I remember that was the only time in that whole series where I was asking for Amir.

It’s ridiculous to say that Flip should have put Amir in (although I agree that he should have been given a shot at the minutes that Ratliff got during the series), but it’s more than fair to say that Maxiell should have been playing at the end of that game.

I don’t think anyone is suggesting it was a firing offense, that 4th quarter lineup.

“You suggest that Amir would have fared better against the Boston big men not named Garnett (was KG not playing in the 4th quater?)”

Detroit showed ZERO energy in that quarter, our only answer was to foul. Boston shot 14 of 27 free throws in the 4th quarter in that game. We needed someone to come in and be a spark, help our offense with put-backs and tip-ins and block shots on the other end. We looked dead, we weren’t driving to the paint, we settled for jumpers that were mostly missed.

Funny enough, we needed Amir on Offense that quarter, more than anything. Rasheed was our inside man, but none of his post shots were falling. So instead he settled for threes, and we know how that goes…

I agree with you re Amir in the Philly and Orlando series(es?). I didn’t see game 6 of the Boston series (out of the country on business — the only playoff game I missed and one of the only games period I missed all year). So I can’t say what I thought or would have thought while watching Detroit blow that 10 point lead — well, there would have been a lot of expletives, but re strategy, I don’t know.

Still, I come back to the idea that if you see a lead slipping away in an elimination game, even if your all-star starter hasn’t played well, you don’t go to a rookie bench guy who has seen few meaningful minutes all year and who in the past was dominated by the specific opponent you are facing now. You suggest that Amir would have fared better against the Boston big men not named Garnett (was KG not playing in the 4th quater?). I don’t know — those guys are hard to figure: Perkins and Powe seem to have really good and really mediocre games for no particular reason.

Anyway, Flip followed that conventional wisdom and lost. We’ll never know whether playing Johnson have changed the outcome. But I hardly think it’s a firing offense to have not played him then. At some point, you gotta dance with the ones what brung ya.

That was supposed to read “Amir wasn’t the rigth body to throw at Howard”

Amir helped close out the Philly series beautifully:
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/boxscore;_ylt=Ai2jxNJw.p4jAOuIZwE1cbikvLYF?gid=2008050120

However, going into the Orlando series, Maxiell wasn’t the right body to throw at Howard (which someone corrected me about here on DBB). Rasheed, Maxiell, Ratliff and McDyess all match up much better against Howard.

Against Garnett, well we all remember how that turned out in the regular season, when Garnett manhandled Amir. But when Garnett wasn’t on the floor, and when players like Perkins, Powe, Brown and others were giving us problems, Amir could have saved the day. I remember in game six, just begging for Flip to put Amir in. There was a point in the 4th quarter of game six where Amir could have begun to turn the tide. Boston outscored us 29-13 in that quarter, and we needed someone to block shots, put bodies on the floor, grab rebounds on both ends of the floor and get cleanup, muscle baskets. Meanwhile, Rasheed shoots 2-12 and almost singlehandedly loses the series for us in that quarter.

Herrmann is another story. He’s a mix between a 3 and a 4, he’s tall, he’s got length, strength, and can be a defensive pest. So if Tay has matchup problems with bigger, stronger 3’s, Herrmann had the skill set to make a difference. I’m willing to bet that Herrmann could have given problems to Paul Pierce, and could do the same to a player like Lebron.

I realize that if Flip tried either of these and we lost, people would feel like those substitutions lost it. But in the heat of the moment, these are the things I was screaming at my television.

Hopefully Curry will do what we all hope he has the potential for– to inspire and command our players and trust our youth a lot more than Flip did.

I don’t think anybody really thought Amir was going to get serious minutes in the playoffs. After the starters we had Maxiell, more experienced and a better producer, and Ratliff, brought in for his experience and shotblocking.

The weird thing that happened to our bench during the playoffs is that Flip stopped playing the two guys who had been backup SFs — Hayes and Hermann — and instead went to three-guard lineups when Tayshaun was out (oh, and Tayshaun was back to playing 40+ minutes every game). If Jarvis Hayes had been able to go for his season averages or a little better, I think that would have made more of a difference than playing Amir as the fourth or fifth big man.

Maybe this is a stretch . . . Okur was what Nocioni would have been for us if we were Chicago and actually matched it.

I like Okur’s game, but his game is very similar to Sheed’s in a lot of respects.

Wouldn’t it be sweet if curry were the cure for cancer? Not least of which for Eddy Curry.

Kevin Sawyer walks into the backyard. Second later, we hear the unmistakable sound of a shotgun blast, muffled only by a human mouth.