[Tigers_eye]

50 from Nowitzki and dallas is one win away from the finals. I'd say he has matured a lot from his spot up jump shooter position. Lets see how the MVP reacts to this performance. Can't wait for the finals. Come'on Shaq. Finish the deal. Fulfill your promise.

I am ready for college football already.

[Tigers_eye]

Big game tonight. Dallas Vs Miami. Dallas having the Home court to begin with. A deep bench. have at least 3 big men to foul Shaq. That's 15+ fouls. The key is to not let him have the 3 point play. Mr. Wade is super hot. Dallas has not faced anyone like him in this year's playoffs. Miami also didn't face Nowitski like player. Driving the ball at the big man and getting into foul trouble would be the main goal for the general (Avery). Railey, is once again in the finals. This should be a good cat and mouse game.

[Faceoff]

Originally Posted by Cats_eye
Big game tonight...

Bhaijan,

Ajke tho kono khela nei. It will start on Thursday June 8.

[Tigers_eye]

Originally Posted by Faceoff
Bhaijan,

Ajke tho kono khela nei. It will start on Thursday June 8.

ধন্যবাদ। দিলেনতো বেলুন ফুটা করে। এত আশা করে ছিলাম আজকে খেলা দেখবো বলে, আর খেলা পড়বি পর বৃহষ্পতিবারে? ঠিক যেইদিন আমি ব্যস্ত?

The first game is on Thursday. Thanks, Faceoff.

[Tigers_eye]

One down, three to go for Dallas and me. Jason Terry shined with his 32, his counter part Jason Williams had 12. Wade led the Miami with 28. Shaq had 7 rebounds and 17 points, he also had 4 fouls.
Miami lost the game at the free throw line. They were 7 of 19. 36.8%? Where as, Dallas went 20 of 26, 76.9%.

Game two will be at Dallas, Sunday June 11, 9:00pm eastern. Howard, Stack should take care of the ball better. They had combined of 8 turnovers out of the 14 dallas TOs. Lets go Mavs.

[Tigers_eye]

Alrighty then. 2 down 2 to go. As in the NBA it is said, "The playoff does not start unless there is a road victory", it is Dallas's turn to show what they are made of. The series is moving to Miami for the next 3 games. All Dallas has to do is steal one. Dallas is a good road team. They beat each of their opponents twice in this years playoff. That includes the defending Champs Spurs, high flying Suns, and the Grizllies.

Doubling Shaq did pay-off. The supporting cast of Miami was worth nothing. Incredible game plan from the General Avery Johnson. Go Mavs!!