dunkside

Pat Riley is probably one of the most underestimated GM’s in the NBA. He promised to bring a title to Miami when he moved there. He did some mistakes at first (giving large contracts to Eddie Jones and Brian Grant, for example). He was hit by back luck when his star player and the heart and soul of the team, Zo, was diagnosed with focal glomerulosclerosis. But he learned from his mistakes and rebuild the team around Wade and finally delivered the title he promised.

When he realized his team was rapidly breaking down, that Shaq had lost all his motivation and that there was no chance to contend again, he broke the team and set to rebuild it. He even managed to find a fool (thank you, Steve Kerr) to take Shaq’s seemingly untradeable contract. And now the Heat seem to be in a great position again to make some moves that would take them back into the elite of the league.

If they get Odom for the MLE, that would be a steal, an even bigger one than getting Haslem for the MLE (one of the few MLE signings that actually worked well; for failed MLE’s see: James, Jerome and Jeffries, Jared).

And there are rumors about the Heat looking to get Boozer. Getting Boozer would be done in two ways, and they’d both put the Heat into position to grab one of the major FA of 2010. Since the 2 major FA’s are Lebron and Bosh, and the Heat would already have 2 really good PF’s in Odom and Boozer, the target would obviously be Lebron. And while everyone has their eyes on the Knicks or the Nets as probable targets for Lebron, he might end up playing with his friend, Wade, in Miami.

The 2 ways to get Boozer would be:

1. Include JO’s contract. That would give the Jazz 23 mil in expiring salary, but they’d want the Heat to either send them some talent back, or take a bad salary off their hands (and their payroll). Does Kirilenko’s nearly 18 mil for 2010-2011 sound bad enough ?

JO + Haslem for Boozer + Kirilenko works under the rules and makes sense, too. The Jazz get rid of a huge salary and get a huge expiring + a good role player PF to back-up Millsap. The Heat get Boozer and a contract that becomes an 18 mil expiring in 2010, when they could package it in a S&T for a FA (where FA = Lebron).

2. Not include JO’s contract. That can be done if the Heat send Haslem + Blount or Blount + Wright for Boozer. The Jazz could use Haslem and Blount would be just an expiring. The Heat might send a pick and/or some cash, too. This would mean the Heat would still have JO’s expiring to offer around the trade deadline. And if by that time Lebron decides he wants to play with the Heat, he might tell the Cavs to trade them there, and they’d have to do it or risk losing him for nothing in the summer. JO + Beasley (again, with some picks and/or cash) works for Lebron + Z or, even better for the Cavs, for Lebron + Varejao + Gibson.

Actually these 2 scenarios can work with or without Odom, and in some cases having him would create a glut at PF, but having a trio of Wade, Odom and Boozer would surely make the Heat much more appealing to Lebron. And a team with Wade, Lebron, Odom, Boozer would be an instant contender and a possible dynasty.

With or without Lebron, Riley seems to be on his way to building a new team around Wade, and doing it with solid picks and trying to get talented players without breaking the bank and putting his team in salary cap hell, while also retaining flexibility so he can make a move for a superstar if the possibility arises. With Riles continuing to make such moves Miami will probably be back in the Eastern Conference Finals in 2-3 years, if not even in the Finals.

Team analysis Carlos Boozer, Dwyane Wade, Lamar Odom, Lebron James, Miami Heat, Pat Riley

As soon as their season is over (be it at the hands of the Celtics or in 5 games against the Cavs), the Magic should focus all of their efforts towards one goal: getting Jason Kidd. Right now they are not a real contender. They haven’t played like one after they lost Jameer Nelson. They got a decent replacement in Rafer Alston, but the difference is huge. Without Jameer (including the game in which he was injured) the Magic went 23-13 for a 63.8% winning percentage. With Jameer they were 36-10, winning 78.3% of their games. With Jameer they’d probably already be playing the Cavs in the ECF and giving them some trouble.

Follow me! I know the road to the Finals.

With Jameer coming back next season and Alston still being under contract it would seem a little weird to bring another PG  in Kidd. But Jameer is more of a shoot first PG. Kidd could play PG on offense (with Jameer as a SG) and SG on defense. He can’t guard small quick PG’s but he can still do a nice job on SG’s. The Magic had some trouble finding a starting SG. With Kidd and Jameer as starters and Alston, Courtney Lee and Pietrus on the bench they’d have a very strong back-court.

