Hollinger: What's wrong with Bulls and Lakers

[Admin]

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs/2011/insider/columns/story?columnist=hollinger_john&page=PERDiem-110504

You're watching the wrong end of the court, people.

The Lakers and Bulls both have had rockier than expected roads in these playoffs, and inevitably eyes are focused on the travails of star guards Kobe Bryant and Derrick Rose. Each has battled ankle problems while laboring to performances that landed somewhere south of awesome, both in the first round and again in Monday's all-upset double feature.

But to pin the focus on them misplaces the real story behind each team's struggles. Bryant may have missed the game-winner against Dallas and participated in the crucial turnover on a late possession, but the reasons the Lakers were behind by a point in the first place largely had nothing to do with his shooting performance. Similarly, Rose didn't draw a single free throw in the Bulls' shocking loss to Atlanta -- the first time that's happened since Dec. 15. But Chicago still managed a fairly typical offensive performance Monday.

Looking at the big picture, the Lakers are second among playoff teams in offensive efficiency and the Bulls are seventh. Given that they were sixth and 10th, respectively, among playoff teams in the regular season in this category, their offensive performances thus far actually qualify as mild surprises, or at worst roughly in line with expectations.

Bryant and Rose haven't exactly been chopped liver either. While neither got to the basket as much as one might like Monday, overall Rose's 24.75 playoff PER is actually higher than his 23.62 regular-season mark, while Bryant's (23.20 compared to 23.94) is barely any lower. In such a small sample of games, the difference is essentially irrelevant.

So what gives? Why are the Bulls and Lakers scuffling?

It's simple: They were great defensive teams in the regular season, and they've been pretty average in the playoffs.

The Bulls led the NBA in defensive efficiency this season, while the Lakers were sixth despite missing linchpin Andrew Bynum for 28 games. In the postseason, both have slumped toward the middle of the pack -- the Bulls a distant fourth, and the Lakers a mere seventh. This is worse than it sounds, because both faced mediocre offensive teams in the first round, and each wasn't exactly facing off with a juggernaut in the first game of Round 2.

I'd say the key word in both cases is unaffected. As in, both the Hawks and Mavericks were unaffected by the opposing defense Monday.

Chicago: Shot down

The Hawks averaged 80 points in three games against the Bulls in the regular season. On Monday they started a point guard that had hardly played all season and nonetheless shredded Chicago with guards Joe Johnson and Jamal Crawford. The Bulls had surrendered more than 102 points just once in their previous 36 games at United Center; somehow they permitted 103 to an Atlanta team that finished 21st in offensive efficiency. Only one playoff team finished worse -- yep, Indiana.

There are caveats with this one. The stats make it look like the Hawks picked Chicago apart and did whatever they wanted; in reality Atlanta made innumerable long jumpers that will be difficult to repeat in subsequent games.

It's not hard to find the flukes. Johnson may have played his best game as a Hawk, shooting 12-of-18 from the floor and making all five of his 3-pointers, but none of those shots were layups. In fact, an amazing nine of his 12 field goals were from 20 feet or further, and many of them were contested. Johnson is a great shooter and his unusual size for the position allows him to convert tough shots like this, but nine times evokes another shocking Chicago stat -- the one from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." It won't happen again.

Go down the list. Jason Collins made two midrange Js, one under duress as the shot clock was about to expire, and scored five points in a game for the first time since Christmas. That ain't happening again. Jeff Teague made two runners, which is roughly two more than he's made in any other game this season. And Zaza Pachulia made two shots from the field in eight minutes -- matching his total from the final four games of the Orlando series.

Crawford scored 22 points, and that may happen again, but it's hard to imagine him and Johnson combining for 56 with only one basket inside five feet between them -- and even that one was a difficult bank shot from a sharp angle.

So we've established Atlanta is unlikely to play quite this well offensively again. But it may not have to. The Hawks won by eight and Josh Smith and Al Horford didn't do anything; even presuming lesser performances from the players above, the Bulls have their work cut out for them.

Atlanta: Unaffected

What stood out from this game was how little duress the Hawks operated under. Atlanta only had 10 turnovers, and the three guards -- Crawford, Johnson and Teague -- were able to handle the ball with little real pressure. In fact, Atlanta's three-guard look gave Chicago considerable trouble, as there was no place for Kyle Korver to hide on defense (Crawford tooled him around). The Hawks even gave Marvin Williams 11 minutes of run as the power forward in an even smaller, quicker lineup.

