The problem I have with Spoelstra playing Shane Battier 42 minutes (despite the hot-shooting) and Joel Anthony only 2 minutes is that the Miami Heat already have 2 great perimeter defenders in LeBron and D-Wade.
i think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who thinks anthony and battier should get the same amount of minutes..
however really with anthony on the floor you're playing with 4 offensive players, he may help you get one or two more rebounds(i doubt it really makes much of a difference) but he is dead weight...
battier was pretty much the reason the heat were up in the first half(as you noted)...he's a very good outside shooter(unlike lebron,wade,and a few others..chalmers is the only other reliable one....james jones doesn't play enough and mike miller is a skeleton), plays good defense, make smart plays
that said, no way do you play him 42 minutes, he shouldn't have been on durant in the 4th quarter either
What the Heat really need is a defensive anchor to use all 6 fouls against the abundance of Thunder perimeter scorers.
that's the big reason you can play joel for 20-25 minutes...let him pick up some fouls and play some D..get some boards...but in that case you're still playing 4 on 5 on offense..so you can not play him too long or you systematically rotate him in when necessary(i don't trust spoelstra to do that though)
The Heat are trying to play small-ball (sacrificing defense and rebounding for offense/floor-spacing) and that is NOT a way to beat the Thunder. They would've been better served playing Joel Anthony a lot more and Shane Battier a lot less in my opinion because the 3 main rebounding positions are the 3, 4, and 5.
not sure that having battier on the floor with lebron and wade sacrifices anything defensively...plus battier's 3 point shooting would actually space the floor
no one is going to argue that joel anthony should get more time, because he should, but he is a limited offensive player and the heat need to be able to keep up with the thunder,which as the heat saw, is the best offense in the NBA. You rotate anthony, haslem, and battier it when convenient. When battier was going cold, they should have taken him out.
but yes the heat have to rebound better because OKC is a very good rebounding team, I don't think with anthony playing 20-25 minutes that's going to change much but atleast it will help a little.
The heat are just not a tall team down low, they have haslem who is a very good rebounder but small, bosh who plays perimeter more, anthony who's not even 6'10 and an ok rebounder, and a couple of other scrubs that never play.
Spoelstra ran the Heat with a 1-2-3-3-and 4 at all times almost and that is no way to compete on the boards.
the problem is not the lineup, it's the fact that he barely adjusted to it when he needed to
that lineup is good for perimeter defense and shooting, but it won't rebound.
When battier was essentially gassed and gone cold, his contribution was defense but he had issues with durant. So Spoelstra should have made the adjustment and gone to a bigger lineup.
LeBron is better suited rebounding when he is matched up directly with Kevin Durant than he is matched up against Kendrick Perkins/Collison/Ibaka. And Battier is in there purely for spot-up shooting and man-defense. I just don't understand how Spoelstra is an NBA coach.
he's not..he's a video guy who got assumed into the position because he's pat riley's *****