And here’s where Kidd could help the Magic:

One of the Magic’s biggest problems in these playoffs was controlling the tempo of the game. More than once they were up by 15-20 points by the 3rd quarter only to see that difference (and sometimes the game) slip through their fingers. Stan Van Gundy complained that even though he told them to push the ball, they walked it up the court and played at a tempo that suited their opponents better. Kidd could help in this aspect. He still is one of the best PG’s at pushing the tempo and getting people open shots.

Speaking of getting the ball to open teammates, there was a disturbingly common sight these playoffs: Dwight Howard open under the opponents’ basket waving his arms and jumping around like a madman while his teammates seemed to ingore him and failed to get him the ball. Kidd would make sure Dwight Howard gets the ball. In fact getting Kidd would at least double the number of alley oops Dwight got per game, and that’s scary. By keeping him involved in the offense, Kidd would help Dwight stay motivated on the defensive end for the entire game. Second DPOY award in a row for Dwight? You can book it.

Kidd will also bring leadership. He’s a veteran, and he’s a true leader. He’s been to the finals twice and he knows what you need to get there and what you need to win. He has tons of playoff experience, so when needed he will bring a calming influence. Even if Shaq was right and Stan Van Gundy is a master of panic, Kidd won’t let the Magic get startled.

Kidd knows he only has very few years left to compete for a title, so he will be very motivated and he will be on his best behavior (he has a little bit of a reputation of a coach killer). He will also be willing to take less money in order to compete for a title, and he’d probably want to have a big enough role on the team so he won’t feel like he’s riding another guy’s coattails, which would happen if he were to join the defending champion.

Financially, the Magic would have to pay the tax to bring Kidd. But they should, cause this would really improve their chances to get a title. They would probably have to pay it anyway to retain Hedo and Gortat. However, with the economy going down and him not having a season as good as his last, they won’t have to break the bank to keep Hedo. (Well, unless GM Otis Smith ends up bidding against himself like he did when he acquired Rashard Lewis.) Kidd will probably take the MLE (or even less) to join a contender. If the Magic can split the MLE between Kidd and Gortat that would be great. If Gortat gets an offer for the MLE from another team and the Magic match it, maybe they can work out a S&T for Kidd, perhaps involving Alston and his expiring 5 mil deal. Battie will have an expiring deal and the arrival of Kidd would make JJ Redick expendable if he wasn’t already. This is where Otis Smith has to earn his paycheck: improve the roster and without increasing the payroll by much; bring in Kidd without losing Gortat or Hedo and maybe turn Alston and Battie into some front-court help.

Player analysis, Team analysis Jason Kidd, Orlando Magic

There are small things that the Bulls didn’t do that if they did, they’d probably be up 3-1 and on their way to winning the series against the Celtics.

• Rose got lost in screens and didn’t fight enough through them. This allowed the Celtics (Ray Allen amongst them) to get open 3s.

• Gordon needed to move his feet more. He must have helped with defensive rebounding too, especially when the Celtics were killing the Bulls on the offensive glass. He also was tentative at times in getting after the ball – on more than one occasion I saw him hesitating to take a couple of steps and pick-up a loose ball only to have a Celtic player beat him to it. On another occasion on a fast break he stopped at the 3p line instead of filling the lane, and when Rose’s pass went a little bit in front of him, he tried to catch it without moving his feet and lost it out of bounds.

• Noah couldn’t keep Perkins off the offensive glass. Easier said than done, since he’s giving up a lot of pounds, but it was very frustrating to see Perkins grab offensive rebound after offensive rebound even when Noah had inside position and was boxing him out.

• Salmons wasn’t aggressive enough. Seemed that most of the time he shot the ball, he made his shots. But he hesitated to shoot it at times, even when he was open. He could also help more on defensive rebounding.

• Tyrus gets criticized for not boxing out his man all the time and not running more on offense, but what would have helped him most was if he could have finished better in traffic. He had a few dunks that he missed on which he was probably fouled, but you won’t get some of those calls against the denfending champions. Especially not on their home court.

• Hinrich kept taking bad shots off the dribble. He made some of those, but they were still bad shots. He took long 2s when he had a lot of room to penetrate and when he did penetrate he missed some easy layups.

