Cause and Effect

It will be a never-ending source of mystery to me.

Why did Carlisle pull Butler and Beaubois? Aside from Dirk in the second half, those were the two most effective weapons at Carlisle's disposal. More importantly, he left them out in favor of giving Shawn Marion, Jason Terry, and Jason Kidd more minutes, despite the fact that they had proven ineffective.

The Spurs had no answer to Caron. I was surprised to see him sitting on the bench at all. A night after dropping 35, Caron doesn't crack 40 minutes after scoring 25 points on 9-18 shooting (perfect 6-6 from the line). Were you saving him for the next round? Marion, Terry, and Kidd combined for a whopping 11 points in 89 combined minutes of play. That's ridiculous. More than that, Rodrigue Beaubois and Erick Dampier played the exact same number of minutes, yet Beaubois produced just as many rebounds and assists (5 and 1, respectively) while outscoring him by 16.

I mean, I get that Carlisle won 55 games with his rotations and he hasn't missed the playoffs as head coach yet, but there is something fundamentally wrong with the way he distributed minutes down the stretch. Coaching is not an exact science, but at the same time, keeping the same players on the floor and hoping for them all to simultaneously pop out of a shooting funk isn't patient; it's just stupid.