Tag: Chris Bosh

Mavs set to answer rest or rust question

By DOUGLAS PILS
dpils@express-news.net

The Dallas Mavericks seek to solve a never-ending debate Tuesday in the Western Conference finals.

Tipping off against the Oklahoma City Thunder or Memphis Grizzlies, it will have been 10 days since the Mavericks swept the two-time defending champion Lakers.

The riddle: Is it better to rest, or did Dallas lose valuable momentum only a six-game playoff winning streak can provide?

Pundits belabor the question. Players and coaches deflect it. Only the games answer it.

Since the NBA made the conference semifinals a best-of-7 test of wills in 1968, 18 teams have reached the conference or NBA Finals with a sweep while their next opponent fought to close out a six- or seven-game series.

The sweepers are 10-8 in the following series, and eight won NBA titles. However, the sweepers have lost the past three.

Last year, the Magic blanked the Hawks only to fall to the Celtics, who took six games to beat the Cavaliers.

In 2009, the Cavs routed the Hawks before losing to the Magic, who battled seven games with Boston.

In 2005, the Heat swept the Wizards, then lost in seven to the Pistons, who had a six-game win over Cleveland.

The last conference semis sweeper to advance past a team that faced a challenge was the 2003 Nets, who beat the Pistons after they had survived the 76ers in six.

Then the Spurs beat the Nets in the NBA Finals.

The Spurs are the most recent of the 10 winners to claim the title. In 1999, they swept the Lakers, then the Blazers, who had a six-game series with the Jazz, before hoisting their first Larry O’Brien Trophy.

As for the riddle, Dallas has nine players with 10 or more years in the league, so the rest theory seems to fit.

But consider how Dallas knocked out Los Angeles. It made 20 of 32 3-pointers in Game 4. Does a team smoking the nets at that rate really want rest? The chances of Dallas coming back anywhere near that hot seem remote.

Two characteristics of the eight teams who lost the next round and the two winners who failed to win the title are lack of championship experience and/or running into a team of destiny.

Aside from the four sweepers noted above who failed to win it all, the other six are the 1978 and 1985 76ers, the 1968 and 1989 Lakers, the 1996 SuperSonics and the 1998 Jazz.

Philadelphia in 1985 and L.A. in 1989 weren’t far removed from titles, but they fell to the Celtics, who were in the middle of four straight Finals, and Chuck Daly’s Pistons, respectively.

Point guard Jason Kidd, a 17-year pro and member of the 2003 Nets, is the closest thing Dallas has to championship experience, but it won’t face a team that has any in the Western finals.

That leaves the destiny part of the equation. We won’t know until later if the Thunder or Grizzlies fit the notion, but teams usually don’t leap from No. 4 or No. 8 seeds to titles.

Destiny could be Mavs star Dirk Nowitzki, 32, trying to erase his name off the list of great players without a title.

Hakeem Olajuwon was 31 when he got his first. Kevin Garnett was 31.

However, it’s more likely that the team of destiny — the one with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh — will be waiting in the Finals, making the riddle’s solution pointless.

Yahoo ranks Spurs’ ‘Big Three’ among top NBA trios in history

Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker have combined to help San Antonio win three of the franchise’s four titles in NBA history.

Yahoo Sports writer Victor Chi considered that past history when he ranked the San Antonio trio among the seven greatest threesomes in NBA history.

Chi’s dividing point was that each group must have been involved in at least two NBA championships.

Here is what he had to say about Duncan, Ginobili and Parker and :

The Spurs were never the sexiest team in the league, but they were brutally efficient while parlaying sound fundamentals into three championships. Duncan had a previous title, tag-teaming with David Robinson.”

