NBA Season/Playoffs 2025-26

[Who]

Interesting listening to Jay Williams talking about NY and their lack of quality ball-handlers in the starting lineup outside of Brunson. This has bothered me for some time. Both M Bridges & Anunoby are limited ball-handlers. J Hart is probably their next best ball-handler.

Anyway, Jay Williams was talking about how well San Antonio are pressuring Brunson and forcing down the shot clock before NY get into their offense.

Jay Williams was also pointing out the number of possessions where Brunson was taking 15 secs before he passed to a teammate. And possessions where Brunson never passed the ball to a teammate and shot himself instead. That this is killing NY's ball movement.

Draymond Green and others were pointing out the key to opening up Brunson is getting the ball more to KAT in the high post as a facilitator and moving Brunson off the ball earlier in the possession then having him come back and get it off of movement. I agree. Same point Jay Will was making. Brunson is dribbling in front of 5 defenders with all 5 Spurs defenders focused on him and ready to help.

Jay Will was also saying how Castle is bigger and stronger than Brunson. As is Dylan Harper. And they are just as quick if not quicker than Brunson. Difficult matchups. They are wearing Brunson down with their physical defense hounding Brunson as he tries to bring the ball upcourt.

This point reminds me a lot of Luka Doncic. It drives me nuts when LAL (or DAL before, like in 2024 Finals) allow teams to beat up Luka all the way up the floor instead of having a different player bring the ball up. Especially since LAL have A Reaves & LeBron who can comfortably do so. Or in DAL in 2024 Finals when Luka had Kyrie. Instead they kept having Luka bring the ball up and allowing the defense to tire him out and hurt his FG% as the game went on.

Same thing happened with LAL and Chicago in 1991 Finals. Jordan and Pippen were hounding Magic for 94 feet. At least LAL were smart enough to get Magic to pass ahead to either Sam Perkins or Vlade Divac to bring the ball up against the Bulls bigs and then get it back to Magic nearer the 3 point line to setup the offense.

New York gotta stop letting San Antonio beat up on Brunson. Let Hart bring up the ball. Or bring in McBride instead of Hart to help Brunson if Hart isn't playing well. Then get it to KAT in the high post more and have Brunson play more off-ball so San Antonio can't load up on him defensively so easily.

[Goldstar88]

LeBron James: "San Antonio, they're a team that doesn't have ego. They have their personal beliefs on what they can bring to the table. We all do, we're all competitors, but that team is egoless.