Re: NBA 2008-09 Regular Season Discussion Thread
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Originally Posted by Carlo Medina
Mark, while certainly the inbounds pass was the most obvious example of something that lost the game for the Nuggets, I think the way they played the third quarter, with some really hard and unnecessary fouls, a technical or two, and some loss of composure is what really derailed them. JR Smith's unnecessary T at the end after hitting a 3. Dahntay Jones's unnecessary two-hand push to the back of Kobe on a curl (which should have been a flagrant). There were a couple of others I'm forgetting which was just Denver playing streetball rather than NBA basketball. In fact, after one of those technicals the announcers said [paraphrasing] "it's little things like this that is going to let the Lakers win."
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What happened in the third with the examples you provide I believe was a coaching decision to get tuff with (or play dirty depending on you point of view) the Lakers. After all, LA has got the reputation of being more of a finesse team and after last years collapse in game 6 of the finals, it has been shown they sometimes have problems handling hard play.
Besides, while Denver had 3 technicals, LA had two of their own. That to me is just hard play and is what you should expect in the conference finals. No one should be allowed to just waltz into the finals just because their is some preconceived marketing campaign already being shown on TV. It sometimes to me seems like with Muppet commercials and G2 commercials showing LBJ and Kobe jarring with each other that some one in some back room somewhere has already decided who going to be in the finals.
IIRC Denver had a 6 point lead with about 5-6 minutes left in the fourth. What happened in the third did not translate to the loss of that lead in the fourth. If I was to dig deeper into the game I would say that Carmello's 4-13 shooting with 4 TOs had a bigger impact.
Getting back to the point, if you wanted to point to a single play that most directly resulted in the loss of the game to LA, you have to say it was that inbound pass. Now successfully getting the ball in play would NOT have won the game, but it's failure sure as heck lost it for them.
What makes this even more inexcusable is that this exact same play happened against the exact same team in the exact same situation in the exact same playoff series. If I was coaching the Nuggets after game 1 I would have had my team practice that play over and over all the next day til they got it right. Either they didn't do that or the players totally tuned him out, whichever the case may be, this is direct breakdown of the coaching on Denver's part.
Lebron's teammates got to a point in the second half where they made some absolutely stupid mistakes. And he just willed them to win. That shot with 1 second left was ice water in the veins. You knew watching him that he was thinking "it's good". Great, awesome finish.
Tonight's game will really determine that.
