There was no way last night could possibly live up to the craziness that was OKC-LAC Game 5, but we still had two very intriguing games. Miami managed to pull off another fourth-quarter comeback over the Nets while San Antonio took care of business and handled eliminated Portland.
What can we learn from those games?
1) Jason Kidd might just be the worst late-game coach in NBA history
In reality, Brooklyn should be heading back to the Barclays Center up 3-2 over Miami. They had big fourth quarter leads in both Games 4 & 5, and each time they blew it - and each game they were scoreless for a four-plus minute stretch in the last five minutes.
That means when it got to crunch time, the Nets didn't just play bad. They didn't score.
And first year head coach Jason Kidd is the reason why.
I like the work Kidd did this season. He adjusted to losing the best offensive center in basketball and rebounded from a terrible start to have one of the best second halves of the season in the league.
But at the end of games, he just stops calling plays offensively. Seriously.
Every possession down the stretch is just an isolation for a certain player, calling on them to make a play. This is called hero-ball in NBA circles, because usually a guy goes rogue from an offensive set to try and be the "hero" of the game himself.
With Brooklyn, there's been nothing to go rogue from. Hero-ball is highly inefficient because it often leads to the wannabe "hero" throwing up a crazy, low-percentage shot, and that's what Kidd has the Nets relying on in the last several minutes of games - which is why they've struggled so much down the stretch against the Heat.
2) Don't mess with the best
With their wins last night, Miami is now advancing to their fourth straight conference final, while San Antonio is advancing to their third straight.
We can talk all we want about how amazing this postseason has been, all of the surprise teams, and the promising future they all appear to have, but at the end of the day, all signs are pointing to another Spurs-Heat matchup in the Finals.
Whoever wins the Thunder-Clippers series will be physically beat-up and emotionally drained, giving San Antonio a major leg-up against whoever they play.
Miami, meanwhile, will continue their cakewalk through the Eastern Conference against either Washington - who they owned in the regular season - or Indiana, whose struggles have been well documented.
They've let everyone else have their fun, but San Antonio and Miami are asserting their dominance and showing everyone why they're on a different level.
3) Perception is reality
Steve Kerr hasn't coached a game in his life, yet he had teams fighting for his services like a bunch of pre-teen schoolgirls over a Justin Bieber poster. He signed a 5-year, $25 million deal to become the head coach of Golden State last night, following his predecessor Mark Jackson in being the Warriors second straight coach coming straight from the broadcast booth to the sidelines with no prior experience.
Kerr is a great basketball mind, and I think he'll do really well. He played 15 years in the NBA from 1989-2003 and was one of the best three-point shooters in league history before serving as GM of the Phoenix Suns from 2007-2010 and has served as a broadcaster for TNT since then.
He's well respected, but no one had thought of him as a coach.
Until Phil Jackson wanted him to coach the Knicks.
It seemed like a foregone conclusion that Kerr would go to New York and serve under Jackson, whom he won three championships with while he was playing for the Bulls with Michael Jordan. And because Jackson is the Zen Master and always seems to know things others don't, Kerr became an attractive candidate for other positions.
The best part? Those other teams started throwing more and more money at him to try and lure him away from that foregone conclusion.
Well, it paid off nicely for Steve Kerr. He's making $5 million a year and has one of the best rosters in the entire league that's full of All-Stars past and present.
Not bad for a guy who hasn't blown a whistle yet.
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