OFFICIAL 2010-2011 NBA PLAYOFFS THREAD : VOL. MOST. ANTICIPATED. PLAYOFFS. EVER?

Originally Posted by airmaxpenny1

But they played the champions last year and gave them a tough as series as anybody did in the West...Why are you getting butt hurt about people realizing they are the second best in the west? They have two elite young players, two bigs who play great interior D, good coaching and a solid supporting cast.

I've seen the Mavs and the Spurs do nothing over the past 4 years, why would I think they are going to do anything all of a sudden? We know what SA and Dallas are, OKC we are just figuring out and the signs are all there.
Click to expand...
Yeah and who are the other two teams LAL played?
laugh.gif


Phoenix and Utah? Where are they now? So if the Mavericks make it to the second round and push the Lakers to the brink then they are suddenly worth talking about?
laugh.gif
Phoenix won just as many games as OKC did, why don't you go hype up the Suns?
laugh.gif


They have proven nothing. I just don't get the hype. Sure KD is great. Sure Russ is amazing, but until you put it together in the Playoffs, what does that say about your team? Tracy and Yao were great in Houston. But they never won a goddamn thing in the Playoffs.

4 years ago San Antonio was putting another ring on their fingers.
laugh.gif


Spurs got to the Western Finals in 08. Year before that they won ANOTHER ring.

I'm just saying, these cats out in San Antonio got the second best record in the L, and the best in the West. This ain't even about the Mavericks. We can talk all day about how young and great the Thunder will probably be. But they have shown nothing in the Playoffs to show me that they are ready to contend. Tracy McGrady tried to show up for his whole career in the first round, never happened. Dude had MVP runs, carried his team in the regular season, but NEVER WON A SINGLE PLAYOFF SERIES.

San Antonio? They got rings, and how'd they win em? By defense. I'm not so foolish to think they suddenly forgot how to play defense. I'm sure if required to in a 7-game series, they would change their style if need-be, but they were about winning basketball games this year, and they did that with their unstoppable defense. Perimeter shooters, slashers, guys who can score in the paint 1-5.

Call me old and stupid, but I have more faith in San Antonio than I do in Oklahoma City.

One playoff series where they got ousted in the first round ain't enough for me, sorry. Doesn't matter who they played. If you wanna go ahead and throw Dallas under that same bus, that's fine, because I ain't said that we were going to contend since Caron went down. (Now go ahead and make your snide remarks about how we were going to contend even with Caron healthy, it's okay, I know you want to).

Thing is, I don't see OKC ready to contend yet. They don't have any post-season experience outside of Kendrick Perkins, who is himself pretty young. If they do? Hell, more power to them. I just don't see them as a serious threat to come out of the West. That's SAS and LAL as far as I'm concerned. Two properly run franchises for over a decade now, and still winning tons of basketball games.

The signs were all there that Portland would be the great young team on the rise, that just never panned out. We were always hearing, this is the year, this is the year, this is the year. They're still young too. They have plenty of time. So do these cats in OKC, that's why I'm in no rush to call them contenders.
 
Dude why do you think San Antonio abandoned the defeinsive, methodical, boring style of play that was their staple for so long? Cause they can't play D anymore. Defense starts with you have down their in the block and Tim Duncan isn't a defensive presence anymore so they play a run n' gun style which is evidence of them not being able to hack it. You don't switch up the formula that won you 4 championships unless you can't succeed at the style. That fast paced %#!% is great for the regular season but come playoff time when things slow down they'll be exposed. No enforcer in the middle, no playoff success. The spurs won this year with superior coaching and depth, two factors that will be increasingly negated come playoff time.

And I think we know why Suns and Utah aren't here anymore, they are completely different teams this year dude, you sounding clownish. And while those teams lost and took a step back, the Thunder have only gotten better this year and continued developing. Since Perk has touched the court they've been the best in the West. San Antonio needs to worry about Memphis first cause I'm not all that confident they'll even get passed them. And for all your %#!% talking of the guys not having big time experience, I watched Russ and KD be the two best players on a loaded US squad on a world stage this summer. So the inexperienced angle you have, which is really your only one, is quite lame. 4 years is an eternity in basketball years, and the guess what, while you were knocking the Suns, who scrubbed the Spurs in the playoffs last year? The Suns.

It's alright dude, I'm eager for next November when you'll eagerly be telling us that you really think its the Mavs year, and "we matchup so well with Lakers."
 
I just don't see the point in hyping young kids that haven't ever won a playoff series. It seems terribly naive to me.

