i think the game of basketball is naturally gonna give you ups and downs. i think you are half right in what you say. but the bottom line is, when crunch time comes, there has to be some type of DOG inside of players that says give me the ball and let me take us home. this is the difference between michael jordan and practically everyone else. not saying that nobody else had it...but none could ever reach that level of confidence, moxxy and preparation that got him to a point where when it came to winning time, there was no way that he was gonna let his team lose. if he caught john stockton on the post he demanded the ball and scored point blank. when blake catches the ball down low and he has klay thompson guarding him, there has to be something inside him that says "barbeque chicken" like shaq would say. that is the "G" in him that i am speaking of.
i dont think that we are totally void of this gene/quality...i think CP3 has it...but he has it in a 6 foot 190lb body opposed to a 6'10" 260lb body.
when i see andre drummond play...he has something the DJ doesnt have. period
if lebron had that DOG in him, he'd be 4-2 instead of 2-4 in finals appearances maybe even 5-1.
this quality we speak of is not new and its not something that we are basically armchair quarterbacking about. the legends see it. chuck, shaq etc etc.
staying disciplined and running your sets is the start of it. run your set, if the defense switches on a CP3/BG pnr, and griffin has klay thompson on his back...the DOG has to kick in, no more posting at 15 feet, no more 360 pirouette jumpers. back him down and put the ball in the bucket. stuff it down his throat and spit on him.
I can't say I agree with any of this. You can't measure a player's "dog." there's no metric for that. How dare you cite Chuck and Shaq. The fact that you think its just that simple for a player like blake to score on an all world defense lets me know you romanticizing this ****. Let's really talk about what's actually happening on the floor.
1) Michael Jordan has nothing to do with this. He's the greatest. Blake Griffin is not.
2) Basketball is not as easy as "Gimmie the ball, and let me take us home." Again, it's romanticized that it happens like that, but in reality it doesn't work like that, especially when you're playing against the best defense in the world. People who are saying that Blake should be dominating in the post against the likes of Draymond and Klay (Klay rarely guards him down the stretch, if at all) are ignoring the pitfalls of blake as a basketball. He can't just up and do that. Which leads me to my second point
3) Blake's lack of fundamentals are highlighted in moments of crisis. You can have all the "dog" you want, but if you are being guarded by a top 3 defender in the league along with one of the best help and recover defense in the last 10 years, you are going to struggle. Point blank period. This isn't not having any "Dog" in you, I'm sure he wants to win very badly, these are basketball fallicies that he is subject to in moments of crisis against the best. It's really hard to punish Draymond and Harrison when the ball pressure on CP by Iggy, Klay, and steph is so tough, in conjunction with Draymond's 3/4 fronting be so great, that it forces blake to catch the ball near the 3pt line, facing a defense that has 10 eyes on him. These are basketball issues. Has nothing to do with no dog.
4) If there is a such thing as a "Dog" again, I would like to think it can't come and go. When he had 8 in the 4th of an elimination game in SAS, was the dog there then? Or when he had the triple double agains them in game 7? Or when CP was down against the Rockets he was putting up triple doubles left and right? What's the view on this? Does it come and go?
5) You're talking about someone having that "Dog" in them, and then saying if lebron had that dog in him he would have been 5-1 in the finals. These are both sentiments you absolutely can't prove. You're viewing basketball from a passionate, biased viewpoint. Take your personal view out of this. How much more dog would he have had to beat the Warriors when he's down 2 all stars? How much more dog would he needed to defeat an all time great spurs team in which his team was in its 4th straight finals appearance with the likes of Miller, Battier, Rashard Lewis, and Chris Anderson? We can't measure dog. But we can measure how old the heat were and that they were playing against an historically great team. Ain't no dog gonna make up for age. Save it.
Leave the psycho analyst of basketball players to sports psychologist and the professionals because you guys are using your personal feelings and allowing them to interfere with what's actually happening.
@ this response
