NBA Playoffs Dance: Jazz vs. Spurs

- The Season's Over -

NBA Playoffs Dance: Jazz vs. Spurs

May 21, 2007

Deer in the Headlights

With Game One of the Western Conference Finals starting just 38 hours after San Antonio knocked Phoenix off Friday night, ETB didn’t have time to put together a proper series preview before tipoff yesterday afternoon. Our apologies. With game one in the books, here’s how we see the rest of the series shaking down.

“We are two teams that try to do the same thing, just put the ball in, play from the inside out, when we have the opportunity we are going to run. It’s going to be fun with a lot of good plays and tough possessions, hard to score. So, we’ll see what happens.” – Manu Ginobili

There are a number of interesting matchups between these teams who looked fairly evenly matched in the regular season, but the most interesting thing to pay attention to may be the chess match taking place on the sidelines. The team’s who play pretty offensive basketball and rack up regular-season wins are gone (deal with it). What’s left are Jerry Sloan’s gritty, disciplined Utah Jazz and Gregg Popivich’s physical, methodical San Antonio Spurs; each team an accurate reflection of their skipper. Between the two, these guys have as much playoff coaching experience and savvy as anybody in the league. They’ve seen it all, and neither will find it easy to catch the other off balance.

Still, there will be plenty of games within the game as they constantly make adjustments between games, halves, quarters and even possessions. Ordinarily, the task of each of these coaches is to slow the game down- that should be no problem here. While the Jazz may be more comfortable running, they’re perfectly content to play in the half court; San Antonio dominates in the half court, but they have some track stars too. Look for both teams to play tight on the ball and force turnovers for transition buckets. Failing that, they will try to run their offense through the power forwards in the mid-post and set up slashing point guards and deadly spot up jump shooters outside. Because Utah usually likes to grind down their opponents and simply try to make fewer mistakes, they will need to make some changes because that style of play is San Antonio’s modus operandi.

The teams split their season series 2-2 and each squad won both of their home games. In those matchups Tim Duncan and Tony Parker each averaged 21.5 points, and Duncan also contributed 11.3 rebounds per. The Jazz did have some success keeping Manu Ginobili out of it though (he shot less than 25 percent from the field), but the rest of the Spurs didn’t have much trouble scoring. Utah limited the Spurs to 85.5 points per game in Utah, but San Antonio averaged a healthy 104 points at home. The rebirth of Jazz basketball has been nothing short of remarkable, but their lack of playoff experience and the Spurs home-court advantage is going to be very difficult to overcome. San Antonio is looking to reach the finals for the third time in five years, while the Jazz haven’t been this far since 1998. Here’s how the on-court matchups look:

Backcourt Leadership
Backcourt
The Spurs really took advantage of Jazz miscues in the first game, but it wasn’t the fault of their quarterback. Deron Williams scored a career-high 34 points, and registered 18 in the fourth quarter during late Jazz rally that showed Sloan’s team won’t quit. He also added seven rebounds and nine assists. If they can continue to get anywhere near that kind of production out of the youngster Utah won’t have to worry about the point guard matchup. He’s also a strong defender who can keep up with Tony on the other end, but Parker’s speed will give just about every team fits. Derek Fisher will be asked to contribute some of the solid defense he played against Baron Davis last round. He’ll also be counted on for leadership and clutch shooting, and Spurs fans know he’s more than capable of the latter (Ahem, Game 5 of the 2004 West semifinals in San Antonio).

The lack of a true scorer at the two-guard position is a major weakness for Utah, and they don’t really have a plus defender who can take the taller San Antonio wing players either. Even though Ginobili played poorly in the season series, he should be able to produce here. Michael Finley and Brent Barry are also going to give them trouble as they will make Utah pay for trying to double Tim Duncan in the post.

The Key Matchup
Frontcourt
I’m a big Carlos Boozer fan, but this is about as tough a matchup as he could see in a playoff series. He’s physically strong enough to keep up with Duncan, but he’s just not long enough to play him straight up nor athletic enough to make up for it. Duncan is such a complete and intelligent player that he should have no trouble shooting over Boozer, forcing Boozer to play on him. When that happens, Duncan can take him to the post and score at will, drawing fouls aplently. Duncan has averaged over 24 points, over 12 rebounds and more than 3.5 blocks during the playoffs and that likely won’t change. Offensively, Boozer managed only 16.7 points on 49% FGs in the three games he played against San Antonio this season- well below his season marks. I think he can explode for one or two huge games, but I’m not convinced he can be the workhorse the Jazz will need to stay in the road games. For better or worse, he’ll certainly have to be more involved in game two than he was in game one.

Mehmet Okur is always a threat to give the opponent matchup problems, as his rare blend of height and dead-eye perimeter shooting is killer when he’s on. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been as often as Utah would like this postseason, and Robert Horry is very capable of keeping up with him in limited stretches. Bruce Bowen could also throw him off his game with his perpetual bumping, clawing and grabbing. Bruce was at his dirty best against Phoenix in round two, harassing the Suns with grabby defense, getting inside Steve Nash’s head and knocking down his trademark, timely 3s from the baseline.

The defensive specialist and spark plug on the opposite side, Andrei Kirilenko, will need to have more of an impact on the game than Bowen for Utah to keep up. AK-47 looked terrible in round one and the first few games of the Golden State series, but then he came alive for the final three contests. He needs to keep the Spurs defense honest with his jumper, scoring double-digit points. He’ll also need to fly around the basket swatting shots and chase down shooters outside, playing the fantastic help defense that made him an All-Star last year. 7 points, 5 rebounds and 0 steals to go along with 0 blocks isn’t going to cut it. If the tentative, weepy Kirilenko from the Houton series shows this week, the Jazz can’t advance. It doesn’t bode well that he only put up 8.8 points on 30% FGs against SA in the regular season.

It’s Gonna Get Scrappy
The Prediction
Utah is rolling, but Spurs have home court and experience. Both figure to play prominently into the series. As I mentioned, these teams split the season series. That just meant that the Spurs extended their home winning streak against Utah to 16 games by winning both of the contests in San Antonio, a streak that goes back to 1998. And Jerry Sloan will do his best to make sure Utah doesn’t look ‘just happy to be here’, but that’s a tall order for a roster so dependent on youth and players who have little to no big-game credentials. San Anton, on the other hand, is the most playoff-seasoned team in the NBA and is certainly not lacking in killer instinct.

The one thing that did look good for Utah on paper was that they were far more rested. They had last played on Tuesday before yesterday’s game, while the Spurs didn’t eliminate Phoenix until Friday night, giving them just one day of recovery time before Sunday afternoon’s matchup. So much for that. There are a lot of teams who could learn from the Spurs professional disinterest in the regular season, because they’re always rested and collected when the playoffs start. I hope Mike D’Antoni was taking notes (Brian and I were discussing the lunacy of a team with title aspirations going with a 7-man rotation so often in December, and lo and behold . . .).

While every year the Spurs appear vulnerable when the postseason kicks off, and there is always a more sexy pick out there, it’s all wishful thinking: the title is San Antonio’s to lose.

Spurs in 5

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