11-04-2019, 01:07 PM
(11-04-2019, 10:36 AM)Kammrath Wrote: To be clear, I don't think Boban should get more than 20 mins a night. I think he is best in spurts. But I INSIST that he needs nightly spurts, versus almost every team. I do not believe in DNPing him. The mismatches always cut both ways. And I also insist that KP+Boban is REALLY good for this team, regardless of the other team's personnel.
Ah, one of my pet points to rant on here. My man Boban!
I'm with you on this Kam and its been a point I've posted about consistently about Boban the last few years especially.
In fact here's a link to the OLD Forum where D. Lord and I actually debated the topic of Boban's usage in some detail. (@Magickian - I'm getting dark purple hyper links on the dark theme of the forum, hard to read)
Boban is an amazing player, statistically over short minutes he's one of the most efficient players of all times, ranking with the all time HoF NBA greats.
Its very odd though because Big TEX Boban only does this in a reserve limited minute role. He has been occasionally used as a started and done ok for example for a short stretch in a San Antonio as a Spur and for a few games Philadelphia. He actually helped Philly win the Nets playoff series particularly when Embiid missed time.
Yes, some matchups will work against you with Boban but even in those matchups a coach could try Boban and give it some time to see if the other team is winning the mismatch or not. Doc Rivers described this in some detail. A stretch big in a 5-out set for example can't guarantee that he's hitting his 3 points or that they are exploiting the PnR over Boban right fast enough to make up for Boban absolutely collapsing their interior defense and getting their BIGS in foul trouble.
Which way will the match up go from night to night. A great example came in the recent Mavs / Laker game. Coach Carlisle IMO made a mistake by not at least trying to go back to Boban, who had been giving the Laker bigs problems.
Dwight Howard, Javale McGee and yes even Anthony Davis have problem defending Boban and he's a problem on the boards as well as defending the rim (even though his aggression as a shot blocker has always been poor by all oberservations). He's a big body and big wingspan to work around even without being a particularly skilled great rim protector. He was a block to Tristan Thompson of the Cavs and Kevin Love.
I LOVE the way the super high BBIQ of Luka knows how to leverage both Boban and KP. Its a thing of beauty to watch. Luka a prodigy of pressing the advantage of his teammates skills and KP / Boban are loaded with mismatch advantages every night.