• Brad Miller acted stupid and got silly fouls and dumb technicals. Not what you’d expect from a veteran. He also missed a bunch of passes that should have been easy to make for a passer like him. And he just fucked up a couple of FT that could have taken game 5 to a 2nd overtime.

Team analysis Chicago Bulls

Amidst the Pistons implosion and all the talk about their 9 (and counting) losing streak and how bringing Iverson was not such a good idea (doooh), there’s an interesting angle that is left out.

Almost 10 years ago Larry Brown almost got Allen Iverson traded to Detroit because he felt he was detrimental to his team in Philadelphia. The trade only fell apart because Matt Geiger didn’t want to forfeit his trade kicker. This motivated Iverson to have the best season of his career. He led Philadelphia to the Finals and got the MVP in the process. However their relationship was never great and Iverson never became the kind of player Brown envisioned: a pass first PG that made his teammates better and only scored when his team needed it. He kept trying to win by outscoring the other team all by himself and became a notorious ball-hog. Only 2 years after reaching the Finals with the Sixers, Brown left. The Sixers followed the historical trend of teams that improved by leaps and bounds when Brown took over and became considerably worse after he left.

Brown took over the Pistons, coached them to a title in 2004 followed by a narrow loss in 7 games in the 2005 Finals and, ever the nomad, left immediately after a public spat. The Pistons replaced Brown with Flip Saunders, but despite reaching the Eastern Conference Finals in 2006, 2007 and 2008, they were not the same team they were under Brown. They were complacent, overconfident, had an unjustified sense of entitlement acting as if they won 10 titles in a row, not just one against a disintegrating Lakers team. They kept playing as if they could turn it on yet they couldn’t when they had to and it really mattered. When they finally replaced Flip Saunders with rookie coach Michael Curry the wheels had already started coming off for some time.

Meanwhile Iverson was traded to the Nuggets yet that didn’t help the Nuggets get out of the 1st round. This season when Iverson was traded to Detroit there was talk about Iverson leading Detroit to a title, despite the writing being on the wall for all to see. Iverson is the ultimate ball-hog, while Detroit represented unselfish team-basketball. Those 2 don’t mix. The result is a 27-29 record and a list of “accomplishments” on ESPN’s Daily Dime.

What’s ironic is that after finally arriving in Detroit, by playing his way and helping them tumble out of the elite of the league to become a mere playoff contender and a sub .500 team for the first time in years, Iverson is helping the “prophecy” fulfill itself while cementing Larry Brown’s legacy. The worse the Pistons are this season, the better does Larry Brown look for both taking an Iverson led team to the Finals and for coaching Detroit to one title and one Finals appearance. Also helping prove Brown’s point is his former reclamation project in Detroit, Chauncey Billups, who took the Nuggets from lottery bound to the elite of the West.

Note: In the long term getting Iverson’s expiring contract might help Detroit save some money and/or become major players in the 2010 FA market. It’s possible that Dumars was told to shed salary so since he had to trade for an expiring he rolled the dice with Iverson. But for the short term the move is disastrous.

Team analysis, Trades Allen Iverson, Detroit Pistons, Larry Brown

This season’s injury bug

In one of the most injury prone seasons in recent history the list of players that really matter for their teams and will or might miss the remainder of the season is awfully long:
- Danny Granger
- Al Jefferson
- Amare Stoudamire
- Michael Redd
- Carlos Boozer
- Jameer Nelson
- Tracy McGrady
- Kevin Garnett
- Manu Ginobili
- Andrew Bynum
- Chris Kaman
- Elton Brand
- Andrew Bogut
not to mention Agent Zero, where zero stands for how many games he played this season.

The probable consequences of these injuries:
- better lottery chances for the Wolves, Clippers and Indiana
- no playoffs for the Bucks, Suns
- better seed for the Sixers
- absolutely no chances at the title for the Rockets, Jazz, Spurs (if Manu’s injury is serious) and Celtics (if Garnett’s injury is serious)
- much lower chances at the title for the Lakers – they played well even after losing Bynum, but without him in the finals they’ll be giving up size and interior defense again.