So there are two countervailing trends here. The short-term trend from Monday night was a fluke -- the Hawks aren't going to shoot that well from outside all series. But the long-term trend of the Bulls' unimpressive defensive numbers against two bad offensive teams? That's an issue.

I've expressed two back-of-the-mind fears about Chicago all season, so this won't be new to Bulls fans. The first is that the Bulls might be regular-season overachievers who went full blast for 82 games and now are incapable of turning the dial up any further. In particular, their push through the final two weeks of the regular season can be criticized in hindsight -- the Spurs are out of the picture and the Bulls finished four games ahead of every other team. Now, the crazed intensity they brought to nearly every game has been matched -- or at times exceeded -- by their postseason opponents.

The second fear is that Chicago's bench advantage would vanish into the ether in the playoffs, because it'd rarely be matched up against opposing second units for long. Johnson and Teague, for instance, both played 45 minutes Monday, and the Hawks basically used a six-man rotation after halftime. We don't have enough data after six games to make strong statements about this, but it's worth noting that Korver was the only Chicago sub with a "+" next to his name in the Game 1 box score.

I still doubt any of these factors costs the Bulls the series against Atlanta -- even if Chicago can't beat them, the Hawks are perfectly capable of beating themselves -- but it's an awful omen for a conference finals series against Miami or Boston. At this point, whoever advances from the Celtics-Heat contest is very much the favorite in the East.

The Lakers: Shot down

The Lakers should be equally concerned. While they played a lot better than the Bulls did, they also face much more serious consequences from trailing 1-0. Dallas is a much tougher opponent than Atlanta, and it's going to be difficult for L.A. to win four of the next six and survive -- road teams that win Game 1 win a best-of-7 series 56.7 percent of the time.

In the Lakers' case, the baffling issue is that a team with so much size could give up so many layups to a jump-shooting team. The Mavs normally live and die with the jump shot, and they lived unusually well on Monday night, hitting 9-of-20 on 3s against a defense that normally is quite stingy with triples, and adding several phenomenal one-legged midrange Js from Dirk Nowitzki.

L.A. can live with that -- the Mavs might beat them once or twice from 18 feet, but they aren't going to do it four times.

Here's the thing they can't live with, however -- all the baskets from inside 10 feet. Tyson Chandler had five. Shawn Marion had four. Nowitzki had two. J.J. Barea, Jason Terry, Corey Brewer and Brendan Haywood each had one. All told, Dallas scored 30 points on shots inside five feet. The Lakers had 40, yes, but they're supposed to; they're the ones posting up on every play.

Dallas: Unaffected

The Mavericks were 29th out of 30 NBA teams in points in the paint at 36.4 per game; they had 34 in Game 1. It's the same for other spots on the floor -- in Game 1, Dallas scored about as many points on 3s, on long 2s, and in the paint as it always does. In other words, L.A.'s defense really had no impact on how the Mavs played.

In particular, L.A.'s imposing size failed to translate. The Lakers were ninth in the league defending against points in the paint, and would rank higher if we included just Bynum's games. Yet the Mavs were able to score just as much in the paint as they did in any random mid-January game against some middling opponent.

These weren't second shots either; the Mavs had only five offensive rebounds the whole night. Instead the Lakers were just breaking down, repeatedly. The shot chart from the third quarter, when the Lakers set about punting a double-digit lead, is particularly embarrassing: The Mavs had only four 2-point attempts from further than seven feet. Everything else was either at the basket or a 3.

The defining play came early in the fourth quarter, when tiny Barea surveyed the defense and drove to the basket from the 3-point line, and no Lakers big man got within hailing distance as he nudged aside Steve Blake and laid the ball in. That can't happen.

L.A.'s size didn't translate too well offensively either -- as the Orange County Register's Kevin Ding noted, it was the first time all season that Bynum played at least 15 minutes in a game and didn't register an offensive rebound. And obviously, it didn't help that Phil Jackson botched a substitution during a late timeout, setting the stage for Pau Gasol's foul on Nowitzki and the go-ahead free throws.

But ultimately, the story for the Lakers is the same as it was for the Bulls on Monday: They were completely unable to affect how the opponent played. Dallas' shots looked exactly like the shots it took against everybody else, and so did the results. Against an opponent that won two-thirds of its games, that's not a winning formula for L.A.

