os asks: what types of players generally struggle in the playoffs? from my impression it is smaller guards as defenses get tighter, and more one dimensional players like giannis in the bubble. i could be wrong though, and would love to be more informed on this.
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nice question. and yeah, i think you pretty much hit the nail on the head.
players that struggle in the playoffs, relative to their regular season production, usually fit in one of the following categories (we're talking purely on-court basketball reasons here, and not including stuff like players being hurt/injured, having off-court issues, etc.):
the smaller guard who has less time and space to get his shot off
defenses tighten up, on-ball defenders give more effort staying in front, help-defenders have crispier rotations, and suddenly the 6'1 guard who usually has 2 inches of space finishing around the rim only has 1 inch of space, his timing/quickness advantage is gone, and now he's shooting like 36% from the field.
the smaller guard who relies on going to the line in the regular season
the entire year he's officiated one way, drawing shooting fouls on little bumps and by leaning into his defenders, using that to get into his rhythm every game… then the playoffs come around and the referees are like "nah" (see "williams, lou").
the forwards and centers that can't defend pick and rolls / pick and pops
these dudes are basically unplayable in big playoff minutes, regardless of how effective they are on offense (see "kanter, enes" and "harrell, montrezl").
the non-shooting guard
this one's pretty self-explanatory.
the one-dimensional shooter
shooting comes and goes. players that rely heavily on their three-point stroke who aren't also great slashers, free-throw drawers, and/or playmakers are typically pretty inconsistent producers in the playoffs.
this is true even for the best shooters. klay thompson, for example, has scored less than 15 points in ~1/3 of his playoff games and shot ≤40% from the field in ~1/2 of them. (i've written a long thread on klay before and been called a huge hater - i actually love watching klay, but his limitations are apparent and they'd be much more obvious to the casual fan if he didn't play for the golden state warriors.)
the star that's asked to do too much
i'd actually put bubble giannis antetokounmpo in this category. if a team can "build a wall" around you, it's probably because you have at least one teammate who's a straight up liability on the perimeter that they're helping off of (see "bledsoe, eric"). let me put it this way: if you're single-handedly making the other team have to build a wall to stop you, i feel like you're doing your job and any "struggles" probably aren't on you.
in fact, i'd put the majority of stars who struggle in the playoffs in this category (dame lillard in 2018 comes to mind - there's only so much he could've done when they were trapping him 35 feet away from the basket and his best release valve was al-farouq aminu).
in the playoffs, teams have days to prepare to throw everything at stopping one or two specific guys. if your star(s) aren't elite and/or don't have capable help to take some pressure off of them, them struggling is pretty normal.
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