How the Bulls Killed the King: A S65 Finals analysis

[greepleairport]

I will always remember the 2054-2055 season as the Warriors legacy that could have been, completely overlooking the legendary team that it was, because the final score of Game 7 had us down by 8 points.

Eight points.

Eight points between us and penultimate 3-peat Sim League Glory.

How did this happen? Was I overly confident? Was it the podcast fully reverse-cursing me? Did the will of the sim Gods actually want to hand garbageman a 9th title instead of newly crowned greeple his 3rd?

I think, if anything, I overlooked some clear ways that I could have lost.

A wiser man than myself once pointed out that if you’re going to write articles, you might as well write some that give you insight into how you might beat other teams, or in this case, better yourself for the future. So while I’ve learned time and again that you can never be too sure of anything in sim league, I think there were a few ways that, had I made the right changes, I’d still be drunk from celebrating my victory.


Game 5: My Death lineup that was the death of me

After watching 4 games played extraordinarily closely for sim league - all single digit victories / defeats - I decided to pull out the big guns by starting my bigs: 7-footer Kai Jones at C, 7-foot-one-er Jalen Warley at PF, 6'11" Fabian Hub at SF, and 6'8" Morelock at SG, who had 100 STR to boot. The only normally sized guy to never shift roles throughout my tenure of this Warriors dynasty was two-time Finals MVP Markus Ridenhour, the most stabilizing and consistent player on the roster, especially in the playoffs, running point.

With this lineup, I figured I would give Markus the opportunity to lob pass to virtually any other player on the team that was mismatched and open for an easy bucket. Strategically, there did not seem to be any way the Bulls could stop this.

On the defensive end, I had 4 monsters with PSDs all above 70 running a primarily zone defense throughout the game so that any fool who decided to drive on us would have giants collapse on him, hilariously slapping his ball away into the stands.

But, whoops! They shot 55% from the field. I could not have been more wrong.

The only non-athlete in my starting 5 was Kai Jones, my A+ free agent acquisition. He spent the last part of the season and most of the playoffs injured, so it’s safe to say that he was rusty, but I figured a sim-league player would not be rusty, presenting his own unique challenge to Svi. Svi is nothing special defensively aside from his blocks, with a C PSD, so his attributes would have me believe. His C rebounds pale in comparison to Kai’s A rebounds. Also, Svi was the only player on the court slower than Kai…

It didn’t seem like a dumb move, but the sim said otherwise. Fabian Hub had played much better the rest of the series opposite Svi, but this one game I decided to pull Hub off Svi. Could it be that Svi was used to this athletically bizarre player, then finally saw someone normal athletically opposite him, and took full advantage of the opportunity? I would say yes, but again, Svi’s numbers were low overall, even for Svi: 4pts above his playoff average; 1.5 blocks below his playoff average... but then I realized he did all of this in 15 minutes _less_ than his average playing time, proving to be incredibly efficient in Game 5.

The Warley / Dirks matchup was the same as it was all series - a taller faster player defending an overall much better player. I’d say Warley did his job in Game 5.

Hub and Morelock, holding the wing spots, were my expected mismatches to really solidify a dominant victory. Somehow, Morelock could not contain 35 yr old still blue Toni Gauss’s efficient 13pts in 15 minutes of total playing time. Morelock can not defend the perimeter worth a damn, but Gauss did not score from the outside - only ½ from three. Hub fared better opposite Dosunmu, and Morelock likely fared better opposite Dosunmu as well, who probably swung over to SG with Gauss in foul trouble. Nonetheless Dosunmu dropped 9 assists on this large and fast wing team, probably playing just a little bit faster than his counterparts, providing a slight edge.

At PG, Markus was an absolute disaster, staying on the court for only 1 quarter’s worth of minutes, racking up 4 fouls. He could not stick around long enough to get ANY offense going for us, leaving PG duties in the incapable hands of Jerold Harrison, whom we had misplaced our trust in the PG position to play, maybe, 10 minutes there, instead of most of the game. He arguably fared better than Albert Myers, though, who accrued ZERO assists in his 17 minutes on the floor.

Our offense was not centered on the big men, but on Markus facilitating the big men’s offense. Markus was a ghost in game 5, and the team paid for it. Despite the Bulls rarely shooting 3’s, zone was absolutely the wrong defense to run against them. It pulled our best rebounders out of position, our biggest strength, giving up 20 boards to the Bulls, still incapable of matching the speed of their smaller team.