We're used to the Lakers' size impacting games much more forcefully, and perhaps the first game was an outlier and it will in coming games. The Lakers were able to block eight shots, after all, and they committed only 12 fouls. But if they can't successfully force a jump-shooting team to lean more heavily on jump shots, the two-time champs will deservedly be dethroned.

[Supporter]

Typical Hollinger, blaming the other team instead of giving the Hawks any credit other than backhanded compliments.

[Crank]

Crawford scored 22 points, and that may happen again, but it's hard to imagine him and Johnson combining for 56 with only one basket inside five feet between them -- and even that one was a difficult bank shot from a sharp angle

.

I may not have the sharpest eye but I couldve sworn JJ and jamal made more than one shot from within 5 ft ? jamal is averaging 20 ppg for the PLAYOFFS and both JJ and jamal are stroking it from three 48% and 46% respectively for the PLAYOFFS.

One other thing jamal and JJ were never this aggressive at any time for longer than maybe a game or so during th regular season . They are locked in playoff mode and the analysts really need to stop trying to gauge them based on regular seasons stats .

If any of them took the time to actually watch the game instead of looking at the box score they could easily see the difference

[TheNorthCydeRises]

The stat about JJ and Jamal making only 1 shot within 5 feet is correct. The thing is though, JJ had been making a point to live in the lane before Monday night's game.

So even if JJ isn't scorching hot from midrange and deep, he could still shoot 9 - 17 by making 4 or 5 floaters in the lane, while only hitting 1 or 2 threes and 2 or 3 midrange jumpers.

Hollinger has watched JJ and the Hawks to know this. He's just being an idiot about it.

He did get one point right though. The Bulls, and everybody else, is not going to have th luxury of JJ being out of the game, unless he pick up some quick fouls. Drew has pretty much committed to playing him 42+ minutes a game. And JJ and Jamal are literally taking turns on when to look for their own shots.

We Hawks fans know that those types of shots won't fall at that clip. But then again, the Hawks were the best midrange shooting team in the league, mainly due to Al Horford.

So let's say JJ and Jamal only combine for 37 points tonight. What happens if Horford's midrange shots start to fall? Or how ahout Marvin's?

It's funny how the media thinks we played a perfect game, even when Horford nor Smith were big offensive factors.

A 10 - 15 point Bulls win wouldn't shock me. But nor would another Hawks win tonight.

[Wretch]

The stat about JJ and Jamal making only 1 shot within 5 feet is correct. The thing is though, JJ had been making a point to live in the lane before Monday night's game.

So even if JJ isn't scorching hot from midrange and deep, he could still shoot 9 - 17 by making 4 or 5 floaters in the lane, while only hitting 1 or 2 threes and 2 or 3 midrange jumpers.

Hollinger has watched JJ and the Hawks to know this. He's just being an idiot about it.

He did get one point right though. The Bulls, and everybody else, is not going to have th luxury of JJ being out of the game, unless he pick up some quick fouls. Drew has pretty much committed to playing him 42+ minutes a game. And JJ and Jamal are literally taking turns on when to look for their own shots.

We Hawks fans know that those types of shots won't fall at that clip. But then again, the Hawks were the best midrange shooting team in the league, mainly due to Al Horford.

So let's say JJ and Jamal only combine for 37 points tonight. What happens if Horford's midrange shots start to fall? Or how ahout Marvin's?

It's funny how the media thinks we played a perfect game, even when Horford nor Smith were big offensive factors.

A 10 - 15 point Bulls win wouldn't shock me. But nor would another Hawks win tonight.

They also have no respect for our defense - which really doesn't shock me because the anchor to our interior defense hasn't been the explosive shot blocker that had teams fearing him a few seasons ago. He showed up Monday though.

Honestly, this team is more talented than the record and stats indicate. We were more talented than the historic blowouts last year. In that, there is something to be said for the mental part of this game. The Hawks have an issue with...I really don't know how to say it. It's like...they get punched, everybody tries to carry the team (with 1 on 1 and jumpshots), and once they fall behind, they lay down. Every once in awhile, they'll figure out "Oh, we're not that bad!" and make a run to make it interesting. Ironically, that was showcased best in our win against the Bulls in the regular season (and of course, everyone spun it like we lost it).

Haven't seen that team in the playoffs and I hope they don't show up. Because when this team plays smart and with confidence, they're just flat out a good basketball team. And that's the real story. Not how Chicago is losing/not playing well. Seriously, the Hawks owned them Monday. No, Joe doesn't go off for 30+ a night and they hit some big shots. But we have seen these guys do that for years now.