The Magic are in a different boat. They were hurt too and losing Jameer probably took them out of contention, but they reacted quickly by bringing Rafer Alston who seems to fit in their system. He’s a worse 3p shooter compared to Nelson (34.8% this season compared to 45.3% for Nelson) and he scores 5 less points per game, but he’s remarkably similar in all other statistical categories. And in his first game with the Magic he confirmed he’s not the shooter Nelson is (9 ast to 1 TO, but just 1-9 FG). The Magic got almost 3 months (1st round of the playoffs should be a breeze) to integrate Alston so you can’t count them out yet. The truth is that they’re kinda lucky Nelson’s injury didn’t happen after the deadline, in which case there was nothing they could do about it.

Team analysis injuries, Orlando Magic, Rafer Alston

According to the Dallas Morning News Rick Carlisle decided to (finally) let Jason Kidd call the plays. The only surprising thing is that this hasn’t happened much earlier. Playmaking is the only thing that Kidd can still do at an elite level, and if you’re not giving him enough freedom to provide that, then you’re just wasting the 21+ million you’re paying for his salary.

Having the coach call all the plays might work with a robot-like point guard like John Stockton that could probably be pre-programed before the game through a USB port, but elite creative point guards like Kidd or Nash thrive in a system that gives them a lot of freedom. Now that Kidd got his freedom, the Mavs might actually improve a little and perhaps even contend for the 4th seed in the West which is still up for grabs, but they still won’t have any real shot at the title.

Update: The Mavs just defeated one of the elite teams of the league, the Orlando Magic, in Orlando. And it looks like Kidd had quite a big impact on the game. According to the AP recap:

Forcing turnovers and speeding up the tempo, the Mavericks closed the half on an 18-7 spurt that put them ahead 54-47. Dallas’ perimeter defense was stellar, holding Orlando to 1-for-7 shooting from beyond the arc in the first half.

Team analysis Dallas Mavericks

Despite starting out as favorites, except for the 1st half of game 4, the Lakers have been unable to play their game against the Celtics. More specifically the league’s 3rd best offense (when accounting for pace) found itself in trouble against the league’s best defense. The Lakers defense was good, holding the Celtics 3p below their regular season average, but the Lakers themselves only managed to score 90.5ppg compared to the 108.5 they scored during the regular season or the 99.2 scored during the playoffs.

The Lakers offense ineptitude is a little bit baffling considering they have the best scorer in the game, a center that can score and enough shooters to keep a defense honest, and they are coached by arguably the best coach ever. Of course a lot of credit should be given to the Celtics D, but how did they manage to basically shut down the Lakers when the Lakers have so many offensive weapons ? That’s even more staggering considering that the Spurs, the 3rd best defensive team in the league, were nowhere near as good as the Celtics in defending the Lakers. The Lakers-Spurs series was also a low scoring one, but this was mainly because the Spurs slowed down the pace as much as they could, while the Celtics like to push the ball on offense to generate easy points. So what are the Celtics doing different from the Spurs ?

From the Lakers role players, only Radmanovic and Farmar have lower FG% against the Lakers than against the Spurs – and as a result they got less minutes . The rest of Kobe’s supporting cast has noticeably better FG% compared to the Spurs series: Gasol .511 against the Celtics up from .446 against the Spurs, Odom .500 up from .404, Fisher .429 up from .375, Vujacic .406 up from .303. The Spurs defended the 3p line fiercely. The Celtics, perhaps not so much: the Lakers role players (other than Fisher) are also shooting better from the 3p line – including Radmanovic and Farmar: Vujacic .438 up from .316, Radmanovic .389 up from .273, Farmar .556 up from .417. One might think of pointing to Odom and/or Gasol and blame them for the Lakers ineptitude, but their numbers are very close to what they averaged against the Spurs.

So if the shooters are shooting better and the inside players are the same what’s killing the Lakers ? The short answer would be: Kobe Bryant. After all, he’s the superstar, the leader, and the responsibility is all his. And his numbers have dropped compared to the Spurs series: points per game down to 26.8 from 29.2 (despite getting more minutes per game), turnovers up to 3.25 from 2.4, FG% down to .432 from .533, 3p% down to .200 from .333 and even the FT% is down to .784 from .909.

This drop is caused because unlike the Spurs who let Bowen single cover Kobe a lot, the Celtics are doubling Kobe a lot. Kobe was a scorer and passer in the first 2 rounds (over 33 ppg, with 6.3 and 7.2 assists). Against the Spurs, he was more of a scorer than a passer (29.2 ppg, only 3.8 ast). The Celtics took away more of his scoring forcing him to be a passer (26.8 ppg, 6.3 ast).

