02-09-2024, 07:55 PM
(02-09-2024, 12:50 PM)KillerLeft Wrote: Oh, sure they will! It’s just that you and I see different strategies for how to deal with that.
You seem to care about matching up with them, whereas I see an opportunity to punish them easily for even attempting to play some slow-footed, single-brain-cell dinosaur in a basketball game against my team of movers and shooters.
Earlier this season, I claimed that I would not be scared one bit of playing the Minnesota Timberwolves in a seven game series. I am actually more frightened of that prospect now than I was before the trade deadline, because the economics of the mavericks roster indicate that they believe as you do, that you have to throw big players at KAT, Gobert and Reid. That seems silly to me, because we literally watched our own mavericks team create the blueprint for how to beat Gobert, and it involved Kleber hitting 8 threes from the corner in a single game and Gobert looking like he did not even belong in the NBA.
They WANT you to try to matchup with their size. That is their entire strategy. That is how they beat you. They have zigged, and the way to beat them is to zag. Plus, it’s just a cooler way of playing basketball that is 1000 times more fun to watch.
I used to think that countering with small ball/5 out was the best way to beat these teams and it’s certainly an option and what got us to the conference finals but Lively has made me rethink all of this. Powell is just not a lob threat anymore so we didn’t see the other option. You consider dinosaur ball having a big old lumbering gobert out there but it’s more than that, it’s drop coverage over and over again. Have you seen what Luka does to drop coverage with Lively? Now can you imagine him having that option ALL GAME if he wants? There’s other ways to attack what your describing is all and now we have multiple guys who can provide 5 out in maxi and PJ and multiple guys to allow Luka to get a guy on his back in the pick and roll and use a lob threat against a big to get a bucket.