» May 19, 2009 7:37 PM | By Brandon Hoffman
- Howard Beck of The New York Times: “The playoffs are where ‘amazing happens,’ or so the N.B.A. insists in the artsy ads that seemingly run during every commercial break. The truth is a little less than amazing. For all of the clutch shots, fantastic finishes, overtimes, Game 7s and near upsets, the 2009 postseason is largely playing to form. The four conference finalists — the Lakers, the Nuggets, the Cavaliers and the Magic — finished in the top five in regular-season winning percentage. When the playoffs began, the Lakers and the Cavaliers were No. 1 seeds, the Nuggets No. 2 and the Magic No. 3. This is, in fact, the norm. In the last 10 years, 38 of the 40 teams that made the conference finals were seeded third or higher.”
- Jerome Soloman of the Houston Chronicle on Ron Artest: “The so-called bad boy was a model citizen this season. The Rockets need him or someone like him (and there aren’t many like him in the league) on the roster. Every player on the U.S. Olympic “Redeem Team,” which was in Beijing when the Rockets acquired Artest last summer, said he would bring a toughness the Rockets lacked. You saw that toughness in the playoffs when the Rockets closed out the Trail Blazers in six games and pushed the top-seeded Lakers to a Game 7. It’s not a statistic, you can’t see it on film, and coachspeak keeps you from catching it in news conferences. But ignore Artest’s shooting percentage, dribbling fixation and sometimes odd interviews. He is a difference maker. The Rockets didn’t become mentally tougher by accident. Artest, the only significant addition last offseason, deserves credit for helping make that happen.”
- John Hollinger: “When they’ve played Cleveland, the Magic have both taken more 3-pointers and made more than they did against other opponents, even though the Cavs overall were great at preventing 3s. Obviously, the defense against Dwight Howard likely has a lot to do with this. He’s too strong and quick for Ilgauskas, and there’s nobody else for Big Z to guard. If the Cavs feel compelled to double Howard, as they did in the regular season, then 3-point looks will be available. So let me throw out one oddball thought: What if the Cavs go small and put James on Howard? He’s their strongest player, by far, and as long as he can push Howard out an extra foot he’ll have done his job. It’s unconventional and probably only a fourth-quarter move (they can’t have James picking up fouls early), but it’s worth considering if nobody else can handle Howard.”
- Matthew Futterman of the Wall Street Journal writes about Denver’s unconventional management structure: “The Boston Celtics have the former NBA all-star Danny Ainge calling the shots. The Houston Rockets have Daryl Morey, a statistical whiz with an MBA from MIT. The Denver Nuggets, meanwhile, manage with a five-headed beast whose most influential voice comes from a guy who broke into pro basketball as a financial planner. Somehow though, as the NBA’s conference finals begin, the Nuggets look like the deepest and possibly most dangerous team standing. With 54 wins in the regular season and convincing victories over the New Orleans Hornets and Dallas Mavericks in the first two rounds of the playoffs, they now take on the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday night in Game 1 of the conference finals, the team’s first in 24 years. Few people are more surprised than most of the folks who run the Nuggets. They don’t describe their success as the inevitable result of a carefully designed strategy. Rather, in an era when sports executives like to play themselves off as masters of mathematical analysis and risk management — and in a year when most NBA teams chose fiscal prudence over expensive superstars — the Nuggets are an anomaly. They owe their success to a bizarre combination of luck, good health, opportunism and a management strategy that is more six-shooter than Six Sigma. ‘I promise you there isn’t another franchise in the league that works the way we do,’ says Bret Bearup, the franchise’s ‘adviser,’ a sort of diplomat without portfolio who derives his substantial influence over the team’s moves from his 11-year friendship with owner E. Stanley Kroenke.”
Category: 2009 NBA Playoffs, Boston Celtics, Cleveland Cavaliers, Denver Nuggets, Houston Rockets, Los Angeles Lakers, Phoenix Suns, Points in the Paint
Tags: 2009 NBA Playoffs, Blake Griffin, Boston Celtics, Bret Bearup, Cleveland Cavaliers, Denver Nuggets, Dwight Howard, Houston Rockets, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Los Angeles Lakers, Mark Warkentien, NBA Teams, Phoenix Suns, Points in the Paint, Ron Artest, Shaquille O'Neal, Stan Kroenke
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