But how can a defense afford to double him so much when the Lakers supposedly have a low post presence and shooters to spread the floor ? Well, perhaps Gasol is not really that much of a low post presence. He is in fact a very good offensive player – someone who scored over 20 ppg over the course of an entire season while shooting over 50% is no slouch. But the numbers might be a little misleading. He is a very opportunistic player (not a bad thing) so many of his points come as a result of him running the floor very well and off opportunities created by others. He is very good at filling the open spaces next to the basket and always has his hands ready to receive a pass and score.

But he is less able of creating scoring opportunities for himself, especially against good defenses. And the Celtics are the best defense he has seen this season. Garnett himself might be the worst match-up for Gasol. Garnett is perhaps the only guy in the league agile and quick enough to keep up with Gasol and not let him get his easy baskets by running the floor and also tall and athletic enough not to allow Gasol to score over him. Garnett is also helped by the fact that Gasol doesn’t like to bang his body in the low post, pushing his opponents to create space for his shot. If anything, Gasol shies away from contact even more than Garnett himself (yeah, the Celtics could do without many of those long 2s shot over much shorter defenders).

So what the Celtics are doing is doubling Kobe making sure they don’t let the Lakers superstar beat them and are also rotating on Gasol to deny his opportunistic scores. This leaves the Lakers role players with the long 2 and the 3, but as the Celtics are younger and more athletic than the Spurs, they usually are able to get a hand in the shooter’s face just enough so they don’t get killed by the 3 ball.

Since they can’t dump the ball to Gasol and let him work the low post (like they did with Shaq – I suppose Kobe misses Shaq now, the in-his-prime Shaq, not the fat old one) and Kobe is swarmed by the Celtics, the Lakers depend on their role players’ shooting accuracy to open up the Celtics D. Only their role players are just not experienced or not good enough to rise up to the occasion.

The only time the shots started dropping for the Lakers – during the 1st half of game 4 – you could hear their offense roar while they took a 24p advantage. Suddenly the middle was open for layups and dunks, Odom was playing well for the first time in the series and the Lakers were dominating. But as soon as the shots stopped falling, the Lakers offense screeched to a halt, and the Celtics were able to pull off the greatesc come back in the history of the Finals.

All things considered, unless there are some serious injuries to the Celtics or Kobe and the Lakers role players get insanely hot and keep it up for 3 games in a row, the series should be over tonight or Tuesday the latest. But that doesn’t mean these Lakers won’t win a title. With the Spurs, Mavs and Suns aging faster than Mel Gibson in Forever Young, the West is wide open. The Hornets and Jazz might raise some claims, but the Lakers are more talented overall and their odds look to be much better for next year with Bynum back and an entire training camp and season to allow the team to gel. Especially Bynum might solve the issues that Gasol can’t: a physical low post presence on offense as well as on defense.

Team analysis Boston Celtics, defense, Kobe Bryant, LA Lakers, Pau Gasol

As the New Orleans Hornets are a couple of minutes away from eliminating the Mavs from the 2008 playoffs it looks like this group of players has run its course. They had a shot at becoming a one shot wonder in 2006, but their window of opportunity was slammed shut by Wade, who, in the process, seemed to have shuttered their collective self-confidence as well. And they never recovered.

Now there’s talk about Avery being fired and perhaps Josh Howard being traded. Which sounds OK with me, as long it is just the beginning of a rebuilding process that must include trading Dirk. He is the Mavs leader, but he hasn’t been too good at it, especially in the playoffs. Like some other really talented players, he’s built for the regular season, where he will lead his team to a good record. But once the playoffs start, his softness and lack of defense get badly exposed. Here’s a list of players that the Mavs should explore trading and the reasons why:

* Josh Howard: he sucked during this series and his admission of smoking pot makes him look kinda dumb. But this is not the real reason why he should be traded. As I explained before, his offensive game is based way too much on 1-on-1 plays and he disrupts the offense.

I think Kidd has a couple more years when he can contribute, and if the Mavs move quick, they might benefit from them. At times, Howard also seemed lost or unfocused on defense. Right now he’s in his prime so the Mavs should be able to get some value back.