Do I doubt they can win a playoff series? Absolutely not, I just don't see why every single person and their momma are rushing to say they are contenders when they have done nothing. They played well in the FIBA games. That's great. So did Eric Gordon and Steph Curry. USA Basketball in no way prepares you for the NBA Playoffs.
laugh.gif


To the extreme, since Tyson Chandler played this summer in the FIBA games, we'll be just fine!
pimp.gif


And quite relying on personal jabs to try and form your argument, it's quite childish.

And call me crazy, but if coaching and depth don't matter, I still take San Antonio's starting five. Manu and TP give anyone fits.
 
I'd disagree and say carrying a team through the world stage which millions of people watching does give you some experience but that's just me.

We will just have to agree to disagree, but I don't understand how some one could dismiss a team that has only gotten better and more experienced after last year after giving the champs a series, but hype up teams that have only gotten older and haven't been to a Western Conference Finals in 3 years. History usually doesn't treat those teams well.
 
Originally Posted by CP1708

Lakers over Bulls in 6. 
Click to expand...
Your picks/predictions are similar to mine, except for the finals pick....I just added one more game for my Bulls.
wink.gif


This is assuming all teams remain intact and healthy for the entire playoffs.
 
i love checking out the espn summer forecast at the end of the year and see how the experts did:
in the east they had:

1. Heat

2. Magic 

3. Celtics

4. Bulls 

5. Hawks

6. Bucks

7. Bobcats

8. Knicks

and west:

1. Lakers

2.  Thunder

3. Mavs

4. Nuggets

5. Blazers

6. Spurs

7. Jazz

8. Rockets
 
Im only interested in two series in the west: Portland/Dallas is going 6 I like the different lineups Portland can throw out there. OKC and Denver will be interesting.
And in the East: I would enjoy a NY/Mia series more than C's/Ny but my guess Melo will go off a few games then lose because they cant get any stop on defense.
Chi/Indy I just want to see what Granger and Big Roy can do in the playoffs. And can we take that a looter in a riot label off of Granger.
 
JA, sometimes you don't make no sense bro.  If you can't see the Thunder are rising, and rising quickly, and the fact that Perk helps them out big time, I don't know what to tell ya. 

Are they locks?  No.  Are they dangerous as hell?  Yep. 

I couldn't help but
roll.gif
at you saying FOUR years ago the Spurs were putting on rings.  And the past 3 years they got boatraced out the playoffs, so........
laugh.gif
 

The Spurs play no D, and won't be able to run and shoot thru the playoffs like they did in the regular season.  And their run looks to include Memphis, OKC, and LA.  (based on if the highest seeds win)  An old team, going thru 2 of the youngest, fastest teams, and then the team they can never beat this past decade.  Yeah, Spurs are dangerous alright. 

*shrugs* 

Like I said, just my predictions before the playoffs begin.  If I'm wrong, I'll be here and you can laugh at me all you want.  No big. 
 
JapanAir21 wrote:

1) Do they have two crafty guards who can tear up teams in the paint like San Antonio does? Nope.
2) Do they have a post-presence like Orlando does? Like you said, nope.
3) Do they have two superstars like Miami does? Nope.
4) Do they have the length and post-offense like LA does? Nope.
5) Do they have the overall team defense that Boston does? Nope.
6) Do they have the defense and rebounding that Chicago does? Nope.
7) Do they have Brian Cardinal like the Mavericks do? Nope.

everyone is entitled to their opinion.. so you could have simply said that the thunder were too young and inexperienced to be a 'real' contender and left it as that.. but the reasons you gave are bull...


1) does james harden not count as a 2nd guard? he is averaging 19 pts since we made the trade and closes out most games for us.. durant is also pretty effective in this regard (also maynor is as effiecent as they come, coming off the bench)

2) granted we don't have dwight howard (who does? and when did dwight howard ever become a savant of the post play?!?!).. but do they have a PG as good as westbrook? or a scorer as good as durant?

3) so westbrook and durant aren't superstars? are both not presently top 5 at their respective positions? and don't you need to factor in the other 3 players miami will have to start ALONG WITH those 2 superstars? and doesn't bench count for something?

4) so ibaka and perkins don't give us length in the post? did kevin durant all of a sudden become short? (you do know we no longer start jeff green as our PF and kristic as our C, right?)

5) go check our team defensive stats since the trade.. you can find an article on post trade stuff here:
http://www.dailythunder.com/2011/04/the-numerical-perk-effect-the-thunder-before-and-after/

6) again go check the article mentioned above.. sure we might not have the no. 1 overall defense (ranked 7th post trade), but we do have the number 1 offense (post trade).. where does chicago rank offensively?

