Well I’ve had a few days to digest the incredibly disappointing NBA Finals.
I’m not disappointed by who won, although I would have slightly preferred the Spurs win it all. I’m just disappointed the series only went 5 games.
But when you have a very young team whose top three players have a combined 6 years of NBA experience, winning a title is a pretty tall order (no pun intended). When you add in a coach in his first year, you have the recipe for a quick series loss. And that is exactly what happened. Mitch Johnson was beyond overmatched. But the end of game four, he looked shellshocked… because he was.
I already wrote about how his poor coaching lead to the loss in game two. His decision to not call a timeout to settle his young team with nine seconds left in a finals game, sealed their fate in that game.
But that was nothing compared to Johnson’s performance in a game the Spurs led by 29 in the second half. Had Gregg Popovic, the best coach in the history of the NBA, not had a stroke and was healthy enough to coach this Spurs team, they would have won that game by 40 points. There is no chance he would have let them chuck threes early in the shot clock with such a huge lead. He also would have known Wemby was EXHAUSTED and needed to rest in the fourth quarter. Pop would have won those two games. By my math, that means the Spurs would have led the series 3-2 after 5 games. But alas, Johnson is a young coach who made young coach mistakes.
Speaking of Wemby, if you watched the games and not just the stat sheet, he was amazing. His defense alone was game changing. But the problem was that Wemby needed to basically play two positions on defense. He would guard the perimeter and then flash down to protect the lane. That is asking a lot for 40 minutes a game.
But that was only half the story, Wemby had to be just as active on the offensive end. He played all out on both ends of the floor. Add all of the clutching, grabbing, pushing and WWE wrestling that was allowed and Wemby had to exert maximum effort (Deadpool would approve) every second of every game. It proved to be too much and he faded in the fourth quarter of every game.
I really hope the Spurs are able to get Wemby a little more help before the salary cap ruins this team in two to three years.