The other six trios that are included with the Spurs’ “Big Three” include the following:

  • Boston’s Bob Cousy, Tom Heinsohn and Bill Russell
  • New York’s Walt Frazier, Dave DeBusschere and Willis Reed
  • Los Angeles Lakers’ Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy
  • Chicago’s Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman
  • Los Angeles Lakers’ Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal and Derek Fisher
  • Boston’s Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish 

When considered in terms of the others on the list, the Spurs’ grouping ranks in the middle of the pack at the worst. Duncan and Ginobili are certain Hall of Fame members and Parker has a good shot if he finishes his career strongly.

Obviously, if LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade stick together for several years and can win a couple of championships with Miami they will qualify on a future list. And others fail to make the cut because they weren’t around to win two titles together.

Spurs sweating defensive breakdowns

By Jeff McDonald
jmcdonald@express-news.net

Before Spurs players could hit the court Wednesday for their longest practice of the season — a 2 1/2-hour marathon in preparation for Friday’s game at Dallas — they first had to sit through the horror film that was their 110-80 loss at Miami two nights earlier.

In between, players discussed summer vacation plans — namely, how long they hoped to put them off.

“The way we are playing now, it will be a quick exit in the playoffs,” point guard Tony Parker said. “We need to forget about our record and go back to playing good Spurs basketball.”

Throughout the franchise’s championship past, the term “good Spurs basketball” has been synonymous with “playing some semblance of defense.”

That was the emphasis Wednesday, and it will continue to be during the season’s final month for the Spurs, who are trending downward defensively at the precise moment they’d hoped to be hitting their stride.

With 15 games left, and a seven-game lead in the loss column on Dallas and the L.A. Lakers, the Spurs (54-13) appear a shoo-in for a No. 1 playoff seed. How far they go with the top slot, coach Gregg Popovich said, will be largely tied to the strides they make — or don’t — on defense.

During the past five games, the league-leading Spurs have allowed teams to shoot 47.7 percent and average 104.6 points, numbers that rank in the bottom third of the league. This month, the Spurs have posted three losses to probable playoff teams by a combined 62 points.

“We’re not as good in that area as we used to be,” Popovich said. “We’re still struggling and trying to get better.”

Of the past nine NBA champions, only one — the 2005-06 Miami Heat — finished the season worse than sixth in field-goal percentage defense. Coming into Wednesday, the Spurs were tied with Dallas and Philadelphia for 10th.

After Wednesday’s epic practice and film session, veteran center Antonio McDyess attributed the team’s defensive woes to “a lack of communication, getting back on defense, assignments where we’re supposed to be someplace and we’re kind of off.”

“Going into the playoffs you have to be more focused,” McDyess said. “In the last four or five games, like Pop said, we lost focus on a lot of things.”

Ironically, the Spurs’ communication breakdown could be rooted, at least partially, in a personnel move designed to improve defensive consistency.

Four games ago, Popovich installed McDyess, a 14-year pro, as his starting center in place of second-year big man DeJuan Blair.

“As we get closer to playoff time, theoretically, I want to start the games with a bit more experience on the defensive end of the court, a little bit more size,” Popovich said. “We’ve been saving McDyess’ minutes all year for the stretch run and the playoffs.

“It might work, it might not, but it seems logical.”

Not only did the lineup shift produce a new combination among the starting frontline, it left Blair and Matt Bonner — two players who haven’t spent much time on the court together this season — paired on the second unit.

In four games since the switch, the Spurs have surrendered 110, 107, 103 and 104 points. Monday, Miami’s Chris Bosh had a good deal of his 30 points at the expense of Blair and Bonner.

“Some of the guys are not in sync with each other,” McDyess said. “I don’t think we’ve seen Matt and DeJuan playing a lot with each other this year. We’re trying to get them used to playing together.”

In light of the lineup changes, perhaps the Spurs’ defense needed to take a step back to readjust before it could take a step forward.

Perhaps.

“That’s no excuse against Miami,” Parker said. “Our defense was terrible.”

The Spurs have exactly one month to iron out the kinks. The postponement of their vacation plans depends on it.