Do the Spurs have a legit crack at the Lakers

Howdy fellers

Just want to hear yall's wisdom on whether the Spurs, a team I personally respect...have a real shot at taking down the Lakers this year.

I think if Ginobli is really back they are going to be a load. The rookie looks good and Parker poses a ton of hassles for the Lakers defenders. To me it hinges on Ginobli's health.

Any thoughts?

Jeb

Certainly they have a chance but if either team looses a major starter, which team has the better ability to cover for that loss?

I'll wait a few games in the season and actually see what these guys have. Personally I think the West is as weak as ever. So getting by with an injury of over there might be a whole lot easier than in the east.

beat

Jeb,

You've got my response on the other thread. Short answer: yes.

Sam

Beat

I think the west is a tad thready too. I think the Spurs and Lakers are awful deep.

It depends on what starter. Lakers without kobe or Pau are a 48 win team.

Spurs without Duncan go weak pretty quick. To me it hinges on Manu. I think when on and healthy he is a fearless player the gets in other teams heads.

The whole lefty thing dont help people tryin to guard him.

I hope everybody stays healthy cause there are 5 teams that have a legit shot.

Going to be one for the ages.

Thanks for your response.

Jeb

Didn't see it yet Sam. I cant keep up! Too much good stuff to read.

It's incredible! I went out for about two hours, and other wise, I haven't even gone to the toilet. Thank god for Depends.

Sam,

Good job.

Yup some sure 4/4 wisdom. Very open and loose. Makes me want to have some damn games to talk about.

I reckon that Cavs game ll tell us a fair amount.

I say bring em. They are going to be a load but so are we.

Aw geeze I digress.

Sam wrote:It's incredible! I went out for about two hours, and other wise, I haven't even gone to the toilet. Thank god for Depends.

Sam... now don't get me going on my Depends jokes. You'll regret the day.

We are being accused of having a nursing home over here for old geezers. Don't let this get out but when they sag down around your knees, change 'em! That's what I do.

GC

Age and treachery overcome youth and exuberance every time.

Cmon you boys lend me some wisdom on the Spurs chances to whup the Lakers!

I think if both teams stay healthy I still give the edge to the Lakers, but Ginobilli will be the key. If he can play at a high level along with Duncan and Parker they could beat the Lakers

Hey Shamrock, welcome to the board.

Are you from Georgia too? Are we starting a Georgia contingent?

Sam

Gashamrock,

I concur on Ginobli. The Spurs got very deep. Similar situation to the Celtics.

I hate to admit it but the Lakers may be a tad long for the spurs. Like Beat says I reckon we'll have to watch a few games.

Thanks

Jeb

With McDyess and Jefferson, the Spurs have shored up Front court deficiencies and added needed depth for them. This will allow Duncan to go harder for less minutes. He'll give quality over quantity effort. Manu's health, to be sure, will be key. They can cause fits for the Lakers. I don't care that's their problem. I'm just concerned that the C's make it to the Finals. Beating the Lakers is better than crabcakes & Sam Adams!-MD.

MD celt

Thanks for the response! I would love to wipe that smirk off Jacksons face and see the fear and confusion in Odom's eyes and have Sasha throwing towels too.

But I want the Lakers as tired and beat up as we are. And there are so many smart hoop minds on here I am interested in what yall think about this upcoming season all over the league.

Again thanks

Jeb

barring injury from either team, it's really hard to tell this year.

the Lakers have been pretty lucky so far in terms of injuries, to be honest. they haven't suffered any setbacks with regards to any of their playoff-tested starters. if either Kobe or Gasol or even Odom goes down, that'd have a huge effect. they'd still make it into the playoffs sure, but they probably wouldn't make it to the Western Finals.

LilRip

Hey Thanks for the wisdom. I think the Lakes could lose odom and there heart would go on. But Gasol's loss would introduce them to how we felt last year. I think Gasol is one of the best bigs around when he is facing the basket.

Losing Kobe my guess is they'd still win 48-53 games. But they'd be food in the playoffs.

In my heart I feel like the lakers are too long by a tad unless Ginobli is really back to his disruptive self. I always thought Manu and Dunc would have made great Celtics.

As stated before I just want it to go seven and be brutal out west.

Jeb

bump

As a Laker fan, I ca tell you that the Spurs and the Blazers are the only two teams in the West that even get my attention as a potential problem in the playoffs.

And neither team is as strong as the three beasts of the East.

If the Spurs stay healthy, which is a BIG if given Manu's recent history and the mileage on TD's odometer, they have a shot. But only a puncher's chance, I think.

