jbk1234 wrote:JonFromVA wrote:jbk1234 wrote:
My issue is we had Okoro for most of the post all star break run and whatever he gave us on defense wasn't enough to offset his limitations on the offensive side of the ball.
But the rest of these names only underscore my point. We got Morris off the waiver wire. CPJ was undrafted and is on a league minimum deal. Merrill is on a league minimum deal that wasn't even fully guaranteed. TT was out of the league last year and is on a league minimum deal. Damien Jones is on a league minimum deal and the Jazz gave us to him for nothing but the salary slot. You expect all of those players to be limited.
Of LeVert, Okoro, Wade, and Niang, only Wade can be said to be on a value contract and his value is tempered by his inopportune unavailability. Even if you give Altman a pass on Rubio, we're paying more than $40M per to guys who have thus far demonstrated they're of limited value against good teams. That's not on JBB.
Were trying to hold on to a playin spot if not for those guys, so it's not about the pay, but what they can bring. If JBB can't even be bothered to try combinations that worked, that's on him.
Just a few weeks ago we were the deepest team in the league.
We beat the Jazz pretty easily without Mitchell less than a week ago. You're overly dismissive of the fact that what works against bad teams doesn't always work against good ones.
The Lakers, who just handed it to us, thought they had a great roster until they ran into Denver last season. They quickly discovered it was hard to play all their one-way guys when the other team exploits their weaknesses. Dlo is a different player when he's adequately defended and is getting targeted on the other end. Whatever Vanderbilt brings on defense gets offset pretty quickly when it results in an automatic double team to AD or LBJ.
I'd argue that the problem we're having is injuries are forcing us to play guys who should be seeing their minutes cut at this point in the season. This boils down to you thinking CPJ should be seeing a lot more run even though he hasn't looked great in the run he's gotten in the last two months.
The fundamental problem is he's undersized so he needed to show he was a viable option with LeVert and Okoro when he had the chance because otherwise he's sharing the court with at least one, or more likely two, weak defenders and we haven't been able to outscore good teams by spamming 3s the way we did earlier in the season. Even Mitchell needs to be hidden on defense right now.
Moreover, most of those combinations were reliant on Wade's defense and rebounding. There was good reason to think that spamming 3s with undersized units was not a viable long-term strategy. We're not the first team to try it, enjoy some success, and then experience reversals.
I'm not being dismissive, but players and lineups aren't going to rise to the occasion if they aren't given a fair chance and developed. Instead Bickerstaff is just going to continue to overplay the player's he trusts and continue to wear them down if not outright break them.