Matchups A teams fate can be decided by which team they play. The Blazers, who seemed to be playing well, found themselves to be outmatched by the Spurs. Yet, the Mavericks had just taken the Spurs to a seven-game series. Had they been able to win that series and send the Spurs home, we might be looking at a conference final with the Blazers playing OKC. And as David Thorpe recently wrote on ESPN, had Lillard not made the series-winner against Houston, the Rockets quite possibly could be in the conference final against OKC because of the matchups they create with the Spurs.
The little things never change
It’s a constant struggle to improve on transition defense and defensive rebounding at the high school level. Throughout the conference finals, it’s obvious that these problems aren’t something that teams grow out of. No matter the caliber of players you are dealing with, the small details of great teams remain the same. It also shows that a solution to the problems that we deal with season after season are not as simple as we hope.
