They had two of the most athletic teams in the league there. Is this team fast and athletic enough to compete with these upper echlon teams?
How fast and athletic were the Mavs? The Celts?
You can add Spurs to the list too
BRIGGS wrote:They had two of the most athletic teams in the league there. Is this team fast and athletic enough to compete with these upper echlon teams?
I think were going to be a half court grinded out defensive team..
Yeah ... I'd be careful about extracting a trend out of this year's finals. Going back over the years it's kind of swung back and forth between running teams and 1/2 court teams; the only real trend/truism about the style of the winners that almost always holds is that "Defense wins titles." Maybe Showtime was an exception (not saying those Lakers didn't play defense, but pretty much every key guy on that team besides Cooper was a better offensive player than defense player).
And I really like the looks of the Knicks defense for next year. It won't be Heat-like where they're so quick and athletic that they can challenge every pass and double whenever they want and still recover to challenge the shooters, but our D will be built the more traditional way, from the inside out with a coach that preaches defense above all else.
All that said, we better take care of the ball when we play the Heat or OKC. Those guys turn turnovers into points as fast as any teams I've seen.
A lot of teams have styles that match up differently. Hopefully the defense improves as a team with the addition of kidd and camby.
I see uptempo still. Lin-Melo-Amare-Tyson are not sloths.
Not SSOL but no reason to think we grind it out.
What we have is better depth and the ability to play better half court game.
BRIGGS wrote:They had two of the most athletic teams in the league there. Is this team fast and athletic enough to compete with these upper echlon teams?
Its not the athletic dynamic I am worried about. Its the will to win.
I think Lebron got that this year.
I know Amar'e has shown this - Melo did in college.
Can they as a group come together and perform?
Honestly, in my opinion, I don't think this squad can win a title. Realistically.
I hope they prove me wrong.
On paper- and we've seen the on paper scenario burn up here in NYC - Francis and Marbury, Tim Thomas, Zach, Crawford, etc.
But the pieces we added this off season - Kidd and Camby- are nearly ancient, and bound to both slow down and break down.
There were only two players with exceptional speed and athleticism LeBron and Westbrook.
Th biggest thing I noticed in the finals is that the two best players in the league were playing. If you compare roster to roster, you could make the case OKC was the more athletic team. But Spoelestra, and I give him credit for this, was able to maximize his matchup advantages and Brooks wasn't. Mediocre coaching beat out clueless coaching.
While we're on this subject.. I also noticed another thing.. teams without major season ending injuries on multiple players tend to go to the finals too. Amazing.
