Luka got his head out of the game arguing with fans non stop then the suns just obliterating him in the fourth by having Paul and booker targeting him defensively.
Some crazy stats from the 2nd half of the that suns game. Another weakness of the heliocentric offense, although you can argue if Luka doesnât do that theyâre getting blown out before the 4th quarter
The Suns went after Luka 50 times as the screen defender FIFTY and scored a casual 1.72 points per chance.
Of the 50 screen attacks 36 of them resulted in a primary attack.
Roughly 1/3 of all Suns PNR attacks were directed towards LD as the screen defender. Cold Blooded.
and 36 of the 50 were in the 2H
Probably better off just trying to run plays for Brunson and company in the first half and hope they hit shots because you arenât going to win with your best player completely exhausted and getting cooked/targeted for 1.72 points per possession in the 2nd half
Yeah it was brutal.
I love how the warriors play basketball but I gotta say it does annoy me Kerr doesnât do this more because its clearly extremely effective. He did it a lil against Jokic and it was super effective but he should be doing it more.
No idea why we arenât attacking Morant way more, heâs one of the worst defenders in the league along with Trae. On top of being good offense it should tremendously slow him down on offense.
Brooks getting a 1 game suspension which is the precedent. Didnât really expect anything else.
Not sure it even really benefits the warriors much because Brooks was playing awful on offense. That said he was their best defender.
LOL, theyâre going to run it back under a new coach.
https://twitter.com/TheAthleticNBA/status/1522237432166461440
Wild because they had like the 7th best defense in the league this year.
Mavs definitely need a different strategy though because Luka was a legit traffic cone in the 2nd half.
Clippers basically did the same thing to them.
I dont think regular season and playoff defense is as correlated as some would think.
I feel like there is a strong correlation with a few exceptions. If the team has a weak link that can be game planned against.
But teams donât play like that in the regular season. Doncic would never be hunted relentlessly in a random regular season game
Maybe they would if we had the shorter schedule some people clamor for with more time between games to plan for specific opponents.
They wouldnât. Itâs the same reason why you see players resting so much now. There is no incentive to go all out in the regular season. People only care about playoff championships/rings.
A shorter schedule means less margin for error and more variance, so there might be more games approach as must-win with playoff-level intensity.
I think the mavs miss a strong interior/defender rim protector which allows this mid range fest to go unabated.
That being said suns havenât shot below 50 percent in the playoffs.
Doncic, as noted elsewhere, has been doing something unheard of in this series with 40/40/40 splits: averaging 40 minutes, 40 points and a 40 percent usage rate. If you only follow the discourse around his Game 2 performance, you probably wouldnât guess he scored 35 on 13-of-22 shooting.
Obviously if the mavs donât solve their issues defensively, itâs over over. I hold out hope they can steal tonightâs game, if they donât itâs over in four,
I canât believe embiid is playing. what a tough sob.
Extremely unlikely it happens but Iâm not rooting for him to go nuclear and they win 4 straight on the heat
Will be interesting to see kids adjustments. Probably just play Luka less. Pretty sure he gave up more points than he scored last game which is nuts
Heat with 34 points at half yikes.
Seems like the reffing is following the normal pattern of home team getting very favorable whistles.
Canât these chuckleheads make anything LOL at the score