Playoff Series Imponderables

[mavsluvr]

That's my guy.  I maintain that he's potentially a much bigger player into the success of the Mavs or some team if they can hurry up and use him before he really hits his big man expiration date.   

Yeah, it was really odd to suddenly in the hottest fire of the playoffs start really using Boban more the way IMO he should have been used all season.   Agree with you the chemistry was lacking which makes it all the more amazing how well the team performed, the general way they held their own for the most part or even better won the +/- during the BIG KP/Boban runs.  

Did they even run this at all during the season?  I don't recall seeing it.  So yeah, if they ran it as a consistent look they go to no doubt the difficulties making the passes into the paint and the turnovers would be greatly decreased.  I thought Boban really helped free up KP. 

I don't think they did. It seems like I recall some announcer saying that KP and Boban had not played together during the season, but I couldn't swear to it. At any rate, it was rarely used, if at all. 

It seems like, if they knew their front court weaknesses rendered it somewhat likely that they would have to resort to this, that they could have been more prepared for it. Even if they didn't want to break it out during games, some basic work on the fundamentals might have been useful -- making crisp, accurate passes into the post, Bobi getting in the habit of keeping the ball high, maybe doing some hand exercises to strengthen his grip strength, if that was part of the issue, etc. 

Yes you're vulnerable to great shooting in the PnR and the 3 but I'm not at all seeing that the Mavs were any worse defensively than they were when they did not play the big lineups.  

The biggest killer runs from the Clippers as I recall came when the JUMBO rotation was NOT on the floor including the 3 point eruptions that killed the Mavs in game 6 and 7.  None of it really had anything to do with slow BIGS.

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of that.
  
The standard rotation guys got cooked on defense but the killer is they also went cold at the worst time on offense, which smart use of the BIG lineups could have avoided. 

It really shocked me how they just couldn't buy a bucket for so many possessions. A lot of missed jump shots, but also blown layups, turnovers, failure to grab rebounds, etc. If they could have managed some consistent scoring inside, that would have been a great thing. 

I was disappointed in the big lineups on the rebounding front. It seemed that the super-sized lineups should have been absolutely crushing the small Clippers on the boards, but it didn't happen. Not saying that was Bobi's fault -- he's actually a pretty good rebounder.