7) we might not have cardinal.. but do yall have collison?
Click to expand...
 
Like henz said, if Grizz find a way to sneak by SAS, OKC doesnt want any part of Memphis. Perk or not, our defense is something else. Depth, tough, size, people who arent afraid to take the big shot even with rudy out, etc. Its funny how people still just blow the team off, but if u asked OKC who they wanna face i bet they say SAS.

Ibaka and Perk do not scare me. Maybe because of how skilled the Grizz bigs are. The two players i fear when Grizz play OKC is RW and Harden. The reason why people cant see Memphis beating them because itll be hilarious to see Mem in the WCF.

So, just know if we take down the Spurs, that the WCF spot is wide open to play LAL.
 
and i get that people on tv sometimes talk for talking sake without looking at the facts...

but the 2 most interesting series to me are:

spurs vs. memphis (grizz won the last 2 games of the series)

mavs vs. blazers (again blazers won the last 2 games of the series)






especially considering we just played denver twice and won twice (and neither were great games for us).. i would put our series 3rd, just because some of the other series are REALLY lopsided (knicks vs. celtics could be interesting)..

but other than that:
hornets won't compete with LA

pacers won't compete with the bulls

76ers might steal a game or 2, but won't be any real threat to the heat

and i see the hawks laying down against orlando again
 
afflalo didn't play either game.. mozgov got hurt in the 1st, didn't play the 2nd
 
Originally Posted by bhzmafia14

Like henz said, if Grizz find a way to sneak by SAS, OKC doesnt want any part of Memphis. Perk or not, our defense is something else. Depth, tough, size, people who arent afraid to take the big shot even with rudy out, etc. Its funny how people still just blow the team off, but if u asked OKC who they wanna face i bet they say SAS.

Ibaka and Perk do not scare me. Maybe because of how skilled the Grizz bigs are. The two players i fear when Grizz play OKC is RW and Harden. The reason why people cant see Memphis beating them because itll be hilarious to see Mem in the WCF.

So, just know if we take down the Spurs, that the WCF spot is wide open to play LAL.
Click to expand...

If Rudy was there, I would give you a better chance, but as of right now, OKC takes that series in 6 tops. 

I would love to see that series though with a healthy Rudy ***  (no 100K fines for me please. 
happy.gif
)

laugh.gif
laugh.gif
laugh.gif

  
 
I do not think Boston can win it all or even get there with the road they have to take it. However, I can't put it past them to knock out Miami.

But, on the other hand..If Miami gets through them (which I think they will) and that weight of 'you cant beat boston' is lifted from Bron/Wade...IMO, they go all the way.



Western Conference..I'll go with the trendy LA/OKC match up. LA in 7. I have a hard time even bothering to consider the other 6 teams.
 
Originally Posted by Al3xis

I do not think Boston can win it all or even get there with the road they have to take it. However, I can't put it past them to knock out Miami.

But, on the other hand..If Miami gets through them and that weight of 'you cant beat boston' is lifted from Bron/Wade...IMO, they go all the way.
Click to expand...
Totally agree, my pick of the Bulls was shaky simply because I can see Miami "conquering" the Heat, and having so much momentum, how could they let the Bulls knock them off? 

However, if anyone can figure a way to screw up James/Wade, it's Tibbs.  If he can find a way to make the other Heat'ers beat them, he's got a shot.  So I went with them.  But i see where you're comin from about that mental block bein knocked out. 


I'm goin thru totals for the seasons and careers and what not today, another huge season of minutes for Lebron. 
sick.gif
  It won't be this year, or next year, but these seasons are gonna catch up to him before the end of that contract.  And a long run this year will add to that big time. 

  
 
Goin thru the prediction thread, so far not a single person has taken SA to reach the conference finals. 
eek.gif
laugh.gif
 

Doo rollin over in his grave about now. 
roll.gif



This weekend is going to be @#$%^& fantastic.  Can't wait for this @#$%.  Next weekend though, friggin games at the same time as the NFL draft. 
indifferent.gif
30t6p3b.gif
  Every year it pisses me off.  I take the whole week off just so I can get as much work in as I can with this stuff. 
 
LA will breeze through the 1st round with NO. I really believe Memphis will give SA a hard time. LA would have had troubles too....

PO
 
It takes luck.

Along with everything else required to win a championship -- talent, coaching, determination, experience, etc. -- virtually every team to hoist the Larry O'Brien Trophy has had at least a dollop of good fortune along the way. Once in a while a 1996 Bulls or a 2001 Lakers comes along; the only luck those teams needed was their team bus successfully arriving at the gym.

But for everybody else? A break or two along the way is essential.