I would like to try game 5 over, obviously, running Half-trap or Help defense instead of Zone. We mostly ran Help this series in an effort to disrupt their highly structured offense, but as we’ll get into next, it was not as effective as we had hoped.

The mystery of close games, or clarity?

Every other game in the series painted a much clearer picture of how our teams matched up. With or without Charles Jarrett playing, the results were very close. I like to think of final scores as clues to unlocking the better team. If we take away the Warriors death-lineup Game 5 wild card disaster, there may not have been a blowout game holding a clue to whom could win the series.

Garbageman’s largest adjustment all finals was pulling Charles Jarrett back into the lineup. He chose a 6th man role for him, and did not bring him in as early as possible. For someone on a D2D schedule, coming off the bench was a smart choice. He warmed up in a Game 6 loss, and played big minutes off the bench in a Game 7 gold-clinching victory. I kept waiting to see Charles Jarrett hit the starting 5, but he never did. Dosunmu and Gauss were doing just fine, so I guess, why change?

I don’t know what minor adjustments, if any, Gman made for games 6 and 7, but both games played like the first 4: close. The Bulls fixed the rebound gap that plagued his team in the first two games, and nothing we did thwarted their high motion offense. Win or lose, their worst shooting performances never dipped below 45%, and I think their two offensive facilitators, McClung and Dosunmu, picked up the other’s slack if or when there was any. We Warriors did not have an answer for that, but boy did we try.

Instead, it was their defense that stopped us. We had the highest FG% as a team most of the season, but the Bulls held our shooting to below 50% every single game except one, Game 4, where the Bulls still beat us by 5 pts.

As much as I have prided myself on having fast big men, the Bulls, overall, were a faster team. Running a defense that fouled a bit more? Not a problem. Our Achilles Heel always lived at the foul line. Though we tended to overwhelm defenses by drawing fouls and thus getting better players off the court early, it didn’t matter how much we drew fouls. Because we bricked at least half of our foul shots outside of Game 1, when Fabian Hub put up miraculous numbers from the foul line (13/18, and Hub averaged 52% in the playoffs, almost exclusively due to this game). They played Half-trap on us, but not too much, and stayed in position to grab rebounds, closing (and some games surpassing) that rebound differential.

Nonetheless, the Sim Gods kept us _so close_ that, despite these small advantages Gman executed, the series really could have gone either way, bringing me to Game 7.

Everything on the line, but flatly outplayed

It was Game 7 where the Bulls finally killed the King. Ken Dirks refused to be neutralized and dominated the boards, drilling layups and grabbing offensive rebounds for almost every shot he missed. Mac McClung outplayed Markus the vet in big numbers, forcing 5 turnovers from a guy who always averaged well over 4.0 for his A/T ratio. But in Game 7? McClung held Markus to 5 assists and 5 turnovers, not to mention 6/23 from the field. To top it off? Mac scored a nice triple double himself, capping the victory. Mac's performance may not have been enough to earn him POTG, but it was surely enough to clinch his claim to Finals MVP at the age of 24. Certainly one of the youngest, if not THE youngest, in sim history.

The baby of our Warriors playoff run, now 27 and entering his prime, my Fabi baby Hubby bun was the only Warrior categorically refusing to go down without a fight. 33pts, 11 boards, 6 assists, SEVEN steals, and a couple blocks, too. Hub did what he could to rally his team, but the rest of the team played like they were already defeated. There was nothing Hub could do for them, and Hub had done it all.

___

For a while after our finals loss, I couldn’t help but kick myself for not playing my big 3 a full 48 minutes apiece. What did I have to lose? It was the final game of the season, all-in! To be honest, the thought never crossed my mind, and the way Morelock and Ridenhour played, I doubt it would have been enough. Maybe Fabian could have scored 8 more hero points in an extra 6 minutes of play, but I doubt it.

I do wish I had switched up my lineup, putting Morelock opposite Dirks, and possibly getting Dirks into foul trouble instead of grabbing 19 rebounds with ease, maybe throwing Gillam in his bizarre swing role at SF, too. Perhaps I should have started Jerold Harrison in place of Coss because…duh. One is blue, the other is yellow.

But I did none of these things, and I will never know the impact those switches may or may not have had. Instead, I laid down in defeat as the Bulls killed the king, led by arguably the league’s best ever GM, Garbageman, a king returned to his throne.

Well-played, sir. WELL WELL WELL played.

[greepleairport]

1800+ words, +6pts

now to count some dumb Fryeing memes, cant wait

[digiskunk]

Excellent article!!

[greepleairport]

Excellent article!!

thanks my g