* Dirk Nowitzki: he’s a great offensive weapon, but he’s also very very soft. He doesn’t go inside nowhere as much as he needs to. Sometimes he doesn’t realize he has a mismatch and thus he doesn’t try to take advantage of it by requesting the ball. He seems unable to set a proper pick, too often he sets the pick standing sideways, and since he doesn’t have a big frame (or big belly), defenders get around him easily. And if the pick works, he pops for a jumper instead of rolling to the basket, even if the paint is open.

On defense he doesn’t put his hands up all the time, he doesn’t rotate to help when opponents are penetrating to the basket. His rebounding numbers are inflated too, as many times the others just box out for him to take the rebound. Defensive rebounds are more a result of team-work, while good rebounders also have good offensive rebounding numbers. Well, out of the top rebounders in the NBA, Dirk has the fewest offensive rebounds at 1.2 per game. The only other player on that list with as few offensive rebounds is Jason Kidd who happens to be a G and 6 inches shorter than Dirk. Most of the other players have 3 or more offensive rebounds per game.

For a team with Dirk to really be a contender, they need a real defensive presence, a shot blocker to play with him, cause Dampier’s lame washed-up overpaid ass is not enough. A Tyson Chandler or Marcus Camby type of player, someone who is not really a scorer and doesn’t need the ball much. Someone who can focus on playing D while being available for open dunks or alley oops when Dirk is doubled. Emeka Okafor or Jermaine O’Neal would also fit well with Dirk, and Jermaine might be available and cheap this summer.

By the way, I am surprised to see how many people fail to see the holes in Dirk’s game and claim he doesn’t have enough help from his teammates. While it’s true that his teammates didn’t handle their business, Dirk was just as much a part of the problem. Including in game 5 where he shot 8-21 from the field, and took most of those shots while fading away from the basket instead of going strong. When you’re a superstar and you know calls are gonna go your way (like not even getting a foul after clearly shoving MoPete), you have to be aggressive and take it to the rim. Flopping on fade away jump shots is not the right way to get to the free throw line.

* Erick Dampier: yeah, like anyone’s gonna want his bloated contract. Too bad for the Mavs, cause he’d have no place on the roster if the Mavs got the defending/rebounding C to play with Dirk. Guess signing players who only perform in their contract years is not a good idea (see: James, Jerome). But maybe the Mavs can pack him with Josh Howard or Dirk.

* Jerry Stackhouse: Biggest bonehead on the team. With the Mavs closing in on the Hornets at the end of the 4th quarter of a “win or go home” game 5, he picks up his second technical and is ejected. That 1 extra point could have been the difference between Dallas losing or going to overtime. And that comes after his moronic comments about returning to play for the Mavs after a trade to the Nets cost Cuban a cool 11 million in salaries and luxury tax.

* Jason Terry: His play during the series was in fact decent, but with his contract, if the Mavs decide to try a quick rebuild, it might be a good idea to trade him while he has some value.

Team analysis Avery Johnson, Dallas Mavericks, Dirk Nowitzki, Jerry Stackhouse, Josh Howard

This season the Spurs look different. Not only do they look older, which was to be expected, but there was a shift in their game plan as well. The shift was most likely caused by the fact that most of their roster is over 30, with quite a few players closer to 40 than to 30. At the time of the Conference Finals/NBA Finals their role players will be: Brent Barry – 36, Bowen – 37, Finley – 35, Horry – 38, Oberto – 33, Stoudamire – 35, Kurt Thomas – 36, Udoka – 31, Jacque Vaughn – 33. And their stars are not that young anymore, except for Parker who will be 26. Duncan and Manu will be 32 and (almost) 31. This means that out of all the rotation players that got at least 10 minutes per game, everyone is over 30 except for Parker (26) and Matt Bonner (22). That roster is beyond old. It’s ancient. And cracks are starting to show in the Spurs’ once impenetrable armor.

