You DON'T need a top defense to win a championship

You may not need a good D, but damn it helps

it would probably help if the playoff system was more logical. for the past few years the west has been obviously superior, having like 8 of the top 10 teams every year. but they still go up against the top comp. meanwhile inferior competition gets deep into the playoffs because they don’t have to face anybody meaningful.

but the way it is, some great teams have been knocked out ‘early’, and that can feed perceptions as well. anyhow, i agree.

The Suns this year I thought were the best they’ve ever been cuz they had the size, or at least more size then they’ve really ever had. I thought they kinda had the Lakers there, but they really are just too good. You’re right , Kerr doesn’t have a gripe that’s what he’s gonna bitch about. The system worked. Maybe if they had kept Joe Johnson all these years, they’d win a champ?

The owner sucks there. That’s the problem. He doesn’t wanna spend money.

The Suns, or if the Knicks are good, aren’t gonna be holding anyone to 67 points on most nights (or maybe they will?). They ain’t gonna be Pat Riley/JVG’s Knicks.

But the system can work. Get the right players, and especially in the East

but you can’t say that any of these teams were bad defensively. They all played excellent defense. A team that doesn’t play defense doesn’t can’t win championships. If you go all out on defense you have a good shot to win it.

I don’t think stats and rankings are very accurate for stating how good a defense is. Those numbers make more sense for offense, but there are so many intangibles on defense that stats can’t begin to measure. I wouldn’t say a team is good or bad defensively because of where they’re ranked.

For defense, you just gotta watch the games and you’ll see the truth.

A team with the best players.

If this year’s playoffs (and basically every finals before this, save maybe Detroit-LA) has taught us anything, its that the most talented team always wins. Whether they do it with offense, defense, special teams or sorcery doesn’t really matter. Talent wins in the NBA. There’s too many games for it not to.

This was probably the Suns most talented incarnation, but they were just never as talented as the Lakers, so they never really had a shot. You could say its because of interior D or limited bench or whatever, but if you added, say, Kevin Durant to that team, they’d be favored regardless of their interior D. Maybe that is why Kerr is retiring. He saw that this was basically the best team Phoenix was able to put together, but without Sarver willing to go over the tax, there was no way he could match the talent level of LA and other big spenders. Oh well.

Think of the overall talent of each team’s players as a points pool. Say the Lakers have a total of 100 points (more talented) and the Knicks have 80. Now lets allocate those points in an overtly simple fashion.

Interior D: Knicks- 17 Lakers: – 25
Perimeter D: Knicks – 20 Lakers: – 25
Interior O : Knicks – 18 Lakers – 25
Perimeter O : Knicks – 25 Lakers – 25

Now this is not to say that the Knicks’ perimeter offense will be a 25 every night. Lets give them a 50% chance to play at 25 level, a 20% chance to play at a 26, a 20% chance to play at a 24, and a 5% chance each to play 23 or below, or 27 or above. This is obviously less than scientific, but ya’ll get my point.

The Knicks are clearly the less talented team, but on a particularly lucky night, they might be able to hit their 3s while the Lakers miss theirs and get a win. Play the same game out 20 times, though, and the Knicks will likely lose about 18 of them. This is because, duh, the Lakers are more talented and therefore better.

Now the reason I just did all that was to convey the importance of overall talent. When you’re operating with a pool of 100 (Lakers) and the other team has a pool of lets say 95 (Suns), then the team with 100 has to play worse than their overall talent and the team with 95 has to play better for the 95 team to win. This can, and does, happen all the time, but rarely enough over a 7 game series to cause an upset. You can also factor in home court, injuries and a bunch of other things, but in the end, the less talented team has to play better than they are, or the more talented team has to play much much worse.

You don’t “need” to allocate your skill into any specific category to win a championship. You simply need to be better than the other team in enough categories to compensate for your weaknesses. Having more points to allocate (aka talent) is the big advantage.

and everyone brings up the Suns. Watever, defense is the most important thing. It has half to do with matchups for the not so great teams. LA seems to matchup against everyone, cuz thats who they seem to beat. Experience helps, but basic fundamentals are what teams seem to forget about. Look at San antonio! the most boring team in the world to watch, but fundamentals and popovich’s system makes it work. DEFENSE!!! Its the NBA, everyone can score, but not everyone can play defense.

But jordan was there, bad example. But i do get ur point and agree