Skip Bayless vs. Kevin Durant on Twitter today(reactions on lbj KD workout)

[chips93]

The mavericks took Lebron out of his comfort zone and forced him to shoot jumpers. Some of it was the zone the Mavericks played. Some was their in your face, never back down attitude. And some was the physical play of Stevenson, Marion, Chandler and the rest of the Mavericks. Even Dirk seemed tough that year.

it is far easier said than done, to keep bron out of the paint. its not like the mavs tried and the thunder didnt, lebron improved as a player, and the thunder arent as good a defensive team as the 2011 mavs.

Last year was completely different. The Thunder let him work in the paint all series long. The Thunder adapted to the Heat's style of play instead of the other way around. I thought it was a mistake that Scott Brooks didn't play Perkins enough and opted for Durant/Ibaka to protect the paint when Lebron was killing them inside. Also, I thought they should have played zone more.

what changed was that lebron had a much improved post game. against dallas he barely went there, against okc his post game was a staple of miami's offense.

Lebron was 8-46 for 17.39% on shots 10+ feet from the rim against the Thunder(According to HOOPDATA). Let that sink in

its hardly fair to judge lebron's progress as a jumpshooter over one series. his jumpshot has improved a lot. his shooting locations stats at hoopdata, over entire seasons illustrate his progress.

[Scoooter]

I wish I had known sooner that you could make a comfortable living trolling professional athletes.

[KG215]

it is far easier said than done, to keep bron out of the paint. its not like the mavs tried and the thunder didnt, lebron improved as a player, and the thunder arent as good a defensive team as the 2011 mavs.

True, but an effective and always moving (with the ball) zone defense should make penetrating and getting into the lane tougher than man defense; especially against a player as great as LeBron.

what changed was that lebron had a much improved post game. against dallas he barely went there, against okc his post game was a staple of miami's offense.

This. Seems like there's not a lot of people pointing out one big difference between 2011 and 2012 LeBron is the improved postgame. It's still not as good and fluid as it could and should be for a player of his size, strength, and ability level, but it was still very much improved. He caused plenty of problems against OKC on the block with his back to the basket, regardless of who was guarding him.

its hardly fair to judge lebron's progress as a jumpshooter over one series. his jumpshot has improved a lot. his shooting locations stats at hoopdata, over entire seasons illustrate his progress.

I don't think he was using the 8/46 to judge LeBron's progress as a jumpshooter. He was using to to illustrate just how poorly he shot from 10+ feet out in that series. Which he did. In game one, although he ended up putting up good numbers, he was bricking jumper after jumper after jumper. I didn't know if that was going to be a trend the rest of the series, but it was. At the very least, when you look at how horribly he shot from mid-range in game one, and saw it was continuing in game two, the adjustment to either a zone defense or a softer man defense where LeBron's man plays way back, should've been made.

Ideally, in a softer/sagging man, you'd have liked to be able to use Chalmers or Battier's man to sag-off, too, in order to help on Lebron and Wade penetration, but given how well the Miami role player were shooting, they couldn't do that. That seemed to be the plan in game five when Durant was assigned to Chalmers, but Chalmers went off. Durant wasn't particularly "guarding" Chalmers as much as that was just his assignment. He was playing roamer/helper and it backfired. Durant also did a poor job several times closing out on Chalmers who was able to drive in for a layup.