Take the Lakers, for instance. They won the last two years and richly deserved it both times. And yet they still needed all kinds of good fortune to get there.

•  Trevor Ariza shooting 47.6 percent on 3s for an entire postseason in 2009? I think we can now all agree that was a happily timed sprinkle of randomness.

•  The East's top seed losing in consecutive years? Perhaps not essential, but certainly helpful, as it gave the Lakers home-court advantage in both Finals wins.

•  Yao Ming's foot injury in the 2009 second round? Well-timed, certainly, from a Lakers perspective, though one suspects they may have won in seven anyway.

•  And the matchups? Favorable, for the most part. The most notable part is that in their two title runs, the Lakers never faced the tiny, zippy point guards they struggle to cover except against Aaron Brooks in the Houston series when the aforementioned Yao injury helped push things back in their favor.

That's no knock on the Lakers; each of the past 10 champions has needed a good bounce or two along the way. Detroit in '04 had every opponent suffer a key injury. San Antonio in '03 had Dirk Nowitzki hurt his knee and in '05 had Phoenix's Joe Johnson break his face; two years later they had the Suns suspensions. Miami in '06 had Bennett Salvatore and Dirk's missed free throws. Boston in '08 needed scrap heap pick-up P.J. Brown just to get it out of the second round. The Lakers in '02 had the scandalously officiated Game 6 against Sacramento, a fortuitous bounce to Big Shot Bob in Game 4, and one of the best shooters ever air-balling a crucial 3 in Game 7.

Not that it was a fluke that those teams won -- in each of those seasons, they were either the best team or close enough to it to take advantage when fortune struck.

But I say this because, while the Lakers are again the favorites to win the title, this all seems a little too easy, a little preordained. L.A. still needs some breaks to go its way, and perhaps it will get them -- Andrew Bynum's MRI result being the first one and a cake-ola bracket for the first two rounds being the second. Once again, there's a lack of little, zippy point guards on the horizon, with Denver's Ty Lawson safely tucked away on the other side of the bracket, Dallas' Rodrigue Beaubois newly injured and New Orleans' Chris Paul lacking enough help to scare them.

So as 15 outstanding teams and the Indiana Pacers get ready to tip off the league's second season, keep Lady Luck in the back of your mind. Talent is paramount, obviously, but at this level the talent is even enough that good fortune can often tilt the balance.

A few other harbingers to ponder today (tomorrow, we'll get to my predictions for the playoffs):
Over the past three years, Orlando, Boston and Los Angeles are 5-5 against each other in playoff series and 21-1 against everyone else.

Nobody is particularly high on the way these three teams are playing at the moment, but it's worth nothing that over the past three years they've lost only to each other (with the exception of the 2008 Orlando-Detroit series) and have crushed the other 27 teams.

The Lakers aren't going to be overlooked, obviously -- they're virtually everybody's pick to come out of the West -- but I do wonder if we're prematurely dismissing the possibility of an Orlando-Boston conference finals rematch in the East. Chicago and Miami were better in the regular season; no argument here. But Boston played much better when it had the Big Leprechaun in the lineup and may have him back by the time it's playing games that matter, while the Magic are a classic matchup nightmare because of how Dwight Howard can screw up opposing defenses.

I'm not saying you should bet on any of these three teams; past performance does not guarantee future results, as they say in the stock fund prospectus. But this does stop and make you think, doesn't it?
Teams that don't have home-court in the first round, and lost the season series to their opponent, almost always lose.

Up until last season, teams in this situation had lost 41 straight times. Ouch. Last year, there were two exceptions, but even those got giant asterisks -- San Antonio beat Dallas, but the Mavs only won the season series because they played against the Spurs' backups on the last day of the season. And Utah beat Denver, but only after the Nuggets lost half their team and their head coach.

So it's now up to 46-2 in the past 48 meetings; there were four occasions it happened in the 1990s, but you're still looking at about a 95 percent fail rate. I'll go ahead and bet against that unless presented with a darned good reason not to.

And that means bad news for five of the eight first-round underdogs. Atlanta beat Orlando 3-1, so they're off the hook, and Portland and Memphis split their season series with Dallas and San Antonio, respectively. But as for Denver (1-3), Indiana (1-3), Philadelphia (0-3), New York (0-4) and New Orleans (0-4), not looking good for ya, guys. Not at all.
Since the league went to a 16-team payoff format in 1983-84, only 13 teams have won consecutive series without home-court advantage.

