eyeatoma wrote:XtremeDunkz wrote:I think it's safe to say the Knicks played well above their heads against us. Similar to Atlanta a few years ago. Brunson, Mcbride and Hart aren't making all of the insane shots at near the clip they were against us.
As always we suffer from the outliers.
It's due to a lot of factors, but for me, it's mostly because our opponents can shut down Embiid by stacking size at their 3-4-5 positions. Once their 4 and 5 can alternately defend Embiid, it's over.
In 2018, the Baynes-Horford duo with the Celtics saw their wings attacking JJ.
In 2019, the Raptors' triple big lineup of Ibaka, Siakam, and Gasol outrebounded us.
In 2020, we lacked perimeter scoring and Ben, who plays a big part on Tobi being playable at the 4, didnt play.
In 2021, the Hawks' lineup of Huerter, Gallinari, Collins, and Capela was lethal. Huerter attacked Seth while the Hawks' frontcourt and Ben clogged the paint.
In 2022, Tucker and Bam were effective, with Tucker defending Embiid and Bam as the helper. The Heat effectively shut down our basic two-man game.
In 2023, I believe we would have beaten the Celtics in Game 6 more than half the time if the game were played ten times. Tucker not being a threat allowed Rob Williams to play goalie with Al Horford defending Embiid.
This playoffs, while we were bigger than the Knicks, we didn't play like the bigger team. OG even was able to be effective defending Embiid, which was my x factor in the series.
All teams need to do is focus on embiid by playing double bigs, make it hard for Embiid to score, rotate on defense, and get extra opportunities with offensive rebounds. We don’t see that in regular season because most teams don’t play hard and just run their vanilla schemes.
The way to counter this is to have the right balance of shooting, length, and players who are all threats, so the defense has to stay busy and can't just focus on Embiid. We also need the length to get shots off, contest, and limit extra opportunities for the opponent.
There’s never been a time in history when we look back and say that the people who were censoring free speech were the good guys.