5/09/2006

What is Pat Riley Thinking?

And more importantly, what is he going to do about it? Watching last nights game 1 was painful… literally causing me pain.

In reading a lot of the press the past few weeks, the headlines seem to focus around Shaq’s foul trouble and Antoine Walker and Jason Williams inability to defend….. Well…. Yes, these are 2 good (and very related) reasons for the Heat struggles, but I believe a good, experienced coach would be able to fix these problems. Pat Riley is under-performing at this task, to say the least.

Shaq foul trouble – Clearly he needs to know how to avoid offensive fouls, learn how refs are going to call it in the post-season and adapt. However, his fouls on the defensive end are all due to the need for him to constantly help when the perimeter defenders get burnt (which seems to be 97% of the time).

Antoine Walker and Jason Williams – Neither is adding much value to the Heat right now and neither is a typical Riley player. Did Riley give up on his “defense wins championships” mentality after he couldn’t get over the hump against the Knicks? I mean - Walker is a complete scrub! (I’ve already written a post about this, so I’ll move on) Jason Williams is clearly struggling on his jumper, which is causing him to force passes which is creating turnovers. Oh – and his defense is a liability…

Some questions I have:

  • Why isn’t James Posey starting and getting the Antoine Walker minutes yet? He isn’t the defensive stopper once advertised, but he can certainly hold his own….
  • When defense is our problem, why isn’t Shandon Anderson getting more run? He isn’t an potent offensive threat, but you rarely see him get beat as badly on the perimeter as Williams.
  • I know his conditioning is in question – but can we please try and play Shaq and Mourning at the same time? I’d like to believe that Vince Carter and Richard Jefferson would think twice about bringing it to the rack if these guys blocked a few of their shots….
  • I never thought I'd say this, but am I the only Heat fan that is suddenly missing Eddie Jones?

I'm hoping Pat Riley wakes up and smells the disgusting stench that is them Miami Heat defense. The Heat clearly have better overall talent than the Nets, and should we lose this series, it will be because Lawrance Frank was a much better coach than Riley.

2 comments:

Colediggy said...

The sad part is the Heat don't have the better talent and possess far less team chemistry. This team is going nowhere fast. Pat Riley is an egotistical asshole for forcing Van Gundy out the door. He put this crap ass team together last offseason and he should suffer these consequences.

Guy said...

You know what you need to do? You need to jump on the power train! Lets go Nets!!!

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