Think about this for a second. Every year there are theoretically 14 teams who could pull off such a feat; in practice there's usually a couple less due to upsets, so let's say 10. (Last year, there were 11 -- everybody except the Lakers, Cavs, Mavs, Suns and Magic could have won twice without home-court advantage if they had kept advancing and the rest of the bracket played out as it did).

This gives us a pool of roughly 300 teams, give or take. Out of that pool, 13 pulled it off. So the odds of pulling this off are roughly 1-in-20; it only happens about once every two years, and it happened each of the past two.

Freaked out yet, Lakers and Celtics fans? This is going to be a tougher gig than you think. Boston will almost certainly have to win two in a row on the road at some point, and there's a good chance the Lakers will, too. We always remember the exceptions -- Boston pulled it off last year, Orlando the year before, and Miami in its 2006 title run -- but history says this is an incredibly difficult feat. Only four teams have done it en route to a championship -- Miami, Detroit in 2004, Houston in 1995, and Chicago in 1993.

The more likely path to glory for any team in the Lakers' or Celtics' position is that an upset or two cleans out the bracket. San Antonio in 2007, for instance, won the title as a No. 3 seed, but had home court for the final two playoff rounds.

In Boston's case, in fact, the news is worse. Only two teams -- Houston in 1995 and New York in 1999 -- have won three series without home-court advantage in a single postseason. Unless the Magic beat the Bulls in the second round, the Celtics will almost certainly have to win three straight on the road to be champions.

And finally, here's a disturbing stat for Lakers fans pondering a Finals series against the Bulls or Heat. You might think the home-court advantage stats even out after we get through all the lopsided first-round pairings, but they really don't. There's a difference, yes, but you need a magnifying glass to see it. Since 1983-84, home-court teams win 76.9 percent of the time in the first round, 78.7 percent in the second round, and 71.6 percent in the last two rounds.
On average, 3.6 series are won without home-court advantage every year.

That's been the case since 1983-84 and is distributed fairly evenly across playoff rounds, which is surprising because most would assume the lopsided 1-8 and 2-7 matchups early in the postseason would tilt the scales. The reason they don't is because of another pairing that is the most prone to upsets. More on that in a minute.

Last season, for instance, we had four upsets: Utah beat Denver and San Antonio beat Dallas in the first round, Boston beat Cleveland in the second round, and Boston beat Orlando in the conference finals. But that Utah-Denver upset is indicative of another trend that I hinted at above:
The first-round 4-5 series seems immune to home-court advantage.

Since 1983-84, the 4-5 series is 27-27; by individual games, the No. 5 seeds have actually won two more. Take heed, Hawks and Nuggets fans. There's a good chance that one of you will be celebrating a trip to the second round.

As for the others, their odds are longer. No. 1 seeds win 94.4 percent of the time, and No. 2s win 90.7 percent. Memphis, Indiana, New Orleans and Philadelphia, your postseason stays are likely to be short-lived.

No. 6 seeds at least have a reasonable shot, winning 27.8 percent of the time. That would produce a 3-6 upset about once every two years; our last No. 6 winner was two years ago, when Dallas beat San Antonio, so we're right on schedule this year.
The Power Rankings like the Bulls and Nuggets, but ...

Chicago and Denver finished as the top two teams in the Power Rankings thanks to strong late-season kicks from both clubs, while the playoff odds favor the Bulls and Lakers to meet in the Finals.

Mountains of salt must be taken with each of those conclusions, however. Chicago was one of the few contending teams to spring all the way through the tape in the regular season, allowing the Bulls to extend their lead over teams like the Lakers, Spurs and Heat in the Power Rankings. And the Nuggets might not have any players for the postseason -- Lawson was hurt last night and Chris Andersen and Arron Afflalo already were having issues.

(Quick side note: The Sunday-Wednesday format of the first two games is a huge benefit to the Lakers, with Bynum's knee, San Antonio, with Manu Ginobili's elbow, and Denver, with Lawson's ankle.)

Finally, you'll notice the percentages for each of the contending teams to make the Finals seem unusually low. There's a reason for that -- the same thing that makes the playoff odds tool powerfully accurate in the regular season actually hurts it in the playoffs, because it adds in a degree of randomness that doesn't exist in real life. In reality, the percentages for the top seeds should be higher, and those for the lower seeds much lower. We'll be working on that in the offseason. And by "offseason," let's cross our fingers that it only means the summer.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

The ultimate sneaker enthusiast community.

NikeTalk was created as a way of giving back to both the sneaker enthusiast community and to the greater global community of which we are all a part.

NikeTalk is NOT affiliated with Nike Inc. in any way, shape, or form. All opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of Nike, Inc.

© 1999-2024 NikeTalk.com

Share this page

Back
Top Bottom