NBA Playoffs Thread

[ThomasPHoolery]

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Why do you guys think Spurs - Jazz will be a good series? The Spurs do everything the Jazz do but much better. I guess the Jazz are a quicker pace team and they will run the Spurs?

Prove me wrong, I'm all ears... but I don't see it.

-Al

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Al,
I like the Spurs to dominate this series. Since the all star break, the quality of ball they've been playing has been breathtaking, however, some like the Jazz because they do create some match up problems, they continue to defy odds and play over their heads, and, counter-intuitively, the Spurs play slightly worse against slower teams than quicker teams (Utah's no turtle, but they are much slower than Suns or Nuggets).

Parker, historically, has had a good deal of trouble with guards with size instead of speed (Devin Harris in last year's playoffs was a bit of an exception). Parker could have a bit of trouble vs Williams on both ends if Willams proves to have the footspeed to at least not let Parker blow right by him. Additionally, Utah will likely try to utilize Kirilenko on Ginobilli some, which is a perfect type of defender to mitigate Ginobilli (tall rangy, able to block shots at all angles). Duncan will be Duncan, but the Jazz have an ability and a discipline to not completely collapse on penetration and abandon their assignments, which could help.

The Jazz are also really peaking right now. I'll be the first to admit that, judging from the way they closed the season, I thought the Rockets were going to cream them, but the Jazz played a well thought out, effective series. I felt they were underdogs to GS too, but, again, they came up with a good game plan stuck to it, and did a very good job of stealing GS's luck box. As such, I think a lot of people are just not sure exactly how good the Jazz actually are right now.

Finally, and I've posted briefly on this before, teams like the Spurs and Rockets actually prefer to play fast-paced teams because they are very good at dictating pace (The Spurs pace SD stats are pretty sick this year). When teams deviate from their standard pace, either faster or slower, their offensive efficiency almost always changes for the worse. As such, they become a worse team, and with SA operating close to ideal pace, they are able to exploit what amounts to a higher net advantage. With a team like Utah, they're not going to deviate too far from the pace that yields their maximum offensive efficiency output, and are therefore, in theory, slightly better off.

All those factors being in place, I still feel San Antonio is much better than the Jazz and a very solid favorite. This year's incarnation of the Spurs at their peak is one of the best teams in league history.