The Karl Anthony Towns, Rudy Goberts, and Joel Embiids of the world could rest easy now as centers are not entirely extinct in the NBA.<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s anything the Lakers\u2019 4-1 win against the Houston Rockets in their semifinal round of the Western Conference proved is that small ball is still not viable, especially in the playoffs.<\/p>\n
The gimmicky Don Nelson creation may have seemingly worked for coach Mike D\u2019Antoni in the regular season (they did finish fourth in the Western Conference), but come the postseason when opposing coaches have an entire series to counteract the Rockets\u2019 pace-and-space schemes, there\u2019s just no way small ball can overcome teams with skilled big men.<\/p>\n
You can say James Harden and company got lucky escaping the Oklahoma City in the first round as unlike Anthony Davis, the Thunder\u2019s starting center is Steven Adams. The 7\u20190\u201d Kiwi is more of a traditional big man, bruising with heavy feet and not really adept to chasing the Rockets\u2019 trigger-happy forwards from 3-point territory.<\/p>\n
Davis, meanwhile, is a guard trapped in a center\u2019s body. He actually started his basketball life as a point guard in high school before an 8-inch growth spurt made his height closer now to his officially listed height of 6\u201911\u201d. He avoids playing center like the plague, but had to due to JaVale McGee\u2019s unfavorable matchups in the series against the Rockets.<\/p>\n
Houston\u2019s small ball lineup was also a bit flawed. The Rockets made a big splash during the offseason when they swapped all-star guard Chris Paul for former MVP Russel Westbrook. While CP3 isn\u2019t exactly known to light it up from the land of plenty, he\u2019s still a far more effective floor spacer than Brodie. It would\u2019ve worked for lesser teams with Westbrook serving as Houston\u2019s de facto center on offense, but coach Frank Vogel\u2019s Lakers is an entirely different beast.<\/p>\n
Against the Lakers, the 2017 regular season MVP just couldn\u2019t bully Davis and 6\u20198\u201d LeBron James inside the paint, which meant LA\u2019s perimeter guys stayed home on Harden, P.J. Tucker, Robert Covington, Eric Gordon, Ben McLemore, and the rest of Houston\u2019s platoons of shooters, ultimately throwing a wrench in D\u2019Antoni\u2019s small ball basketball philosophy.<\/p>\n
The gentleman\u2019s sweep is a bitter pill to swallow for Houston general manager and analytics guy Daryl Morey, who went all in on D\u2019Antoni\u2019s small ball system by jettisoning starting center Clint Capela before this season\u2019s NBA All-Star Game. The donut team barely scraped by the Thunder in the first round then were completely eviscerated by the Lakers in the second. As the old adage goes, height is still might in basketball and no amount of analytics would negate that fact. Former Memphis coach David Fizdale\u2019s infamous \u201cTake that for data!\u201d comment may be true after all.<\/p>\n
As a result of their season ending abruptly, Houston might see an exodus of not only players but even D\u2019Antoni himself, who is in the last year of his contract. The NBA\u2019s premier mad scientist will not be short on suitors as the\u201c:07 Seconds or Less\u201d coach is already being rumored going to multiple coaching vacancies with the Indiana Pacers job his most likely destination.<\/p>\n
The ill-fitting pair of old OKC teammates, The Beard and Brodie, may also be headed toward a divorce. However, that\u2019s easier said than done as Westbrook\u2019s contract is un-tradeable even before the pre-COVID-19 landscape of the NBA. There\u2019s no way Clutch City will part with Harden. The Rockets could still trade Brodie in a salary dump if it attaches draft picks in the deal, but wait Houston\u2019s future had already been mortgaged in the Chris Paul trade (first-round picks in 2024 and 2026 and the right to swap first-rounders in 2021 and 2025).<\/p>\n
For a team with championship aspirations ever since acquiring LeBron (and even so after trading for AD), the Lakers hurdling the Lilliputian Rockets is not really a cause to celebrate, as there are bigger fish to fry for LA. Now they await the outcome of the series between the Paper Clips and upstart Denver Nuggets. Game 6 is today and I\u2019m crossing my fingers that The Joker and company will pull off the win. That would setup a Game 7, the sweetest words in sports.<\/p>\n
The Nuggets already overcame a 1-3 series deficit (first round against the Utah Jazz and my kababayan Jordan Clarkson) and who\u2019s to say they can\u2019t do it again against The Claw and the rest of the Clippers. While I never really liked Kawhi Leonard, I still hope that the Clippers emerge victorious against the Nuggets so basketball fans can finally be treated to a Battle of LA, 2020 edition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Karl Anthony Towns, Rudy Goberts, and Joel Embiids of the world could rest easy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":321624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[143],"class_list":["post-329730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-ball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}