The Lakers were light years ahead of them last year, so even though they had the best offseason of any of the big 5, they had the most holes to fill, so it only closes the gap to a point.

Assuming everyone is healthy on both sides, LA is too long, athletic and deep for SA. But I have a lot of respect for TD, Manu, Parker and Pop, so I give them a shot.

I expect LA to get the top seed in the West, with SA and Portland the 2 and 3. Either one is a tough con finals opponent, but the Blazer's lack of experience and defense will give LA the edge in that matchup. I don't give them as much of a shot as I give SA if the Spurs are healthy.

BUt like I said, that's a big if. People talk about Boston as being old, but the Spurs have a much worse injury history to their Big 3 than the C's do. Outside of KG's injury last year, the C's BIg 3 has been remarkably durable. And I don't consider Pierce to be old yet, as his game isn't predicated on quickness.

Manu's however, is, so his ankle issues are a real problem.

Sky,

I actually think that the better the Spurs and Blazers are, the better chance the Lakers have if they reach the finals. My somewhat convoluted reasoning relates to the reason I think the Lakers have lost quite a few times in the finals. Facing marginal competition in the conference has enabled them to make the finals without becoming battle-hardened enough to WIN the finals. So, while Celtics fans are understandably rooting for the Spurs or Blazers to give the Lakers a run for their money, the same fans could ironically be rooting for a more competitive Lakers team in the finals.

It should be a great season. I wish the basketball gods would give every team a dispensation from serious injuries so we could see every one of several excellent teams at their finest.

Sam

Babyskyhook

First of all that name still hurts. Second of all thank you for voicing your opinion.

Jeb

Sam wrote:Sky,

I actually think that the better the Spurs and Blazers are, the better chance the Lakers have if they reach the finals. My somewhat convoluted reasoning relates to the reason I think the Lakers have lost quite a few times in the finals. Facing marginal competition in the conference has enabled them to make the finals without becoming battle-hardened enough to WIN the finals. So, while Celtics fans are understandably rooting for the Spurs or Blazers to give the Lakers a run for their money, the same fans could ironically be rooting for a more competitive Lakers team in the finals.

It should be a great season. I wish the basketball gods would give every team a dispensation from serious injuries so we could see every one of several excellent teams at their finest.

Sam

Sam-

you've got me thinking here. I'm feeling like your theory doesn't hold water historically. Let's deal with the history first.

LA has been to the Finals 30 times and won 15. Nice easy math, 50% rate of success. I'm no statistician, but that would seem to be a reasonable success rate given that they are playing what should theoretically be one of the two best teams in the league in the Finals, although we know that's not always the case. Still, LA's winning percentage in the Finals looks like about what you would expect from a math standpoint. But it is skewed because the C's winning percentage in the Finals is so insanely high, it makes LA's look low by comparison.


I would break down LA's Finals losses as follows:


4 times where they simply had no shot, so it didn't matter who they played in the West on their way to the Finals. Celts swept them once and beat them 4-1 once in the late 50's-late 60's run, Reed's Knicks won 4-1 in early '70's, and Moses' Sixers swept them in '80.

2 times where LA suffered a devastating injury (or two) right before the finals. In '88, after dominating the regular season and sweeping through the West playoffs, Riley's crazy boot camp before the Finals results in Magic and Byron Scott both pulling their hamstrings and missing the Finals. You can't win a Finals missing your two All Star guards. In '04, Karl Malone, the glue that kept the team from imploding and e fantastic low post defender and scorer, hurt his knee in the last game vs the Spurs and wasn't able to effectively play in the Finals. In fact, I don't think he played at all after the first game. Sheed killed them on the low post that year, Shaq was much less effective without the Mailman, and without Malone to rein him in, Kobe went wild, throwing up bad jumper after bad jumper. With Karl, I have no doubt they win that series.

4 times, the Lakers have lost in game 7. Three times to the Celts and once to the Knicks. I don't think a lack of competition in the West caused this. All of those games came down to a crazy bounce or a crazy moment. If Frank Selvy hits that open 8 footer at the end of regulation in '62, LA wins despite Russell's insane 30/40 night. If Don Nelson's shot doesn't bounce straight up off the rim and back in in '69, or if Van Bredakoff had decided maybe it would be a god idea to play Wilt during the last 5 minutes of the game (he kept him on the bench that whole time), the Lakers could have easily won that game. In '66, Lakers lost Game 7 by 2 at the Garden. And against the Knicks, the Willis Reed legend game 7, I mean, what are you going to do ? I'm not looking to re-write history here. The Celts deserved to win every one of those games and were the rightful champions, but the margin was agonizingly close- a razor's edge. I don't think the competition in the West was why the Lakers lost.

And one time, the Lakers just flat out choked. For you guys, the nightmare moment is Magic at the Garden in '87. For me, it's Magic choking at the line followed by Worthy throwing the ball to Henderson in '84. I STILL can't believe that game. My friends and I were convinced for a long time that Magic and/or Worthy had money on the game, as both sequences were so out of character. Lakers had won the first game in Boston and were about to go up 2-0. That series would have been over. But they inexplicably choked. Again, not rewriting history. It happened. My only point is that they didn't choke due to a lack of competition in the West that year. I mean, this was a team that had been in the Finals three times in the previous four years and won twice.


So that's 11 out of the 15 losses that LA has had in the Finals that I don't think had anything to do with the quality of competition in the West.

You could make a case that the other four losses were related to this, but I would put the blame on something else.

Lack of Finals experience/ lack of veteran hunger/ we're happy to be here syndrome.

This was clearly the case in 2008, where the Lakers and the Celtics were very evenly matched physically, but the C's were so much tougher and hungrier mentally. The Lakers, outside of Kobe and DFish, had never been to the Finals and went traipsing into Boston with a fairly nonchalant attitude, not knowing the level of intensity that would be needed for the Finals.

The C's ? A group of incredibly hungry veterans who, except for Perk and Rondo, had been in the league at least a decade and never been to the Finals. They knew how hard it was to get there and weren't going to let the opportunity slip away. Lack of intensity was no problem for them. They were out for blood from the opening tip of game 1 while LA's players were still looking around going "Wow! So this is the NBA Finals ?" And when the C's fell behind by so much in game 4 in LA (another brutal memory for me), their mental toughness and hunger allowed them to come back. They were simply not going to be denied.

I think we saw the same dynamic last year, but with the roles reversed. The Lakers were the hungrier, more experienced team that had the intensity cranked up from the opening tip of Game 1, while the Magic were happy to be there. Hence, a huge blowout in Game 1. And when the Lakers could have folded mentally in Game 4, they came back at the end with the Kobe to Gasol in the lane fastbreak and then Fisher's 3 in the last 30 seconds of regulation.


So I guess the answer is, I don't think it's been about the level of competition in the West historically when the Lakers have lost in the Finals. You could say that maybe a tougher run in the West would have enabled them to be tougher against the Cs, but I don't think that's the case. The Cs were the better team that year. They absolutely manhandled the Lakers in both regular season games, then were mentally tougher and emotionally hungrier in the Finals.


As for the present, I don't think the level of competition in the West matters much now that this team has been in the Finals the last two years. Everyone but Artest will know how high the intensity level needs to be, and if there's one guy whose intensity level doesn't worry me it's Ronnie.

I think SA or PDX will give the Lakers a good series, but I think the only teams that really have a shot at beating them are the Cs and the Magic.

Sky,

Well, I certainly haven't thought about in the depth you have, and you may very well be right. And I admit to being influenced by the Celtics' record in thinking that the standard should be a lot higher than .500.

But playoffs aren't won or lost by a bounce. One could argue that it might never have gotten to the point where one bounce could decide everything (maybe not even to a 3-3 tie in several cases) had the team been more battle-ready. Certainly that should have been the case in 1969, when the Lakers were playing an old, injured team on which the 36-year-old center had to play every minute of the finals series. And, as I recall, the Celtics had to win game 6 in L.A. to force Selvy game even to happen.

At one point, I did an analysis of the records of sub-.500 teams in the Western Conference versus those in the Eastern Conference. (It took a long time, and then I lost the results.) I don't recall details, but it indicated that there were more weak "rest stop" teams in the western Conference than in the Eastern Conference except in the 80s (when the Lakers won five championships). Come to think of it, wasn't the Western Conference stronger during the first part of this decade too?

Anyway, it was just a theory. I understand your points (good research, by the way). Who knows? The only thing I know for sure is that I'm not about to repeat the hours it took to do that analysis. What a jerk, to do all that work and then to lose the results!

Sam

Sam-

Fumble! I hate the sound of losing something that you spent hours putting together.

Ouch!

Maybe there's something to your theory on a macro basis, as the West was dominant in the first half of this decade, when LA's three peat was sandwiched in between two of the Spurs' four titles, and LA obviously won 5 times in the '80's. Conversely, Houston was the only West team to win in the '90's (not coincidentally when MJ was banned for gambling, err, I mean playing baseball), when the East was stronger.

So you might have something on a big picture basis. I do think that on a year by year basis, however, at least in the case of the Lakers, it's more often been about individual and team psychology, intestinal fortitude and experience.

I think the C's were simply in the late 60's Lakers' heads after all their success in the Finals- to the point that if something could go wrong it would. I don't think they really had any confidence against the C's by '69, which explains how the physically less-gifted but mentally and emotionally tougher C's won. I don't think tougher competition for the Lakers in the West would have made them tougher against the Cs- the Cs just owned them when it came to crunch time- they always made the plays they needed to and the Lakers always failed to.

As posted above, of the 15 times LA has lost in the Finals, I would say that 11 of those times were not affected by lack of competition in the West. But in the other four cases, tough competition within the conference could help a team is during its first trip to the Finals.

Having given it further thought, if the '08 Lakers had run a more grueling gauntlet in the West, they might have been mentally tougher when they met up with the Cs in the Finals. I don't know if it would have changed the outcome, but that's where your theory makes sense to me.

Sky,

The late 60s will always be the most fascinating time in basketball history for me because, in many ways, they may be the most improbable.

It's very likely true that the Lakers possessed more talent than the Celtics in 1969. Although both teams boasted three future hall-of-famers, the Lakers' trio was younger than that of the Celtics. What I felt differentiated the two teams in favor of the Celtics were (1) second-tier players like Nelson, Sanders, Siegfried, and even Emmette Bryant and (2) the fact that the Celtics' players all were used to fitting together like gloves. The latter factor made those Celtics more fluid and instinctive at all times, while the Lakers with Wilt had a greater tendency to default to individual efforts in the clutch.

I never sensed that those Lakers lacked confidence. They seemed really jacked, which made Jerry West's meltdown after the series more comprehensible. I sensed no hint of a "Well we should have been underdogs anyway" mentality. Heck, nearly the entire basketball world felt certain the Lakers would win that series.

I knew those Celtics personally and traveled with them to and from L.A. for that game. True, Celtics teams of that era always expected to win the big ones. When they (rarely) lost, they considered it akin to a clerical error. But I didn't feel the presence or absence of confidence in that final game was nearly the factor that determination was for the Celts.

I went through practice, a bridge game, getting a haircut, and several other adventures with the team, and they functioned normally. In fact, their final practice was outwardly loose, and Russell spent the entirety of it shooting 40-foot set shots and cackling hysterically when one would occasionally go in.

But I could feel (yes, viscerally feel) the underlying burn of determination in each of them. Every once in while, while in the course of some normal activity, one of them would give himself away by seeming to look through everyone around him and narrowing his eyes ever so slightly. They were obviously practiced in the art of operating on two dimensions simultaneously—the outer and the inner.

By the time they came out on the floor, their faces were gray with resolve. It was absolutely chilling to see, as several of us lined up at the entrance. Ever since, I've wished I could summon that intensity of determination in any number of circumstances. I recall being almost scarily clammy as I went to my seat. It had been sort of light witnessing death for the first time.

At that moment, I had no idea the "old" Celts would use only 7 players and two of them (Havlicek and who else but Russell) would go the distance. Even in his rotation decisions that night, Russell gave no quarter and refused to yield. I'm quite certain that, when the chips were down, he was the single most determined human being I've ever seen.

So I don't believe lack of confidence beat the Lakers that night. The shock of what happened to them during the first quarter obviously shook them momentarily, as a lesser-known Celtic (Bryant) burned them again and again. Nonetheless, the Lakers came back and trailed by only 3 at the quarter and 7 at the half.

If I had thought they were gray-faced coming out for the beginning of the game, the Celtics looked like corpses emerging from halftime. Then, led by retiree-in-waiting, Sam Jones, they absolutely croaked the home team in the third quarter, building the cushion that the Lakers couldn't quite overcome in the final quarter.

And the key to the machinations of the fourth quarter was the simple act of doubling a torrid Jerry West. After they started doubling him, he scored just two free throws and was stripped three times down the stretch. Wilt's absence could certainly have had something to do with that, but Russ had been running away from Wilt on breakaways before Wilt's injury, and Counts actually did a better job on Russ.

I actually heard very little talk about the game at the all-night party and during the homeward flight. And most of any game-related conversation centered on what a fabulous game Jerry West had played. If I were a Lakers fan, I'd point to that game as one of the greatest-ever by a Laker. (And he was fighting an injury.)

Sam