Their defense is not what it used to be. Here’s how the Spurs defense this season compares to their previous seasons (data from basketball-reference.com):

Team analysis Manu Ginobili, San Antonio Spurs, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker

2 weeks ago I started wondering what’s going on with the Spurs. They just lost on the weekend to the Rockets despite Duncan having 25 points and 17 rebounds. The other 2 Spurs stars weren’t bad either. Ginobili had 21 points (6-13 FG) , 5 reb, 4 ast. Tony Parker had 16 points (7-15 FG), 4 reb, 4 ast. On Houston’s side McGrady played only 25 minutes and scored just 9 points on 4-12 shooting. Yao was good but not spectacular with 21 points (7-10 FG), 14 reb and 2 blk. Other then Alston (16 points) nobody from Houston scored in double digits. Houston as a team shot 38.6% from the field. How did they lose that game ? Well, other then Duncan, Manu and Parker, everyone else on the Spurs pretty much sucked. Finley, Oberto and Bowen “contributed” a combined 6 points in 80 minutes on the court. That’s how much Ben Wallace scored the same night in 26 minutes. Whenever Ben Wallace scores 3 times more points per minute than you, you suck.

The Spurs sucking this bad is pretty uncharacteristic so I started asking myself: is this the beginning of the end for the Spurs ?
The numbers seemed to suggest so. They started the season hot and on the 10th of December they were 17-3. Since then, they were 8-10 till the 20th of January. But why were the Spurs playing so …. average ?

None of their 3 stars seems to have a down year. Duncan’s scoring is down 1.2 points compared to last season, slightly above his production in 2005-2006. His FG% is down to 50.6%, slightly above his career average. His other stats are more or less the same. If anything, these variations are just about what you’d expect from the robot also known as Tim Duncan in his attempt to fool you into believing he’s human.

Duncan’s slight drop in scoring isn’t a concern anyway, since Ginobili and Parker more then picked up the slack. Ginobili is having a career year with 19.6 points (up 3.1), 4.6 reb (up 0.2) and 4.1 ast (up 0.6) in under 30 minutes per game. He’s 5th in the league in PER, trailing only Lebron, CP3, Amare and Garnett. That means he’s above the likes of Dwight Howard, Kobe, Bosh, Dirk, Nash, Yao Ming and, of course, Tim Duncan himself. Tony Parker hasn’t been too bad himself with 20.1 points (up 1.5) on a 49.1 FG%, 3.1 reb (down 0.2) and 6.5 ast (up 1). So the 3 stars are doing their part. And the rest of the cast, despite having graduated from the same class as Tutankhamun, is not really bad enough to explain their play.

But just as I was thinking that the age of the Spurs might be starting to show, I remembered I’ve seen the exact same thing one season ago. The Spurs were looking old, and slow and tired and …. well … old. On February 11th they were 33-18 for a winning percentage of .647, below the .658 the Spurs had after the recent Rockets loss. But then they went on a 13 games winning streak, lost a couple of games they shouldn’t have lost against the lowly Bucks and Celtics, and then sandwiched another loss between 6 games winning streaks. And they went on to win their 4th title in 9 years.

Can they do it again this year ? They never got back to back titles, so history works against them. Speaking of history, they are 1 year older which can’t be good for such an old team. How old are they ? Their rotation players are: Duncan (32 soon), Ginobili (30), Parker (almost 26), Oberto (33 soon), Bowen (36), Elson (32 soon), Finley (35 soon), Barry (37), Horry (37), Booner (28), Udoka (30). And they just brought Damon Stoudamire (34) as a back-up PG. That’s a lot of players closer to 40 than they are to 30. Can they put up another run after the All Star Break ? Can they fight through what promises to be a grueling playoff ?

This season, the West is even tougher. For the past seasons, it’s been the Spurs, Mavs and Suns that were battling for the Western Conference crown. The other teams were good, but not really good enough. But now, things have changed. The Jazz showed last season that they belong. They couldn’t really put up a fight against the Spurs, but they are a young team and they keep improving through the growth of their players and small but smart trades. The Hornets seem to be the real deal with Chris Paul playing like an MVP. And the Lakers just got a whole lot better by trading half of glass of soured milk and a month old newspaper for Gasol.

So all things considered, I doubt the Spurs will be able to finally get a repeat. They are bound to make a run come March. But it may come a little too late for them to get a top seed. And without home court advantage it will be even harder to face off all the pretenders to the throne. They will be tough, they will be savvy, they will use all the tricks in their book, but at the end of the day, I don’t think they will come out on top from the West.

That’s not to say they won’t come back next year. Their front office proved itself to be way more capable than most front offices in the NBA, so through a number of well thought trades and free agents signings using their exceptions, the Spurs may bring in the fresh blood they need to keep them in the elite of the league and contending for a title.

Team analysis Manu Ginobili, San Antonio Spurs, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker